Colossians 3:1–3 — “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
Crucified Path
We end where every good pilgrimage should end — not in a conclusion, but in a way of walking forward. Paul’s logic here is the same one this whole series has traced: because you are risen with Christ (already, settled, true), therefore seek the things above (an ongoing, daily practice). The theology comes first. The practice flows out of it, not the other way around. You are not seeking resurrection life in order to earn it. You already have it, hidden with Christ in God, and now you get to live like it’s true.
Across this series we’ve traced the call of Jesus to take up a cross daily, the honest wrestling of Gethsemane, the call of the epistles to suffer as participation rather than punishment, and the settled truth that we already stand on the resurrection side of the cross. None of that was meant to stay as an idea. The crucified path is walked, not just believed. It shows up in what you set your affection on this week, in the small deaths you choose, in the suffering you no longer face alone because you know Christ meets you there.
If you’ve read this whole series and feel the weight of it — the cost, the daily dying, the suffering named honestly throughout — remember the promise tucked into this very passage: your life is hidden with Christ in God. Hidden things are safe things. Whatever this path costs you, your life itself is not exposed and unguarded in the carrying of it. It is kept, right now, in the safest place there is, even while you’re still walking.
A simple rule of life to carry forward from this series:
Choose one practice from this series — the morning prayer, the evening gratitude, the honest “nevertheless” — and keep it going for thirty days, past the last post.
Once a week, reread Hebrews 12:2 slowly, letting it re-anchor you the way it anchored this whole series, long after the posts themselves are finished.
Find one person to walk this path alongside — someone you can name your crosses to, and who will remind you Christ is walking with you both.
The path is crucified, and it is also already resurrected. Walk it, one ordinary day at a time, with Christ beside you.
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