RESURRECTION LIVING

COLOSSIANS 3: 1-4 / Christ Above All Series
RESURRECTION LIVING

The Resurrection is regarded in Scripture in three aspects- as a fact establishing our Lord’s messiahship, as a prophecy of the believer’s rising from the dead, and as an enabling for the Christian life here and now. The last aspect is the one taught here. Scripture teaches that the believer is so joined with Jesus that he has died and risen with Him.
The settled unshakable conviction of the apostle Paul was that the open tomb opened the way to a life of immense possibilities. He wanted the Colossians not only to believe in the power of Christ’s resurrection but to claim the victory of it as their own. So he taught them the secret of Resurrection Living in Colossians 3:1-11. Victorious Resurrection Living can be realized through a conscious habitual pattern of thought in the mind and an attitude in heart (CIT). The victory of Christ’s resurrection enables Resurrection Living.
The death and resurrection of Jesus to many is just an objective fact concerning how the world was reconciled to God. You can not be too emphatic about that fact, but that is not the whole gospel. The gospel is intended to be personally received, it is intended to change life, it is intended to become a living reality in the lives of those who believe and receive Jesus as their life. It is the foundational principle for truly living the Christian life.
Let’s look into our text and learn how you can appropriate the gospel, how you can live a life in the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For living in the power of Jesus’ Resurrection enables Resurrection Living.

I. SEEKING THE THINGS ABOVE, 1-2.
II. FINDING LIFE IN CHRIST, 3-4.

The only remedy for the indulgences of the flesh (2:30) is the believer’s new life in Christ. By our union with Christ in His death we can died to the world’s way of believing, thinking and acting. In the believer’s union with Christ in His resurrection the power to live a new life is found. Verse 1 commands us to center our life on Christ by seeking His virtues. Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

We have learned that baptism symbolizes our death and resurrection with Christ (2:12). This union with Christ in His death and resurrection is the key that unlocks the power of Resurrection Living. When we surrender or yield our life to Christ we are incorporated into His death and life. When Christ comes to live within us we experience a resurrection to a new life and can live under His guidance and power -if we will surrender the control of our life to Him. That is why Christ commands us to die to our old life, to our old self, to our fleshly nature which we can only do by appropriating, by claiming His death to sin as our death to sin (Rom. 6-7). The mathematician Blaise Pascal said, “It is one of the greatest principles of Christianity that that which happened in Jesus Christ may happen in the soul of the Christian. We have a linking not only with Calvary but with His Resurrection.”
This vital union with Christ gives one a new set of desires, and a new purpose, and a new perspective. The power of the Resurrection puts heaven in our hearts but it needs