"¹ If then you are raised by the Messiah, seek the things from above, where the Messiah is on the right hand of God. ² Think about the things from above, not so much  things on the earth. ³ Ye face death—indeed also your life is being hidden with the Messiah in God." (DLT: torahtimes.org, Colossians 3:1-3).

comment:  "If you are raised with the Messiah".   This is one of those timeless gnomic aorists in Greek, συνηγερθητε, clearly indicated by the fact that our raising up is not complete.  In order to convey this, it must be translated in the English present tense.   Our raising up will be completed with the resurrection of the body and the perfection of our spirit at the time of Messiah's appearing (cf. vs. 4).  But the gnomic saying here is timeless.  We are being raised right now in understanding and knowledge of the Lord, being transformed from glory to glory (2Cor. 3:18).

 

comment: Chaferism¹ would have us take these words as a "prophetic past", teaching once saved always saved, and would therefore illegitimately insist on a past tense translation, "have been raised".  However, the Greek is not a past perfect English participle.  It is the timeless gnomic aorist  (Wallace, Greek Grammar, pg. 562).  They key to identifying this aorist is that it is not referring "to a particular event that did  happen, but to a generic event that does happen" (pg. 562).  Linguistically the aorist is the undefined  tense.

 

comment: "...not so much things on the earth".  The Greek negative here is not the absolute ουκ but the relative and conditional μη.  It is the negative to use when encouraging someone toward a particular end without making absolute prohibition of the other.  "In a word μη is just the negative to use when one does not wish to be too positive" (pg. 1167, A.T. Robertson, Grammar).  Paul was not a Gnostic, but a Hebrew who embraced God's creation as good and useful.

 

comment: "Ye face death—".  The Greek verb απεθανετε does not just mean to die, but it can mean to expect death (BDAG 3rd edition, αποθηνησκω, "2. be faced with death or realization of mortality, be about to die, face death, be mortal ").  This is the definition that must be used when we are facing degrees of "death", i.e. "I die every day" and the person is not actually dead.   Again we are dealing with a timeless aorist.  See above.   One must die to worldly desires and seek the heavenly ones.  Paul does not deny that earthly things are part of life and God's good creation, but we must die in respect to life in order to further the goals of the kingdom of God.  Therefore we face death of every kind when we choose the things that are right.  Choosing to follow now is costly.

 

comment: "is being hidden".  The Greek verb, κεκρυπται, called the Greek "perfect", is somewhat of an English misnomer.  It is in reality built out of the Greek present tense stem with the aorist augment added to it.  Once again it is the gnomic idea (cf. Wallace, pg. 580).  The idea is more like our life was hidden, but still is being hidden with Messiah as we loose it for the kingdom in the present.  Even so what is hidden is a figure of speech pointing out that the life we loose is "preserved" so to speak so that it will be restored by Messiah at his glorious appearing.

 

comment: Chaferism might prefer a mistranslation like "hath been hid", which renders the passage less intelligible for the sake of shoring up the doctrine of eternal security.   What is wrong with this doctrine is not that a believer cannot have assurance of salvation.  Rather it is the lawless basis for assurance of salvation.   The carnal Christian cannot expect to be saved by a false theology based on Calvin and Augustine's Greek philosophy.

 

[1] A system of theology in which Calvinism is combined with lawless dispensationalism and the carnal Christian theory, i.e. the idea that one act of belief saves no matter what the person may do afterward (DLC: torahtimes.org/translation/).

Daniel's Literal Translation and Commentary: (http://www.torahtimes.org/translation/col0301.html)