Book of Colossians 3:1-4 Hid With Christ in God

[Study Aired October 13, 2026]

“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1–4).

If Ye Then Be Risen

The last study ended on a question Paul put to this church. If they were dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, “why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” (Colossians 2:20). That study said the next chapter would give the other half of the argument. This is that half.

The chapter division is not Paul’s, and it falls in the middle of his argument. The verse after it has the same shape as the one before: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.” Dead with Christ at 2:20; risen with Christ here. The last study borrowed this verse to show that the two belong together.

Start again with the “if.” The method is the one the last study used at Colossians 2:20: the word decides nothing by itself, and what stands around it decides. Here the letter settles it without looking ahead, because Paul has already said it outright: “Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him” (Colossians 2:12). Part Eight found that this verb stands three times in Scripture, and every time it speaks of men raised together with Christ. Paul is not asking whether they were raised. He has already said they were, and the “then” draws the conclusion from it: risen, so seek.

The order is the text’s own. The rising comes first, and the seeking follows from it.

Four verses, and they move in four steps: a rising stated, a seeking charged, a life hid, and an appearing promised.

Where Christ Sitteth

The first thing Paul says about “above” is who is there. He does not map it, or rank the beings in it, as the teachers did. He names a Person and says where He is: “seek[ing] those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). Above is not a height a man climbs toward. It is where Christ is.

He is seated. The writer of Hebrews tells us why that matters. The priests of the law stood, because their work was never done: “every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:11–12). He says it again with the cross in view. Christ “endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). The seat comes after the sacrifice. Part Nine found the handwriting of ordinances, the bond that stood against us, nailed to that cross. Here is the One who died on it, seated because the work is done. He said so Himself, before the cross and on it (John 17:4; John 19:30).

“I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4).

“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19:30).

That seat is also above the very ranks the teachers pointed to. Peter says Christ “is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him” (1 Peter 3:22). Angels are named first. His word for “authorities (G1849)” is the word this letter uses when it calls Christ “the head of all principality and power (G1849)” (Colossians 2:10). A man who worships angels bows to beings made subject to the One who sits.

So the “above” has a name and an address: Christ, seated, His work finished, every rank beneath Him. That is where the next verse sets the mind, and that is where the difficulty begins.

Things Above

Here the letter seems to turn against itself. Since Colossians 2:8 Paul has been answering teachers who offered two things: a way up into things unseen, and a way of denying the body its food and drink. He has just quoted their rules, “Touch not; taste not; handle not” (Colossians 2:21), and weighed them and found them wanting. Now he writes this:

“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2).

It sounds like the teachers’ own program: an ascent and a turning away from the earth. Part Seven said the teachers offered “a route out and up,” and that every route away from Christ is a route away from the thing being sought. Has Paul turned around?

Start with the word. “Above” is anō (G507). Scripture uses it plainly of height: the servants filled the waterpots “up to the brim (G507)” (John 2:7), and God will shew “wonders in heaven above (G507)” (Acts 2:19). But the Lord uses it of where He is from, and sets it against this world: “Ye are from beneath; I am from above (G507): ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23). Paul uses it in Galatians, where he answers an error much like the one at Colosse. He warns men against turning back “to the weak and beggarly elements” (Galatians 4:9), and seventeen verses later he writes, “But Jerusalem which is above (G507) is free, which is the mother of us all” (Galatians 4:26).

So “above” is more than a direction. In the Lord’s mouth it names the opposite of this world. In Paul’s, it names where freedom is, set against the bondage of the elements.

Now the answers, and there are three. First, the “above” is located by a Person. Paul does not say, seek the things above wherever they may be. He says, “where Christ sitteth.” Part Seven found where the treasures are kept: “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). The seeking points to the same place. It is not a road past Christ. It is a road to Him.

Second, look at who is told to seek. The teacher of Colossians 2:18 was “intruding into those things which he hath not seen,” going in by his own effort, after something he thought he lacked. These people are told to seek because they are already raised: “If ye then be risen… seek” (Colossians 3:1). Paul says as much elsewhere, in a verse an earlier study has already weighed: God “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6). The next verse here gives the reason in so many words: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The mind is set above because the life is already there. The teacher climbs in order to arrive. The Colossians look toward where they have been placed.

