Christ Is Your Life: Discovering the Reality of Colossians 3:4
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. — Colossians 3:4
Read the verse slowly and notice what Paul does not say. He does not say Christ is the source of your life, though He is. He does not say Christ gives your life meaning, though He does. He says Christ is your life. Not the best part of it, not the centre of it, not its purpose. The thing itself.
Most of us carry a quieter theology than that. Life is mine; Christ is Lord over it. That is true as far as it goes, but it stops short of what Paul is saying, and the shortfall shows. A person who thinks of Christ as the Lord of a life that is still his own will spend his years trying to keep the two in step. A person who knows Christ is his life has nothing of his own to keep in step. He has only to live from the One he has.
How Paul gets there
Colossians 3:4 is the fourth verse of an argument that begins in verse 1. You have been raised with Christ. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Therefore Christ is your life. Each step rests on the one before it. Because you died and were raised in Him, your old life is not somewhere in storage; it is gone, and the life you now have is His, held in God, safe.
That is why the same chapter can then tell you to put to death what is earthly in you. It is not asking you to build a new self by effort. It is asking you to stop wearing clothes that belong to a dead man, because you are alive in Christ and He is your life.
What it changes
- Fear of losing your life, in the small daily sense, loses its grip. It is hidden with Christ; nobody can get at it.
- Guilt has less room to work, because the life under judgement was crucified, and the life you have now is His.
- The question "what should I do with my life?" becomes "what is Christ doing in me today?" That is a lighter question and a truer one.
- Death itself becomes what Paul calls it elsewhere: gain. If Christ is your life, dying is not the end of it. It is more of it.
A way to begin
For a week, whenever you catch yourself saying "my life" in your head - my plans, my time, my future - add the verse to it. My life, which is Christ. It will feel strange at first, and then it will feel like the truth, because it is. The One who appears in glory is the One you are living now, and when He appears, so will you.