Colossians 2:6-7
Grab your Bibles, please, and turn to Paul’s letter to the Colossians. We’ve come to the heart of the letter in Colossians 2:6 and 7. Colossians 2:6 and 7, that’ll be our text for today. And in our study of Colossians so far, we’ve worked our way through Paul’s rather long introduction. It started in chapter 1, verse 1, and has gone all the way to chapter 2, verse 5. He’s addressing this church, in his introduction with Apostolic affection, love, demonstrating his Apostolic care for this church, even though he’s never been to the Lycus Valley, to Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, three churches there.
He’s never been there, and yet these churches are under his Apostolic care. They were planted by an extension of his Apostolic ministry while he was in Ephesus. The Colossians had been evangelized subsequently, very well taught, very well served by Epaphras. Epaphras who had met Paul in Ephesus and then gone back to the Lycus Valley. He’s a very significant leader in that region. Three important churches planted there, one in Laodicea, one in Hierapolis, and then this one in Colossae, and under his leadership and under his influence, they were planted.
They were growing strong, but now, about ten years later, after the planting of those churches, Epaphras has detected a growing and pernicious threat. A subtle, but influential, we might call it, a mood was sweeping through the valley. There was a mood, that was kind of shifting attention and focus from Christ, and creating discontentment and some dissatisfaction in Christians, in their contentment in Christ.
False teachers came in, not only creating discontentment and stirring up any dissatisfaction, but they offered to then solve the problem that they created; offering to augment Christ, supplement his simple rituals with better ones, more fulfilling ones. They offered some better conversations outside the local church than they could find inside the church. They offered that they could mix with more interesting people who kind of were in the know, saw the things the way they saw things, shared the same philosophies, the same outlook on life, the same criticisms of the culture.
They offered a fuller experience, a deeper communion in the theology that they were teaching. So Epaphras, who is a discerning evangelist, he senses this subtle threat to detract from simplicity of faith in Christ. He’s a wise pastor who loves his church, and yet he sees the need for sound counsel to help them. So he heads to Rome to pay a visit to his spiritual father, his ministry mentor, the authoritative apostle and friend of his, Paul.
Paul’s in prison in Rome and so Epaphras knows he’s not going to have to chase a moving target because Paul is obviously constantly on the move. But now being imprisoned, he’s going to be there a while. So Epaphras knows he can secure some undistracted time with Paul, find benefit in his teaching, his counsel, and benefit from his wisdom so he can go back to the Lycos Valley to protect and strengthen those churches.
So here’s Epaphras visiting Paul under house arrest. Paul hears this report from Epaphras about what’s going on and he hears the report not only about the threats that are facing the church, but also he hears mixed in, in Epaphras’ joy over his church and over all those churches, he hears about their good order, their stability in Christ of the majority. And so Paul delays Epaphras’s return, gets a little bit more time with him, and in lieu of sending Epaphras immediately back, he fires off this letter to the church to help them address their immediate concern.
So in this long introduction that we’ve studied, we’ve been through together, we’ve seen that Paul is preparing the church before he even addresses the threat. He starts by telling them how he thanks God for them. That’s a good start. He starts by telling them how he’s praying for them, what he’s, what is in his heart for them; he wants to make known to them.
He reminds them, after that, about the security of their salvation in Christ and as he speaks of Christ, he can’t help but go further to unveil Christ to them, in chapter 1, verses 15 to 20. Paul is confident for them, about them confident in Christ and they should be too. And if they’re going to be as confident as Paul is about their condition, about their situation, about their stability, they must continue in the faith, go deeper.
Chapter 1, verses 21 to 23, calls them to this steadfastness, to continue to be grounded and steadfast, not to be moved away from the hope of the gospel that they’ve heard, the one that Epaphras preached to them; the gospel that Paul now currently serves as a minister for. He’s an apostle of it. He’s, in fact, in prison because of it. So he would have them remain steadfast, grounded, not moved away from that hope.
There’s not a better gospel out there. There’s not a better message. This is the only message; the only way, walk ye in it, is what he’s saying. So in the final section of his introduction, which is chapter 1, verse 24 to chapter 2, verse 5, Paul is setting about to strengthen their confidence as he tells them about himself, about his ministry. He’s assuring them by telling him about himself. He’s assuring them of God’s care and concern because God, after all, gave them Christ.
And Christ after all, sent Paul as an apostle to proclaim Christ, the one who indwells each and every one of them, the one in whom they are complete. They have full access to all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in him. They don’t need to go looking anywhere else, and then this, take a look at verses 4 and 5 of chapter 2. “I’m saying this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. For even though I’m absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the stability of your faith in Christ.”
