If you then are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. – Colossians 3:1

“If you then are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.” Let your actions be agreeable to your new life. First, then, let us leave the sepulcher…Let us have done with outward forms and rites and ceremonies, which are not of Christ’s ordaining and let us know nothing except Christ Crucified, for that which is not of the living Lord is a mere piece of funeral pomp, fit for the cemeteries of formalists whose whole religion is a shoveling in of dust on coffin lids. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

Let us also quit the vault of carnal enjoyments where men seek to satisfy themselves with provision for the flesh. Let us not live by the sight of the eyes, nor by the hearing of the ears. Let us not live for the amassing of wealth, or the gaining of fame, for these ought to be as dead things to the man who is risen in Christ…As Jesus Christ left behind Him all the abodes of death, let us do the same.

Let us hasten to forget every evil, even as our Lord hastened to leave the tomb. How little a time, after all, did He sojourn among the dead…He rose early, at the very break of day! At the first instant that it was possible for Him to get away from the sepulcher, consistent with the Scriptures, He left the napkin and the grave clothes and stood in the garden, waiting to salute His disciples!

So let it be with us! There should be no lingering, no loitering, no hankering after the world—no clinging to its vanities, no making provision for the flesh…Up in the morning early from your ease, your carnal pleasure, your love of wealth and self and away out from the dark vault into a congenial sphere of action— “If you then are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.”

Following the Risen Christ by C. H. Spurgeon