---

There is no doubt a supposition in the "if." The apostle takes it for granted that Christians were raised together with Christ, and admonishes them, therefore, to evince it in their life. The resurrection of Christ is represented as giving to His people —

I. A NEW AIM. Man is born to aspire, and when he rises with the victorious Christ he aspires to heavenly things. The new quest is for righteousness, holiness, patience, devotion, love, and self-sacrifice.

II. A NEW HEART. The affections are to be set on things above, not as in the unregenerate state on earthly things. It might be possible to seek heavenly things merely in obedience to authority or convictions of duty, but that we may be raised above that, we are encouraged to set our whole heart and mind upon Divine realities.

III. A NEW LIFE. Dead to the world, they have nevertheless a resurrection life hid with Christ in God. And their earthly life of duty and endurance corresponds with the secret fountain from which it flows.

IV. A NEW HOPE. which —

1. Respects Christ — "He shall be manifested." It is the blessed hope, the glorious appearing. He shall come the-second time without sin unto salvation.

2. Respects Christians. Spiritually raised with Christ, they will share His revelation.

(Family Churchman.)

1. St. Paul has just been dealing with a system of repression and abstinence which had a vain show of wisdom, but did not touch the spring of action, and was therefore of no value in resistance to indulgence of the flesh. Would you know, he asks, how you may be lifted above the tyranny of sense, and be initiated into the true secret of temperance and chastity? To go back to a system of bondage fit only for the childhood of the race is to forget the characteristic feature of Christianity, which is the elevating of the whole man into a new region of thought and action, in virtue of union with One who has ascended into that heaven where your true life is hid with Him in God.

2. This is Paul's great doctrine.

(1) He seems almost to picture a pursuit of the sinner by the Avenger of blood which is disappointed by his reception into the City of Refuge. "That I may win Christ and befound in Him," so that when I am looked for only Christ is to be seen.

(2) But inclusion in Christ is more than for safety, it is for comfort in trouble, strength in weakness, life in death.

3. This union is expressed in a retrospective way. If I am in Christ I am in Him as that which He is now, as one who has died, risen and ascended; and when He died I died, and when God exalted Him He set me with Him. Henceforth I must live the risen life, and live above the world as one who has done with its cares, tails, and lying vanities. "He that is dead is freed from sin;" he that is raised must mind the things above, have them for his interest, employment, study, affection, so that when the veil is removed which now hides Him we may be manifested with Him.

I. THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST IS A FACT, as much of history as of the faith of Christendom, and attested by convincing evidence on the part of unexceptionable witnesses.

II. OUR RESURRECTION WITH CHRIST IS A FACT SPIRITUAL, BUT REAL, AND CONTAINED IN CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. To some minds a spiritual fact is a self-contradiction. But a spiritual fact is, above all other kinds, a factor in history. It sets in motion influences which change the face of nations, working those miracles of good in comparison with which the rise and fall of dynasties are vanity.

III. This resurrection IS EFFECTED BY UNION WITH CHRIST. The word "union" is used very loosely. We speak of a combination of a few thousands for a purpose salutary or mischievous as union, little thinking what the term is which we take in vain. But this union is one which man cannot have with man. It is a union of spirit, and such that the spirit of the Saviour not only influences the spirit of the man from outside, as our mind is wrought upon by speech or books, but from within. "He shall be in you."

IV. HOW AND WHEN IS THIS UNION REALIZED. Paul says that all we who are baptized into Christ, there and then put on Christ. "We were buried with Him by our baptism into death." If this realization of Christ has not yet been given us, let us not take refuge in names and forms, saying, "I have it as a thing of course, for I have been baptized." If you have it you will know it; if you have it not yet it is yours by right. Baptism is at any rate the promise of God, to each one, of his grace and acceptance in proportion to the need and. entreaty.

V. THIS UNION IS BETWEEN CHRIST IN HEAVEN AND US. That Christ is there need not repel any one from seeking Him. "He ascended that He might fill all things." When He was upon earth He did not even fill Palestine. Now by virtue of His exaltation He can fill every soul with Himself.

VI. Therefore WE MUST SEEK THE THINGS ABOVE.

1. The contrast is to things on earth — harassing anxiety, importunate vanity, consuming ambition, exciting pleasure, shameful self-indulgence. The things above are the realities of which these are counterfeits, the grand and satisfying pursuits of which these are the phantoms, things which bring comfort and peace and rest to the soul.

2. Every honest searching of the heart to root out what God hates, every earnest effort after forgiveness, every aspiration after a Diviner life, every sincere endeavour, is a seeking after the things above.

3. By degrees there shall be in every such seeker a change of places between earth and heaven. From seeking he shall rise to thinking the things above, and when at last the door opens, and he is called in to see the King in His beauty, he shall find himself in no strange scene or company.

(Dean Vaughan.)

---

---

KJV: If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

WEB: If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.