This letter is about confronting a controversy. It’s about confronting a threat, a false theology, false teaching, but notice how Paul doesn’t see the need to generate or gin up any fearful feelings for these people that are really facing a very serious and pernicious threat. He doesn’t trouble them. He actually engenders confidence in them, in what he says to them and about them.
Paul is confident that true Christians in this church will not be deluded. They won’t be deceived by the false teaching and yes they need to be wary, yes, they need to be watchful, but without being alarmed, without being anxious, and this is what brings us to the heart of this letter. The thesis is right there in verses 6 and 7. This is kind of like Paul’s propositional statement for the whole letter, and it’s going to be unpacked.
This proposition, this thesis is going to be unpacked through the rest of the epistle. So we want to take today to focus on his thesis. Let’s get that under our belt so we can make sure we know what’s going to be happening later. What he’s saying later and why? Look at Colossians 2:6 and 7, having spoken of their good order, the stability of their faith in Christ, Paul then says this, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and being built up in Him, and having been established in your faith just as you were instructed, and abounding with thanksgiving.”
You can think of those two verses sort of as the seed from which the rest of the letter is going to grow, a seed that is going to produce abundant fruit among this church and the churches of the Lycus Valley. In fact, it’s been bearing fruit among churches ever since he wrote it, including in our church. You can think of those two verses as like the blueprint drawn by an Apostolic architect or maybe a master builder of churches under Christ. We might say in today’s vernacular, those sources are like the source code. They command the operating system, so the machine runs at its maximum efficiency and its optimum performance.
Pick your analogy, but in the most basic lines of code, at the foundation of the blueprint, the power at the heart of the seed are those two words that are repeated in each verse, “in Him.” In him, note the protective power and the productive power of this concept of, in him, in Christ. Go back to Colossians 1:27 where he says his whole goal as an apostle of Christ is to preach the mystery of God, which is Colossians 1:27, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Now we want to take that small yet very powerful kernel of truth, Christ in you, and these two verses really are expanding that concept, Christ in you, to give us a pattern and direct the habits of the practice of the Christian life; facing theological doctrinal threats, well go back to the source code, Christ in you. You’re struggling to respond to social change, cultural pressures, challenges, workplace issues, go back to the blueprint, Christ in you. You’re dealing with marital problems, perplexed by parenting issues, raising children in a hostile world. What’s the answer? Christ in you. You take that seed and water it, and you feed the heart around it with the truth, and it will produce abundant fruit, because the power is in, the truth of Christ in you, the hope of glory.
So we’ll have two points for this morning built around that concept, one per verse. Together these verses unpack Christ in you, focusing on Christ in verse 6 and on, you in verse 7. So first point number one: The one in whom you walk. The one in whom you walk, again verse 6, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” It’s a present tense imperative. So we can read it this way, walk in him, you can read it, in him continue walking.
In him, keep on walking, and in the original and as we can see here, the command comes at the end of the verse, as if Paul is drawing our attention really to the first part and saving the command until later. So it’s, therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, is the emphasis and the focus in verse 6. He wants our singular focus to be on Christ and again, that goes back to the entire point in Colossians, from start to finish, it’s all focused on Christ.
For the sake of time, I cut out of my sermon a huge chunk, which is a beautiful chunk, that I would probably use later on so it won’t be wasted. But if you go through Colossians for yourself and see what is predicated of Christ, you see every time he’s mentioned, what is said about him or what the command is related to him, it’s Christ in you through and through.
The focal point of this entire letter is Christ and so we don’t want to rush past the emphasis here in the verse 6, so that we can get to verse 7, which seems to be all about what we need to do. We really, like as Americans, we’re action oriented. We want to get things done. We’re very pragmatic people. We want to rush to the commands, rush to what we can do. But Paul says, no, I want you to linger here.
I want you to consider carefully what I mean by, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord. The verb for received paralambano, it can mean to take or to receive. So, take, is kind of aggressive, active, receive is kind of passive receptive. It can mean that, with a personal object, which is what we see here, it means to receive to one side in the sense of, as one source has put it, denoting a a close fellowship and agreement, to accept, to receive to oneself.
So as you received and then, personal object, receive to yourself, accept Christ Jesus the Lord. This is what some new converts mean when you hear them say I’ve accepted Jesus or I’ve received Jesus and there will always be some older wiser Christian lurking around, offer a corrective, you accept Jesus? Don’t you mean that he accepts you? Isn’t that the point? Okay, you got me, nailed. Well done. Based on this, there is room to say we have accepted Christ.
