10/31/26 IAM Over Death

Colossians 3:3  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Died. This is not something that many of us even will allow in our conscious thoughts. It is a subject put off by couples who never seem to get their house in order. As individuals in an age of people dying younger, less marriages occurring & higher isolation rates our belonging & such are left to the government to deal with & many of our loved ones are robbed of what we would like for them to have.

The literalist will entirely misinterpret the meaning of this verse because they will teach that this means that when we die physically our lives are hidden with Christ. It seems confusing to most of us who already know that this verse is not about physical death. The context is being raised with Christ, setting our hearts in that place, along with our minds at the right hand of God, then we get to this verse. That means the verse is spiritual in nature. This is why we have to be very diligent about what we take from scripture & embrace it as literal. Also, consider how this is written to the intended audience, the church of Colossae, he states that the death is past tense. “For you died,” why would he be calling his audience dead. Love letters to dead people do not get read, let’s be honest.

This death that Paul is referring to we have proven is a spiritual demise, it is the same demise he speaks of when he says 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily” (NASB). This echoes Jesus’ command to those who want to follow Him: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

The cross is an instrument of death but you are not picking it up & following him if you are physically dead. Beyond the shadow of a doubt this was a spiritual death, so he is starting this statement off after speaking of spiritual elements, spiritual locations, in the presence of the physical and spiritual Lord. From this we can assimilate that this spiritual death is not going to be separated from God because it says our life is now hidden with Christ in God.

How can we be separated if this verse states what it states? This is not the same spiritual death that is not separation from God in a road that leads to hell. So what is the message here & where would the Lord have me to teach this week, other than you cannot take this verse literally? The key to this verse is not the word that draws negative feelings that make us psychologically run because some of us cannot bear the fact that most likely unexpectedly we will meet our end & there will be words left unsaid, deeds left undone, & intentions that are not shown that were meant to be revealed.

Hidden with Christ. If we are alive in the context of this verse physically it seems would be hard to conceive in an age of surveillance. Does this mean that when we are in Christ we live off the grid? Not physically but spiritually.

When we know, accept, & live in the hope of the death burial resurrection of Jesus triumphing over sin, death, hell, the grave, the devil & the world we are in Christ. The Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity baptizes us in to the family of God, into the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12-13).

This is the same baptism of the spirit that John spoke of in the book of John chapter 1 alarms that there are two forms of baptism baptism of water and baptism in the spirit. Paul teaches on this in Romans chapter 6:4-7 as the basis and draws here to the Church of Colossae a concise point that believers are hidden with Christ. This is orchestrated through the death of Jesus for the glory of God the father who sent Jesus as the love offering for us.

When we become dead spiritually in this context, not separation from God because of our sin it is quite the opposite. We are as stated baptized into the body of Christ the body of Christ is not a body that is obligated to the sin nature. This means that our previous nature our previous way of life, the things that we would bow to in the flesh have no authority over us any longer. If you recall a few weeks ago we taught on being a new creation in Christ. This is stated in Roman 6: 9, 14. And exemplifies the power that the spirit of God has in our lives to pull us away from that which we deem natural.

When we are hidden with Christ which is what the for states this means that the old is gone, harkening back to the new creation, the new life is what is ahead of us it is what we live and breathe it is the path that leads us to the glorious future that we have hope in to hear well done and good and faithful servant and turn to all that I have made for you. Galatians 2: 20 states it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me so I live in this earthly body by trusting in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

This verse draws all that into account. Because our future is tied to the glory of God because it is by his means we have this promise, we have this hope, that the wretchedness and the wickedness that dwells in this world and sometimes flows through our veins has been done away with we are no longer to bow to it. Our future is tied to being at the right hand of God upon the throne in the hand of righteousness that is the righteous hand of God Christ Jesus.

Now some of us are going to get real nervous at the thought of sharing the throne with Jesus being at the right hand of God knowing that the eyes of the Lord himself are upon us. We can reflect at the times in our life when we have intentionally tread into the fields of transgression and iniquity, and we have dove in head 1st and essential elements giving in to the draw and now we have to consider God the father is looking at us that can be stirring.

So let me tell you, let me encourage you when God the father looks at you, he no longer sees the wretchedness. He no longer sees the wickedness. He no longer sees the malice. Because remember you are hidden in the hand of the righteousness of God the father, that is Christ Jesus your old self is hidden with Christ and God. He doesn’t see you.

The father ceases to count your sins because he can no longer seize them because all he sees is his mighty resurrected, pierced right hand that has overcome the world. That right hand overcame despite the piercing, the effects of the fallen world. You are changed into a new creation because all he sees is the image of his son and the likeness of the perfect Lamb of God.

Safe forever