Look up

 This week's verses are Colossians 3:1-5:

Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Keep thinking about things above, not things on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ (who is your life) appears, then you too will be revealed in glory with him. So put to death whatever in your nature belongs to the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, shameful passion, evil desire, and greed which is idolatry. 

These verses continue the theme from last week on remembering what game we're here to play.  They come after a section where Paul is condemning performative religiosity. He is saying that instead of worshiping the idea of being seen worshiping God and proudly making a spectacle of being humble, we should be focusing on Jesus himself and not ourselves.

One of the things that happens when we become Christians is we begin to realize that we are eternal beings. We are also spiritual beings as well as physical. We have one foot in heaven and one on earth. Becoming a Christian lifts us up into a world we didn't recognize before.

When we die, people often tell children that we are with Jesus. But we are with him now too! We have died, in a sense, to our old ways and we are with Jesus in his kingdom. Our life is no longer our old life but a new one lived in imitation of Jesus. Or that's how it's supposed to work.

Instead, we crawl out of the grave like zombies and go back to our old patterns of life, half dead and half alive. We stop looking up and start looking around, and become gluttons and idolators and get wrapped up in impure and immoral things.  But we are supposed to stay dead until we rise with Christ. People are supposed to see Jesus, not the flesh zombie.

So Paul reminds us to seek the things above. We have to look up and remind ourselves of our example in Jesus. We have to see heaven and remind ourselves that's our eternal home. Anything that keeps us looking around for something to devour should be shot in the back of the head. You have the cross. Go get a shovel!

Paul gives the examples of sexual immorality, impurity, shameful passion, evil desire, and greed, to make it clear we're not just talking about the ten commandments. When something makes us desire something more than God, it is idolatry and must be stopped. If we really are "dead," then none of those things should matter. The only thing the dead are meant to do is await the resurrection.

So how often do you look up at Jesus?  Where do eternal priorities rate in your day to day? Do they at least outperform the vices Paul describes, even if they don't necessarily crowd them out? Take some time to consider that we have been lifted up with Christ and that he has hidden us from the things that want to destroy us, if we are willing to stay hidden in him. Keep seeking what he has to offer and not what the world would have you settle for instead.