Colossians 3:2

Colossians 3:2. Set your mind (not, ‘affection'), etc. ‘Seek' pointed to the outward conduct, this carries the injunction to the inward thought and controlling desire. Lightfoot: ‘You must not only seek heaven; you must also think heaven.'

The things that are on the earth. Comp. Philippians 3:19: ‘earthly things;' 1 John 2:15: ‘the things that are in the world.' Those who place this paragraph in the polemical portion of the Epistle find here a reference to the false precepts about eating, etc. Of course the injunction gains force in its application to these ascetic rules, which are about things ‘to perish with the using' (chap. Colossians 2:22), but it should be limited to them. The tone henceforth is ethical, not controversial. ‘The use of earthly things is not forbidden, but we are bidden, in the right use of the earthly, to mind and seek heavenly things' (Braune). Colossians 3:3. For introduces an enforcement of the preceding exhortation.

Ye died; in fellowship with the death of Christ (see marg. references); ‘died from the rudiments of the world' (chap. Colossians 2:20). Hence ye cannot go back to that previous mode of living.

And your life is hid (or, ‘hath been hidden') with Christ in God. The past and present are combined in the thought: your true life was hid and remains hidden together ‘with Christ,' and this permanent concealment was ‘in God;' in Him, ‘as the Father in whom is the Eternal Son (John 1:18; John 17:21), and with whom He forever reigns (Colossians 3:1), the life of which the Son is the essence lies shrouded and concealed' (Ellicott). ‘Life' here means more than the future resurrection life; or rather, it includes all that is involved in that life. The life to be completed hereafter begins here. That life is unknown to the world, and in its fulness even to believers themselves (1 John 3:2); but though ‘hidden' it furnishes a motive for not living to the world. Being kept secure is not the thought suggested.