Set your mind above, and trust God daily. 🙏

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Since I Have Been Raised with Christ, Why Do I Still Make Others Feel Small?

There is a peculiar grief in recognizing that one has been given a great gift and yet still lives so often beneath it. There is a sorrow that belongs especially to those who know the language of grace, who have sung resurrection hymns, who have confessed Christ, who have spoken of new life, and yet who still discover in themselves an ugly tendency to diminish others. Not always openly. Not always with shouting or cruelty. Sometimes it is done with a tone. A look. A correction too sharp to be loving. A joke that lands like a knife. A silence meant to chill. A habit of always needing to be the wiser one in the room. And afterward comes the question, heavy and humiliating: Since I have been raised with Christ, why do I still make others feel small?

The question matters because it is not merely psychological. It is theological. It is spiritual. It touches the nerve of discipleship itself. If resurrection is real, if new life is real, if the old self has died with Christ and the new self has been raised with him, then why does so much pettiness remain? Why does pride still rise so quickly? Why does the self still reach for superiority as if it were food?

Part of the answer is that resurrection is both gift and calling. Scripture speaks in a strange and beautiful double voice. On the one hand, the believer has already died and been raised with Christ. This is not an aspiration but a declaration. On the other hand, the believer is also commanded to put to death what belongs to the old way of life and to clothe oneself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. In other words, what is true in Christ is still being worked out in us. The risen life has begun, but it has not yet fully overtaken every chamber of the soul. We are new, but not yet wholly healed. We belong to Christ, but many habits still belong to fear.

That may be the most painful truth of all: making others feel small often has less to do with strength than weakness. It can look like power, but it is usually a defense. We reduce others in order to protect some fragile place in ourselves. We feel uncertain, so we become cutting. We feel unnoticed, so we dominate. We feel ashamed, so we become severe. We fear our own inadequacy, so we magnify the inadequacy of someone else. The impulse to make another person shrink is often the frightened self’s attempt to avoid disappearing.

This is why belittling can wear so many respectable disguises. It can appear as discernment, when it is really contempt. It can appear as honesty, when it is really impatience. It can appear as theological precision, when it is really the pleasure of standing above another. It can appear as leadership, when it is really insecurity in clerical dress. It can appear as humor, when it is really aggression with a laugh track. One does not need to curse someone to make them feel small. One only needs to remind them, subtly and repeatedly, that their words matter less, their insight is thinner, their mistakes are more visible, their presence less weighty. There are many ways to wash one’s hands while still leaving another diminished.

For this reason the question is not simply, Why am I like this? It is also, What am I protecting? What wound, what vanity, what fear, what hunger in me reaches for elevation by lowering another person? The old self does not die gracefully. It flails. It bargains. It borrows the language of virtue. It even tries to make holiness itself into a platform. The ego can turn anything into a ladder, including religion.

And yet there is mercy in the asking of the question. The fact that one feels pierced by it may itself be evidence of grace. There was a time, perhaps, when making others feel small brought satisfaction, or at least went unnoticed. But to feel the sting of it, to be unable to rest in one’s own superiority, to hear in one’s own words an echo of something un-Christlike, is already a sign that the conscience has not been abandoned. The Spirit is often most present not when we feel triumphant, but when we are unable to escape the truth about ourselves.

The raised life in Christ does not make us impressive. It makes us honest. It frees us from the exhausting labor of having to appear larger than we are. The gospel does not inflate the self; it crucifies the need for inflation. To be raised with Christ is not to become grand over others, but to be joined to the one who took the form of a servant. The risen one still bears wounds. The exalted Christ is still the crucified Christ. Therefore any resurrection that makes us harsher, more self-certain, more dismissive, more addicted to being right at the expense of being loving, is not resurrection in the shape of Jesus. It is merely ego with religious lighting.

Perhaps that is why humility is so difficult. Humility is not humiliation, but it often feels like death because it requires surrendering the illusion that our value depends on being above someone else. Many of us have learned to live by comparison. We know how to feel secure only when we are more faithful, more intelligent, more discerning, more moral, more wounded, more enlightened, or more correct than another. Even our suffering can become a form of superiority. But Christ does not raise us in order to place us on a pedestal from which we can look down. Christ raises us into a life where we no longer need the pedestal.

To make others feel small is to forget the shape of grace. Grace does not approach us in order to embarrass us into transformation. Christ does not stand over the weak and smirk at their incompleteness. Christ stoops. Christ touches. Christ restores. Christ tells the truth, certainly, but never to annihilate the person standing before him. Even his rebukes open a door toward life. How often ours merely close it.

