We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

—Colossians 1:9b-14 (TNIV)

Here we see the kind of life perspective a resurrection faith produces; it is an eternal perspective, not a temporal one. Notice where the emphasis is for Paul. He seeks to know God and his will as best he can. He acknowledges this kind of knowledge is only possible by the work of the Spirit living in us. Paul seeks to live a life worthy of the Lord for all that the Lord has done for us in his death and resurrection. What is it that Christ has done? He has rescued us from the darkness of our sin, from the alienation and separation from God that it causes, and brought us into the kingdom of light. In other words, through Christ’s blood we are no longer alienated and separated from God. We have been rescued from our sins by God himself.

No wonder Paul cared little about what happened to him or his body in this lifetime. For example, he writes to the Corinthians that he would much rather be away from his mortal and broken body and be with the Lord he loves. But Paul acknowledges that he still has work to do here, the work of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:1-10). Here he tells the Colossians that they are to give joyful thanks to the Father in any and every circumstance because what we have to deal with in this life is temporary. This doesn’t play well with modern ears because we have become a people of instant gratification. God, however, is a God of eternity, not instant gratification, and part of growing in grace and faith is to learn that we are to be hopefully patient as we await our final redemption and new resurrection bodies.

Here is the essence of the Gospel. Our sin has alienated and separated us from God, the Source and Author of all life. This perforce leads to death. But God himself has taken care of the problem of sin himself. He became human and died to pay the penalty for our sin, satisfying both his holy justice and holy love for us. As a result, we are no longer separated or alienated from God. We are reunited with Life itself, now and for all eternity. But this will be accomplished in God’s time, not our own. Until that glorious day comes, we are to live joyfully and with hope, resisting our urge to be instantly gratified and trusting God knows what he is doing, even when we cannot fully comprehend or apprehend his will and designs for his creation and us. When we have this kind of hope and faith, we see immediately why Paul writes so joyfully to the Colossians here. This is what it means to have a proper relationship with Christ, one in which we acknowledge that he is God and we are not.

This is what it means to have an eternal perspective of life. Does your faith allow you to have this kind of understanding about life and your relationship with God?

As for me, I began to know Jesus as soon as I accepted Jesus as the truth; I found true peace when I actively sought his friendship; and above all I experienced joy, true joy, that stands above the vicissitudes of life, as soon as I tasted and experienced for myself the gift he came to bestow on us: eternal life. But Jesus is not only the Image of the Father, the Revealer of the dark knowledge of God. That would be of little avail to me in my weakness and my sinfulness: he is also my Saviour. On my journey towards him, I was completely worn out, unable to take another step forward. By my errors, my sinful rebellions, my desperate efforts to find joy far from his joy, I had reduced myself to a mass of virulent sores which repelled both heaven and earth. What sin was there that I had not committed? Or what sin had I as yet not committed simply because the opportunity had not come my way? Yet it was he, and he alone, who got down off his horse, the the good Samaritan on the way to Jericho; he alone had the courage to approach me in order to staunch with bandages the few drops of blood that still remained in my veins, blood that would certainly have flowed away, had he not intervened.

—Carlo Carretto, In Search of the Beyond

Here we see the prerequisite for having a relationship with Christ. We must do the hard work of acknowledging what a mess we are when left to our own devices. Carretto does exactly this using powerful language. It can be hard to read, but when we finally begin to understand how grievous is our sins to God, the sentiment from today’s excerpt is perfectly natural if we are at all interested in having a relationship with Christ.

But note too the hope that is contained here. Carretto acknowledges he fatally broken but he also knows from whence his help comes. This is the difference between seeing oneself clearly, broken and beyond self-repair, which can lead to life, and having a pathological loathing of self that inevitably leads to darkness and despair.

“What shall we do?” [the crowd asked Peter]. They did what must be done. They condemned themselves and despaired of their salvation. This is what made them such as they were. They knew what a gift they had received. As soon as they heard, they were baptized. They did not speak these cold words that we do now, nor did they contrive delays, even though they heard all the requirements. For they did not hesitate when they were commanded to “save yourselves from this generation” but welcomed it. They showed their welcome through action and proved through deeds what sort of people they were.

—John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles 7.

[T]he apostles did not preach another God or another Fullness or that the Christ who suffered and rose again was one, while he who flew off on high was another and remained impassible; but that there was one and the same God the Father, and Christ Jesus who rose from the dead.

—Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.12.2.

Holy Father, we come before you with humble hearts, confessing our sins. We have chased after the vanities of the world and have wandered from our heart’s true home, and, forgetful of you, the living God, we have burned the incense of the soul before false gods that cannot deliver. Deal not with us as we deserve, but pardon our foolish and perverse ways. Of your clemency wash us clean from all sin, for no adversity shall harm us if no wickedness has dominion over us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

—The Leonine Sacramentary