COLOSSIANS (14) Continue to Live Your Lives in Him

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” (Col 2:6-7)

Review
Last Sunday, we started to talk about Colossians chapter 2. In the first 5 verses, Paul revealed why he was writing the letter to the Christians in the churches of Colossae and Laodicea.
 
Paul said,
“My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ” (Col 2:2)
 
The Colossian Christians needed to be united in Jesus Christ because that was how they were able to fight against false teachings. That was the fight the apostle Paul was fighting. He made every effort to defend the essence of the gospel. Paul encouraged them and every reader of the letter to join in that fight.
 
Then Paul suggested two things that would bind them together as one body of Jesus Christ—love and knowledge of Christ.
 
To be united in Christ, we’re to love one another with God’s love and stand upon the truth of Christ together. We’re to have one heart of love and one mind—the same attitude of mind that Christ Jesus had.
 
The love of Christ will bind us together in Him. When we allow the message of Christ to dwell among us by teaching, admonishing, and encouraging one another, His word will bind us by giving us all the vision of the kingdom of God.
 
Then, we won’t be shaken by anything, including worldly values and false teachings, but continue to keep our faith, fighting the good fight of faith together. We need to remember that we can’t stand alone. As the triune God lives in community, we’re also made to live together in community.
 
Receiving Christ Jesus as Lord
Today, I want us to think about the next two verses. Even though they are short, they contain important teachings about Christian life. These two verses are also a summary of the basic teachings to the Colossians.
 
Before jumping in, I want to remind you of what we already know. Believing in Jesus Christ is not the goal of faith.
 
I’ve seen some Christians who are satisfied with the fact that they made the decision to believe in Jesus,  but they don’t put any effort in becoming like Him or following His will. Their only interest is the salvation of their souls. Nothing else is of their interest. But, how can we say, “I’m a Christian” without having an interest in what Jesus is interested in?
 
It's true that we are saved by believing in Jesus. But that’s not the end of the journey of faith. That’s actually a starting point. Believing in Jesus means that we start a new way of life that’s completely different from the old. A very exciting and absorbing life awaits, in which Jesus is with us, guiding us and building us up. On this journey, we’ll experience the joy of maturing in Him and find ourselves changing remarkably to be like Jesus Christ.
 
In verse 6, Paul explains what it means to believe in Jesus. It is to receive Jesus Christ as Lord. This sentence is very important in defining Christian faith. It is to acknowledge Jesus as both our Savior and Lord.
 
Lordship Salvation Controversy
Now, I want to introduce a controversy in Christianity.
 
The lordship salvation controversy is a theological dispute regarding the relationship between faith and works. The question it asks is this: “Is it necessary to accept Jesus as Lord in order to be saved?”
 
Those who support lordship salvation insist that no one can truly receive Christ as Savior while he or she rejects Him as Lord. They say, “Those who have not enthroned Christ in their hearts and lives, and yet imagine that they are trusting Him as Savior, are deceived.”
 
By contrast, those who are against lordship salvation maintain that one can accept Jesus Christ as Savior without accepting His lordship over their lives. What do you think? Is accepting Christ as Lord essential to  salvation?
 
I personally support lordship salvation based on the word of God. I think it’s impossible to truly accept Him as Savior while refusing Him as Lord. It is true that only faith matters in one’s salvation. The question is what does faith cover? Can faith that’s not accompanied with certain actions be considered true, saving faith?
 
I can’t agree with such a concept. We can’t divide Jesus in two. We can’t separate Jesus as our Savior from Jesus as our Lord because He is both Savior and Lord.
 
To be our Savior, Jesus must be our Lord. The only reason Jesus can be our Savior is because He is the Lord of everything. How can we expect Him to set us free from all darkness, sin, death, and Satan unless He has absolute authority and power over everything?
 
So, we should oppose every attempt to separate Jesus’ ministry of salvation from His lordship because they must go hand in hand. He can’t be our Savior unless He is our Lord.
 
That’s what Paul points out here. Paul said that the Colossian Christians received Christ as Lord. He didn’t urge them to receive Christ as Lord. He didn’t have to, because as I said earlier, it’s impossible to receive Him as Savior while rejecting Him as Lord.
 
