Let us consider for a few moments the words Paul writes to the Colossians and ponder what they might mean in our lives. I would like to pick out three themes which will form the focus of our prayers this morning.
Firstly there is the theme of the hidden self and the new self.
Paul says to the Colossians, ‘you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,’ and he says, ‘you have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator’.
We embrace our new selves every time we confess our sins and accept God’s forgiveness. At that moment we are renewed. We have become like Christ. We have become the people we were created to be.
And then we step out into the world. It is a world which is still broken. And so we have to cling onto our true selves. We have to cling onto an identity which often remains hidden in a world that does not recognise it.
And this idea is reflected in our second theme: which is that there is a difference between those things which are above and those things which are on earth.
Paul tells the Colossians that they must set their minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth: that they must put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly.
Implicit in the idea of heaven is the idea that the way things are on earth is not the way God desires them to be, nor will he tolerate things to be this way for ever. So we shouldn’t get dragged into the way things are on earth. We should not accept these things as divinely ordained. Many things on earth are not divinely ordained and God is on the move; he will transform these things. And, in the meantime, he calls on us to reject them.
And this has implications for our third theme. Because the way humanity is divided among itself, the way in which humanity oppresses itself, this is not how God wants the world to be. God will renew the earth and Paul writes that ‘In that renewal, there is no Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!’
These divisions among us are passing away. Christ is all and in all. Amen.