This is not to say that all correction is wrong or that all clarity is cruelty. Love does sometimes speak hard truths. Pastors, parents, teachers, friends, and prophets cannot avoid this. But there is a difference between helping another stand and needing them to kneel. There is a difference between truth spoken for healing and truth used as an instrument of self-exaltation. One can tell the truth in a way that enlarges the soul of the hearer, even in pain, and one can tell the truth in a way that shrinks them. Christ seems always to do the former. We too often do the latter.

So what is to be done? Not self-hatred. Self-hatred is only pride turned inward, the ego still fascinated with itself. Not despair. Despair is another refusal of grace. The better path is confession joined to watchfulness. One must begin to notice the moments when the spirit tightens, when irritation becomes an appetite, when another person’s weakness starts to feel useful, when one’s own cleverness becomes too pleasurable, when the urge rises to interrupt, correct, expose, or diminish. These are holy warning signs. They are invitations to stop before the damage is done, or to repent quickly when it has been.

And repentance in this matter may need to be very plain. It may mean apologizing without explanation. It may mean resisting the impulse to add one more clarifying comment that keeps oneself in control. It may mean listening longer than feels comfortable. It may mean asking whether someone felt dismissed, and then enduring the answer. It may mean learning silence not as withdrawal, but as restraint. It may mean praying before speaking in rooms where one is accustomed to ruling by tone. It may mean letting another person be bright without feeling dimmed by it.

Most of all, it means returning again and again to Christ, not merely as the one who raises, but as the one who lowers himself. The church rightly loves the language of resurrection, but resurrection can be sentimentalized unless it remains joined to crucifixion. One does not rise with Christ without also dying with him, and one of the things that must die is the craving to secure oneself by making others smaller. That craving is old self business. It belongs to the tomb, even if it keeps trying to crawl out.

The good news is not that those raised with Christ never again wound another person. The good news is that Christ does not abandon them when they discover they still can. He exposes, convicts, forgives, and continues the long work of conforming them to his likeness. He is patient with the slow unmaking of our pride. He is not surprised by our unfinishedness. He knows how much of us still needs to come alive.

So the question remains a worthy one: Since I have been raised with Christ, why do I still make others feel small? Perhaps because some part of me is still afraid to die. Perhaps because the old self is more deeply rooted than I imagined. Perhaps because I still confuse being Christlike with being impressive. Perhaps because resurrection has entered my life, but I am still learning how not to live by the old hierarchies of ego, power, and fear.

But the question need not end in condemnation. It can become prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, if I have been raised with you, then raise also my speech, my reactions, my habits of thought, my hidden motives, my need to tower, my secret pleasure in being above. Show me where I make others small so that I may finally become small enough to enter your kingdom rightly. Teach me the humility that does not need to humiliate. Teach me the strength that does not need to diminish. Teach me your risen life, which is never domination, but love.

And perhaps that is where the answer finally begins: not in pretending that resurrection has already finished its work in us, but in yielding ourselves again to the Christ who is still raising the dead.

Set Apart in a Noisy World

DID YOU KNOW

DID YOU KNOW that Colossians 3:2–3 teaches us that the Christian life begins with a radical shift of focus—from earth to heaven, from temporary things to eternal realities?

When Paul urges us to “think only about the things in heaven, not the things on earth,” he is not asking us to escape the world but to re-anchor ourselves in Christ. Our old sinful self has died, he writes, and our new life is now hidden with Christ in God. That means your true identity—your truest, most secure self—is not defined by culture, accomplishments, trends, or failures. It is tucked away safely in the presence of God, untouchable by the pressures or expectations of this world. When we embrace this truth, the pull of worldliness loses some of its power. We begin to see that the things competing for our attention—status, success, approval, wealth—cannot give life because they are not the source of life. Christ is.

This change of focus also frees us to live more peacefully. Much of the stress we feel comes from trying to juggle the demands of a world that constantly shifts its standards. But Paul invites us to rest in a God whose character never changes. Thinking on heavenly things means returning again and again to what God says about us and about Himself. It means letting His promises frame our decisions and His love ground our identity. When you set your mind on Christ, your heart becomes steadier, your choices clearer, and your soul quieter. Heavenly thinking becomes earthly strength.

