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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘Your life is hid with Christ in God.’
Col_3:3
I. The reality of the spiritual life.—The presence of Christ in the heavenly places is invisible to us. We cannot see Him, as with transfigured form He stands within the dazzling light of the throne. But none the less sure is it that if we believe we are saved through Him. His words are true; His promise steadfast. Besides this, two considerations may assure us:—
(a) The consciousness of spiritual change.
(b) The evidence of spiritual character.
II. The preciousness of the spiritual life.—We have access to God, and can press into His audience-chamber with sure acceptance. It is the spring of joy and happiness to our natures. ‘All things are yours,’ ‘All work together for good.’ ‘Whom having not seen we love.’ At whatever value the Christian, as a man, esteems his natural, yet at an infinitely greater value does he prize his spiritual life; and so multitudes have counted ‘all things but loss’ for this.
III. The sure guardianship of the spiritual life.—There is nothing valuable but is exposed more or less to danger. Full well we know the peril of the spiritual life. What evil influences are brought to bear upon us! How temptation weaves the wizardry of its spells! Now if life were dependent on our own custody and feeble strength we should soon be deprived of it. But who can erase the shining characters from the life-roll of heaven traced by the finger of God?
IV. The reserve of the spiritual life.—‘It doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ The ‘glory’ that shall be revealed ‘in’ the believer is not yet manifest. ‘The world knoweth’ us ‘not.’ Hence the indifference, scorn, contempt with which Christian character is often treated. Christ at last shall confess His own before His Father and the holy angels. But now, till the time comes, this life and the glory that pertains to it maintain a reserve. They are hidden in Christ; ‘not of the world.’ Yet be encouraged; the day of redemption draweth near.
V. The deathlessness of the spiritual life.—This perishable body must decay, and dust shall be laid with its kindred dust. But the life secured by Christ shall not be harmed. Christ exclaims, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ and that which is hidden in Him shall survive and flourish above all the dissolutions of time and the wrecks of the universe.
Illustrations
(1) ‘It is related of a Duke of Brunswick, celebrated for the costly jewels he possessed, that he had an iron chest made and placed in his bedroom. This was so skilfully contrived that when any one opened it who knew not the secret, bells rung, pistols were fired, and other tokens of alarm were given. But skilful thieves once, during the silence of the night, dug through the wall against which it was placed, pierced the chest, and took away many of the gems. And however we might watch and be careful, if there were not One wiser, greater, more vigilant than ourselves, the life-treasure we have might be lost. But God is mighty, faithful, and slumbereth not, and our life in Christ is secure.’
(2) ‘To the honour of Lord Macaulay it is related that on one occasion, while surrounded by courtly friends in a brilliant assemblage, he recognised and shook hands with a retiring man of literary talent whose worth and capability he knew, but whom others passed by.’
LIFE INDEED
I. The Christian’s life is ‘a hidden life.’—His real life is not on the earth, nor for the earth. His desires are beyond this world; higher and further-reaching than the utmost condition of earthly kings, and conquerors, and statesmen, and men of wealth.
II. And yet he has a visible and outside life in this world.—He has a body compassed with infirmity, he has his sorrows, his pleasures, his wants, his trials, his ailments, his active duties, his seasons of rest, his conversation with the outside world, his domestic relations, his social position. In all these matters he is as much visible as others are: perhaps even more openly so, because the more honest; for having little to conceal, he cares the less to be watched and observed.
III. The believer has an inward and an outward life, and they do not correspond; and thus there seems to be about him a kind of contradiction in the matters of this life? He may be poor, or weak in the flesh, or in shame and of low estate and consideration among his fellow-men; while his heart is rich in the joy of the Holy Ghost, strong in hope, and full of the prospects of an ever-increasing glory.
—
Rev. G. F. De Teissier.
Illustration‘Travellers among savage nations tell us that, for the most part, the wild and half-naked people are more taken with shining beads and pieces of bright cloth than by the more solid and useful gifts of civilised life. Their friendship is easily purchased and at a cheap rate. What takes the eye is everything; that which requires intelligence, study, and a higher estimate is put aside. The same kind of thing is true of the children of this world. Wise as they are, and civilised, and highly cultivated, and full of wants, and grasping after many things; wonderful as are their works, their reasonings, their schemes, their productions, their imaginings, still they are, like the savages, taken more by the tinsel, the glitter of the things which are immediately before them, or within easy reach, than with the better and purer, and nobler and more glorious promises of the hidden and the future, the unseen!’