We have received Christ, it’s written there. We can describe our conversion in those terms. You have, after all, accepted Christ, haven’t you? You’ve received him. But the real question, isn’t it, what do we mean by that? What do we mean by that? I know that many today denying the lordship of Christ, they want to take Christ as their Savior. They want his benefits. They don’t really want him telling them what to do. They don’t really want him to challenge them to change their priorities, to mess with their calendar, mess with their pocketbook, and so they prefer, I accept Jesus.
They prefer to be in charge and to, to sit on the throne of their lives and add Christ to their already busy schedule, and they’ll get around to him if they can, but they’ll hold the insurance of his salvation in their back pocket so they can pull it out when they stand before God one day and say, I accepted Christ.
So if that’s what’s meant when a new convert says I’ve accepted Jesus, okay, we have reason to correct, teach, instruct, challenge. But what does Paul mean by what he says here? The verb paralambano, as I said, means to take or to receive, but really what Paul is doing here is he’s kind of introducing us. This is new to us, it’s not new to the Colossians, but this is introducing us to an ancient practice, a common practice that’s called receiving tradition.
Receiving tradition, fondness for tradition, kind of strikes American ears as quite strange. After all, we pride ourselves in breaking with traditions. It’s kind of how our country was founded, by breaking with jolly old England and jolly old King George and all the stuffy things in English Parliament and royalty and all that stuff.
We Americans don’t like any of that stuff, do we? We forge ahead as masters of our own fates and captains of our own souls. To quote that insidious poem, Invictus, all about prideful self-sufficiency. No Christian should champion Invictus. And from the judgement of history really, the sentiment of Invictus is not courageous, but quite stupid and foolish, because true wisdom throughout human history has never been about becoming innovators, advancing on our own, doing our own thing, making our own way, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
True wisdom is about advancing forward from a foundation that’s been received, advancing forward from tested experience received by us, from those who are older, from the aged; receiving traditions of the elders, heeding the wisdom of the fathers. Now could these traditions handed down from generation to generation become distorted and corrupted and perverted.
Absolutely they can, most certainly, which is what Jesus condemned in his own day in the Pharisees and the scribes, what Paul condemns in verse 8, philosophy, that is according to the tradition of men. So what prevented traditions from this distortion and perversion and corruption? What preventative maintenance would act as a corrective to traditions, that tended stray and to drift? Only one thing will prevent it, an authoritative source of absolute truth.
Without a source to go back to, like all the non-Christian religions of the world, like every other person in the world, they don’t have an authoritative source to go back to, though they make one up. It’s not truly authoritative, it’s arbitrary at its core, it’s unjustifiable and leads to irrationality.
But without an authoritative source to go back to like the non-revealed religions of the world. So Judaism before Christ, and then Christ and Christianity now, or by deviating from or ignoring an authoritative source of truth, that’s exactly what happened to the Jews of Jesus day. That’s what’s threatening this Colossian church. That’s what continues to this day. The deviation, deviating from the truth that makes distortion and corruption inevitable.
True wisdom is about advancing forward from a foundation that’s been received, advancing forward from tested experience received by us, from those who are older, from the aged.” Travis Allen
FF Bruce in his commentary, traces the transmission of authoritative tradition among the Jews. It’s a good illustration of how deviation occurs over time. He quotes a quite a well-known summary, the Jewish handing down of tradition in the ages before AD 70. This is what Bruce says, providing an outline. He says, “Moses received the Torah from Sinai. He delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets delivered it to the men of the great Synagogue.”
Now he’s referring to the one traditionally set up in the time of Ezra. “From one of the last survivors of the Great Synagogue, Simon the Just, the Torah was received by Antigonus of Soko in the 2nd century BC. He was delivered into successive pairs of scholars, generation by generation until Hillel and Shammai circa 10 BC.” This brings us up to the time of Christ.
Going on, he says, “This was the tradition of the elders, which Jesus denounced because in practice it nullified certain basic principles of the divine law which it was intended to safeguard and apply. You leave the commandments of God, Jesus said, and hold fast the tradition of men. End Quote.
When Jesus came preaching, take as the example of him preaching in the Sermon on the Mount. You remember what he said repeatedly in chapter 5, “You’ve heard it said.” What’s he referring to? He’s referring to the teaching of the scribes, the traditions of the elders. “You’ve heard it said, but I say to you,” what did he do? Give new teaching? Did he upset and thwart their traditions and insert his own? No, he corrected their traditions by taking them back to Moses, to interpret Moses rightly, correctly, to give them an accurate exegetical summary of the teaching of whatever they were addressing, so that they can understand revealed truth, authoritative, absolute source of truth.
