The pattern of the new life received in Christ continues to follow the baptismal plunge into the waters of death. Yes, life is ours, “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). But we have not yet appeared with him in glory. And so, the present life of faith requires that we die again and again to the sinful patterns still imprinted on our own flesh.

Put to death . . . what is earthly in you. (Colossians 3:5)

Today I must die.

Is that one of your first thoughts in the morning? Does putting yourself to death rank very high on the list of things that occupy your mind throughout the day? Do you dwell on self-mortification? If we heed Paul’s words in Colossians 3:5, then death will be daily on our minds.

Paul’s instructions to the church in Colossae cast the Christian life into what we might call a baptismal shape. While baptism occurs just once, the life of faith is patterned after this descent into the waters of death and rising again to breathe the air of new life (Colossians 2:11–12). Baptismal “death,” then, is both an event and an ongoing act for all those united by faith to Christ.

So, Paul calls us to embrace this dying-and-rising shape of the Christian life: You were dead. Because Christ died, you now live. Because you live, you must keep dying. In dying, you truly live.

You Now Live

The hope-filled, gracious message of the saints’ movement from death to life bleeds through the text of Colossians.

The church of the living was once a field of dry bones, “the domain of darkness” (Colossians 1:13). In this domain, true life does not exist. That “life” is shadowy, empty of hope or lasting meaning. It withers in a moment and is forgotten. It is, in the psalmist’s terms, a beastly existence (Psalm 49:12, 20). You were dead.

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