You Have Been Raised with Christ

This morning, we received the sad news that a brother of ours that many of us know, Mark Simpson, passed away. Mark and Marsha were a part of our church for a long time. And if you know Mark, you will know that his passing away on Resurrection Sunday would be something that he would have truly rejoiced in. We celebrate Resurrection Sunday in view of a resurrected Lord and Saviour. And as a soon to be dad, or you can call me a dad now, I guess, the labour, the work, the pain of our upcoming birth is like the Good Friday we've just had in view of the great and glorious arrival of our baby daughter, which is like Easter Sunday.

The joy, the magnificence, the celebration of the Sunday makes the pain of that labour pale in comparison. And that is what we are reflecting on today: that even in the dying of beloved brothers, we know that death is not the end. Let's turn to Colossians 3 this morning. Even as we've heard the narratives of the Resurrection day, we hear Paul's explanation of the significance of that resurrection for us in Colossians 3.

And we will read only the verses from verse one to verse four. Colossians 3:1: 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.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. As we reflect on the significance of Easter Sunday again today, we take our reflections today not from the narratives of that great Resurrection day, but on the implications of Paul's letter to the Colossian church. In the first verse of chapter three, we see the statement: if, or since then, you have been raised with Christ. If you have been raised with Christ, and from this conditional opening statement comes a reflection on the implications of the resurrection for our lives.

This conditional statement, that if this happens, then this will happen. From this conditional statement about being raised with Christ, we are offered three great hopes on this Easter Sunday morning: three great benefits that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has offered us for those who believe. The first benefit that you and I may have in the resurrected Christ, if we have been raised with Him, is you have the forgiveness of your sins. One of the repeated truths that the New Testament tells us is the tragic state of the human condition.

We are gripped by a deep and inescapable condition, a thing called sin. First, this condition, this sin in us, affects our standing before God. It renders us guilty. It renders us liable to His impartial judgment of us. And it is precisely because God is completely unbiased that the verdict about our moral situation will always be guilty.

The verdict will always be guilty. The second problem of sin is that it affects our experience of our present life. It leaves us trapped in a power that controls our lives. This domination bends us towards self destruction. The destructive nature of sin's effect is such that apart from God's intervention, the Bible says that we are as good as dead.

Ephesians 2:1 says that we are dead in our trespasses and our sins. In other words, sin both leaves us inexcusably guilty before a holy God and helplessly enslaved to the destructive effects of sin. The Bible then says that the reality of this terrible position is proved to us most concretely by the reality of death. The fact that death exists points to sin. Paul says in Romans 5 that death reigns through sin.

Death reigns through sin. This death is firstly a physical death when human bodies die. But then something we don't see: that once the body dies, a spiritual death happens to the soul where we potentially die eternally, forever in a place called hell. It's interesting that when you read the Apostle Paul's writings all throughout the New Testament, you notice how much Paul individually hates the concept of death. He hates it.

It is his enemy. Why? Because as he famously explains in Romans 6:23, the wages of sin is death. The payment of it to us is dying. Biblical scholar Gerhardus Vos says of Paul that death is understood by Paul to point us towards the personified sentence of God against sin.

In other words, the reality of death is proof of the criminality of sin. Death proves that sin is the consequence of God's judgment. Deep down, whether you are a Christian this morning or not, we know this to be true because death always seems unnatural to us. Even when we hear of dear old Mark Simpson dying at the age of 94, 95, having lived a good life, we are sad. Why?

Because Mark isn't meant to die. And yet we know people who will try to say that we need to embrace death as part of the normal cycle. And yet the Bible says that God has placed eternity in our hearts. We mourn death because we actually know eternal life. Death is the enemy of life.

We desire life. We despise death. The good news of Easter, the good news of the gospel, is that Jesus died for the criminality of sin. He died and then He was placed in a tomb, and three days later, He rose physically from death. And because He has come back from the dead, proof has been given to us that sin has been conquered.