The Jews of his day had deviated from that one true authoritative source of absolute truth, which is the revealed Word of God, and since they had departed from Scripture, they misconstrued the truth. Then they misrepresented God, misunderstood his will, and they absolutely failed to recognize the Messiah when he came. Instead of bowing in worship, they elevated him and hung him on a cross. As John 1:17 says, “The law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
Two revealers, two sources you could say or conduits of absolute truth, Moses, Jesus Christ. The written record of commandments and precepts of history and instruction, the revelation of God and his righteousness that came through Moses. But it had no power to save, the power to save in grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ. And when that grace and truth came in Jesus Christ, it was not stenciled by the hand of God into tablets of stone. He arrived on the scene as God Incarnate, not with a book, but is the living Word.
He’s the living, breathing man of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ and the prophetic writing about him came after the life that he lived; after he died on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins; after he was buried in the tomb; after rising from the grave in a resurrected body; after he ascended into heaven; after he sent forth the promise of the Holy Spirit from the father to indwell his people, to empower his apostles, and to fill his apostles and the prophets and the New Testament, Ephesians 3:5, Ephesians 2:20, with truth to be written.
But first, before any of the words of the New Testament were written, the apostles preached, early disciples preached, their converts preached, and what they preached was received, just as Paul describes it here, and accepted as the authoritative oral tradition. They received Christ Jesus the Lord. What these early converts heard in the proclamation of Christ Jesus the Lord and then unpacking the meaning and the significance of those life-giving words of grace and truth. That is the tradition they received.
We see this same word used, in tradition, same word used in 1 Thessalonians 2:13. Paul told the Thessalonians, when you received the word of God, paralambanō, again, same as in Colossians 2:6, you received the Word, which you heard from us, and you accepted it, not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God which works in you who believe.
These early Christians, they were able to distinguish the word of God from the words of men in their own time. In the preaching, they received the tradition of the authoritative absolute truth. They were able to distinguish that tradition from all the traditions of men, which all those traditions of men amount to nothing more than deceptive philosophies, as Colossians 2:8 says.
So how could they discern so clearly? Were they smarter than we? Were they more adept at listening? Better skills in a pre-Internet age, a prebook age, where books are everywhere and they’re just better listeners. How did they do it? Well, it’s by the invisible work of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. It’s by his individual internal ministry of teaching, of revealing, of opening hearts and minds, so that when they heard the Apostolic preaching, it cut through all the clutter of the world and every other philosophy.
They were able to receive this tradition and they were able to make this confession, which Paul writes here, Christ Jesus the Lord, they believed it and they obeyed it. The tradition we have received, the tradition that Paul reminds the Colossians of, is summarized really in this confession of faith, Christ Jesus the Lord, because that’s what it is. It’s a confession.
This is the tradition that we’ve received and heard and believed and obeyed and notice, it’s not merely about a what, it’s about a who. Yes, New Testament is the authoritative historical record of his life and ministry. Yes, the New Testament is the only right interpretation of Jesus Christ and his life and his ministry. Without it, we’re ignorant, in the dark.
Apart from it, we too will drift into distortion and corruption, as happened to the Jews of Jesus day, as happened to the false teachers in Paul’s day, and some of the people that they peeled away from faithful churches. But the Apostolic preaching, the oral tradition that was handed down, the record in the New Testament is fundamentally about a person.
Paul conveys it here in Colossians 2:6 in a saying that was familiar to the Colossians, one that was taught to them by Epaphras. This is really the good confession of the early church: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord, it’s in other letters as well. If you look around the New Testament, you’ll find it. We can read this in 2 Corinthians 4:5, “We do not preach ourselves,” Paul says, “but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as slaves for the sake of Jesus.”
We read it again in Philippians 2:11, “Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.” And what is it they confess? “That Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” This early confession is, is a formulaic summary of doctrine that acts kind of like a bona fide, to validate true Christians from any false professors of Christianity.
For no one can say, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” You say, now anybody can say Jesus is Lord. It doesn’t mean, no you can’t say it; you can’t confess it, you can’t live according to your confession except by the Holy Spirit. You can’t know the meaning of those words, Jesus and Lord and the equative, is, you can’t know that, apart from the Holy Spirit. You can’t understand it; you can’t apply it. You can’t live out the implications of that in your lives without the Holy Spirit. What he says is true.
Colossians 2:6, this is unique, this statement of the confession, it’s the only place in the New Testament, that kind of, puts the confession of faith in exactly this way and it kind of presents the tradition of the early church and the confession of the early church in such definiteness.
