Colossians 3:4,5 - You will appear with Him in glory

3:4

“When Christ appears”. We can take both an eschatological view of this, and a more immediate view. Before the return of Christ the world will often look down on us, despising us. When Christ returns we will appear with Him in glory. Part of our battle is to keep our eyes fixed on the future, fixed on the certain return of Christ and the exalted state we will share with Him. However, there is also a more temporal view as well. In any situation we need to fix our eyes on Jesus. For a time He may seem far off, we may be struggling to understand or to see, but when the breakthrough comes, when we trust Him, then everything looks different. In this life that may well still involve suffering, but we will see the purpose.

3:5

Appearing with Christ in glory is our destiny. Too often we are reluctant to play up that side of the gospel, but it is true, and it is important. It also has deep consequences for how we live now, and here Paul gives us some of the important do-not’s. We are to put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature, which is quite a lot! We have been saved in order to Christlike (Rom 8:29), not to remain the same. There are positive aspects to this, but also negative aspects, ie things we should not do. The reason for this is that they have a very destructive effect, both on us, and those around us. Sexual immorality is the first to be mentioned. As a church we are far too reluctant to talk about this, sometimes for fear of offending people. We should not be so, for sexual behaviour is extremely important, either for good if it within God’s terms (ie within marriage between one man and one woman), or in a destructive way in every other context. Evil desires and greed are then mentioned. Greed is a form of idolatry. The only thing we should want evermore of is God Himself.