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Be Christian: Heavenly Minded, Earthly Good
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Paul’s writings in Colossians 3 almost directly parallels what we saw in Ephesians 4.
The reiteration of these points of what it means to be a follower of Jesus to a separate congregation means they are to be foundational themes that are non-negotiables.
Focus: We must learn to be heavenly minded to accomplish God’s earthly good.
Heavenly Minded
Earthly Good
Heavenly Minded
We must be heavenly minded to enact God’s earthly good in the world.
Colossians 3:1-4
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte
Earthly Good
We must obey God’s commands to be of an earthly good that reflects Christ.
Colossians 3:5-17
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Compassionate hearts reject shelters of indifference.
The danger is that if we want, with the opulence that surrounds us, we can by choice remain untouched, disinterested and unaffected by the plight of the world around us.
The challenge with the western millennial church is understanding that the fact that we are unaffected by situations persistent in our world (poverty, discrimination, etc.) doesn’t mean that God is unconcerned about such issues or that they are not sin.
It simply means that it is out of my purview and I need to be educated about it to develop the Biblical heart of Christ towards it.
This is expanding my tent pegs and becoming broader in my scope.
The problem we’re having today in the public forum is that people are not defining their terms
And thus people are talking about apples and oranges while ignoring the things about which God actually cares.
For example:
Justice does not equal socialism or a propagation of white guilt
Anti-racism does not mean anti-police or anti-patriotic
However:
Righteousness does mean holiness in God’s sight
And this is that to which the Bible calls people
Being Christian also means that you are determined to be an earthly good by doing all things in the name of the Lord Jesus.
This means that you make it your highest aim to do things the way that Jesus would.
Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The word of Christ needs to determine my worldview and my convictions.
If you don’t study your Bible, you will not know the word of Christ, and thus you will develop a fabricated spirituality.
“If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him.”
-Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
Why?
Because we would shape Jesus or any messianic figure according to our momentary preferences, our temporal agendas and what ultimately comes most easily to us.
The Bible however talks of Jesus going to the cross for our sins and calling his followers do the same by daily denying themselves to be of earthly good.
It is then that we live in God’s resurrection power and can speak life to a world consumed by sin and death.
This is the gospel on which we will focus next week.
Second City Church - Be Christian, Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020