Literally stated here: it’s you received the Christ comma, Jesus comma, the Lord. Now there are no commas in the original. I inserted that, but you get the point. You received the Christ, Jesus, the Lord. This is no cliche, mindlessly recited like some kind of a religious mantra. This tradition that we have received is about a person, and those words inform us about the person. And those words, when they’re unpacked, they are deep, with infinite depth of substance and glory and power and salvation and honor.
This person is someone who has loved us from all eternity. This person is someone who became incarnate to love us sacrificially, dying to save us, and he lives now in resurrection life, at God’s right hand, in a state of exaltation, and he ministers to us from that vantage point forever. So we’ve received the tradition, preached, passed on orally, recorded in the authoritative record, the New Testament Scripture.
We’ve received this about this particular person, the Christ, Jesus, the Lord. He is the Christ of God, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the one who came as the second and greater Adam to fulfill the perfect will of God and to be the perfect and only mediator between God and man. He’s the one who ministers to God’s people as the perfect prophet, the great High Priest, and the Davidic King.
Christ is Jesus, which refers to Jesus of Nazareth, a particular person of history. He was conceived by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, born from the Virgin Mary in a natural way, as a true human being, in a normal human way, and raised in a home, grew into maturity in the way of all humanity.
He fulfilled all the law of God to become the perfect atoning sacrifice for all sins by substituting himself for sinners when he died on the cross and then rising from the dead. And now he represents the first of a new race of a resurrected humanity. Because he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on the cross, as Philippians 2:9 through 11 says, “God highly exalted him, and God bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, that EVERY TONGUE WILL CONFESS that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the Father.”
This is the one that we’ve received by tradition. This is the Christ. He is Jesus, and as Paul tells us here, this Jesus is the Lord. Notably, when the Septuagint translates the divine name from Hebrew into Greek, the divine name being Yahweh in Hebrew. When it goes into Greek, instead of finding some Greek transliteration for Yahweh, the Septuagint translators shied away from using the divine name, and taking it out of Hebrew. It’s kind of pristine ground.
They didn’t want to sully the divine name with barbaric speech like Greek, and so they found an alternate, the word Adonai. They used Adonai, which comes from the Hebrew, which translate directly into Greek as Lord, and that’s where we get the name Jehovah. So don’t let the Jehovah’s Witnesses tell you, you don’t have the true God because you don’t know his true name, which is Jehovah.
Jehovah is the consonants that come from Yahweh. Inserted into those consonants are the vowels from Adonai, Yahuva. And so whenever they would see the word Yahweh, the Greeks would translate it and say the word Adonai. That was like the kind of little mnemonic device. So they didn’t pronounce it, but it just came into, kind of this bastardized form into, you know, American time, to Charles Taze Russell to say, Jehovah’s the true divine name and the church has lost it for all these centuries, and we’ve discovered it. Come follow our cult. Kurios, Lord, for the Greeks, when referred to a divine person, took their minds back to Yahweh. The readers of the Septuagint understood, Lord means Yahweh.
Paul’s asserting in this confession that the Christ of God, who’s revealed by the incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth, he’s none other than Yahweh himself. So as Paul has unpacked in his introduction and as Doug Moo puts it, “Jesus Christ is Lord, is a succinct way of saying he is the image of the invisible God, the first-born over-all creation, the head of the body, the church, the mystery of God, the repository of all wisdom and knowledge.”
When you read, Christ Jesus the Lord, that’s what you think of. So if you’ve ever heard it said, oh, Christianity is not about a religion, but about a relationship, we understand that sentiment, but that’s really a false dichotomy. Better said, Christianity is about a reality, about a relationship with God in Christ and the redemption that he won. Therefore, the practice of our religion, in contrast to every man-made religion, the practice of our religion is about growing deeper in the reality of a relationship with God’s Christ, who is my redeemer, who’s revealed in the historic person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, who is known to be none other than the Yahweh of old, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Anyone who comes peddling any other message, teaching any other philosophy, adding any addition or subtracting in any way from this tradition, from this Christ, is deluded and deceived and on a sure and certain path to destruction, intending to pull you right down with them. Listen, there is no other valid tradition. There is no other authority that is true, no other reality. This is it, Christ and Christ alone.
Just as God revealed his righteousness in the law of Moses, and there is no other righteousness, just as he revealed his standard in his code, and there is no other standard, there is no other law, there is no other code. And all the prophets point back to that law and guide from it and remind people about it and exhort them from it and admonish them from it.
