January: New Beginnings
Day 15 — 15 January
Stop Trying to Get There
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For 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.” Colossians 3:1–4 (KJV)
There is a particular sound a crowd makes when a sprinter crosses the line first. Not the polite applause you hear at a ceremony, but an involuntary roar, a sound that escapes people’s throats before their brains can catch up. You know the kind. It erupts because something has been settled. A finish line has been reached. Whatever suspense existed a moment ago has collapsed into a single undeniable fact: it is done.
Hold that sound in your mind for a moment.
Now imagine somebody telling the sprinter, after the race is finished and the tape has already snapped, that she needs to start running toward the finish line. She would look at you as though you had lost your senses. “I’m already here,” she would say. “What exactly are you asking me to run toward?”
That picture, absurd as it seems, is remarkably close to how many people experience their walk with God. They live as though the race is still being run. They strive, they strain, they exhaust themselves attempting to reach some destination they believe remains out ahead of them, some spiritual altitude they have yet to attain. And all the while, the astonishing claim of Scripture is that they have already arrived.
Paul’s letter to the Colossians does not suggest this gently. He states it as settled fact. “If ye then be risen with Christ…” That little word “if” in English can mislead us. In the Greek, it carries no doubt. Paul uses a first-class conditional, a grammatical construction that assumes the reality of the statement. He is not saying, “If, by any chance, you happen to have been raised.” He is saying, “Since you have been raised,” or better yet, “Given the established reality that you have been raised.”
And the verb behind “be risen with” is worth lingering over. The Greek is sunegerthete (συνηγέρθητε, meaning “raised together with”), a compound word Paul appears to have coined, combining sun (σύν, meaning “together with”) and egeiro (ἐγείρω, meaning “to raise up” or “to awaken”). The tense is aorist passive, pointing to a completed event. Something that happened. Something already accomplished. Not something you are working your way toward, not a destination still shimmering on the horizon, but a reality already occupying the ground beneath your feet.
You have been co-raised. That is Paul’s starting position.
Think of it this way. A great deal of spiritual exhaustion comes from treating the Christian life as an uphill climb. People speak of “pressing higher,” “getting closer to God,” “reaching a new level.” The language of ascent is everywhere. And it is not entirely wrong; there is genuine growth, genuine maturation, genuine development in the life of anyone who takes Scripture seriously. But here is where many people go quietly wrong: they assume the starting point is the bottom.
Paul says no. The starting point, for anyone who has repositioned themselves in faith toward Christ, is the top. You have already been raised. You are not climbing toward resurrection life. You are learning to live from it. The difference is enormous.
Consider Paul’s next instruction. He does not say “try to reach the things which are above.” He says “seek those things which are above.” And the word for “seek” here, zeteo (ζητέω, meaning “to seek,” “to search for,” or “to set one’s heart on”), is in the present imperative. That means it is a continuous command: keep on seeking, go on pursuing. But pursuing what? Not a position you lack. Rather, the full expression of a position you already hold.
Then comes a second command, and this one cuts even deeper: “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” The word translated “set your affection” is phroneo (φρονέω, meaning “to think,” “to set the mind on,” or “to adopt a particular mindset”). This is the same word Paul uses in Philippians 2:5, where he urges believers to adopt the same mindset as Christ. Phroneo is not about emotions in the first instance. It is about orientation. It concerns where you direct the settled posture of your thinking. Paul is saying: align your mind with the reality of where you already stand.
Notice something important here, because it matters for how we understand God. Paul does not say, “If you get your thinking right, then God will raise you.” The raising has already happened. The command to realign your thinking follows from the accomplished fact, not the other way round. This is crucial. God has not withheld something until you perform correctly. His restorative purpose, His life-giving character, His sustaining presence have always been fully available. What changes is not God’s posture toward you. What changes is the orientation of your mind, your willingness to think from the position you have already been placed in rather than grasping for a position you imagine you must earn.
And if that were not extraordinary enough, Paul then makes a statement that sounds almost reckless in its boldness: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
The word “hid” translates kekruptai (κέκρυπται, meaning “has been hidden” and “remains hidden”), a perfect passive verb. The perfect tense in Greek describes a completed action whose results continue into the present. Your life has been concealed, and it remains concealed, tucked inside Christ, who is himself in God. There is a security in that grammar that casual reading misses entirely. You did not hide your own life there; it was hidden for you. And it stays hidden. Not because it is lost or forgotten, but because it is protected. Secured. Held.
Think of it like a deed locked inside a vault. The deed is real. The ownership is settled. The vault exists to protect the document, not to keep it from you. Your life, your truest identity, your deepest reality, is stored in the most secure location conceivable: in Christ, who is in God. Nobody can break into that vault. No failure of yours relocates the deed. No season of confusion cancels what has already been accomplished.
There is a kind of new beginning in this that most people overlook.
We tend to think of new beginnings as ground-level events. You start over. You pick yourself up. You try again. And there is courage in that. But Paul describes a new beginning that does not start at the bottom of anything. It starts from a position of completion. You have been raised. Your life is secured. The foundation beneath you is not your own effort but the accomplished reality of what Christ has already done. Your new beginning, if you want to call it that, is the dawning recognition that the race is not ahead of you. It is behind you. You are already at the finish line. Now you are learning what it means to live from that place.
Perhaps you have spent a long time running. Striving. Reaching. Trying to feel worthy of something you were certain had to be earned. Perhaps each morning has felt like another attempt to close a gap between where you are and where you imagine God wants you. Read Paul’s words again slowly and let the grammar do its work. You have been raised. Your life is secured. The One whose character never shifts, whose presence never thins, whose restorative purpose never stalls, has already accomplished what you are trying to accomplish for yourself.
Stop trying to get there. You are already there.
What remains is not the striving. What remains is the living. Set your mind on it. Let your thinking catch up with what has already been settled. And when doubt whispers that you have further to climb, remember: you are not climbing. You are learning to breathe at the altitude where you have already been placed.
Declaration
You are not striving toward a distant destination. You are already raised, already secured, already held in a place no failure can breach. Your mind is set on realities that do not shift, because the One who holds your life does not shift. Whatever today brings, you face it from the position of one who has already arrived, not as someone scrambling to qualify, but as someone learning to live from the fullness that is already yours. The race is behind you. The finish line is under your feet. You walk forward now, not in anxiety, but in the settled confidence of what has already been accomplished. Your life is hidden with Christ in God, and nothing, nothing at all, can prise it loose.
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