Colossians 3:1-4 Amplified Bible
Put On the New Self
3 Therefore if you have been raised with Christ [to a new life, sharing in His resurrection from the dead], keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value]. 3 For you died [to this world], and your [new, real] life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, [a]appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Knowing God and Knowing Ourselves
2 Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value].
What does it mean to be habitual?
1. : regularly or repeatedly doing or practicing something or acting in some manner : having the nature of a habit : customary. habitual candor. habitual behavior. habitual drug use.
What is the meaning of habitual behavior?
Habitual behavior is a form of automatic and routine behavior. It is behavior that people repeat, because this behavior is easy, comfortable or rewarding.
Habitual behavior’s automatic character is demonstrated by the fact that it is often started by a cue or a change in the situation.
What does habitual mean in humans?
If the same behavior is performed more frequently in response to specific situational cues, this may become more automatic, or quicker and easier. As a result, it may be experienced as “automatic” by those who perform it (Verplanken & Orbell, 2003), and categorized as “habitual” by researchers.
Examples https://www.merriam-webster.com/sentences/habitual
Augustine wisely, habitually prayed that he might know God and then himself.
Christ is your Maker. Therefore, to know Him is to know yourself: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3)”
The better we know Him, the more we’ll grasp who and whose we are.
And the more we see who and whose we are, the more secure we are.
We all have fundamental personal worth needs: a need for security, a sense of unconditional love and acceptance by other people, and a sense of significance—the assurance that our lives absolutely matter. Finally, we need satisfaction and purpose. Is there anything we can accomplish for God that will endure?
Because God Himself endowed us with these needs, they cannot be satisfied in the temporal realm of this world.
People habitually turn to others for their sense of security and worth. But other people habitually let us down, and we, in turn, habitually let them down.
We habitually look to wealth and prosperity for our sense of significance, but soon, the hollowness of hoarding worldly possessions becomes all too real.
Luke 12:16-20 Amplified Bible
Parable of the Wealthy Fool
16 Then He told them a parable, saying, “There was a rich man whose land was very fertile and productive. 17 And he began thinking to himself, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place [large enough in which] to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my storehouses and build larger ones, and I will store all my grain and my goods there. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many good things stored up, [enough] for many years; rest and relax, eat, drink and be merry (celebrate continually).”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; now who will own all the things you have prepared?’
We often turn to performance, position, popularity, and prestige to gain a sense of true satisfaction in this world. Once again, these will all let us down. The only place where we can find those needs fully met is in our relationship with Christ.
Empowered to Love Others Compassionately
Our relationship with Christ empowers us to love others compassionately.
Grasping our true identity in Christ is not a one-off once in a lifetime event but an ongoing journey of habitual discovery. But the more we come to grasp who and whose we are, the more we begin to realize that we are people who have a new identity and a new purpose. We’re no longer in Adam; we are in Christ. We have a new spiritual DNA, as it were. We have been adopted into His family.
We now have a foundation for understanding our true position in this world. At the beginning of the upper room discourse in John’s gospel, we get to listen to Jesus’s most intimate words to his disciples. Here, we discover that Jesus’s hour of departure was soon coming upon them, that He loved His own until the end.
But the key verse to highlight, and one that’s often overlooked, is John 13:3, which tells us, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he’d come forth from God and that he was going back to God.”
That little verse is the basis for what he was actually able to do.
He performed a visual parable when his disciples were too busy jockeying for higher positions regarding who was going to be first in the heavenly kingdom.
As His disciples are bickering over who will sit at His right hand, Christ lays his garments aside, putting on the clothing of a servant, began to wash their feet.
Though this was an integral part of Oriental hospitality, it appears that there was no “lowest” servant on hand to perform the ritual during the Last Supper.
Certainly, none of the disciples were going to do it if they were arguing, fighting and debating over what they believed was coming: highest honors and prestige.
So Jesus, to humbly, quietly, decisively settle the matter, took up the towel and the basin and began to wash their feet, giving them their model of servanthood.
Even today, too many of us are visibly repulsed, too much like Peter who was almost too embarrassed “no, not ever, my feet” to let Jesus wash his feet.
What gave Jesus the real security and the power to serve in this manner, even knowing that his arrest, humiliation and crucifixion was so very imminent?
My conviction is that Christ focused on these three things:
1) He knew that the Father had given all things into his hands, and this was the true source of his dignity
2) He knew he’d come forth from God
3) He knew that he was going back to God.
This was His security.
Because of these three great truths, He was able to serve—to wash the disciples’ feet as they were fighting for their greatness and as he was awaiting crucifixion.
As Jesus shows, true greatness consists in service to others. Once again, the washing of the disciples’ feet is a visual parable of this astonishing insight.