So also has God revealed his grace and the righteousness that comes by faith, in no other name than the name of Jesus. There’s no other way, there’s no other path, there’s no other savior, it’s Christ and Christ alone. Now, what’s the point of verse 6? Just this, the fact that they received this tradition, the fact that they are able to make this good confession, the Christ, Jesus, the Lord, this is evidence, proof positive of the work of God in them.
This is what Paul wants them to see very clearly and to know with certainty, so they can walk ahead in full confidence even as they walk out into the world and face false teaching, people who are skilled at deception. He wants them to be confident that they make this good confession and they know this person of this tradition because God’s changed them.
God’s done the work and that takes us to a second point number two: The way in which you walk, the way in which you walk. Paul gives the command at the end of verse 6, present tense imperative, walk in him. And as I said, present tense. It means keep on walking in him, continue that way. It assumes though a start, that you have started walking in him and now you’re to keep on, keep on keeping on. It encourages continuing.
When we unpack the command, Paul wants us to see here in verse 7, the divine provision for our walk so that we know that God is for us and God is with us and God is doing the work within us. We’re not left as orphans. We’re not stuck on some desert island without resources, without food, without drinking water. No, we have God in, for, with, us.
Look at the text, “Walk in Him,” verse 7, “having been firmly rooted and being built up in Him, and having been established in your faith- just as you were instructed-and abounding with thanksgiving.” You can note several metaphors are used there to describe Christian growth, which kind of shift rapidly.
Lightfoot points it out saying, “from the path to the tree to the building.” You notice that. So there’s a journey metaphor, and then there are horticultural and architectural metaphors used there. We see that plainly, and that’s very helpful for us to grab word pictures and kind of apply this to our lives.
Verb tenses are important here. We’ll note those along the way, but what I want to point out right here from the front is that all but one of the verbs in this verse are in the passive voice. So what does that mean? Just to draw it to the bottom line here, Paul is assuring us by the use of the passive voice in these verbs, that God is the one who is invisibly at work. God is working within us. Very important to know.
Paul wants the Colossians to know this. He’d have all Christians know it, including us, that for all who receive Christ Jesus the Lord will walk this way. This is what our lives will look like. Why? Because God is doing the work. He’s the one causing us to walk this way. He ultimately is the one who keeps us out of the clutches of false teachers.
And how does He do it? By keeping us on the straight and level path, not deviating to the right or to the left. He keeps us on path, on track, on task. The more thoughtful, the more intentional we are about walking in this way, the more cognizant, the more knowledgeable, the more we have understanding and wisdom about walking in this way. Listen, the safer we will be, the more secure we’ll be, the stronger we will be. Never diluted by any persuasive argument, never taken captive by philosophy and empty deception, but always walking steadfast in Christ; we’ll live the most fruitful, joyful lives. Be ready to give a good account to him in the end, be a blessing to many around us as we teach and instruct and help and counsel.
So we start here first with the horticultural metaphor, like trees rooted, having been firmly rooted in him. Several things to notice here, and they’re super encouraging. The passive voice, as I said, it indicates what has been done to us. And again, this points back to God’s initiative. He is the one who has done, the rooting. In other words, we have been planted by God.
Paul’s going to go on to explain how it is that God planted us in the coming verses in Colossians 2:11 to 15. He does a deep, deep work to plant us in Christ. But notice next, notice where he planted us, it’s in him. That, in him, at the end of those first two participles, applied to both participles. So it’s rooted in him and then built up in him.
So this is Christological, which means our vitality is from him, and the shape of our growth will make us look like him, and the fruit that we bear from our tree will be exactly like the fruit born from the tree and the produce of his life. Another thing worth noting is that this is a perfect tense verb, having been rooted. So it’s God’s act, planting us in him, and it happened at some point in the past.
The results of being planted, firmly rooted deeply in him, those results continue through the present moment. So it’s God’s doing, God’s work, and it started at a point and it continues on. Now if this first metaphor doesn’t ring any cross referencing bells for you, let me remind you of this one. Jesus, use the same metaphor, not a tree, but a vine. Remember that John 15, “I am the true vine. My Father is the vine-grower.” He says, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.”
And what’s he saying there? False branches, fake branches just hanging on strapped to the outside, he removes those and burns them up. But every branch that bears fruit, proving to be an actual branch, the father prunes that branch, takes off the straggling little things growing out of it that aren’t productive and fruitful, cuts them off, prunes it. What’s that called? Trials, afflictions, pressures, difficulties, changes that we don’t like, people that are difficult, he prunes it.
