A Powerful Magnet (Col. 3:1)

'If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above . . .'

Robert Jamieson, Andrew R. Fausset and David Brown, writing in 1884:

The contrast is between the believer's former state, alive to the world but dead to God, and his present state, dead to the world but alive to God; and between the earthly abode of the unbeliever and the heavenly abode of the believer. We are already seated there in Him as our Head. . . . Of ourselves we can no more ascend than a bar of iron lift itself up from the earth. But the love of Christ is a powerful magnet to draw us up.

--Commentary: Critical, Practical and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments (Toldeo, Ohio: Jerome B. James, 1884), 136-37

HT: Jim Lane