This verse invites you to pause and ask: Where is your focus today? Are you trying to measure your worth by things that are passing away? Or are you allowing God to reshape your thoughts so you can live from a place of quiet confidence? The invitation is gentle but firm—lift your eyes so your heart can breathe again.

DID YOU KNOW that James 4:4 tells us that loving the world is the same as opposing God—not because God is harsh, but because worldliness pulls our hearts in the exact opposite direction of His?

When James writes, “Anyone who wants to be a friend of the world becomes God’s enemy,” he is using covenantal language. Friendship, in his day, implied loyalty, alignment, shared values, and shared purpose. So the problem is not that God doesn’t want us to enjoy His creation; the problem is when our deepest loyalties settle into the world’s values rather than God’s heart.

Worldliness, as James describes it, is an inward posture more than an outward activity. It’s the subtle drift of the heart toward the beliefs, priorities, and desires that crowd God out. Worldliness says success is measured by applause, possessions, beauty, or influence. It whispers that compromise is easier than faithfulness and that comfort is worth more than conviction. But James reminds us that these are not neutral temptations—they form a rival kingdom resisting the transforming work of Christ. God is not indifferent to this drift because He knows it fractures our souls and distorts our identity.

Reflecting on James’ message gives us a chance to recalibrate. Has worldliness been tugging at your heart? Have you found yourself longing for approval more than intimacy with God? The good news is that James never leaves us in condemnation—he points us back to God’s readiness to draw near when we turn toward Him. As you consider this Scripture today, let it lead you toward renewed loyalty. God longs to be the center of your affection, not because He is possessive, but because He knows that life is only whole when our hearts rest fully in Him.

DID YOU KNOW that 1 John 2:15–17 reveals the temporary nature of everything the world chases—and the permanence of everything God offers?

John’s warning, “Do not love the world or the things in the world,” is not meant to restrict us but to protect us from disappointment. He explains that the world’s system—all the desires that spring from the flesh, the eyes, and pride—will ultimately fade away. Nothing the world promises can satisfy the soul because everything the world promises eventually expires. But the one who does the will of God “lives forever.” That is not merely about eternal life after death; it is about participating in a kind of life now that cannot be shaken.

John gives three categories of worldliness that speak powerfully to our modern culture. The desire of the flesh pulls us toward self-centered gratification. The desire of the eyes pulls us into comparison, craving, and material fixation. The pride of life convinces us that achievements, titles, and possessions can secure our identity. John wants us to know that these desires never deliver what they promise. They inflate the ego but shrink the soul. They stir hunger but never satisfy it. In contrast, doing the will of God roots us in a life that expands, strengthens, and restores. God’s will does not expire.

This Scripture encourages us to take inventory of our affections. What holds your desire? What captures your attention? Are you investing energy in things that can never give you lasting peace? Today is a good day to return to the One whose love does not fade. Let Him help you loosen your grip on the temporary so you can take hold of what truly lasts.

DID YOU KNOW that John the Baptist—one of the greatest men ever born (according to Jesus Himself)—was a stunning example of living unentangled from worldliness?

Mark describes him as wearing camel hair, eating locusts and wild honey, and thundering a message of repentance with no concern for cultural approval. Most churches today, as the study humorously notes, might hesitate to hire a prophet who dressed like that and preached with such bluntness. But John’s life was powerfully centered on one purpose: to be a voice pointing people to Christ.

Everything about John—the way he dressed, the wilderness he lived in, the message he proclaimed—was shaped by his devotion to his calling. He lived simply because he wanted nothing to distract him from revealing the Messiah. He refused to bend to worldly expectations because his eyes were fixed on God’s mission rather than culture’s opinion. John understood something that our modern world often forgets: holiness isn’t about looking strange or being out of touch; holiness is about being set apart so God can speak clearly through us. We are not shaped by withdrawing from the world but by refusing to be conformed to the patterns that steal our attention from Christ.

John’s life invites us to ask a gentle but important question: are we more shaped by culture’s expectations or by Christ’s calling? You don’t have to dress like John the Baptist or live in the wilderness to resist worldliness. You simply need to be willing to say “yes” to God’s voice even when it runs against the crowd. Let his example encourage you today: faithfulness is not measured by fitting in but by standing firm.

The theme running through all these Scriptures and reflections is simple: the world will always try to shape us, but Christ invites us into a deeper, freer, richer way of living. As you reflect on these “Did You Know” insights, let them stir your heart toward holiness—not as something strange or heavy, but as something beautiful and life-giving. Holiness means belonging fully to God. It means seeing the world clearly, loving people deeply, and walking confidently with Christ. Let Him show you where worldly attachments have taken root, and let Him help you loosen their hold so you can walk more lightly and more joyfully in His presence.