If death equals sin and death has been conquered, sin has been conquered. And because sin can be forgiven, life can therefore be restored even after physical death. This is the hope that Christians celebrate on Easter Sunday. Vos will go on to explain and say: when Christ rose on Easter morning, He left behind Him in the depths of the grave every one of our sins. There they remain buried from the sight of God so completely that even in the day of judgment, they will not be able to rise up against us anymore.

If you have been raised with Christ, if you are a Christian today, through your faith in Him, you have been raised with Christ, and your great hope is that your sins have died with Jesus on the cross. They remain buried in that grave. And this is why Paul says in Colossians 3 this morning: when Jesus died, you died. When Jesus died, you died. Your life is now hidden, consumed by Christ.

When Christ died for sin, it was my sin that died with Him. And when He was raised to life, my life was raised with Him. Friend, your life is now so tied up in Christ's life that Paul says it is hidden with Him. The image here, the words here, is that your life is embedded in Him. It is so entwined with Him that they cannot be separated.

Your sin remains buried from the sight of God forever. And so the first hope is that if you have been raised with Christ, you have the forgiveness of your sin. The second benefit we have, if you have been raised with Christ, is that you are assured of becoming better. A few months ago, I led the funeral of a friend, a family friend of ours named Keith, who had passed away from cancer. Visiting with Keith's wife, Maureen, I saw a family crest proudly displayed on one of their walls.

The motto of this old family crest, actually written in Dutch because he was Dutch, was taken from Colossians 3:2. Specifically, the statement: set your minds on the things above, not on the things that are below. This old Dutch family motto was drawing upon the aspirational hope of Colossians 3:2: that because we have been raised with Christ in faith, our thinking, our minds, and our hearts have been elevated to heavenly things, to the things that are good, the things that are godly, the things that are pure. It's a wonderful family motto.

I don't know if it's possible to create family crests nowadays. Just inherit them. That's a good one, because it reminds the entire family, those who belong to Christ, that the standard is not simply being better than the next guy. The standard is heaven.

The standard is godliness. Set your hearts and your minds on the things above, not on the things that the plebs wrestle with. Yet this goal, this aspiration to have minds and hearts centred on heavenly things above, that motto would be crushing to anyone who has not been raised with Christ. It would be a hopelessly unattainable pursuit to have a heavenly mind if heaven hasn't entered our hearts. But Paul's argument goes like this:

If you have been raised with Christ, let your heart and your minds be raised to the same place that you have been raised. Let everything in you be elevated to the realm of where you will one day be raised to forever. You see, because of Jesus' resurrection, we have this powerful knowledge of what the end will be like. We know that Jesus has conquered. We know that He will restore life back to us.

We know that He will transform our hearts and our minds to fit not this world down here, but the kingdom up there. And because we already know how this ends, that knowledge transforms our experience right now. Our minds are already centred on God. I've told this story once or twice before, but it's a good one to use again to explain what's happening. A few years ago, my little nephew Noah, so my brother-in-law's son, who is now four years old.

We were holidaying with Noah and his parents. At one time, when his dad wanted Noah to finish his dinner, he promised Noah ice cream with sprinkles. Because Noah trusted his dad, believing him to not go back on his word, Noah waited patiently, even gulping down mouthfuls of broccoli and peas. He happily finished his dinner instead of throwing a tantrum. Why?

Because the hope of ice cream was just around the corner. Not only does Noah wait patiently, he waits obediently. And yet even in his obedience, even in his waiting, there's a sparkle in his eyes. He can already taste that ice cream. This is what it means to have our minds raised with Christ.

To set them to heaven. When Jesus was raised from the dead, when He ascended to the right hand of God the Father, the Bible calls this moment a first fruits moment. Metaphorically, Jesus is that first mango of summer, the one that people are paying tens of thousands of dollars for at auctions. Have you ever seen that?

Crazy. The first mango of the season. And those who have put their trust in Him are like the fruit that will follow after this first fruit of the season. Because He has been raised, because He has ascended to heaven, we are given the promise that we follow in His footsteps. Paul explains in Romans 8:11 when he says: if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.

