By Pastor Don Schatz

Safety with Christ in God

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In one of the newer Star Trek movies, an old Earth spaceship is found partially embedded in rock on top of a cliff.  In Canyonlands National Park, one can find many massive circular disks of stone, resembling that fictional spacecraft.  When I saw those formations, I immediately thought of that Star Trek episode.  But in one such instance, something caught my eye in the shadows.  A large, rectangular stone box.  Very like an ancient sarcophagus.  Now, how in the world did that get there?

“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
Colossians 3:3 New International Version

We are not hidden away in a stone box under a huge rock formation in the Utah desert.  But we have died.  Truly!  I am Baptized.  “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death….” (Romans 6:3-4a).  In Baptism we died to sin and rose to Life in Christ. “…when you were buried with [Christ] in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:12).  If you are Baptized, all of this is true for you.

Our life is now hidden with Christ.  The form of the word translated hidden has the sense of ‘stored up for safekeeping’.  Your life is SAFE!  God has stored your life for safekeeping, with Christ.  Your name is already written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  I hope you know that.  I hope you trust that.  Because it is true!  As true as Christ is the Truth!

“In God.”  If we are with Christ, we are in God.  “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21).  Christ is our hiding place.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado