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It Is Written

Sabbath School 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven & Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

Eric Flickinger

Clinton Wahlen

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

06 Confidence Only in Christ

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

03 Life and Death

04 Unity Through Humility

05 Shining as Lights in the Night

07 A Heavenly Citizenship

08 The Preeminence of Christ

09 Reconciliation and Hope

10 Complete in Christ

11 Living With Christ

12 Living with Each Other

13 Standing in All the Will of God

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

We're looking at how we can unite heaven and earth, and actually less how we can do it, and how Christ wants to unite heaven and earth.

Today we're going to be spending time in the book of Colossians and looking for pictures of Jesus in the writings of Paul.

Father, we're grateful to be able to gather together once again in your Word to find hope and encouragement and strength and a view of Christ that will give us encouragement for the road ahead.

We ask that you'll bless our time together and we thank you in Jesus' name.

We're grateful that you are here, but we are also grateful to have the author of this quarter's Sabbath school lesson with us, Dr.

He is an associate director at the Biblical Research Institute.

So lesson 11 of 13, the end is coming, but we're not there yet.

There's still 3 lessons left to really dig into what Paul has to share with us about Christ in the book of Colossians where we've been for the last couple of weeks and these are really packed lessons There's a lot in these last couple of chapters There's a lot again if you happen to have missed the previous ones, you can go back and find them archived at itiswritten.tv or on the It Is Written YouTube channel.

But these last 3 lessons, we're going to pack a lot into.

So we are in chapter 3 of Colossians right now.

And I'm just going to read the first verse and it's going to hopefully get us started here.

In chapter 3, verse 1, Paul says, if then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.

So how does this being raised with Christ kind of change our thinking?

And what impact does that have to maybe change our actions, the way that we live our lives.

What does he mean when he says that you were raised with Christ?

We could go back to chapter 2, verse 12 of Colossians.

Notice what he says there, buried with him, with Christ, in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

So in baptism, when we are lowered down under the water, It's like a burial to our old life.

Our old life is buried in the waters of baptism and we're brought up and raised again to newness of life.

Just as Christ died and was resurrected, baptism is a way of accepting his death and resurrection as ours.

That in Christ's person, he paid for our sins, he died for those sins, and so therefore we can accept him through baptism and be raised to a new life with him.

And Paul talks about this also in the book of Romans.

He talks about burying that old man of sin and coming up to a brand new life in Jesus.

So this is a theme that you'll find in several places throughout the writings of Paul.

It's not unique to Colossians, but it does emphasize things that he wrote elsewhere and those things emphasize what we find here.

Exactly, And a little later in Colossians 3, we'll see his similar contrast between the old man, as he puts it, and the new man, this old life, old way of life, and the new life in Christ.

In fact, we read down the next few verses here through Verse number 4.

Verse 2, he says, "'Set your mind on the things above and not on things on this earth, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." So what's he talking about here?

Well, I wanted to emphasize how often the idea of life and the heavenly realm is referred to in these verses.

Because we've been talking about Christ uniting heaven and earth.

Notice he says, seek those things which are above, this is obviously heaven, speaking of, where Christ is, again, referring to heaven, sitting at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things above, so he says it again, not on things on the earth.

So he's making this very strong contrast.

Our minds, our hearts, our thoughts should be heavenward.

And Then verse 4, for you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God, again, there in heaven.

When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

So again, referring to the glory we'll have with Him and when we are in Heaven, this glorious existence.

So this life with Christ is focused on Heaven and being heavenly minded.

Sometimes people, you know, There's a saying that some are so heavenly minded they're of no earthly good.

But I like to turn that around a little bit, that some are so earthly minded they're of no heavenly use.

You know, God wants us to focus on things above and things that have to do with Christ and His salvation.

And that is what we can share with others.

In these next few verses he really goes into that in greater detail.

In verse 5 he says, Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.

But now, he says in verse 8, you yourselves are to put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.

Do not lie with 1 another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on a new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him." So there's an old man and there's a new man.

All right, so, well, first of all, the very first word that you read in verse 5 is important.

And as people say, if there's a therefore, there's a wherefore, there's a reason for therefore.

And that reason is actually given in verse 1, if you then were raised with Christ.

There are 4 different, what we call conditional constructions in Greek, 4 ways of saying if, as it were.

And this is the first and most common way where it assumes what it says to be true.

So if you were raised with Christ, we could even say, since you were raised with Christ.

And therefore, since we have been raised with Christ, put to death your members which are on the earth.

And then, you know, the members he's talking about is of course our bodily desires, the temptations, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

You know, If we covet what someone else has, that's idolatry.

It's putting things, material possessions, in a place they do not belong.

And it's because of this that we're called sons of disobedience, and in which it says, you yourselves once walked.

So again, he's making the point, this is not our life anymore.

It is history, It is past, or it should be.

We should not allow any life, any temptation to be entertained by us because our life is hid with Christ in God.

And in verse 8 he continues that thought, he says, but now you yourselves are to put off all of these things.

So those things are gone now and there should be a new life that we enjoy, that we experience in Christ.

Notice how many of those things, by the way, Eric, are mental.

You know, the battle, as I mentioned before, is in our minds.

These are, you know, things that we conjure up in our minds.

And then he goes into the expression of those things.

Blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.

Do not lie to 1 another since you've put off the old man with his deeds.

And then, you know, this old man, this old way of life is, remember, baptism is like a burial.

And we have a new person, we are a new person in Christ.

And so we put on a new person, a new way of life, renewed in knowledge, according to the image of Him, that is Jesus, who created Him, or God.

You know, we're made in His image by creation, and we're recreated, we're renewed in His image.

So really the plan of salvation, the whole idea, is to restore us to the image in which we were originally created.

We see pieces of that in verses 12 and 13.

He says, therefore, has the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, bearing with 1 another, forgiving 1 another, if anyone has a complaint against another, Even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do." So there's that contrast.

The old man versus the new man, the 1 that has put on Christ, it's now coming out of their personality because Christ is living in them.

That's how we know that we are in Christ.

If we see these positive things coming out rather than the negative things that Paul mentioned before.

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Series

Sabbath School 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven & Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

11 Living With Christ

Transcript

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