uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor
free: but Christ is all, and in all. 12. Put on
therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved,
bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind,
meekness, longsuffering; 13. Forbearing one
another, and forgiving one another, if any man
have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave
you, so also do ye. 14. And above all these things
put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
15. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts,
to the which also ye are called in one body; and
be ye thankful.'--COL. iii. 1-15.

The resurrection is regarded in Scripture in three aspects--as a fact
establishing our Lord's Messiahship, as a prophecy of our rising from
the dead, and as a symbol of the Christian life even now. The last is
the aspect under which Paul deals with it here.

I. Verses 1-4 set forth the wonderful but most real union of the
believer with the risen Christ. We have said that the Lord's
resurrection is regarded as a symbol, but that is an incomplete
representation of the truth here taught, for Paul believed that the
Christian is so joined to Jesus as that he has, not in symbol only, but
in truth, risen with him. Mark the emphasis and depth of the expressions
setting forth the believer's unity with his Lord: 'Ye were raised
together with Christ'; 'Ye died, and your life is hid with Christ.' And
these wonderful statements do not go to the bottom of the fact, for Paul
goes beyond even them, and does not scruple to say that Christ '_is_ our
life.'

The ground of these great declarations is found in the fact that faith
joins us in most real and close union to Jesus Christ, so that in His
death we die to sin and the world, and that, even while we live the
bodily life of men here, we have in us another life, derived from Jesus.
Unless our Christianity has grasped that great truth, it has not risen
to the height of New Testament teaching and Christian privilege. We
cannot make too much of 'Christ our sacrifice,' but some of us make too
little of 'Christ our life,' and thereby fail to understand in all its
fulness that other truth on which they fasten so exclusively. Union with
Christ in the possession of His life in us, and the consequent rooting
of our lives in Him, is a truth which much of the evangelical
Christianity of this day needs to see mor