Various ways of pruning it, different kinds of shears. But why does he prune it? Why does he hurt the branch like that? That it may bear more fruit. Because what has been done to us by God, planting us in Christ, rooting us firmly in him, we’re now able to contribute to the acceleration of our growth, which we come to in a moment.
They didn’t want to sully the divine name with barbaric speech like Greek, and so they found an alternate, the word Adonai. ” Travis Allen
Next metaphor, second, the architectural metaphor, like a building, or maybe even more specific, like a sacred temple, is how the New Testament describes Christians. We are being built up in him. These first two metaphors are connected. They’re tied together in the syntax here, but the first guarantees the second, the rootedness guarantees the building rises.
But the tense now has changed, from the perfect tense having been rooted, we go to the present tense being built up. Still the passive voice, it’s still God doing the building. But the emphasis here now is not on past action with continuing results; now it’s the continuousness of the work, the ongoing nature of the building up.
This is no static project, kind of like buildings, we build that. Once the building is finished, we fill it with stuff and people go and use it. What God is building is a dynamic thing, a dynamic project, sort of this organic living building always being added to, always rising higher and higher. That’s what Peter described in 1 Peter 2:5, We are, “living stones” and we’re, “being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
So we’re a living breathing building, a living organic sacred temple, ever growing, ever expanding. Paul’s going to develop this point in Colossians 3:1 through 15, which we’re going to come to in due course in our study. But how does the growth happen? With what material do we contribute? How do we join in the building? After all, the passive voice means God is doing it. And yet there’s a command at the head of these metaphors that means we do something, namely walk in him.
So if God is the one who has rooted us, and God is the one doing the building, well, then what’s our part? Paul comes to this in his third verb, and here he leaves metaphors behind to emphasize the need for sound doctrine. He says, “Having been established in your faith just as you were instructed,” still God’s work, the passive voice is still in play here.
But Paul indicates the part that we play so that we’re sure to remain deeply rooted in him, so that we ensure the building up in him continues on schedule, so that we continue to secure our lives established in the faith and firm in the truth. It’s actually a better way to interpret Paul’s use of the word faith here. So it’s not your faith, as I read in my translation here, as if it’s a subjective sense of believing, and that is certainly involved.
Make no mistake, we have to believe what we study and learn. But the emphasis here is on the need for sound doctrine to establish us. So this is the objective use of the word, faith, and that’s indicated in the original by the use of the definite article. It’s established in the faith.
The faith referring to the doctrinal content that we believe, that we learn, that we understand. It’s also indicated in the next phrase, “just as you were instructed.” They had to be instructed with content so they could believe it. So Paul’s going to develop the point further in the letter, and he does that starting in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”
There’s our part, “with all wisdom, teaching, and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” and on and on it goes. There’s our part, “let the word of Christ dwell in you,” and it’s a plural command, so it’s all of us in the church. Let it dwell among you and through you and out from you. Let it live here richly.
As the elders were praying this morning for the service, we were just kind of connecting with the different teaching that’s gone on in the first hour and just rejoicing in God giving us truth and God giving us faithful teachers of the Word of God here in this church to keep us all on track. So we don’t make the mistake of drifting from our own confession, from distorting our tradition, from misunderstanding God and misleading people.
We just spent time in prayer, not only praying for the service, in just giving thanks to God for that. We’re so thankful because truth is a gift; it’s a grace of God. Depth of truth and teaching is a gift of God and a grace of God. Hear the word of Christ in Colossians 3:16. It’s a word about Christ. It’s what Paul really laid out in Colossians 1:15 to 20. It’s the word of Christ, a word about Christ.
The more we learn, the more we understand; greater clarity comes from greater depth. It’s not true when you go diving. Going deeper doesn’t bring more clarity, brings more darkness. The way of the spiritual realm is inverted. It’s not like the physical, material world where greater depth leads to greater pressure, depth, darkness, lack of clarity, muddy.
In the spiritual realm that’s flipped over, so the greater depth you have, the greater understanding you have, the greater light. The more you see, the more you understand, the firmer you believe. The greater our depth, the deeper our faith, the stronger, more resilient, firm, steadfast established, we will be. When you read on from Colossians 3:16 and forward and all the way through chapter 4, verse 1, you come to see how useful and productive sound doctrine is, how fruitful it is in the church, in the home, in the workplace.
It’s the truth, divine truth, quite literally, that changes the world. Now, knowing God has rooted you deeply in Christ Jesus the Lord, you cannot be uprooted because it’s him who’s doing it. Knowing that God is building you up in him and always working to establish you firmly in him, I ask you, what do these truths do for your soul? Do they not fill you with confidence and joy?