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It’s Both/And

https://youtu.be/H3YO6-Jpplg

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

Our spirituality often gets forced into a binary: it’s completely earthly or it’s totally otherworldly. Either we’re completely consumed with the things and events of this world bearing the burden that it’s our responsibility to fix and mend, or we turn two blind eyes to the fires and tumults burning and occurring around us and stare heavenward convinced that one day God will suddenly make everything right.

I think human beings love binaries because they seem easy to navigate. Isn’t it just easier to live as if all of this is right and all of that is wrong? If everything is determined in its substance to be 100% good or 100% bad, then our choices will be clear, and we’ll (always) know what to choose and when to choose it (or not). The thing is that this line and way of thinking is exhausting because it removes us from having any control over ourselves and the things presenting to us asking for our action. It’s exhausting because we aren’t the ones in control but are being controlled. It’s exhausting because we’re under the subjection of toil, of the “shoulds”, of the “having to prove our righteousness through our works” or the lack thereof.

But human beings don’t work this way and certainly don’t work best this way. We thrive when we ourselves in distinction from our temporal or spiritual allegiances, when we have a bit more alterity regarding our self-expression and self-determination, when we take a moment, catch our breath, and see and hear what’s needed in the moment. Rarely are moments in life demanding my response so crystal clear, black and white, good or bad; often, there are too many factors needing to be considered, most importantly considering any other person in the mix beside myself.

This is why I think Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, is exceptionally helpful here; even if passages such as the one below are used to affirm radical departures from the temporal realm to the spiritual life; that’s not what Paul is advocating for. Rather, the Christian is the epicenter of both the spiritual and temporal realms, working out their spirituality in the temporal realm while bringing the temporal needs of their neighbor into the spiritual realm through prayer. And all of it is about looking to and keeping our eyes fixed on Christ.

Colossians 3:1-11

Paul begins chapter 3 with, Since it is the case that you were raised with Christ, seek the things above where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Keep setting your mind on the things above, not on the things upon the earth… (vv.1-2). In the previous chapter, Paul mentioned that the Colossians identifed with Christ in his death; now, he balances the equation: if you have died with Christ then you can identify with Christ in Christ’s resurrection. For Paul, the Christian journey by faith and deeds is not only about dying to the old self and to the world and its deeds, but it’s fundamentally about taking hold of—orienting oneself toward—the resurrected life because those who identify with Christ in his death also identify with Christ in his resurrection. The Christian life is not merely a set of do-nots, but a big, robust set of do-pleases![2] Paul expects the Christians he teaches to be those who have one foot in the death of Christ and one in the resurrection of Christ. It is the Christian, for Paul, who operates by and through divine grace: she’s not the one who rejects the world or finds herself consumed by it; rather, she’s the one who is oriented toward Christ[3] and infused with God’s grace[4] that she’s compelled to walk in the steps of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in the world.[5] What this entails is a new perspective, one that is informed by the things above most of which/whom is Jesus of Nazareth the Christ sitting at the right hand of God.[6] With this new perspective so inspired by the death and resurrection (and ascension) of Christ, it’s the Christian (having died and continually dying to the old self) who is the one who can navigate the treacherous way through the world avoiding all those ideologies of the kingdom of humanity demanding complete devotion and manipulating through fear and anger.[7],[8] Thus why Paul then says, …for you died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God. Whenever Christ, your life, might appear at that time you, you will be revealed in glory with him (vv.3-4). Their identification with Christ will cause the Colossians to walk differently in the world, but their reward lay not in popularity within the kingdom of humanity (which will probably hate them for moving against the status-quo), but in the glory they’ll receive when they’re revealed as God’s own through Christ and by the Holy Spirit.[9]

