Tidings for Tuesday
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3
When the late Gospel preacher Albert Ramsay was attending a conference, he used to enjoy giving out Hymn 64 in the Believers Hymn Book, Hark Tis the Watchman’s Cry. If it was a large conference, this rousing hymn would rattle the rafters and lift the spirits of the Lord’s people in a wonderful way. As I would watch the great crowd putting so much energy and harmony into that song, I would wonder how anybody could look upon us and declare that we were dead. But our text does! God sees us as dead, and a victorious Christian life depends on us reckoning ourselves dead as God sees us.
The fundamental meaning of death is separation. Physical death separates the body from the soul and spirit. Spiritual death separates the soul forever from God. The death that our text refers to is also a separation – the separation of a believer from his former life. Positionally, this occurred the moment we were saved. Old things passed away and all things became new. Our standing before God is complete and perfect in Christ, and will be forever. Practically, this separation happens daily, as the believer allows his life to be hidden with Christ in God. This does not happen automatically, but requires that we submit our wills to the will of our Lord. It is His desire that our lives be brought into conformity with death to the world and being alive to God.
In many ways, we need to be alive to the world. We need to tend to practical matters such as making a living, providing for our families, for our health, and physical well being. We need to own those things that enable us to function in our homes, our communities, our employment, and in our Assembly. But what we don’t need as the Lord’s people is to allow those things to own us. Our highest goals should not be for the temporal and physical but for the spiritual. Our best efforts should be for the Lord’s work, including the upbuilding of His people and the furtherance of the Gospel. Our greatest source of enjoyment should be those things that delight the heart of our Lord. We need to deaden our senses to those things that the devil would dangle in front of us, and sharpen our senses to those things that pertain to the kingdom of our God.
We struggle to see ourselves as dead to the world, because we have too much of ourselves anchored in the world. We need to sever those anchor cables and reckon ourselves dead, that our lives might be hidden where they will count the most – with Christ in God. -Jim MacIntosh