Colossians 3:1-11
What Words Can Express?

If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory. Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry; for which things' sake the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. You also once walked in those, when you lived in them; but now you also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth. Don't lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator, where there can't be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all.

World English Bible

When we read this passage in Colossians, most of us are drawn to the "don'ts". Paul's litany of sins is reminiscent of the Ten Commandments in Exodus, and no one would argue that the evil actions he listed are congruent with the Christian life. Aside from the clearly illegal and immoral deeds, Paul challenged his readers to avoid the more subtle but insidious attitudes that express hate instead of love, like anger and slander. This is a good reminder of what we should not be, and we cannot mature in our faith without purging ourselves of these bad habits. However, if we are successful only at avoiding these sins in our lives, all we have become is proper and civil.

The descriptions of what we should do as Christians are not as vivid as those we should avoid, but they are essential to our growth. Paul even went so far as to describe our lives as "hidden" with Christ, not to be revealed until Christ is revealed "in glory". In a historic sense, Paul might have been referencing how Christianity was an underground movement being persecuted by Jewish religious authorities and the Roman government. At the same time, I think there is a deeper truth than the necessities of his era in Paul's statement.

The nature of our "hidden" life with Christ is that our focus is to be "on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth". Our values, our goals, and our treasure above are difficult to express in words created to describe what is below. We don't know yet what heaven looks like or feels like, but the sense we have in our souls assures us the completeness and beauty God has created for us will overwhelm our earthly expression of it. So, for now, we can only express the eternal and divine to each other in what language we have and, as Paul wrote in Romans 8:26, we reach up to God by depending on the Holy Spirit to "make intercession for us with groanings which can't be uttered."

This is why I believe this observation is important. If we are not careful, our faithful walk with God can be detoured by the words we choose and by how our thoughts proceed from those words.

I used a dangerous word earlier, when I referred to "our goals". When we speak of our goals in earthly terms, we are choosing a direction for ourselves and setting into motion a sequence of activities to move in that direction. In contrast, our goal spiritually is to relinquish that choice of directions to God and to follow faithfully the activities God chooses for us, no matter whether those activities make sense to us. In an earthly sense, Christianity follows the opposite of what we label as "achievement", in that our motivation is in an entirely different direction from that of those who choose to be successful.

Another confusing word is "happiness". My imperfect personal dictionary defines "happiness" as what we feel based on what is outside us and defines "joy" as what we feel based on Who is inside us, but those are my arbitrary distinctions related to this dichotomy of the temporal and the eternal. The truth is that we have a choice in how we search for happiness. We know there are destructive and foolish ways to find happiness. Still, even when we look for happiness in the 'right" places—family, friends, church—we can still be looking for what is on earth rather than what is in heaven.

I'm even convinced that the words "right" and "holy" can take us in the wrong direction, and there are numerous conflicts in the Gospels between Jesus and the Pharisees that forcefully make this point. When it is our human initiative that seeks to make "right", we are in danger of doing the right things for the wrong reasons and shoving God out of the way of our plans. When we allow God to lead us in making "right", we will be reminded frequently that God's ways are stunningly different from our human ways, and God's results are dramatically superior to what we would have hoped.

This all leads back to the fundamental question of our Christian walk: "What would God have me do?" It is God alone that provides the answer to that question, and God's answers will draws us away from an earthly perspective towards a heavenly perspective. Our goals, our joy, and our holiness will have Jesus Christ as their only source. Our reasoning and planning for our lives will be shaped less by our abilities and desires than by our love for and trust in God. We might even find ourselves at a loss for words in trying to explain to others what we are doing, but God has a new heavenly language waiting for us.