How Should We Live?

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

   We're continuing our series on the Good Life, and this week we're going to answer the question, how should we live? And I recently dropped my son off at school, and here in the last couple weeks he's been trying to figure out like, well, what is life going to look like for him? How should he live? What clubs should he be a part of? What's the schedule he should keep?

I am thankful that a part of it includes class and the library and all the other different things that go on with school, but I think for each of us, we have to figure out how do we want to live and how do we want to live in order to experience the good life. Often we think our life is made up of these big moments or these big decisions, but in actuality, it's a lot about the day to day. Moment by moment decisions we make and that those are the things that are gonna lead us to the good life.

Today, what I want to talk to you about is a passage from the book of Colossians, or the letter that Paul wrote to the church at Cosy to answer this question, how should we live? Because what Paul sketches out in the letter is three things. He says, if you want to live the good life, live this way: first, remember that you are caught up in Jesus' resurrection. The whole world, whole creation, whole universe, whole of history has been transformed because Jesus came as the son of God lived, died, and in his resurrection, there's future hope.

And there's this promise of the future in which the world and all of creation will be restored and reconciled in and through Christ. And so Paul is saying, Hey, live that way. Live in anticipation of that.

Secondly, what he says is that you have to rid yourselves of things like anger, malice, greed, slander, these kinds of things bring destruction. So you wanna rid those from yourself and from your life.

Lastly, in this letter, he sketches out and says, Hey, I want you to clothe yourself. Clothe yourself with kindness and humility, and meekness and patience, and above all of that - on top of all that, I want you to clothe yourself with love. And if you live that way, if you live in anticipation of the future reality, if you rid yourself of greed, anger, malice, slander. And you clothe yourself with kindness, humility, meekness, and love. That's how you're going to arrive at the good life.

And so I want to pick out from each section a little bit to help us grab a hold of that a little bit more. So that first is really about, he says set your mind on things above, not things of earth.

Now here, what he's saying is he's not saying the earth is bad. He's just really talking about that future reality, which sin, death, and evil are gone. Set your mind there. That's the transcendent reality that's been revealed in the resurrection of Christ and stay away from sin, death, and evil. That's the things of the earth that the world is in bondage to.

The way we do that is actually very practical. It's just about how we live. We see two realities. We see the broken world, but we also see the world as it will one day be. And we can do that in the midst of work and walking the dog and hang out with our kids. Because what we do is we live towards this reality in which when we give ourselves to building healthy workplaces and we give time to people and our neighbors, and we live in relationship with creation and the earth, and we take care of it, and we live in such a way where we were reflecting grace and peace and goodness into the world, then we're heading in the right direction.

So my question to you is, how do you help yourself stay connected to that transcendent reality? For me, it's a lot about how I see things. I can see things in the midst of busyness. I can see things in the midst of fact. But the unique difference is when I see it in such a way in which I'm amazed by its beauty, its creation, its wonder, I would say it's the difference between talking to a human being and looking in the eyes of a human being.

When we look in the eyes of a human being, we connect in a unique way, and that's us tuning in to that transcendent reality in which all things are set right and good.

So ask yourself, are you tuning in to the transcendent reality that's revealed in the resurrection of Christ? Two, rid yourself of things like anger, malice, greed, slander. The reason we have to rid ourselves of these is because they bring destruction. The good life is about life, not death. The good life is about flourishing in health, not destruction and chaos. And anger, malice, greed, slander, those things bring about death. I would argue that one of the challenges in our world right now is there's too much of that, and so Paul says we have to rid ourselves of it.

Recently, my wife and I had to do some outdoor pruning because we had had these vines that grew up into our trees and into our neighbor's trees. We needed to rid our yard in these trees of the vines because otherwise they would choke out the trees and kill them. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of chopping, a lot of cutting, a lot of pulling, a lot of dragging.

And so we had to be very diligent and work hard at it. And I think the reality for you and I is that we have some of those things inside of us that anger, rage, malice, slander, and we wanna rid ourselves of it. Now, it might not be loud and over the top, but it might be little things like. There's somebody at work who's kind of annoying and you have a tendency to talk about how annoying they are to someone else.

Maybe for you, there's some injustice that goes on and there's an anger and rage that comes with that. And I think anger is right with injustice, but there's a part of it where we want to keep it back because the goal is always reconciliation versus destruction. And so we want to identify the things in our life that we need to rid ourselves of, and then we want to go about that. So what is it that you are ridding yourself of? That's a good question, to help you live that good life.

Lastly, Paul says, clothe yourself with love. And I love that. It's one of my favorite word pictures in the scriptures because it's this idea of we put on kindness and meekness and humility we put on love.

I think a great thing for us to do is visualize what that's like. And in the morning, maybe as we're getting dressed, we think about as we pull on our socks, pulling on some kindness and some patience. Maybe when we are putting our shirt on, we're putting on some gentleness and some humility. Maybe as we head out the door and we put on our coat, we're putting on love so that as we go out into the world, the good life that we're seeking is the good life that is experienced as we live out kindness and meekness, and humility and patience and love.

I think these three things together, this living in anticipation of the future reality and the transcendence, ridding ourselves of things that cause destruction, like anger, rage, malice, slander, and putting on gentleness and kindness and patience and humility and meekness and love. That's how we want to live. That's how we are going to experience the good life.

Hope this week was helpful. Looking forward to next week as we continue to explore how we might live the good life. The life that is truly life that is reflected in Christ. Thank you. Have a great week.