Having spiritually and theologically described the way the Colossians now identify with Christ in his death and resurrection while living in the world,[10] Paul spells it out for them. He writes, Therefore, you put to death the members that are of the earth: fornication, impurity, inordinate affection, coveting evil, and covetousness which is idolatry, through these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience (vv.5-6). What Paul wants the Colossians to consider is that they’re now representatives of Christ and in being such, certain actions must be refused.[11] To (intentionally) persist in such activities is to incur the wrath of God, says Paul, which is none other than earning the rewards of such chosen behaviors.[12] (Keep in mind that all of the listed actions to avoid are all actions causing violence against someone else and the self, actions that cause oneself to degrade its dignity of humanity and that of another.[13] ,[14]) These “taboo” actions may have defined and described their lives before their encounter and identification with Christ by faith and God’s gift of grace, but now they are antithetical to the new life of the representative of Christ; the Colossians must, even if it takes a while, work against that old Adam who is such a good swimmer.[15] Thus why Paul writes, In which things you, you also once walked when you were living in that [life]. But now you, you take off all these things: wrath, rage, wickedness, blaspheming, abusive language out of your mouth, not lying to one another; stripping off from oneself the old person with its practices and put on [oneself] the new, the one who is being renovated into knowledge according to the image of the one who created them… (vv.7-10).

What does this new, renovated life walking in the identification with and representation of Christ look like for the Colossians in the positive sense of their being raised with Christ? Unity in distinction. [16] Paul writes, where there cannot be “Greek and Jewish”, “circumcision and uncircumcision”, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but all things and in all things Christ (v.11). For those who are yoked to Christ through faith and by God’s grace, there must be no hierarchies and divisions of human beings that relegate some to dignity and others not.[17] Paul has exhorted the Colossian Christians to live in the world in a new way reflecting the economy and politics of their God who so loved the whole world that God became incarnate in Jesus the Christ the one who is the power of all powers and in whom all things of the earth find their life.[18] It’s this incarnated experience that the Colossian Christians are to emulate in their new life[19] oriented toward Christ[20] and empowered by the Holy Spirit. These are to be in the world as Christ was and now is through their witness.[21]

Conclusion

We, like the Colossians, must be reminded that our faith and deeds as Christians in the world are beautiful and messy mixes of the spiritual and temporal; we, like the Colossians, have one foot in the spiritual realm and one in the temporal realm. Where we pray doesn’t mean we won’t act; it just means that our prayers shape and form our actions in the world, in that moment, toward that need. Where we act doesn’t mean we don’t pray, but that we must so that we keep Christ as our goal. Where the world is burning doesn’t mean we should let it because we know that Christ is in control and will one day redeem the whole kit and kaboodle. Rather, knowing that Christ is all in all, we should be that much more motivated to take up our part in the healing and nurturing of our world and the lives of our neighbors.

Do you know what the neatest thing about our faith in Christ is? It’s that it’s eager to work itself out in loving deeds toward the world and for the well-being of our neighbors to the glory of God. Why is this? Because our faith is in the incarnate Word of God, God’s own Son who came as God to be in the world in human flesh to bring God and humanity and the world closer together. Therefore, we get to participate in this mission of God and bring the spiritual realm into the temporal realm by our actions in the world while bringing the temporal realm into the spiritual through our actions by faith in worship and prayer. It is not either/or; it is both/and.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[2] James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text, TNIGTC, eds., I. Howard Marshall, W. Ward Gasque, Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 203. “The event of death-and-resurrection was two-sided for Christ himself (2:15); a message of the cross without the resurrection would not be gospel, and a call to embrace the implications of the cross without a call also to embrace the implications of the resurrection would be poor teaching. So here: it was not enough to remind the Colossian recipients of the lifestyle and religious praxis that they no longer do or need follow out; that would have been too much like the ‘Do not’s characteristic of the Colossian Jews’ praxis (2:21). The message of the resurrection has equally positive corollaries for the believer’s daily life, which have to be spelled out to provide a sufficient counterweight to the evident attractiveness of the more traditional Jeish lifestyle…”

[3] Dunn, Colossians, 205. “The consequences for the Christian perspective are thus also clear. If Jesus, the Christ, is so highly favored and acknowledged to be God’s ‘right hand man,’ with all the power and authority to effect God’s will and to protect his own which is implicit in that claim, then Christian life should be entirely oriented by reference to this Christ.”

[4] Dunn, Colossians, 203. 3.1 Change of perspective, “It is the sort of change which follows form complete identification with another person or cause, when the service of that person or cause becomes all-consuming the basic determiner of all priorities, the bubbling spring of a motivation, resolution, and application which perseveres despite even repeated setbacks….What the Pauline gospel offered and emphasized by means of its passive formulations was the promise that the change was not self-contrived but rather enabled and brought about by divine grace, the same divine grace which had raised Jesus form the dead…”

[5] Dunn, Colossians, 205. What is commended here is “…a cast of mind, a settled way of looking at things, a sustained devotion to and enactment of a life cause.”

