Sometimes old books and outdated books get culled from my seminary’s library and end up on a table for anyone to take as their own. A free book is always appealing so I’m always looking over what’s available. The older books don’t always catch your eye. The binding may be tattered and the covers may be completely plain without any design. But this one did catch my eye because of the author, an author I had never heard of until coming to seminary.

This is one of the main benefits of seminary – broadening your learning across the centuries of church history, and exposing yourself to old and new authors. Before beginning my studies, it had been too easy for me to fall into familiar reading patterns, always reaching for Sproul, Piper, and Grudem. But in my first class in seminary I was introduced to someone named C.F.D. Moule. He was an English Anglican priest and scholar who taught for some time at Cambridge. Though he lived most of his life in the 20th century, I had never heard of him. Because of my professor’s mention of him and his work in a class on Paul’s epistles, his name was put on my radar. When I saw this old commentary of his on Colossians and Philemon I grabbed it.

New and shiny and colorful always seems better doesn’t it? Who would rather drive the dingy old car compared to the shiny new one? But outward appearances can be deceiving and a faded cover and broken binding doesn’t mean there isn’t treasure on the pages inside. I had been thinking about Colossians 3:1-4 and union with Christ and thought I would turn to this old commentary to see what Moule had to say about it. I was not disappointed.

Colossians 3:1-4 says this: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

What do these phrases in bold mean? How can I have died but still live? And what does it mean for Christ to be my life? Moule’s comments deserve a much wider reading.

And that death, because it was “with Christ,” in union with Him, was followed of course by life, by resurrection, by part and lot in His own immortal and victorious state as the Risen One; you died, and your life lies hidden, stored, safe-guarded, once placed there, secure for ever, with our Christ in our God. There it lies, and there it lives; and so if you would live it out, using this wonderful life-power for spiritual triumph and service here on earth, you must go evermore to find it there; you must “seek” it; you must “with Him continually dwell,” in steadfast recollection, simplest reliance, and ceaseless secret reception of the divine supply.

Death and life are two animating principles of the Christian life. In this passage we learn that once we place our faith in Christ, a death has occurred, death to the old man, the part of us united to Adam. Life has come, powerful resurrection life because we are now united to the second Adam, to Christ. This is where our life is found, where everything is found. So why go back to that old man to find what we need? It is a broken cistern as Jeremiah says. It is like a parched man going to the Dead Sea for refreshment.

Therefore, in order to live this Christian life, we must constantly go to Christ. It seems simple but oh how often do we default to our own resources! I’ve been meditating on Moule’s words and believe they perfectly describe what it means to abide in Christ: we must steadfastly recollect the facts of what our salvation means – we have died and been raised with Christ; we must simply rely on him and not ourselves; and we must without ceasing drink from the infinite well of his divine supply of grace.