Bible Study from May 19, 2020 - Colossians 2:4,6-10

In our study this week, we began with the warning of Paul in Colossians 2:4 that there are people wanting to “delude” us and lead us away from the truth by what seem to be “plausible arguments," using persuasive words and speech. Therefore, Paul says, stay where you always need to be, firmly connected to Christ. Because of the Greek verbs used, we could translate Colossians 2:6-7 in this way. “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so continue to walk in Him, continually rooted and continually built up in Him and continually established In the faith, just as you were taught, continually abounding in thanksgiving.”

Paul is writing to a Christian church at Colossae, and he is writing also to us, who are believers in Christ. We have “received Christ Jesus the Lord.” We believe that Jesus (the Savior) is the Christ (the Anointed One from God, the Messiah promised in the Old Testament and now sent to rescue us) and is our Lord and God. There is a lot of meaning in simply saying that Jesus is the Christ and our Lord.

Some churches and groups teach this wrongly, though, by saying that we must first, as an act of our own will, repent and accept Christ and trust in Him, and then God will forgive us and save us. They quote a passage like John 1:12, about people who receive Christ, but they ignore and omit the very next verse, which says that they “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). People can resist Christ (John 1:11), but if they come to faith, they were born of God, by His power and grace, through the means by which the Holy Spirit works to bring new birth and faith, His Word and Baptism. None of us gave birth to ourselves, physically or spiritually. It was the miracle of God, and He alone gets the glory and thanksgiving. The means of grace are effective because God has promised to work through them, and the Spirit does work through them.

We went on, then, in the study to see how other Scriptures also help us understand the other images that Paul uses in Colossians 2:7. We are in Christ and continually walk in connection with Him, by being continually “rooted” in Him, also. See John 15:1-5 for the parable of Jesus and of the Vine and the branches. Branches cannot survive without being connected to the vine and the roots, which bring them nourishment. “Abide in Me," Jesus says, “for apart from Me, you can do nothing” (v. 4,5). Jesus gives us what we need, as we stay connected to Him. See also Mark 4, where Jesus uses several images of planted seeds and growth that then comes: The Parable of the Sower and the seeds in v.1-20; the Parable of the Seed Growing in v.26-29; and the Parable of the Mustard Seed in v.30-32. The Lord can bring great blessings from tiny beginnings, as we stay continually rooted in Christ.

Likewise, Paul says, we are continually “built up in Christ." (See Ephesians 2:13-22, as another example of this same image. As we are brought to Christ, we are also brought together with other people of different backgrounds and cultures, and grow together in the church, with Christ as the Cornerstone for us all.) We not only begin our new life in Christ, but we grow and are established and confirmed in the faith, as time goes by.

Again, this is the work of God. We do not root and build ourselves up. We are rooted and built up, by being connected to Christ, and staying with what we were taught through His Word. (See 2 Thessalonians 2:13-15 and 2 Timothy 3:14-17, for example.) When we read and study the Scriptures of the Bible, we are not hearing human ideas and traditions, but the very Word and teachings of God Himself, coming to us through these human authors. We are continually “abounding In thanksgiving," then, counting the blessings we already have received and continue to receive, in Christ.

We don’t need to keep looking for “something more” in our lives, from new and
different teachers and ideas, as Paul goes on to warn in Colossians 2:8. These philosophies and human traditions (see Matthew 15:1-9, for example, as Jesus battles against such human traditions)and elemental worldly ideas and spirits may actually “take us captive” and pull us away from the One we really need most - Christ Jesus and His Word - if they are “not according to Christ.” For again, Paul says in v. 9-10, we have fully what we need already in the God/man, Christ Jesus. We will hear more about all this next week, and the ways in which Christ already has won the very blessings and victories we all really need.