“Your Life Is Hidden with Christ in God”: Identity, Loss, and Re-Formation Through Colossians
(An Osmer-informed practical theological reflection).
Over the past few months, I have been working slowly through Colossians with my church small group.
It has been unhurried reading. And yet, more often than not, I found myself wishing we had more time.
More time to connect.
More time to sit with the text rather than move past it.
More time to tease out meaning.
More time to talk honestly about how it presses into the dusty corners of our own lives.
More time to reflect together on what it reveals about the character and person of the Most High God.
I do not think that longing for slowness is accidental.
Colossians seems to call for it.
This letter is not interested in making small adjustments to behaviour. It is doing something far more disruptive. It is quietly relocating our realities, insisting that Jesus is not simply part of life, but its centre.
James Dunn captures this well when he says that being “in Christ” is not an escape from everyday life, but “the starting point and base camp for a quite differently motivated and directed life.” That is not a sentence you skim. It calls us to stop and ask what we have been using as base camp instead of Christ. Or whether we have been stopping long enough to make camp at all.
Tom Wright presses the same point from another angle. For Paul, “true reality for the Christian revolves around a life of devotion to the risen King.” When that is the claim being made, speed works against understanding. Worldviews do not change quickly. Identity does not re-form in a hurry.
Douglas Moo adds another layer, pointing out how dense and tightly packed Colossians is theologically. He warns how easily we rush from Christological confession straight to ethical exhortation, missing the identity claims that must come first. Slowness, then, is not a devotional preference. It is a way of understanding. Even a way of life.
Reading Colossians in community has only heightened this tension. Just as conversation begins to deepen, time runs out. And yet that frustration has been revealing. It suggests the letter is doing exactly what it is meant to do. It refuses to let identity be settled cheaply.
This reflection grows out of that space.
A text that demands slowness, read within the limits of time-bound community life, intersecting with a personal season where identity itself has been slowed, stripped back, and re-examined.
The text at the centre: Colossians 3:1–4
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
(Colossians 3:1–4, ESV)
This passage is a hinge in the letter. Paul moves from towering Christology into lived formation. But he does not start with behaviour. He starts with being.
Identity is established before ethics.
The grammar matters here. “You have died” is not aspirational language. It is declarative. Something definite has already taken place. Union with Christ has already re-centred the believer’s identity before it reshapes how they live.
The phrase that keeps ringing in my ears is this:
Your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Hidden does not mean imaginary.
It does not mean denied.
It certainly does not mean forgotten.
Hidden means secure.
Protected.
Fortified.
It is Psalm 23 language. The rod and the staff protecting.
Hidden means your life, if it is in Christ, is not up for negotiation.
Hidden means your identity is no longer at the mercy of visibility, usefulness, affirmation, or the loss of a role you assumed would always be there.
To my brothers and sisters who know something of loss, I hope this verse rings true.
You are hidden with Christ in God.
Reassuringly, Colossians does not tell you to go and find yourself. There is no self-help here. No “live, laugh, love.” It tells you that if you are in Christ, your life is already held, already located, already anchored.
Not in a job title.
Not in a relationship status.
Not in parenthood.
Not in a degree.
Not in what people can see.
In Christ.
What is going on
Many of us build identity through roles and relationships, often without realising it.
For me, those roles became clear over the years.
Husband.
Pastor.
Leader.
Provider.
Alongside these, I held aspirational roles. If you asked me my life ambition, I would answer, half-joking,
“I want to be a grandfather… I’d like to be a dad.”
Something about these roles resonated deeply. They felt like the natural destination of a life lived in gradual obedience to God.
I was happy to be the one who held things together.
The one people called when things fell apart.
The one with a clear sense of purpose.
The one with firm foundations.
When those roles change or collapse, the pain is not only grief. It is disorientation. It is that strange moment of waking up and realising you are no longer sure who you are, because so much of who you were was tied to what you were carrying.
This has been deeply personal for me.
I lost my identity as a husband through divorce. Unexpectedly. Painfully.
I stepped away from full-time ministry — part strategic retreat for healing, part shameless running away from the questions I was not ready to face.
I stepped away, for a time, from my home and my country.
I am walking into a new chapter while feeling the pull back toward what was, what mattered deeply, and what still aches.
Alongside this has been a quieter lament.
The desire to be a father.
One day, God willing, a grandfather.
The longing to build something generational, not just functional.
Futures once assumed now held far more tentatively.
