Colossians 3.4-11

Matthew 22.35-46

St Paul is referring to Holy Baptism when he says in our epistle this morning: ‘When Christ our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in Glory.’ When you were received into the Holy Orthodox Church through Baptism and Chrismation, you were united to the Body of Christ, and you became a ‘partaker’ of Christ (Heb 3.14); that’s when Christ became your life. Through Holy Baptism, you are no longer outside of Christ (Eph 2.12). You are now with Him, you are in Him. The LORD says to Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus, I am the Resurrection and the Life (Jn 11.25). The Holy Orthodox Church is the Body of Christ, the fullness of Him who is all in all. If you are in the Church, you are in the Resurrection and the Life.

And Christ, your Resurrection and your Life, is hidden in you; and your resurrection and life are now hidden with Christ who is Himself now hidden in the Heavens where He is seated at the Father’s Right Hand. Christ is hidden for now in this age; and so your life is hidden; but when Christ appears at His 2^nd Coming, then your life also will appear.

But, the full force of your Baptism into the Orthodox Church, into the Body of Christ, into Resurrection and Life, is given in the solution to the riddle posed by Our LORD: ‘If King David calls the Christ His LORD, then how is He his Son?’ He is David’s LORD and Son because He is the Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages who, in these last days, became Man of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. He was crucified, dead, and buried, but on the Third Day He rose from the dead, destroying death by His death and giving life to all, to us, who were in the tombs. That is to say, Christ is the LORD and the Son of King David because He is our life. This is the immortal life of the Holy Spirit that was breathed into Adam’s face when the LORD God raised him from the dust of the ground – a prefiguring of the Resurrection – and by the Holy Spirit, the Breath of Life, man became a living soul. His having been created in the image of God’s own eternity and immortality (Wisd 2.23) was completed.

So, when St Paul says that Christ is our life, he means that Christ is the life we were meant to live in. Christ is both LORD and Son of King David because He is the immortal life of God that made man a living soul in the beginning, and that makes us living souls again through Holy Baptism when we are rooted in the LORD’s incarnation, death and resurrection – i.e., when we are rooted in the mysteries of Christmas and Holy Pascha.

Christmas and Pascha are the 1^st Coming of Christ. This is when Christ, the LORD of King David, united Himself to us. At Christmas, the LORD of King David was born of the Holy Virgin and He became a partaker of our flesh and blood (Heb 2.14); He became the Son of David. And, in His Holy Pascha, the LORD of King David, now the Son of King David in the flesh, became one with us in our death (Phil 2.8). The Holy Orthodox Church is the same Body of the same Christ who was crucified, buried, and risen from the dead. Now, in the Church’s sacramental mystery of Holy Baptism, we unite ourselves to Christ, the LORD and Son of David, and we become sons of God; united now to Christ’s human nature, we become partakers of His divine nature.

For, in the mysteries of Christmas and Pascha, Christ, the only-begotten Son of God and LORD of King David, sowed Himself in the root of our old man and established Himself as the new root of the new man and the Son of David. This is the new man St Paul speaks of in our epistle this morning. It is the new man with whom we were clothed when we were raised from the Font of Holy Baptism into the Resurrection and the Life that is Christ. This is the man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the Icon, which is Christ (Col 1.15), who created him (Gn 1.26-27).

Christ has united Himself to us in the mysteries of Christmas and Pascha. But for Christ to become our life, we must choose to unite ourselves to Him. Note how Christ honors our free will. For salvation is to be restored in the love of God; and love cannot be coerced. The Baptismal Font is where the free gift of our salvation, which is Christ uniting Himself to us, meets our choosing to unite ourselves to Christ.

St Paul says (Rm 6.3-5): ‘You died with Christ’ in Holy Baptism; i.e., not by believing it in your head or feelings, but by the concrete, ‘incarnational’ reality of your flesh and blood being immersed in the waters of the Font into which the Holy Spirit descended through the prayers of the Church. Our union with Christ is not wishful thinking. It is incarnate, embodied in the mystery of the Church’s Baptismal waters. If you need empirical proof that you have been united to Christ, you need look no further than the day you were received into the Holy Orthodox Church, into the Body of Christ, through Holy Baptism and Chrismation.

St Paul goes on to say, if you have died with Christ, so that your life is now hidden in Christ, then live in that life. How? St Paul tells us. Seek the things that are above, he says. Set your heart on things that are above (Col 3.1-2). What does that mean?

St Paul tells us. It means to put to death your earthly members. That is, don’t live in them, don’t live in your death that was put to death at Holy Baptism. And what are these earthly members? St Paul lists them: sexual immorality, perversity (fornication, porn), depravity, impure desire, greed or covetousness, which is idolatry, anger, wrath, malice, hatred, blasphemy, vulgar words, being false or deceptive with each other. Don’t live in these ‘earthly members’; they are the garment of the old man that you took off at Holy Baptism. Don’t put them back on and start wearing them again. Don’t nurse them in your thoughts so that they become sweet to you, and you give yourself to them as their slave, and you begin to act them out and to live in them (cf. Rm 6.14). For, now you are living again in the death that was put to death in your Baptism.

To the contrary, says St Paul, clothe yourself with the New Man that was put on you in your Baptism when you became an elect of God, holy and beloved. How? St Paul tells us (Col 3.12ff.): put on compassion, mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiving as you have been forgiven. These are the things, the ‘heavenly members’ that are above with Christ in whom your life is now hidden. Live in these heavenly members, wear them as the garment of the hidden man of the heart. That is, let these be what your mind dwells on and contemplates.  And on top of all these, clothe yourselves in love for the God who first loved us; for this is the bond of completion and perfection. This takes us back to our Gospel this morning. The LORD says: ‘On these two commandments – to love God and to love one’s neighbor – hang the Law and the prophets.’ But the LORD Jesus is the perfection and fulfillment of the Law and the prophets (Rm 10.4). He’s posing another riddle here, and the solution is that the Law and the Prophets hang on Him. He is the Law of God incarnate; and by His death, the Law has died so that God may establish a New Covenant with man in which His Law to love Him with all one’s heart is written not on tablets of stone but on a new, fleshy (living) heart.

Let the peace of Christ be established in your heart. How? Again, by giving your thoughts and your affection to these ‘heavenly members’ and not to your earthly members, so that you dwell, so that you live in the Mystery of God that is hidden in you, the Mystery of God that is Christ in you, Christ your life, the hope of Glory! (Col 1.27) Amen!