In Colossians 3:1-17 Christ is presented as the life of the saints. In verse 4 Paul speaks of “Christ our life.” This indicates that the mysterious Christ is our life. This marvelous life, which is ours, is described in many wonderful aspects of Christ in the first two chapters of Colossians, such as the portion of the saints and the mystery of God (1:12; 2:2). Today we may live by this life. Christ as the life of the saints is the highest enjoyment; no other enjoyment is superior to Christ as our life.
The extensive, all-inclusive Christ is subjective to us, for He dwells in us as our hope of glory (1:27) and is our life (3:4). Nothing can be more subjective to us than our own life. In fact, our life is us. Our life cannot be separated from our person. Since Christ is our life, He cannot be separated from us. To say that Christ is our life means that Christ becomes us. Christ cannot be our life without actually becoming us. Christ dwells in us, and He is our life. He becomes us in our experience. As Paul says, “To me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). Life is our being. Hence, for Christ to be our life means that He becomes our being. For Christ to become our being is for Christ to become us.
Christ must be our life in a practical and experiential way. Day by day we need to experience Christ as our life. Christ should be our life within, and we should have one life and living with Him. Because we have another life—Christ as our life—we can live another kind of life. That Christ is our life is a strong indication that we are to take Him as life and live by Him, that we are to live Him in our daily life in order to experience the universally extensive Christ so that all He is and has attained and obtained will not remain objective but will become our subjective experience.
We need to be one with the Lord Jesus just as He is one with the Father. In John 14:10 the Lord said, “The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works.” This indicates that the Father works in the Son’s speaking. Although the Father and the Son are two persons, They have only one life and one living. The life of the Father is the life of the Son, and the living of the Son is the living of the Father. In this way the Father and the Son have one life and one living. The principle is the same with Christ and us. Today we and Christ have one life and one living. The Son’s life becomes our life, and our living becomes His living. This is what it means to live in union with Christ.
In Colossians 3:3-4 Paul twice speaks of life, indicating thereby that we have one life with Christ. In verse 3 he says that our life “is hidden with Christ in God.” In verse 4 he goes on to say “Christ our life is manifested.” Life here is Christ’s life becoming our life. If it were merely Christ’s life, it could not be called “our life.” The fact that it is “our life” indicates that it refers to something which has become ours. However, the life here is not our natural life, the life inherited from Adam. Such a life could never be that which is hidden with Christ in God. God would never allow the natural life inherited from Adam to be hidden in Him. The only life that can be hidden with Christ in God is the divine life, the life of Christ. It is this life which has become our life. Paul’s use of the expression our life indicates that we and Christ, and also God Himself, have one life. We should not think that God has one life, that Christ has another life, and that we who believe in Christ have yet another life. Rather, God, Christ, and the believers have one life. The life of God is the life of Christ, and the life of Christ has become our life. We can declare that we have the life that Christ has, the life hidden within God.
The life of the saints is Christ, a wonderful person who is sitting at the right hand of God, with whom the saints were raised, and with whom their life is hidden in God, in order that they may seek the things which are above and may set their mind on the things which are above for them to be manifested with Him in glory (vv. 1-4). Therefore, we must put to death our members which are on the earth, all the fleshly and sinful members, and we must put off the old man with his practices while putting on the new man, which is being renewed according to the image of Him who created him (vv. 5-10). In doing so we are daily being transformed into the image of Christ by being sealed with the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 1:13; 4:30). As the life of the saints, as our life, Christ is also the constituent of the new man because He is all and in all; this means that Christ is us. In the new man there is no race, no nationality, no social rank, for in the new man Christ is all the members and is in all the members. The new man is the spontaneous issue of our taking Christ as our life and living Him.