Richard Gaffin Jr on what is true and what should be

Richard Gaffin Jr says:

[…]“seek after what you already have, because you already have it.”

In the study of Paul in the modern period this pattern of teaching has been the object of a fair amount of discussion and is often referred to as the “the problem of indictive and imperative in Paul”. While this teaching certain [sic] challenges the church, it is not ultimately problematic and so might better be referred to as the pattern or phenomenon of indicative and imperative in Paul. In addition to Colossians 3:1-4, the following passages belong to this pattern:

Galatians 5:25: “If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit,” virtually equivalent to, “If we live in the Spirit let us live in the Spirit.”

Galatians 5:1: “Christ has set us free for freedom, stand firm and don’t be burdened again with a yoke of slavery.” Equivalent in its elemental thrust to, “you are free, therefore be free.”

Ephesians 5:8: “But now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light.”

1 Corinthians 5:7: “Get rid of the old leaven that you may become a new batch of dough [= “become unleavened”], even as you become unleavened.”

Galatians 3:27: the indicative, believers “have put off the old man and put on the new”; Ephesians 4:22-24, on the most likely reading: the imperative, they are to “put off the old and put on the new.”

Romans 6:2: the indicative, “you have died to sin”, verse 12 the imperative, “do not let sin reign in your mortal body.”

[…]

Paul, we may observe, never writes in the imperative without first writing , at least implicitly, in the indicative. That is so because he knows all too well, better than some subsequent preachers, that “it does no good to beat a dead horse” – which is exactly what the congregation is apart from Christ, apart from who they are and what they have in him.

(pp. 69-72, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation, Carlisle:Paternoster)