Third, the only way up ran through a descent. “(Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)” (Ephesians 4:9–10). The Lord said the same to Nicodemus: “no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven” (John 3:13). Part Four said that what the Colossians were urged to reach toward, Christ went beneath. That still stands. The One who went beneath is the One who ascended.

That answers the first half of the verse. The second half is harder: “not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2).

Things on the Earth

Paul’s verb governs both halves, so start there. “Set your affection” is phroneō (G5426), and it is wider than feeling. It can simply mean to think: “we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest (G5426)” (Acts 28:22). It can reach into care: “your care (G5426) of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful (G5426)” (Philippians 4:10). It names where a man’s mind is turned. The Lord used it when Peter tried to turn Him from the cross: “thou savourest (G5426) not the things that be of God, but those that be of men” (Matthew 16:23). And Paul uses it of two kinds of men: “they that are after the flesh do mind (G5426) the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5). The “mind” of 2:18’s “fleshly mind” is a different word (G3563), but Romans 8:5 describes the same danger with this one.

What are “things on the earth”? This letter has used the phrase before, and in a way that sharpens the problem. All things “that are in earth” were created by Christ (Colossians 1:16), and it pleased the Father “by him to reconcile all things unto himself… whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Colossians 1:20). The Greek phrase is the same there as here. What Christ made and reconciled, Paul now tells these people not to set their minds on.

The phrase does not settle it, because Scripture uses it for opposite things. The Lord taught men to pray, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). In the same sermon He said: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt… But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19–21). The earth is where His will is to be done, and yet the heart is not to be put there. The treasure is not called wicked. It is called perishing, and the wrong place for the heart.

Paul said it of meats other teachers forbade, in a verse the last study heard: “every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). The thing is good. The fault is in how it is held.

So the two sayings in Colossians do not collide. At 1:16 and 1:20 the things of the earth are named by where they stand with God: made by Christ, and reconciled “unto himself.” At 3:2 they are named as the object of a man’s mind, sought for their own sake. We take this reading from the Lord’s words and from Paul’s: what God reconciles to Himself is not something a man should set his mind on in place of Him. Two verses on, Paul will carry the phrase into “your members which are upon the earth” (Colossians 3:5), and the next study takes that up. Here the nearer case is the one this letter has just described.

Here the difficulty turns inside out. Paul describes men “whose God is their belly… who mind earthly things.) For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour” (Philippians 3:19–20). Whether Paul’s “belly” there is appetite indulged or appetite ruled, the man’s mind is on the earth either way. Which man at Colosse had his mind on the earth? The one whose whole religion was food and drink and days, rules about things which, Paul said, “all are to perish with the using” (Colossians 2:22). He looked heavenward and thought about his food. The last study heard the writer of Hebrews name what such a man had missed: “it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats” (Hebrews 13:9).

So Paul has not turned around. The teachers offered a height without Christ, and a turning from the earth that kept the mind fastened to it. Paul points to a height that is Christ, and he points men to it who have already been raised into it. The earth they receive with thanksgiving; they do not set the mind on it.

None of this is a charge against every man who keeps a day or refuses a food. The last study drew that line, and it holds: what Paul condemns is a rule bound on others, or claimed as wisdom. This same word allows the rest: “He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord” (Romans 14:6). The word is not against days. It asks where the mind finally rests.

Your Life Is Hid

Paul gives the ground of that command in the next breath: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” The last study borrowed the first half of this verse to show that the “if” of 2:20 raised no doubt. “Ye are dead” is the same verb in the same tense. The death is behind them, and it was a death with Christ. Paul does say “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31), but the verses around it speak of standing “in jeopardy every hour” and fighting “with beasts at Ephesus.” The death with Christ is another thing, and he tells us how to hold it: “Now if we be dead with Christ… reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin” (Romans 6:8, 11). The death happened once. We are to go on living as men who have died.

The second half says where their life is. “Hid” stands in the tense of a thing done and still holding: hidden, and staying hidden. It is hidden in one place, “with Christ in God.” That is where Part Seven found the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The treasures and the life are kept together. Whatever a man seeks above, he will not find it anywhere but where his own life already is.

Part Six drew on this verse and the next to join the hope of 1:5, “laid up for you in heaven,” with “Christ in you, the hope of glory” at 1:27. The hope is in heaven because Christ is in heaven, and it is in us because He is not only in heaven.