This is especially important to many modern Christians who tend to speak more about Jesus being their Savior than about Him being their Lord. They want to enjoy the sense of forgiveness and salvation without surrendering their lives to Him.
 
They simply want to be saved from the consequences or punishments of their sins and not the sins themselves. So they don’t try to fight against their desires of the flesh or their sinful nature, which is possible only when they accept Jesus as their Lord and completely surrender their lives to Him.
 
But, biblically speaking, true repentance must involve giving Christ the authority to rule over us so that He can decide the kind of life we should live according to His will. True Christians are those who always acknowledge His sovereignty and absolute authority over their lives.
 
Then, what are some important characteristics that define the meaning of becoming Christians who receive Christ as both their Savior and Lord? What kind of life should we seek as Christians? In today’s short passage, Paul suggests three things regarding this question.
 
1. Continue to Live Life in Him
First, Paul said, “continue to live your lives in him” (Col 2:6)
 
Paul also said in a previous verse, “live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way” (Col 1:10)
 
Living life in Jesus means seeking a worthy life that pleases Him. Here, life is very closely related to one’s actions. Living in Christ means making an effort to reflect who Jesus is through what we do each day..
 
It's not enough just to say He is always with us unless we give Him control of every corner of our lives and surrender everything to Him. Living a life in Jesus means others can see Him through how we live our lives.
 
This is the most significant change that takes place in Christians who receive Christ as their Lord. Even though they are still imperfect and may stumble from time to time, they at least have the desire and make the effort to become more like Jesus. Even though they may still fail, they never give up on pursuing a life of faith or stop striving to walk with Jesus.
 
That’s the life we’re called to live as Christians. We’re to continue to live our lives in Jesus, who is our Savior and Lord, opposing everything that is against Him, aligning our wills with His will, and matching our lives to the promises we have in Him.
 
2. Being Rooted and Built up in Him
Then, the more we try to live our lives in Jesus and walk with Him, the more we’ll find that our lives are being built up in Him. This is the growth of faith.
 
Here, Paul compares Christian life to the cultivation of plants. If you want to grow tomatoes, you should first check that  the tomato seeds are well-rooted in the soil. Then, you should take care of the tomato plants so that they grow well.
 
What’s important is that you plant the seeds just once. You don’t plant seeds repeatedly. Once the seeds have taken root in the ground, you don’t take them out to plant them again. You only care about how well the seeds grow.
 
This image does a great job explaining a person’s faith journey. Here, ‘have taken root’ is the past perfect tense. In Greek, the perfect tense is used to describe completed actions whose results are still in effect in the present.
 
By saying this, Paul implies that one's life is only planted in Christ once and takes root in Him permanently. Once you're rooted in Christ, you won't ever need to be planted again.
 
So now, what we must be careful of is how we build up our faith in Christ. Planting seeds itself is not the purpose. We plant seeds to see them grow into plants or trees that bear fruit. What Paul demonstrates through the metaphor of a tree rooted in the ground and growing is that believing is not the goal, but just the start.
 
So, we shouldn’t “[lay] again the foundation” (Heb 6:1). Instead, we must “move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity” (Heb 6:1).
 
Even though it’s good to check whether we really believe in Jesus or not, true, mature Christians are not worried about that. Being confident in their belief and trusting that Jesus is their Savior and Lord, they are focused on their desire to become more like Him in order to reach His fullness in their lives.
 
If we really believe that we’re rooted in the foundation of Jesus Christ, we should be interested in how we can be built up in Him and grow in Him. That’s what God wants us to see. He doesn’t want us to remain as seeds rooted in the ground. He wants us to come up through the ground and grow into trees to bear lots of good fruit.
 
The seed God plants in us is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the seed is always accompanied by rapid growth if it’s really rooted in our hearts. If we take good care of the seed, it will become a big tree that covers all our lives. And the fruit we’ll reap is not irrelevant to the seed—we’ll reap fruit worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
 
So, if we see fruits other than the fruit of the gospel in our lives, we must check whether we’re really rooted in Jesus Christ. And if we’re confident that we’re rooted in Christ, we should strive to be built up in Him, becoming like Him in every respect.
 
3) Being Strengthened in the Faith
Then, how can we be built up in Christ? How can we move beyond the elementary teachings and be taken forward into maturity? We’re urged to be strengthened in the faith, which comes from the knowledge of Christ.
 