What surprised me was not the sadness.
It was how much of my sense of self had been carried by roles I thought were permanent or guaranteed.
Why is this going on
This is not usually rebellion.
Nor is it outright error.
It is mis-ordering.
Good gifts slowly begin to bear the weight of ultimate identity.
Marriage becomes not only a covenant, but a mirror.
Ministry becomes not only a calling, but a way of life.
Place becomes not only home, but a foundation.
Even in Christian contexts — perhaps especially in Christian contexts — we can become functionally defined by what we do for God or how we are perceived by others. We may never say it out loud, but we live as though being known for something finite is the same as being held by someone infinite.
Then a season comes when God allows the props to be removed.
Sometimes gently.
Sometimes painfully.
And suddenly we feel exposed. Not because God has left, but because we have been leaning on something else for steadiness.
Colossians names the mercy hidden in that exposure.
Your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Not performed.
Not curated.
Not proven.
Hidden.
Often, the disorientation is the moment we discover what we were treating as base camp.
What ought to be going on
Colossians insists on something both beautiful and confronting.
Christ is not simply part of your life.
Christ is your life.
That does not make marriage unimportant.
It does not make calling meaningless.
It does not erase longing or lament.
It simply refuses to let any of those things become the centre.
Identity is received, not achieved.
If you feel as though you are endlessly waiting to arrive — to get the Mrs or Mr, the Rev, the MA, the PhD, the mother or the father — you may be missing the identity being offered to you now.
Not earned.
Not unlocked later.
But handed to you.
Freely given.
Already yours.
The death Paul speaks of in Colossians 3 is not merely moral. It is existential. It is the end of the self as self-authored. The end of identity as something you secure through performance, productivity, or being needed.
And the hiddenness he describes is not a downgrade.
It is protection.
It is freedom.
It is the quiet relief of realising that the truest thing about you cannot be taken by loss, delayed by transition, or undone by other people’s opinions.
This has been the invitation for me. And it has not been quick.
I have had to turn to God for rest when I wanted to hustle my way back to stability.
I have had to turn to God for identity when I wanted a role to hand it back to me.
I have had to turn to God for renewal and redemption when I wanted answers instead.
Slowly, I have found something sturdier than a title.
Not a rebranded self.
A deeper belonging.
How might we respond
Practically, this has meant learning to live without constant proof that I matter.
It has meant relearning prayer — not as production, but as presence.
Relearning Scripture — not as a tool, but as a place to dwell.
Relearning rest — not as collapse after usefulness, but as trust that I am held even when I am not needed.
That one hit me hard.
Held, when others would cast me off.
It has also meant allowing lament to be real, without letting it become lord. The truest form of lament turns us from endless navel-gazing to lifting our eyes to Jesus.
I can want to be a father and still be hidden with Christ.
I can grieve what I have lost and still be secure.
I can feel the pull back toward home and still receive identity from the One who has not moved.
For the church, there is something here too.
We often rush to fix people by giving them something to do. We hand out roles because we think usefulness will heal.
But sometimes the most faithful response is to honour hiddenness.
To cultivate communities where people are not only valued for contribution.
Where small groups are not only about covering content, but about letting Scripture press into the dusty corners of our lives.
Where the in-between is not treated as a problem to solve, but as holy ground.
Colossians is slow because formation is slow.
Identity is slow.
Healing is slow.
Love is slow.
And sometimes that slowness is not delay.
It is not time wasted.
It is grace.
Living in the in-between
Colossians does not promise tidy futures or quick restoration. It offers something far sturdier.
Christ is your life.
That does not erase the pull back toward what was, or the ache for family, place, and vocation. But it does relocate identity beneath all of that longing.
Waiting is not wasted.
Hiddenness is not absence.
Loss is not negation.
I am still journeying.
Still hoping.
Still lamenting at times.
But I am learning, slowly, to let identity settle not in what I hold, but in who holds me.
My prayer in this — and coming out of this — is that I will always lean into that identity.
Held.
Hidden.
Bibliography
James D. G. Dunn
The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon
New International Greek Testament Commentary. Eerdmans.
James D. G. Dunn
The Theology of Paul the Apostle
Eerdmans.
Douglas J. Moo
The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon
Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans.
Richard R. Osmer
Practical Theology: An Introduction
Eerdmans.
N. T. Wright
Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters
SPCK.
The Holy Bible
English Standard Version (ESV).