Why is it hidden? John answers in words close to Paul’s: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3:1–2). The life is real now, and unseen now. The world does not recognize it, because it did not recognize Him.

That raises a question from inside the letter. At 1:26 the mystery “hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints.” Now the life is hid. Is the hiding over or not? The two sayings are about different things. The mystery — “Christ in you, the hope of glory” — has been made known. The life has not yet been shown in glory. It is known, and it is at work, but it is not yet seen for what it is.

There is comfort in the verse, and it should be stated at its true strength. “Hid with Christ in God” says where the life is kept: beyond the reach of the teachers at the door, and of anyone else. It does not speak of a man’s grip on it. Part Four put it plainly: a man may be moved; the hope cannot. That is what this verse says of the life.

When Christ Shall Appear

Hidden now. The verse that closes the passage says when the hiding ends: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”

“Appear” is phaneroō (G5319): to bring into the open, to make seen what was there. Scripture uses it of things good and bad. The Lord said the man who does truth comes to the light, “that his deeds may be made manifest (G5319)” (John 3:21). Paul uses it of a judgment: “we must all appear (G5319) before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive (G2865) the things done in his body… whether it be good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Appearing is not always glory. That reckoning has its own place in this letter, where Paul writes that “he that doeth wrong shall receive (G2865) for the wrong which he hath done” (Colossians 3:25), with the same word for receiving, and it waits there with the rest of the reckoning at 3:24–25.

In this letter the word has been used once already, and the echo is worth hearing. The mystery “hath been hid… but now is made manifest” (Colossians 1:26). Here the life “is hid” and “shall appear.” The words for hiding differ; the word for showing is the same, and so is the shape: hidden, then shown. Part Seven found that this letter speaks of hiding only with its end in view. It does so again here.

John uses the same verb, phaneroō, for both ends of the Lord’s story. Of His first coming: “(For the life was manifested (G5319), and we have seen it… that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested (G5319) unto us;)” (1 John 1:2). Of what is still ahead: “it doth not yet appear (G5319) what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear (G5319), we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). The Life that was shown once in the flesh is now hidden in God, and our life with Him; He will be shown again, and we with Him. Paul calls Him simply “Christ, who is our life.”

There is a showing even now, though not in glory. Paul writes of “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:10–11). The ministry is Paul’s own, but an earlier study found that what he bore, he bore as one member of the body; his is the largest case, and still a case. The life hid with Christ is not idle. It shows through His people now, in their daily dying, and it will be shown with Him in glory.

What appears is glory, and Part Six has said what that glory is: Christ Himself brought into the open, with His people appearing with Him. This study adds only when. The appearing is His coming: “Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23). Then, as John said, “we shall be like him,” and the Lord “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21).

Last, notice a small word that has run through this whole stretch of the letter. These people were “buried with him” and “risen with him” (2:12). They were “quickened together with him” (2:13). They were “dead with Christ” (2:20), and “risen with Christ” (3:1). Now their life is “hid with Christ,” and they will “appear with him.” Past, present, and to come, every step is taken with Him. What was done to Christ is where His people stand, and what is still to happen to Him is where they will stand.

What These Verses Establish

Read whole, the four verses turn the dying and rising of the last chapter into a direction for the mind. Those raised with Christ are to seek where He sits, the work done and every rank beneath Him, and not the earth the teachers were selling: food, days, and rules that perish with the using. Their life is hid with Christ in God, where the treasures are kept. It is at work now in their mortal flesh; at His coming it will be shown with Him in glory.

The order this series has found through eleven studies holds a twelfth time, and here the text states it twice. “If ye then be risen… seek.” “Set your affection on things above… For ye are dead.” Each command stands on something already done. The walk answers to the standing, and never supplies it.

What is new is the direction. The teachers were wrong about where to look, and about what the looking could win. There is an above, and Paul does not abolish it. He tells us where it is: where Christ sits.

That settles the question for us as well. A way of life can look upward and still be fastened to the earth — to rules, to food, to days, to anything that perishes with the using. The test is not how high it claims to reach. It is where it sets the mind: on Christ, where He sits, or on something here that will not last. Scripture puts the same test in both Testaments (Psalm 73:25–26; John 6:27; 2 Corinthians 4:18).

“Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25–26). 

“Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27).

“While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Next study: (Colossians 3:5–7)

“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.”