Rooted, and Nothing Added

"As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving" (Colossians 2:6-7). Hear how I began: you received him. You did not achieve him. And the walk is nothing other than a continuing in what you first received — the same Christ, all the way down. So I gave you two pictures at once, a root sunk deep and a house rising up, because life in him is both settled and growing. You do not move on from Christ to something higher; you sink further into him, and give thanks.

I wrote this because men were coming to you with a more impressive offering — "philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ" (Colossians 2:8). Mark that phrase: not according to Christ. That is the whole test. Anything that would take you captive dresses itself up as fullness, as the next thing, the deeper secret. But hear what I say next: "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him" (Colossians 2:9-10). There is no fuller place to go. All of God met you in this one Man, and in him you already lack nothing.

Then I named what he has done for you, and I want you to feel the sheer completeness of it. You were circumcised — not with hands, but by "putting off the body of the flesh," a circumcision made by Christ (Colossians 2:11). You were buried and raised with him in baptism "through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead" (Colossians 2:12). And you who were dead, God "made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses" (Colossians 2:13). All of them. Do you believe that?

And how? Here is the heart, so hold it. "He canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross" (Colossians 2:14). Picture the charge sheet, every count against you written in your own hand — and it is not softened or excused but nailed to the cross, taken away in his own body. And more: on that same cross, where he looked most defeated, "he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him" (Colossians 2:15). The powers that would enslave you are already stripped and led captive behind the Victor.

So do not let anyone tell you Christ is your beginning and something else is your maturity. He is the root and he is the building. Your debt is cancelled, your enemies disarmed, your fullness secured in him. Walk today, then, as you received him — abounding in thanksgiving.