COLOSSIANS 3:1-3: If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God

The most profound truth that is also the most empowering truth Christians need to understand and apply is in today’s scripture. It is the most profound because it radically shapes our thinking which directs our affections and wills. As for the power from this truth? Our grasping of it determines if we live the Christian life as God intends – full of joy and influence–or languish in fear, doubt, and spiritual paralysis.

The Apostle Paul writes to the Colossians reminding them “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” What? Died? Yes. When we look at the world of humanity, every single person on this planet falls into one category – the walking dead, but there are two distinctions.

First, there is the walking dead who are still in their sins and trespasses. We read of this category in the letter to the Ephesians – And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:1-3). Every person born is alive physically but live spiritually dead. All things about their lives are of this world rooted in sin. And they are powerless to change themselves. New birth is what they need and new birth, like their physical birth, is out of their control. But then, God intervened – But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved (Ephesians 2:4-5) leading us the second distinction among the living dead identified in today’s scripture – those dead to self and alive in Christ.

When God opens the eyes of our understanding and we exercise the gift of saving faith and repentance He gives us, we become new creatures in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). The new creature means new life and with the new life, death to our old life. It is a death that frees us from living as the walking dead in the bondage of Satan, sin, and self to live as the walking dead in the freedom of Christ and all the rich spiritual blessings of living for Him and others, not ourselves.

Do we get this? Do we realize what happens when we become Christians? We died with Christ to be raised with Christ to walk in the newness of life as the walking dead, not in trespasses and sins, but in the power of a life hidden in Christ.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to live as I really am – dead to my sinful self and alive in Your holy Son.”

QUOTE: “We once walked dead in our sin but now, in Christ, walk alive in His Glorious Person.”