Tonight’s sermon looked at being rooted and built up in Christ, with reference to Col 2:6-15.
God wants us to start well by faith and to continue by faith. In that sense, growing up spiritually is not the same as growing up naturally, for as parents we teach our children to be independent as a necessary part of the maturing process, but we can never become independent of God. Continuing in Christ means we walk by faith continually and accept His Lordship. We are to be rooted and built up in Him. Jer 17:7-8 and Ps 1:3 remind us of a tree with good roots and the Casting Crowns’ album ‘Thrive’ has a good picture of a tree which digs deep in order to grow tall:
We have to have roots that are firmly established in who Christ is and what He has done for us; we have to be grounded and rooted in His love. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was ‘I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.’ (Eph 3:17-19) If we are to be able to withstand the storms and the droughts, we have to be able to rest secure and unshaken on the love of Christ. We need to have a firm foundation with deep roots – the word ‘rooted’ has connections with the idea of stability – but we need also to be growing upwards towards the light.
Being strengthened in faith means to have our faith muscles constantly developed. The amazing thing about muscles is that they have memory and as we apply the things we are taught to our everyday lives, as we take God’s Word and believe it not only for other people, or for the saints in the Bible, or the missionaries of the past, but for ourselves, for now, for our situations, we can move on to bigger things. The more we see God stretch our faith, the more thankful we become when He answers our prayers and demonstrates His reality in our lives. Overflowing with thankfulness is a key sign of maturity (see Eph 5:20, 1 Thess 5:18).
For us to grow up, we have to be aware of the pitfalls which abound. Hollow and deceptive philosophies often sound attractive and plausible, but do not provide lasting satisfaction and fulfilment. Paul reminds us that we have an enemy who wants to seduce us (2 Cor 11:3) and we can only defeat his schemes if we are secure in who Christ is and in what He has done. Col 2:9-15 vividly demonstrate Christ’s deity and the power and efficacy of all He has done on the Cross. Far from being an ignominious defeat, the Cross showed that Satan no longer has any hold on us.
When we realise that we have been given fullness in Christ – in whom all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form – our lives can be revolutionised. Our part, then, is to enter into everything that Christ has done for us so that His life in us becomes the growth medium. In Galatians 2:20, Paul says ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ This is the secret to real growth in God: it’s not our life, but Christ’s life living in us, a life lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us, a complete identification with Him brought about by the fact that ‘Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it.’ (Gal 2:20, The Message)