Mark 10:32-45 Amplified Bible
Jesus’ Sufferings Foretold
32 Now they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking on ahead of them; and they were perplexed [at what Jesus had said], and those who were following were alarmed and afraid. And again He took the twelve [disciples] aside and began telling them what was going to happen to Him, 33 saying, “Listen very carefully: we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed and handed over to the chief priests and the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and hand Him over to the Gentiles (Romans). 34 They will mock and ridicule Him and spit on Him, and whip (scourge) Him and kill Him, and three days later He will rise [from the dead].”
35 James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came to Him, saying, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You.” 36 And He replied to them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” 37 They said to Him, “Grant that we may sit [with You], one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory [Your majesty and splendor in Your kingdom].” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism [of suffering and death] with which I am baptized?” 39 And they replied to Him, “We are able.” Jesus told them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and you will be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. 40 But to sit on My right or left, this is not Mine to give; but it is for those for whom it has been prepared [by My Father].”
41 Hearing this, the [other] ten became indignant with James and John. 42 Calling them to Himself, Jesus said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their powerful men exercise authority over them [tyrannizing them]. 43 But this is not how it is among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first and most important among you must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a [a]ransom for many.”
Imagine if Jesus listened to what people said about him.
He would never have been secure enough to serve.
People would say, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Why is he eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners? The son of man came eating and drinking.” They went on, “Behold a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Even His own siblings refused to believe in him.
We Have the limitless Resources of Christ
Jesus was continually the subject of scorn, criticism, and abuse.
If He’d listened to what people said about Him, He would not have been secure enough to serve—to love others compassionately.
Instead, Jesus chose to allow His Father’s words to define Him.
His true dignity, His true security, and His true destiny then empowered Him to be a habitual servant of other people.
And He invites us to do the very same thing because, astonishingly, His resources have now become our resources. When we think about the fact that we’ve become children of God and have been given the security and destiny that comes along with this knowledge, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
If I had to stop and sum up the entire Bible in one word, it would be the word relationships. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is all about relationships.
It’s about knowing the love of Christ that liberates us to love others. Once again, there’s a tremendous risk involved in this.
People can be habitually painful and we can be habitually painful to them, and yet, we are able to serve them because we know who we are and whose we are.
The great American theologian Jonathan Edwards was profoundly right when he said that real wisdom is for us to treat things according to their true value.
The perennial human temptation is to mistake the temporal for the eternal.
We habitually seek fulfillment in human relationships, wealth, fame, and power, only to have our hopes habitually shattered again and then again.
True wisdom, however, involves the recognition that you’re going to give your life in exchange for something.
As Paul, the apostle, informs us in Galatians 2:20,
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
If Christ authentically loves us and willingly, with no second thoughts, gave Himself for us, how can we not live for Him and for others? (Philippians 2:5-11)
5 Have this attitude [a]in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be [b]grasped, 7 but [c]emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and [d]being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death [e]on a cross. 9 For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
If we leverage the temporal for eternal gain, what we’re really doing is treating people according to their true value.
We are going to give our lives in exchange for something, and we’ll be wise if we give in exchange for something that’s never going to let us down in the end.
God will never fail us, Christ will never fail us. Holy Spirit will never fail us.
Embracing this crucial truth allows us to forgive others when we’ve been wronged. It liberates us to accept both the people who are gifts to us and those we find to be draining. If we’ve been forgiven all, we ought to forgive others.
Christ invites us then to treat people with mercy, forgiveness and to relinquish the demand for ultimate justice. Justice is getting what we richly deserve. Never ask God for justice. Not a one of us could ever hope to endure God’s real justice.
Rather, ask Him for mercy—not getting what we deserve—and ask Him for grace. When this is our habitual posture, we are freed to be people who navigate through this brief earthbound sojourn with an habitually eternal perspective.
In the coming year of our Lord and Savior 2025, habitually take the time to pray about your relationship with God and honestly pray how it shapes your identity.
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Psalm 19 New American Standard Bible
The Works and the Word of God.
For the music director. A Psalm of David.
19 The heavens tell of the glory of God;
And their expanse declares the work of His hands.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
Their voice is not heard.
4 Their [a]line has gone out into all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
In them He has placed a tent for the sun,
5 Which is like a groom coming out of his chamber;
It rejoices like a strong person to run his course.
6 Its rising is from [b]one end of the heavens,
And its circuit to the [c]other end of them;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.
7 The Law of the Lord is [d]perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
8 The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
9 The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether.
10 They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much pure gold;
Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.
11 Moreover, Your servant is warned by them;
In keeping them there is great reward.
12 Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.
13 Also keep Your servant back from presumptuous sins;
Let them not rule over me;
Then I will be innocent,
And I will be blameless of great wrongdoing.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 