Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith by Dave Hunt - Only the Dead Can Be Resurrected

Nuggets from An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith by Dave Hunt  - Only the Dead Can Be Resurrected

Hear Paul say it again: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Consenting to be dead and willing for Christ to be their life was not only the Colossians’ basis for victory but also the essential meaning of the gospel they must embrace. Otherwise, there could be no salvation. Without that, they were mere Barabbases, grateful that Christ had died in their place but mistakenly assuming that they had been “saved” in order to live for self. If they were not willing to acknowledge Christ’s death as their very own and to give up life as they would have lived it so that Christ could become their life, then they could not experience the victory over sin and self that Paul preached. Indeed, they had not consented to the message of the gospel at all.

And what made the fact of their death, burial, and resurrection with Christ the dynamic power that transformed their lives? It was this promise: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” Once that truth had gripped their hearts so that His “appearing” to His own to take them to His Father’s house in heaven had become their daily expectation and hope, Christ’s death and resurrection were so real to them in the present that they were to changed into new persons. As such, Paul told them, they were to “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” (vv. 1-2). May we each pursue that challenge wholeheartedly.