What the Father did in raising Jesus from the dead, He will also do to those who have placed their trust in His finished work. In other words, the resurrection promises that we will become better people. We will become heavenly people even now. We are people who have not only had our past sins forgiven, we are people with futures one day free from sin forever. And that knowledge of the future freedom we have is already now causing sin to lose its power over me.

If then you have been raised with Christ, set your minds on things above. Our third and our final benefit of the resurrection we remember today is that if you have been raised with Christ, your place with God is secured forever. In verse four, Paul finishes his train of thought by saying that because our life is hidden in Christ, when Christ who is your life appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory. The night before Jesus goes to the cross, He says to His disciples in John 14:19: Before long, the world won't see Me any longer, but you will see Me. And because I live, you also will live.

Those apostles went on later in their lives to endure all sorts of resistance to the message that Jesus was the Saviour of the world. Their message was as unpopular then as it is now. But being rejected for that message was nothing to them. Why? Because they knew that Jesus once stood before them in the flesh.

Like we read this morning: real flesh, real bone. And that changed everything. They saw the scars on His hands and His feet, scar in His side. They knew they were marks of a real body. His heart was really beating.

His voice was really speaking. His stomach could take in broiled fish. He is alive. First Corinthians 15 then tells us that those who belong to Christ will be resurrected to be just like Him. No different.

Just as He received a body that cannot die again, an eternal body that is heavenly, indestructible, and glorified, so we will receive a glorified body. The promise of the Bible is that through faith in Jesus Christ, in what He accomplished at Easter, these bodies will never again experience the curse of sin. A time is coming when we will never fail again. A time is coming where we will never experience death again because the curse of sin has been broken. And all of this happens when we appear with Him in glory.

That's why Paul writes in Philippians 1:6 of his hope. When he says: I am confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion, when? At the day of Christ. The day of Jesus Christ is the same day of glory described here in Colossians 3. The end will come, and Jesus will deliver up to His Father the kingdom that He has reconquered, having destroyed the great enemies of Satan and sin.

Every single enemy of His eternal reign has been conquered. That day will be the day of His glory. And on that day, as freed captives, He will show us how His good work in us has been finished. This good work is locked in when we are given our own resurrection from the dead. So the fact that Jesus lives means that we will live with Him in glory, in His kingdom, for all eternity, and we will experience a kingdom when none of our greatest enemies, sin, Satan, and death, have any power whatsoever.

We will forever know just how powerful our Saviour Jesus Christ is for saving us. How loving He was. How kind He has been. That is the hope that Marsha Simpson has today with the passing of Mark. His life is not gone.

And so all that is left for me to do this morning is to ask you: Is this your personal hope? Is this your comfort today? Or will you leave here this morning sad and hopeless? Let me encourage you that today can be the day that you believe in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that in this moment, you may receive the glory that He received on that day of His resurrection.

It is as good as yours. If you have been raised with Christ, you have the forgiveness of your sins. You have the hope of having your hearts and your minds moved to better things. And if you've been raised with Christ, you have the joy of a secure place in the glorious kingdom of the Son. Don't place your hope in things that won't save you.

The last time I checked, ten out of ten of us will die. The strike rate of death is a hundred percent. None of us escape it. Don't place your hope in any of the things down here below. Set your minds on the things above.

There is no power like the power of the resurrection of Jesus. That's why His resurrection is our greatest hope. If then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts, set your minds on the things above, not on the things below. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, even as we remember Your great victory over the grave, we remember that You are now sitting at the right hand of God the Father in glory.

And so, Lord, You are not simply a living Saviour. You are a conquering King who rules and reigns from His throne in heaven. And as King, Lord, You are calling all subjects to bow their knee. You're calling all citizens of the kingdom to see and hear what the kingdom of God is like. And today, again, Lord, we see that the kingdom is hopeful.

It is full of joy. It holds great confidence that our sins have been forgiven, that our lives are being transformed, and that nothing on earth can ever remove that hope. Thank You for this truth. May we forever be changed by it. In Jesus' name. Amen.