If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:1-3
Yeshua taught that we should always keep asking, knocking, and seeking in order to receive, have doors opened, and to find what it is we’re searching for. Paul carries this theme of searching forward into a mindset that should continually guide us in our ongoing new life in Messiah.
To Paul, placing one’s faith in the Messiah was a matter of life and death: death to self and traditions of men, and new life as a new self that seeks after the things of God.
For if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Romans 8:13
Therefore, put to death whatever is worldly in you: your sexual sin, perversion, passion, lust, and greed (which is the same thing as worshiping wealth).
Colossians 3:5
This putting to death of our worldly passions and desires was considered to be an ongoing practice, one to where the believer becomes the dichotomous “living sacrifice;” that which is constantly being offered up, yet continually alive, as well.
Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:1-2
This renewal of mind comes as we vigilantly “seek the things that are above,” not only looking forward to a heavenly eternity, but finding ways to enact heavenly principles in the here and now, incorporating our new life into the life we are living now.
This seeking involves ongoing aspects that are wrapped up in the definition of the original wording used in the text: to seek in order to find a thing; to seek in order to find out by thinking, meditating, reasoning, to enquire into; to seek after, seek for, aim at, strive after; to require, demand; to crave. These types of urgent and continual qualities of vigilance are the intent of Yeshua’s exhortation to keep seeking until the objective is found.
In like fashion, Paul uses the same wording to emphasize the believers desperate motivation to know God and his Messiah, to learn more about the things of God and to keep our focus there through the trials of life.
In this way, we end up “putting to death” our selfish desires and we rise to the new life of our new self, created to be like him.
Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.
Colossians 3:10
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