Let me use a word that’s right here, gratitude, because that’s what comes next. Fourth we see a doxological output, which is evidence that we’re in him. Notice the last phrase in verse 7, “abounding with Thanksgiving.” Paul at this point dropped the divine passive. He switches back here to the active voice and present tense because an ongoing life of gratitude, coming from us, is what characterizes the true believer.
We are, as Paul says, “abounding with thanksgiving.” This is a verb here that indicates a superfluity of gratitude, an ever-flowing stream of gratitude, which may seem like a bit much until you keep on reading and you see all that God has accomplished for us, in and through Christ Jesus. From Colossians 2:11 all the way through the end of that section, verse 15, and when you see what he’s done, your hearts are filled to overflowing. You can’t stop giving thanks.
The thankful heart is a contented heart. The thankful heart is a satisfied heart; a happy and delighted heart which is complacent in Christ, complacent, meaning, at ease, living in peace, at rest, ultimately at rest. This is the believing heart. This is the mind of every true Christian.
And in fact, when you hear someone who is characterized by constant complaining, by routine grumbling, you know that truth teller who’s always telling you what’s the problem with you or the world or your family or church or whatever. It is the person who never seems to be content, never satisfied. You know what they’re saying to you, really, in all the complaining and all the grumbling, they’re begging you, examine me, please, for I may not be a Christian.
Listen to the symptoms of that heart and ask deeper questions about the cause because there is something not right in the one who was never happy in Christ, always bearing a grudge, has a long list of gripes, complaints, and unresolved issues. A heart of unforgiveness. The Christian heart is a contented, satisfied heart. Happy in Christ, delighted in Jesus, complacent in all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that have been granted to us by God in Christ.
When I say complacent, I don’t mean lazy and indolent. I mean in all the best sense of the word. It’s so satisfied, so at ease we are. There’s not even a hint of discontentment, not a whisper of grumbling or complaint. There’s no itch to look elsewhere. There’s no wandering eyes, no hearts adrift, idolatrous, covetous, bowing at strange altars. There’s no feet that wander into worldly places, no hands that do what non-Christian hands do and build what non-Christian neighbors build. No tongues talking like they talk, rehearsing the same banal trivia. Meaningless chitchat. No.
Why is that? Because we are constantly looking to our planting and how it is that we have become in this state and in this condition. How it is that we were firmly rooted in him. We’re constantly attending to the work of erecting this building, this temple. We’re constantly feeding our souls with truth established in the faith.
We’re filling out all that we were taught with this ever deepening, ever expanding, ever widening degree of apprehension and comprehension of the truth, because of this life that we now get to live in Christ. Can you believe it, beloved? Our hearts are filled to overflowing with gratitude and our mouths are filled with songs of praise to God.
The Word of Christ dwells in us so richly that our hearts are filled with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We sing with gratefulness in our hearts to God. And when we engage with others, our words are always filled with grace, always seasoned with salt, so that we will know how to answer each person. Why? Because we’ve been studying, learning, growing, deepening.
We will become increasingly like our teacher, Paul. From start to finish in this epistle, has modeled the very heart of gratitude and utters words of thanksgiving in ink on paper. So as Paul prepares to address this threat of false teaching, he really starts at the heart of it all, Christ in you. I like how Douglas Moo puts it, “The way forward is not through addition, but through deepening.” That’s exactly right.
The deeper you go, the more you come to understand him, know him, see him, the more clearly you understand and apprehend him and comprehend him and love him and worship him. You know what flows out of your life and heart? Gratitude. It’s not put on, it’s not fake, it’s true, it’s real, and the people around you can hear it and know it.
Deeper and deeper we go into the truth, so we can be more deeply and firmly rooted in Christ, so that our building can ascend higher and higher to the glory of Christ, so we can be firmly and strongly established in Christ. So our hearts are filled with contentment and satisfaction and joy, and we are overflowing with gratitude to God for Christ. A person like that, you think they can ever be tempted with any false doctrine, arbitrary philosophy, other influences, influencers, distractions, temptations, lusts? No, you’re safe when you stick to Christ and “Christ in you who is the hope of glory.” Let’s pray.
Our Father, what can we say, but thank you. We do give thanks to you in Christ, our Savior. We thank you for what you have done as our Father, as the one who chose us before the foundation of the world to be in Christ. The one who has loved us, given us eternal hope in Christ. We thank you, we worship you in the name of Christ, give our lives to you wholly, because of Christ. And Lord Jesus, thank you for all you’ve done for us. It’s in your name we pray. Amen.