If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 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.
Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
(Colossians 3:1–11)
Our life is hidden with Christ in God. It is hidden with Him through our Baptism into His death and resurrection. This is where we were raised with Him. Now we press toward glory—new life in hand. It is in Baptism that we are all made one, we are now no longer Greek or Jew, barbarians, Scythian, Germans, Americans. We are the Lord’s baptized. His saints. His new-life ones. We are those whom He washed and made clean from all sorts of uncleanness: fornication, evil desire, passion, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, and any other such things. Washed and redeemed we are saved from the wrath which God will pour out on those who practice such things—the sons of disobedience.
But in baptism we died and our life is hidden with Christ in God. Therefore we flee such things of this world. We put them to death. We need to put our Old Adam to death. Paul here in Colossians speaks the same thing as he does in Romans 6. Thus we confess in our catechism that the baptizing with water indicates that “the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
This dying and rising is the life-long fruit of baptism. Our life truly is hidden with Christ and not with ourselves. If we look at ourselves we see a lot of that list which would put us with the sons of disobedience, but we are in the Son of obedience. That’s where our are life is hidden. Though we see our own deeds, we know that in Jesus we are alive. Our life is hidden with Christ. He keeps it safe. It’s your life now, and your life forever.
Lord, my God, out of great mercy, through the washing of regeneration, You made me a partaker both of the death and of the life of my Savior. Bestow upon me the power of Your Holy Spirit, that I may daily die unto sin, but live unto You and serve You, until in the life to come I shall be wholly renewed and in perfect bliss. Amen.
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