What would it look like if we started every day focusing on God and how God is working through us.
Let your desires reflect that you are His. And it creates a shift in more than just what we think about. But it means that we have filters in place to process life. Filters can be described as the collection of knowledge, wisdom, discernment, and other tools provided by God to respond to life. And then we are to set our minds on things above, and not on earthly things.
Think about the things we talk about as important in our lives. Is it always something focused on something above? We can get distracted. And even as we can be distracted from God’s ways, Satan is going after people who do not know God even harder. talks about the god of this age, Satan, blinding the eyes of the unbeliever. He works hard to distract us from God.
The moment that you put your faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God’s spirit, is instantly living in you. Here Paul approaches this from two directions. Accept Jesus equals the Holy Spirit in you. But if you do not have the Holy Spirit in you, you have not accepted Jesus. So it is a settled fact that believers have the Holy Spirit in us.
You are not defined by your behavior, but by your identity in Jesus. We can look back and see the bad decisions we made. We deserve the punishment for sin. And we can stand in the context of our lives, knowing what we know, and be so thankful for the offer of mercy by God. God condemns sin and fulfills the punishment required through Christ. And the Spirit gives us life beginning at the acceptance of faith.
And while Paul has described this in very theological terms, he wants us to know the practicality of what is being described. That when we live without God, we will surely die. But when we live with God, we find life. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. You are a child of God because He says so!
And to be clear, behavior is not be stressed here. He wants a relationship first. And if you try to go to obedience and behavior first, you will struggle. Because you will fail, and without a relationship, you will fall away. But when you start with a relationship first, when you do fail, the Father will work through that relationship to restore us. And being children of God, that makes us heirs of God. What does that mean? It means that we both share in the suffering and the glory of Jesus Christ.
3:1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (ESV)
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (ESV)
9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (ESV)
10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (ESV)
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (ESV)