That’s why Paul added “as you were taught” after saying “strengthened in the faith” (Col 2:7).
 
How does one come to have faith in Jesus? What’s certain is that we don’t believe in whom we don’t know. It’s impossible. We only believe in things that we know. Even though knowledge is not everything in faith, we can’t ignore the effect it has on faith. In fact, knowledge has a significant impact on our faith.
 
Paul said in Romans 10:17,
“Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” (Rm 10:17)
 
Without hearing the message of Christ, the gospel, we can’t know who Jesus is and thus can’t believe in Him. As Paul said,
 
“How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?” (Rm 10:14)
 
So, it’s made clear that faith in Jesus does come from the knowledge of Him. Even though knowledge is not the only factor in shaping one’s faith, it plays an important role in allowing one to believe in Jesus and grow in faith.
 
That’s why Paul continues to emphasize the importance of the knowledge of Christ repeatedly in the book of Colossians. As we already talked about before, Paul said he continually prayed that God would “fill [them] with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives” (Col 1:9) so that they would “[grow] in the knowledge of God” (Col 1:10)
 
Paul knew that what would really strengthen the Colossian Christians in their faith was the great depth of the knowledge about Christ. That would allow them not to be deceived by false teachings no matter how attractive or appealing they sounded.
 
That’s why Paul continues to mention the mystery of God, namely Christ. It’s what Paul taught Epaphras, which was later taught to the Colossian Christians. Paul wants them to be reminded of the gospel one more time so that they would be strengthened in their faith.
 
So we should oppose the idea that we don’t need to know much about Christ to believe in Him. That’s because the good news we have in Christ is very simple but at the same time very profound. The knowledge we have is not found in the world around us.
 
It’s about God and His predetermined plan from before the creation of the world. How can we, finite beings, easily understand the knowledge about eternity? So we should make every effort to know Christ more deeply.
 
In fact, that’s one of the characteristics of Christians. Christians have a desire to know Christ more because they recognize that the more they know Him, the more they will become like Him.
 
Being strengthened in faith is the same as standing on the right knowledge of Christ. There can’t be true Christianity, churches, or Christians without a mature understanding of Jesus.
 
Today, we talked about three ways Paul encouraged the Colossians Christians. If they really believed in Jesus, in other words, if they received Him as Lord, they were to try to live their lives in Him, placing His will first.
 
If they were really rooted in the foundation of Jesus Christ, they were to strive to be built up in Him, maturing in Him, without laying the foundation again. And in order to do so, they were to be strengthened in their faith based on the knowledge of Christ they had heard.
 
These are the three things that we are also to keep in mind and make every effort to pursue as Christians who receive Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord.
 
I hope and pray that all of us can always keep ourselves awake in faith in Jesus so that we may grow to reach His fullness without being shaken by worldly things, our desires of the flesh, or false teachings. Let’s pray.
 
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank You for giving us this opportunity to think more deeply about what kind of faith we should have as Christians. We want to profess that You are not only our Savior but also our Lord.
 
We proclaim that You came to the world not only to save us from sin and death by paying the price of our sin, but also to be the Lord of our lives so that we wouldn’t be swayed by sin anymore but live our lives in You.
 
Oh Lord, please continue to show us who You are and fill us with the desire to know You more. We want to live a life that pleases You in every way. We want to be deeply rooted in You so that we’re nourished by You and so that we can be built up in You as trees that bear fruit in every good work. Oh Lord, we want our faith to be strengthened through our knowledge of You.
 
Please have mercy on us and guide us to You. Please soften our hearts and let us fix our eyes on You. Let us be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ more than anything else. Please strengthen our faith and be with us.
 
We pray that the fact that You are the Savior and the Lord of our lives can be shown to those around us.
 
We thank You Lord. We pray in the precious name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, Amen.
 
Sharing Questions
1) What do you think about the lordship salvation controversy? If you think it’s true, or if you don’t think it’s true, why do you think that way? And why do you think it’s important in one’s faith?
 
2) Believing in Jesus is not the goal but a starting point. Once we have faith in Him, we should continue to live our lives in Him, being built up in Him and strengthened in our faith. What are some practical things you can do this week to become more like Jesus?