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| Ellis library north wall, Monroe |
I'm sermon-prepping for this Sunday as I preach out of Colossians 3:1-4. One of my commentaries is N.T. Wright's Colossians and Philemon.
As Wright comments on vv. 3-4 he pulls a page out of C.S. Lewis's famous essay "The Weight of Glory." Vv. 3-4 read:
3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in
God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will
appear with him in glory.
Wright writes:
The hope of every J-follower is not only for the coming of the Lord but for the full revelation of what I
am and you are.
“Then
will it be seen with what faithful diligence and perseverance many outwardly ‘unsuccessful’
and forgotten Christian workers have served their Lord. Paul himself,
the prisoner, that eccentric Jew in the Romans’ eyes, and a worse-than-Gentile
traitor to the Jews, will be seen
as Paul the apostle, the servant of the King. These Colossian
J-followers, these insignificant ex-pagans
from their third-rate little country town Colossae, will be seen
in a glory which, if it were now to appear, we might be tempted to worship." (Wright, 133, slight revisions mine)
Paul is saying, for everyone who follows Jesus as Lord
and King, that this is how you are to regard your life: hidden with Christ himself, and on this
foundation you are to build genuine holiness and Christian maturity.
