Summary
The "If" That Is Not a Condition
Human beings love logic, and we especially love the if/then. If you study, then you'll get good grades. If you save your money, then you can take that trip. The "if" sets a condition; the "then" delivers a future benefit. It is tempting to read the Christian life this same way—as though heaven were a payoff waiting at the end of a sequence we must complete.
Paul writes something different in Colossians 3:1: "If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above." That "if" is not conditional. It is presupposed. Paul is writing to baptized believers and is stating a settled fact: you have died, you have been raised, and your life is hidden with Christ in God Colossians 3:3. Lutherans confess what Ephesians declares—"by grace you have been saved through faith… not the result of works" Ephesians 2:8-9. Nothing in our standing before God hangs on our performance.
The "Then" Is Future—and the "Then" Is Now
There is, of course, a future "then." When Christ who is our life appears, we also will appear with him in glory Colossians 3:4. Luther's explanation of the Third Article confesses that on the Last Day God will raise us and all the dead and give eternal life to all believers in Christ. Paul stakes everything on this: if there is no resurrection, our preaching and faith are in vain 1 Corinthians 15:13-14. The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed 1 Corinthians 15:51-53.
But the resurrection is not only future. Being raised with Christ already shapes today. As Romans 6:3-5 teaches, all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death—and if united with him in a death like his, certainly united with him in a resurrection like his. The "then" of glory has already broken into the "now" of the baptized. That is why the teaching "If/Then Is Now" 5-29-22 names today as one day in all of eternity, not a waiting room outside it.
Baptism: Where the Holy Spirit Meets Us
This is why the Holy Spirit keeps returning us to the same places: the waters of Baptism, the body and blood of Christ in the Supper, Absolution, and the preached Word. There the Spirit drowns the old Adam and the old Eve and raises the new creation. Luther refused to speak of himself as someone who had been baptized; he said, "I am baptized," because Baptism is a continual blessing—a daily death and a daily rising into the child of God we were created to be.
That daily rising is what Paul describes: "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" Galatians 2:20. Our lives are bound to his life. Because he lives, we live.
Minds Set on Things Above
To "seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God" Colossians 3:1-2 is not escapism. It is the Spirit centering us on the ascended Christ so that the burdens of sin, fear, and the world's terrors no longer define us. We still have lives to live here—but we live them as the new creation, no longer crushed under the record that stood against us, which Christ has nailed to the cross Colossians 2:13-14.
From this living root comes love of neighbor—not as a condition we meet to earn anything, but as the fruit of Christ dwelling in us. We are "his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" Ephesians 2:10. The cross was not only for a future hope; it was for our today. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. So if you are in Christ—and by Baptism you are—then you are indeed raised. The "if/then" is now.
Video citations
- “If/Then Is Now” 5-29-22 — If you would please open your Bibles to Colossians the third chapter, if you're using a Pew edition of the Bible, that can be found on page 178 in the New Testament. We'll be in Colossians the third…