“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. “
“and your life is hidden with Christ in God”
“Hidden with Christ” is a statement of our eternal security in Christ. “Hidden” does not mean that God hid it from us but that He hid it for us. Jesus lays away our life in His. God reserves eternal life in heaven for us (1 Pet. 1:4,5). The Greek tense of “is hidden” means in this context that God hid our life at a point in the past with the result going on forever. When we received Christ, eternal life began and continues forever. When Christ comes (v.4), the life hidden in Christ goes with Him.
“With Christ in God” constitutes a double shield. God doubly safeguards the security of the person who trusts in Christ. Not only are we in the bank, but we are in the bank’s vault.
“With Christ” connotes identity. The believer has a fellowship of identity with the death of Christ and with the risen Lord that carries us to God.
Principle:
No intruder, not even Satan himself, can separate us from God.
Application
The believer owns double security before God. God has locked us together with Christ in God. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:31-39). God secures our position against the precarious conditions in life. Our whims, other people, or the devil himself cannot touch our eternal status before God.
When Caesar threatened to take the life of Chrysostom unless he renounced Christ, he said, “You cannot, your majesty, for my life is hid with Christ in God.”
Security is something that Christ did for us. It has nothing to do with what we do. The believer’s eternal security is a matter of our position in Christ before God. We cannot secure this position by the kind of life we live. This security rests in the death we died in Christ. Our eternal security before God is a matter of grace. Grace is what God gives, not what we do.
We do not become a Christian by what we do but by what we become. We are not secure in God by what we do but through what we are. However, what we have become and are, compels us into a life that pleases God.
