October 16

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. — Col 3:3 BSB

There is nothing as deep or as hidden as the life of God in the soul. It seems to be enshrined in the very depths of a person’s heart. It doesn’t float on the surface like a cork on water but sinks deep into the very core of the soul. This is why it’s hidden from the eyes of the profane world, from those who merely profess faith, and sometimes even from the believer themselves. Often, a child of God can’t see their own faith or recognize the life bubbling up inside them. It’s not like a lake, visible in the sunlight for all to see, nor like a babbling brook running over pebbles. Rather, it’s like a well—“The water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” Therefore, it remains hidden from view.

The most important part of our religion is the part that is least seen. Our secret cries, groans, tears, confessions, and supplications rarely come out into the open. The despondency, heartache, trials, temptations, and perplexities that many saints endure are hidden from sight. So, too, are their fears, guilt, misery, and self-condemnation. The best part of their religion is hidden, for the heaviest things always sink the deepest. As it is with their dealings with God, so it is with God’s dealings with them—keeping their conscience tender, reviving the fear of God, drawing their hearts upward in prayer and meditation, and watering their spirit with the secret dew and rain of His grace. The spiritual part of a person’s religion, the best part, is hidden from all except as it manifests in the fruit of their life.

Picture standing on a hill and noticing a strip of green spreading across a barren plain. When you come closer, you see a little brook threading through the plain, watering the roots of the grass and giving it life. But the brook itself is hidden until you look closely. So it is with the life of God in the soul. We see the effects, like the verdant grass, but the brook—the life and grace of God within—is hidden, “hidden with Christ in God.”

And if it is hidden with Christ in God, what a sacred, holy, and truly divine life it must be! If this spiritual life dwells with Christ in the heart of God, what a heavenly possession it is, full of eternal blessedness. It is locked up in two distinct places, yet connected through Christ’s humanity and the faith that unites us to Him. If I may use an analogy, one end is in God’s bosom, and the other in the believer’s heart. How vast the difference between this divine life of God in the soul and man’s superficial, empty religion. The distinction is beyond words.

The word “hidden” also suggests another meaning: out of reach, stored away, and therefore safe. What would have become of the life of God in our souls long ago if it could have been taken away, destroyed, or lost? But it cannot be, for it is locked up in the Person of the Son of God. It is out of reach of Satan, sin, death, and hell, safe in Christ’s keeping, locked away in His eternal heart. If it were any other way, where would we be? What would have happened to our faith and religion if it hadn’t been kindled and sustained by God’s power from the very beginning? This is the great comfort for a child of God—to believe that they have the life of God in their soul and to know that the same power that gave them that life will sustain it in them day by day.