You died

For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.  – Colossians 3.3-4

You died.

That must be one of the strangest sounding phrases in the New Testament. If this was the only reference to the deadness of living people it would make no sense. How can the living be dead?

To make it even more difficult we always have been dead.

Let's see if we can work through this. Originally, from the time we were born we were spiritually dead. Our sin caused a deadness to the things of God and our deadness to the things of God made us very alive to the things of the world. Those things ruled our lives.

But when we were saved we were made alive in Christ. We died to one life and were made alive to another. Instead of our lives being controlled by sin they are now controlled by Christ. Romans 6 gives a great presentation of this truth. I think the phrase ‘buried with Him in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life’ describes perfectly what it means to be dead but alive. Paul also asks the question there ‘how can those who are truly dead to sin continue to live in sin.’

I think it is pretty clear that the Christian cannot continue to live like the world. Without Christ the world is dead to Him. In Christ we are dead to sin. The world cannot live in Christ – we know that. Why then do we think we can live in sin?

It is a hard concept to grasp. It doesn’t feel like sin is dead in our lives. The problem is that we live in the flesh and though the power of sin is dead our flesh can still long for it.

My life is hidden with Christ. That means that I have the power to not be controlled by sin. We know it is not perfect because it is not until we are totally united with Christ at our death or His return.

But in the meantime we need to live in Christ and not in sin. We can’t do it apart from Christ, but there are things that we can do.