“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand oj God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Col. 3:1-4).
We often hear of the higher life, the victorious life, the blessed life, and similar expressions, all of them more or less scriptural. But, after all, for the believer there is only one life: “He that hath the Son hath the life, he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life” (1 John 5:12, R.V.). This life may have a higher display in some than in others, but the life itself is that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us, and this life comes to us through faith in the risen Christ. Therefore it is resurrection life which the believer is called upon to manifest as he walks through this scene.
For forty days after our Lord came forth from the dead, He walked in resurrection life through this world ere He ascended to the Father, and those forty days suggest the life that we are to manifest, for we have died with Christ, but we have been raised in His resurrection and we are now called upon to manifest that resurrection life in this scene of death.
The Israelite of old was to wear a ribband of blue around the border of his garment (Num. 15:38-40), and as he looked upon it he was to remember that he belonged to the God of heaven, for blue is the heavenly color, and that the Lord had said, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” That ribband of blue ran around the skirts of the garment at the very place where they came closest in contact with the earth. How significant this is! We are the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, called upon to manifest the heavenly character everywhere we go. In all our dealings with our fellow-men we are to display the ribband of blue, which is the sign of resurrection life. Whether at home, in the church, in business, or in society, we are to be different to others who do not possess this divine life. Thoreau, the naturalist-philosopher, in defending some of his oddities, wrote once, “If I do not keep in step with others, it is because I hear a different drumbeat.” The Christian may well say this. If our inner ears have been attuned to the music of the heavens, we hear the drumbeat of the skies, and therefore we must of very necessity seem to the world to be out of step with all that goes on down here which is contrary to the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. But as we keep step with that other drumbeat, we shall live the resurrection life to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.