Colossians 3:1-7 (KJV)
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: in the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.
We were made to set our first and best affections on God above and to set what’s left on His green earth below. We were not made to despise the ground beneath our feet, but to praise the God above the heavens and to thank Him for the feeling of mud between our toes and dirt under our fingernails. The problem with our affections is not having them, but having them out of order. C.S. Lewis, in the Abolition of Man, agreed with Augustine who said that the aim of education is ordo amoris, or ordered affections.
The apostle Paul urges us to set our affections first and foremost where they belong first and foremost, on God above. He also exhorts us to kill our disordered affections. Better to die to desire than to live under disordered ones. When we place anything above God, we ruin whatever affections we have for it. Our first and best given to anything except Him ends in the worst at last. But when we love Him above and beyond any and every other thing, we are set free to love whatever He gives. We do not honor the Giver by rejecting His gifts, we love the Giver by receiving what He gives and appreciating it enough to keep it around, but not on the top shelf.
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