Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] The apostle, indeed, teaches the Colossians in writing that we had formerly been dead, estranged and hostile in mind toward the Lord, back when we walked amid our vilest deeds — buried with Christ, then, in baptism, and raised up together with him through faith in the working power of God who raised him from the dead: [2] "And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, forgiving you all your trespasses"; and again, "If you have died with Christ away from the basic principles of this world, then how is it, as if you still belonged to worldly life, that you subject yourself to its regulations?" [3] But since he makes us dead in this way spiritually while still acknowledging that we are one day to die bodily too, he certainly, in reckoning us likewise raised spiritually, does not thereby deny that we shall also rise bodily. [4] Again: "If you have risen together with Christ," he says, "seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at God's right hand: set your mind on the things above, not on the things below." Here he shows that we rise in mind — the only way we can as yet touch the things of heaven, which we would neither seek nor set our minds on if we already possessed them. [5] He adds too: "For you are dead" — dead, that is, to your sins, not to yourselves — "and your life is hidden with Christ in God." What is hidden, then, has not yet been laid hold of: [6] and John says the same: "It is not yet made manifest what we shall be; we know that if it is made manifest we shall be like him." So far are we from already being what we do not yet know — for we would surely know it already, if we already were it. [7] So then in this present span it is a contemplation of hope through faith, not a present possession — not ownership but expectation. Of this hope and expectation Paul writes to the Galatians: "For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness" — he does not say "we hold it"; and by "the righteousness of God" he is pointing to that outcome which the coming judgment, by which our reward shall be weighed, will bring about. [8] Hanging on that same hope, he himself writes to the Philippians: "If somehow I might arrive at the resurrection that comes from among the dead — not that I have already received it, or am already made perfect." And yet he had believed, and knew all the mysteries, chosen vessel and teacher of the nations that he was — and still he adds: "But I press on, if indeed I may lay hold of that for which I was also laid hold of by Christ." [9] Still more: "Brothers, I do not reckon myself yet to have laid hold of it: one thing I do — forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, for the prize" of that summons by which I might attain — attain, that is, to the resurrection from the dead, but each in its own time: [10] as to the Galatians: "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in its own season we shall reap"; and likewise to Timothy, of Onesiphorus: "May the Lord grant him to find mercy on that day." [11] For that day and that season he charges Timothy himself to keep the commandment spotless, beyond reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in his own seasons he will show, he who is blessed and the only Sovereign, King of those who reign — speaking there of God. [12] Of these same seasons Peter too speaks in Acts: "Repent, therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, so that seasons of refreshing may come to you from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ who was appointed for you beforehand, whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets."