1 If ye are risen, seek the things above - As Christ being
risen, immediately went to heaven.
3 For ye are dead - To the things on earth. And your real, spiritual
life is hid from the world, and laid up in God, with Christ - Who hath
merited, promised, prepared it for us, and gives us the earnest and foretaste
of it in our hearts.
4 When Christ - The abruptness of the sentence surrounds us with sudden
light. Our life - The fountain of holiness and glory. Shall appear - In
the clouds of heaven.
5 Mortify therefore - Put to death, slay with a continued stroke. Your
members - Which together make up the body of sin. Which are upon the earth
- Where they find their nourishment. Uncleanness - In act, word, or thought.
Inordinate affection - Every passion which does not flow from and lead
to the love of God. Evil desire - The desire of the flesh, the desire of
the eye, and the pride of life. Covetousness - According to the derivation
of the word, means the desire of having more, or of any thing independent
on God. Which is idolatry - Properly and directly; for it is giving the
heart to a creature.
6 For which - Though the heathens lightly regarded them.
7 Living denotes the inward principle; walking, the outward acts.
8 Wrath - Is lasting anger. Filthy discourse - And was there need to
warn even these saints of God against so gross and palpable a sin as this?
O what is man, till perfect love casts out both fear and sin.
10 In knowledge - The knowledge of God, his will, his word.
11 Where - In which case, it matters not what a man is externally, whether
Jew or gentile, circumcised, or uncircumcised, barbarian, void of all the
advantages of education, yea, Scythian, of all barbarians most barbarous.
But Christ is in all that are thus renewed, and is all things in them and
to them.