[6] Dunn, Colossians, 203. “The key factor in this new perspective is the fact that Christ has been raised and exalted…to sit on God’s right in heaven.”

[7] Dunn, Colossians, 206. “They key, once again then, is recognition of the crucial turn of events and transformation of perception of reality effected by Christ’s death and resurrection; it is this Christ-perspective which should mark out the Colossian Christians’ heavenly spirituality and enable them to see through the alternative spirituality of the Colossian philosophy.”

[8] Dunn, Colossians, 206. “The aorist is simply a powerful metaphor for the fact that when they believed in Christ in baptism they were putting their previous way of life to death and having it buried out of sight. Consequently, it should no longer be a factor in their new way of life. They have been freed by that one act to live a quite different kind of life, determined not by their old fears and loyalties but by their new and primary loyalty to Christ and by the enabling which comes from on high…”

[9] Dunn, Colossians, 208. “Despite the present hiddenness of their ‘life,’ which might make their attitudes and actions in their present living somewhat bewildering to onlookers, they could nevertheless be confident that Christ, the focus of their life, would demonstrate to all the rightness of the choice they had made in baptism”

[10] Dunn, Colossians, 207. It’s a real, tangible life, and not a spiritually conceived life disconnected from earth.

[11] Dunn, Colossians, 212. “…the person’s interaction with the wider world as through organs and limbs is what is in view. It was precisely the interaction which had characterized the Colossians’ old way of life which now targeted…”

[12] Dunn, Colossians, 216. “…the wrath take the form of God giving or allowing his human creatures what they want, leaving them to their own devise—the continuing avarice and abuse of sexual relations being its own reward.”

[13] McKnight, Colossians, 293. “…flesh mindedness leads to flesh living, while Spirit mindedness leads to spirit-drenched living…This second group becomes Spiritually wise in their relations of humility and love and harmony…the opposite is the way of discord, violence, and fractures relationships…”

[14] McKnight, Colossians, 304. “If the Roman world’s sexuality as shaped by themes of dominance, status, and indulgence (in all directions), for Paul it was shaped by holiness, love, and fidelity.”

[15] Dunn, Colossians, 213. “Paul and Timoty clearly did not harbor any illusions regarding tie converts. They did not attempt to promote a Christian perspective which was unrelated to the hard realities of daily life. On the contrary, they were all too aware of the pressures which shaped people like the Colossian Christians and which still held a seductive attraction for them. They were concerned that the Colossian believers’ death with Christ, the atrophy of old habits of evil, had not yet worked through the full extent of their bodily relationships.”

[16] Dunn, Colossians, 223. “…it is not so much that the individual categories ‘Greek,’ ‘Jew,’ ‘circumcision,’ and ‘uncircumcision’ are discounted as no longer meaningful; rather it is the way of categorizing humankind into two classes, ‘Greek and Jew,’ ‘circumcision an uncircumcision,’ is no longer appropriate. In contrast, the last to items (‘slave, free’) do not cover the complete range of human status, so we do not have ‘slave and free,’ breaking a parallelism which is a feature of the other two versions.”

[17] Dunn, Colossians, 227. “The point here, then, is once again that Christ has relativized all such distinctions, however fundamental to society, its structure, and its ongoing existence.”

[18] McKnight, Colossians, 299. “This section articulates what the gospel does to the moral life of a believer; participation in the death with Christ slays the flesh and sins that destroy and divide; in fact, it brings the Gentiles—all people (3:11)—into the one family of God alongside Isreal so that Christ ’is all and is in all.’”

[19] Scot McKnight, The Letter to the Colossians, TNICNT, ed. Joel B Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 290. “Far from a summons to an un- or other worldliness, these exhortation calls the Colossians to live in the world on the basis of the rule of Christ over all the powers.”

[20] McKnight, Colossians, 29292-293. “To back up now: on the basis of their co-resurrection with Christ, the Colossians are to seek to participate in new-creation life by directing their faith and lordship toward the Christ, who rules all of creation. That rule is not yet visible to all but someday will be…To seek the thing above, then, means to live a life on earth under the resurrected King Jesus as the Lord of all creation, with the implication that Caesar is not their true lord.”

[21] McKnight, Colossians, 291. “…by ‘things above,’ Paul means a way of living constituted not by the stoicheia and skia but by the rule of Christ above, whose rule will become a reality on earth in the future.”

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