Col. iii. 3, 4. 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.
INNUMERABLE are the advantages which reve- lation gives us over the heathen philosophers : for, whilst it discovers to us a much sublimer rule of con- duct than they were able to devise, it affords motives
sufficient to incline us to duty, and teaches us where to obtain strength for the performance of it. The duty it enjoins is nothing less than a supreme delight in heavenly things : but at the same time it animates us by the consideration of the privileges we enjoy and the prospects we have in view. What the Chris- tian possesses in these respects may be seen in the words before us : in which we notice,
I. His exalted state —
The Christian is a paradox ; being both dead and living at the same time. He is " dead" —
[Once he was alive wholly and entirely to legal hopes and carnal enjoyments : but now is dead to both. He now sees that he has no righteousness of his own for his justification before God, and no strength of his own for the fulfilment of God's holy will : he therefore renounces all dependence on himself, and seeks righteousness and strength in Christ al
one
As for the enjoyment of the things of time and sense, he has the same capacity for it as ever ; but he has lost his incli- nation for it, and no longer seeks his happiness in it. He feels the emptiness and vanity of all sublunary good : and, whilst he is thankful for the portion of it that is committed to him, he regards the whole world as an object that is crucified, and is himself crucified unto itb ]
Yet is he alive in a far higher sense than ever he was before—
[He has in Christ a "life," whereby he is enabled to live unto his God, and to walk in the paths of holiness and
peace This life is " hid with Christ in God ;" so that,
whilst the world seeth it not, Satan is not able to destroy it. When Adam had life, so to speak, in his own possession, his great adversary prevailed over him and slew him : the believer therefore is placed beyond the reach of Satan's efforts, and has his life treasured up in heaven, whither Satan has no access,
and in God, over whom he can have no power Indeed
Christ himself liveth in the believer0, and is " his very life." What the soul is to the body, that is Christ to the believer's soul, acting in all its faculties, and operating in all
its energies And hence the believer, however dead he
is in himself, is enabled to live in a way that no other creature in the universe can live.]
a Isai. xlv. 24. b Gal. vi. 14. « Gal. ii. 20.