December 1

Read: Colossians 3:1-4

Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

Hid With Christ In God

Can this passage be used fairly to support the teaching of Christian holiness? Yes. By whatever name we call it, here is described the life of evangelical perfection.

Paul exhorts us, “Seek those things which are above.” This is the way of life here and now for all who pray, as Jesus teaches us to pray: “Thy will be done in earth [in me], as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). The Bible teaches nothing higher than this — and asks the Christian to live no lower.

“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” Another version translates it, “Set your minds on things that are above.” God has given us the power to manage our thoughts. As we meditate on God and goodness, His power somehow creates within us a genuine desire for the things that we think about. It is thus that we set our affections where God asks us to set them. We set them? Not really. Only God can enable me to love what I ought to love. But by opening my mind to Him I make it possible for His miracle of sanctification to occur in me.

Paul says, “Ye are dead,” but then he adds, “and your life is hid with Christ in God.” This is the mystery of the divine-human cooperation in the life of holiness. By His power we may be dead to everything that is not like Christ. By His power we are made alive and respond with Christ to everything that God wills for us.

To be “hid with Christ in God” inhere is Christian holiness. This is my earnest prayer every day of the sanctified life.

Sweet will of God, still fold me closer, Till I am wholly lost in Thee.

— Mrs. C. H. Morris