Colossians 3:1-4 Commentary

On the American National Library of Medicine website the cognitive therapist Dr. Dean Schuyler reflects on what we might think of as what people often “set” our “hearts on” (cf. Colossians 3:2). “What,” he asks there, “do we think about?

“We anticipate sometimes, thinking about events to come. We think about our children and sometimes about our friends. We think about ourselves, the events of our day, the relationships we have. We think about what may be coming next in our lives.

“We think, too, about world events: terror or foreign involvement. Sometimes we anticipate travel. And, as we age, at times we think about the ‘consequences of aging’: loss, lost control, changes in life.”

We might deduce, then, that Dr. Schuyler suggests that much of what we think about is closely related to ourselves and our own interests. When we have time left over to think about other things, it’s often about how world and other events will affect us.

In Colossians 3 Paul summons Jesus’ friends not to “set” [zeteite*] our “hearts” and “minds” on such “earthly things [ta epi tes ges],” but on something quite different. He, in fact, invites us to set not just our minds (2), but also our hearts (1) on “things above [ta ano].” In doing so the apostle professes Jesus’ resurrection that God’s dearly beloved adopted children celebrate today changes everything, including the objects of our love and focus of our attention.

In fact, as preachers might grab hearers’ attention by opening an Easter message on Colossians 3 with, when Jesus walked out of the tomb, his friends walked out with him. Paul implies that in a real sense, when God raised Jesus from the dead, God also resurrected Jesus’ adopted siblings.

After all, in verse 1 the apostle insists, “You have been raised with Christ [synegerthete].” This, of course, requires some Spirit-led homiletical “unpacking.” We can’t, first, fully understand Paul’s profession of our resurrection until we remember his subsequent posting of our death notice. “You died [apethanete],” he asserts in verse 3. Why do God’s dearly beloved people refuse to “set our minds not on “earthly things,” but “on things above”? Because we have apethanete (“died”).

But what could the apostle possibly mean by insisting living, breathing adopted children of God have already died? What on earth could he mean by claiming that people whose hearts haven’t yet stopped beating and brains haven’t yet stopped functioning have already been resurrected?

On a perhaps lovely Easter morning preachers will need to let the Spirit help us decide how much somewhat “heavy theology” we should lay on worshipers who may be thinking more about Easter eggs and dinner than death and resurrection. We may choose to go a bit lighter on the theology and a bit heavier on tangible evidence of that death and resurrection.

We might choose to simply preach something like this: when Jesus died, our naturally sinful selves, in a sense, died with him. When the Romans crucified Jesus, he broke death’s stranglehold on his friends. Because Christ died on our behalf, physical and spiritual death no longer control our thoughts and desires. We need neither fear our own death nor cave in to sin’s temptation. When Jesus died, sin’s mastery over us died with him.

What’s more, on that glorious first Easter, when Jesus rose from death to life, the Spirit also raised our new nature to life. God raised a new life in us that’s fully equipped to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. Long before Christ returns to raise dead bodies and take living ones to himself, God had made us people of the resurrection.

Among the signs of that new life are setting our hearts and minds on things that are ano (“above”). This, however, raises a translation question. While the NRSV, for example translates the Greek word phroneite “seek the,” the NIV, by contrast, translates it “set … on.”

Preachers might note there’s actually little substantive difference between those two translations. After all, Jesus’ followers seek what we set our hearts and minds on. To borrow the paraphrase of The Message, Jesus’ already resurrected followers act like the “things above” are the most important things in all of creation. Christians make those things the center of our attention, thinking and behavior.

The much bigger Easter question is, “What are the ‘things above’ on which we focus our thinking and acting?” While we sometimes think of the things above us as spatially above us, that more closely reflects an early Hebrew than Christian cosmology. While we sometimes think of, for instance, heaven as located hundreds of miles above the earth, the Scriptures at least imply “heaven” is more of a realm than a spatial reality. God’s heavenly throne and the saints whose souls now surround it are, in other words, in an entirely different dimension of reality.

So on what things “above” do Jesus’ resurrected friends set our hearts and minds as well as seek? Preachers might begin preaching on this by letting the Spirit lead us to prayerfully explore our “death” (3) and those things Paul summons us to “put to death.” He insists Jesus’ followers have already apethanete (“died”). By that he seems to mean at least that our naturally sinful selves have, in a real sense, died. Our sin, sins and sinfulness have lost control of us.

As a result the Spirit helps us, according to verse 5, “Put to death [nekrosate], therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature [ta mele epi tes ges]: sexual immorality [porneian], impurity [akatharsian], lust [pathos] evil desires [epithymian kaken] and greed [pleonexian], which is idolatry [eidololatria].”

While this list of ta epi tes ges (“earthly things”) is less than exhaustive, it lists things that are characteristic of a life that’s self-rather than God-centered. The Spirit equips those whom God raised to life with Christ to refuse to even think about those deathly and deadly things that include, as The Message paraphrases them, “sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy.”

As preachers explore the “things above,” we might continue by describing the opposite of these “earthly things.” People God has raised from the dead with Jesus concentrate on things like discipline in our intimacy and faithfulness in our marriages. We set our minds on contentment with all the good things God has given us. Resurrected people, quite simply, focus on and cultivate the things that God desires for us as well as our neighbors.

Preachers might go on to note some of the “things above” Paul subsequently mentions in Colossians 3:12-15. He summons “God’s chosen people” to cultivate “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts … And be thankful.”

We might at least infer that the things above also include some of the things the other Easter Lessons mention. Those whom God raised from the dead with Jesus think about how we, with Mary, can share the good news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (John 19:18). We can also join the prophet Jeremiah in focusing on God’s everlasting love that draws us to himself with an everlasting kindness (31:3). Jesus’ resurrected friends can, what’s more, with the psalmist set our hearts and minds on praising and exalting God for God’s great love for and enduring faithfulness toward us (118:1).

Preachers might, on top of all that, summon God’s dearly beloved people to spend our time thinking of God’s heavenly throne as the place from which God rules over the entire creation and every creature. Those whom God has raised with Jesus focus on bringing our hearts and minds, words and actions into conformity with God’s loving reign. We, quite simply, set our hearts and minds first on the kingdom of God and its righteousness.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Few literary characters are more memorable for the emotional wallop they pack than Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find’s The Misfit. While he’s a convicted murderer, he understands something about Jesus’ resurrection that even God’s adopted children sometimes fail to grasp. The Misfit recognizes that Jesus’ rising from death changes everything.

“’Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,’ The Misfit tells his next victim, ‘and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,’ he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.”