Set your affections on things above

In the words of the apostle, in his Epistle to the Colossians, I call upon you, "If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." "Set your affections on things above, and not on things on the earth." Yes, to such an exercise of the affections we have constant need to exhort one another. Perhaps we know too little of the glorious things above in order to love them heartily. First, let us consider the event itself; secondly, what the apostle saw in heaven.

1. Who is the man that speaks to us in our text? The more remarkable the things are which any one relates, the more important it is to know who our informant is, whether he deserves credit. Now, you are aware that the speaker on this occasion is no fanciful enthusiast, no mere sentimentalist. He is a man who in numerous passages of his Epistles zealously opposed religious delusions and a false spirituality, and strove to fix both himself and the Church on the written, firm, prophetic Word, and not on feelings, visions, and ecstasies. Indeed, we may say of him that a calm reflective understanding predominated in him more than in any other of the apostles. He was also a man of learning. It cannot be imagined for one moment that vainglory and self-exaltation prompted him to give the narrative contained in our text. Oh! in what a light do we, imperfect Christians, appear when placed by the side of this great apostle! We who are used to experience only some slight measure of answer to prayer and of spiritual elevation. Only think! for fourteen years he kept this matter to himself! How does this impress on it the stamp of truth! Let us now consider the statements of the apostle. He begins with saying, "It is not expedient for me, doubtless, to glory." Do not imagine (he means to say) that I wish to utter this for my own glory. "I knew a man in Christ," he goes on to say. Paul speaks of himself as of a third person. In looking back on a period of life long since passed, a person feels as if he was contemplating another and not himself. At such a distance a person judges of himself with more freedom, impartiality, and truth. Paul calls himself "a man in Christ." He enjoyed the great privilege to lose sight of his own personality, and only to view himself in the attire of his Surety. He had a special reason for calling himself on this occasion "a man in Christ." He wishes in doing so to meet the question how it came to pass that he was so highly honoured; it was because he was a man in Christ that before him the gates of paradise must fly open. He says, "I was caught up"; according to the word used in the original, I was forcibly carried away. He was caught up from the earth. But whither? To some blessed star, from whence, as Moses viewed the promised land, so he might view the land of glory glimmering in the distance? Oh no, his flight went further. He was in the very heart of this land. How often in the dark seasons of his life had he looked with sighs to this distant region! How often had he thought that he would willingly resign everything on earth that only a fleeting glance might be allowed him through the impenetrable veil which covers that land of immortal beauty! There he stood. The tumult of the world was hushed around him. Oh what a life in those serene fields of light and love! In those palmy groves of everlasting peace what forms, what visions, what tones of praise!

2. Was Paul then literally in heaven? Is there, in fact, a world of blessedness behind the clouds? Truly I think that Paul was not the first to inform us of that. He says, "He was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter." And his meaning appears to be simply this: what he had heard and seen during this visit to the other world was of such a peculiar kind that it was absolutely impossible to express it in human language. Oh yes, the apostle might have been cordially willing to have painted before our eyes an image of that blessed world, but whence could he take the colours for the painting? Would he have taken something from the light of the sun, from the blooming meadows of our earthly spring, from the groves and solemn stillness of our summer mornings? Alas! he would only have dipped his pencil in poor dull shades. All this the apostle felt, and he preferred being silent. He might have been willing to describe to us how the saints appeared. Oh, gladly would he have told us in what glory his Lord and Saviour there appeared to him. But what could he say? But there is still another circumstance which perhaps gives us a greater idea of the glory of what Paul heard and felt in the third heaven than even his silence — I mean the ardent longing of the apostle to return again to the blessedness that he had once enjoyed. But his wishes could not be taken into consideration. He was obliged to return to this dark earth and to the toilsome path of his apostleship. But after his return his renunciation of the world and its lusts was rendered complete. His conversation is henceforth in heaven. Paul knew that he could return to the blessedness he had beheld by no other path than death. Well, be it so, no hour was more longed for by him than that. What the apostle saw on this occasion we certainly cannot see in the same way, but we may still behold it in the mirror of an unimpeachable testimony.