The Hidden Life

The apostle describes the believer in a way that would puzzle the world entirely. Ye are dead, he says, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Dead, and yet alive; but the life is hidden, out of sight, kept in secret with Christ in the very presence of God. The Christian’s truest life is not the visible one that others see and that he half sees himself, but a hidden life, concealed and secure, laid up with Christ in God. We are more than we appear, and our real life is a hidden thing.

There are three things here, and each is a wonder. Ye are dead, for we have died with Christ to the old life, the old order, the old self. Your life is hid, for the new life we have received is not on open display but concealed, secret, kept from view. And it is hid with Christ in God, doubly enclosed, held with Christ, and Christ in God, so that our life is wrapped in Christ, and Christ in the Father, and no safer place could be imagined in all the universe. The hidden life is the hidden life of the risen with the risen One, in the bosom of God.

A LIFE OUT OF SIGHT

Because this life is hidden, the world does not see it, and does not know us. Behold, the apostle John marvels, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. The world looks at the believer and sees only the outward and ordinary, the plain and unremarkable person, and does not perceive the hidden life within, the son of God concealed in the common clay. It knew not Christ himself, taking the Lord of glory for a carpenter’s son, and it does not know us, for our life, like his, is hidden.

And in part this life is hidden even from ourselves. It doth not yet appear, the apostle says, what we shall be. We do not fully see our own new life, do not comprehend what we are becoming, catch only glimpses of the hidden reality that is ours in Christ. We are like heirs who have a vast inheritance we have never seen, or like a seed that has no notion of the tree it carries within. The hidden life is greater than we know, and much of what we truly are is kept for now out of our own sight as well as the world’s, hid with Christ in God.

HIDDEN, AND THEREFORE SAFE

But the hiddenness is not only concealment; it is security. Your life is hid, and a thing hidden in God is a thing utterly safe, beyond the reach of any enemy who would destroy it. The world can touch the outward life, can wound and rob and even kill the body, but it cannot touch the hidden life, for it cannot find it, cannot reach into God to pluck it out. My sheep hear my voice, the Lord said, and I give unto them eternal life; neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand; my Father is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. Held in the hand of Christ, and that hand held in the hand of the Father, the hidden life is doubly secured, safe past all fear.

This is a deep comfort in a threatening world. Whatever may happen to the outward and visible life, the real life is hid with Christ in God, untouchable, kept. The soul may be pressed, the body may suffer, the outward man may perish, and still the hidden life is safe, for it is not kept by us, who could not keep it, but by God, in whom it is hid. Thou shalt hide them, the psalmist says, in the secret of thy presence; in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me. The hidden life is the hidden and guarded treasure, and God is the keeper of it.

THE HIDDEN MADE MANIFEST

And the hidden life will not stay hidden forever. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, the apostle says, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. There is a day of manifestation coming, when the hidden shall be revealed, when the obscure and unremarkable saints shall appear in their true glory, shining forth as the sons of God they always were. The whole creation, the apostle says, waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God, the day when what is now hidden is at last displayed. So the believer need not grasp for glory now, need not be recognized or vindicated or seen in this life, for the manifestation is coming, and it will be Christ’s own glory that he shares.

This gives a great patience with present obscurity. We do not need to make our life visible, to be known and admired and vindicated now, because we know that the hidden life will be manifested in its time, and manifested in glory, when Christ appears. The saint content to be hidden now, unknown and unrecognized, is not losing anything, but waiting for a revealing that will far outshine any recognition this world could give. He that would be vindicated now, in the world’s sight, trades the coming glory for a present notice; he that is content to be hidden waits for glory itself.

CONTENT TO BE HIDDEN

And this is the freedom of the hidden life, the freedom from the need to be seen. The world lives for visibility, for recognition, for the notice of others, and is enslaved to it, forever performing for an audience, unable to rest unless it is seen. But the one whose real life is hid with Christ in God is freed from all that, for his life needs no earthly witness, being already witnessed by God, and kept with Christ. He can be content to be unknown, to do good in secret, to live and serve and pray unseen, because the seeing that matters is God’s, and the glory that matters is coming. He must increase, said John the Baptist of his Lord, but I must decrease, and he said it gladly, content to grow smaller and more hidden that Christ might grow greater.

CHRIST WHO IS OUR LIFE

We must see whose life this hidden life is, for the apostle names it plainly. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, he says. Christ is our life. The hidden life is not merely our own life improved, made better and holier, tucked away for safekeeping. It is Christ himself, living in us, the very life of the risen Lord become our life. This is the deepest thing about the hidden life, that it is not ours at all in the old sense, but his, a life we did not generate and cannot sustain, the life of Christ hid in us and we in him.

The apostle Paul said it of himself in words no one could have invented. I am crucified with Christ, he wrote, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The old self was crucified, died with Christ, and the life he now lived was not his own but Christ living in him. Not I, but Christ. This is the hidden life, that the believer has died to his own life and been given the life of Christ, so that his truest self is now Christ in him, hidden from the world, hidden often from himself, but real and living and his.

So the hidden life is fed and sustained not by our own efforts to keep it alive but by Christ who is that life. We do not manufacture holiness by striving, as if the hidden life were a fire we must keep lit by our own fuel. We draw on the life of Christ within us, receive from his fullness, live by his life as the branch lives by the vine. For to me to live is Christ, the apostle said, gathering the whole of his existence into that one word. Christ was not a part of his life but the whole of it, its source and its substance, its beginning and its end.

This lifts an enormous weight from the soul that has tried to live the Christian life by its own strength. The hidden life does not depend on our keeping ourselves alive, for it is Christ’s life, and Christ does not die. We are kept, not by our grip on him, but by his life in us, which is as secure as he is. So the hidden life is both hidden and safe and living, because the One who is that life is himself hidden with us in God, alive for evermore, holding what he has given. When he who is our life appears, we shall appear with him, for his life and ours are now one.

So do not grasp for visibility, nor grieve at your obscurity, nor measure your life by how much of it is seen. Your real life is not the visible one but the hidden one, dead to the old order and hid with Christ in God, safe past all reach, and destined to be manifested in glory when Christ appears. Be content, then, to be hidden. Live the hidden life, serving and praying and loving unseen, freed from the need for an earthly witness, waiting in patience for the day of manifestation. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God, and when he who is your life shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory.