Colossians 3: Setting the Mind Above
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✝ Passage: Colossians 3
The chapter opens with a conditional built entirely on the previous chapter’s imagery of dying and rising with Christ in baptism: if you were raised, then seek what’s above. Within a few verses, that same lofty instruction lands on a very unglamorous vice list — anger, slander, lying, malice.
Read it in the terminal:
bible colossians 3
Seeking above, dealing with below
“If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above” (3:1) sounds mystical until verse 5 turns it practical: “put to death” whatever in you still belongs to the old arrangement. The chapter refuses to let cosmic identity stay abstract — it goes straight for specific behavior within a sentence or two.
Off with the old, on with the new
“Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance… Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection.” — Colossians 3:12, 14
The clothing metaphor matters: you don’t wait to feel compassionate before acting compassionate, any more than you wait to feel like wearing a coat before putting one on. The virtues are given as things to put on, not just feelings to develop.
Whatever you do
The chapter closes by extending this all the way into ordinary work: “whatever you do, in word or in deed” is to be done “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (3:17), and later, to work “heartily, as for the Lord” (3:23). Even unglamorous labor gets folded into the same identity as the cosmic Christ of chapter 1.
Questions for study
- What in you still needs to be “put to death,” per verse 5 — not managed, but ended?
- Which virtue in 3:12 do you need to put on today, whether or not you feel it yet?
- How do 3:17 and 3:23 change how you think about the most boring task on your list this week?