Is it turning the other cheek & forgiving people that you don’t want to forgive? Is it walking away from temptations & living a life holy before God? Is it carrying the burden of great expectations & having to live up to a certain way of living? Is it something else? ... in him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)
What’s the hardest thing about being a Christian?
Somewhere on the list—maybe it’s not the top of your list, but it’s probably on there somewhere—is the pressure to work to be more Spirit-filled. Maybe it’s the nagging concern that your devotional time isn’t what is should be ... or that you need a Bible study ... or that you’re doing stuff out of a sense of duty, but not really feeling good about it ... or maybe you feel your faith isn’t strong enough.
You can blame others: family, for messing up your quiet time; or work, for keeping you from a evening Bible study; or church friends, for letting you down; or the pastor, for not feeding you. You can blame God—gutsy, but isn’t that what David does in some of the psalms when he says things like, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22)? [1] You can even blame yourself: for not working at your spirituality harder; for not doing more; for being a failure once again.
What if there was another—maybe even a more Biblical—way to spirituality?
Colossians 2
Commentary
When a passage begins with something like "therefore" or "so then" we need to check the context—are we coming in on the middle of a longer topic? In the preceding verses (v1-5) Paul reveals his motivation for writing, to wit: I want to encourage you, I want you to know the mystery of God with its hidden treasures, and I want your faith grounded so others will not lead you astray. Thus v6-7 begins of Paul’s encouragement and revelation.
v6 The two key actions in this verse—receive & continue to live—are tied together by the phrase "just as." What was special about how you received Jesus that must be continued now?
The word "received" frequently refers to the receipt of a gift; specifically it is neither taking nor earning an object.
"Continue to live" is an NIV interpretation for a word that means "to walk around." Think of a moth hovering in the vicinity of a light, and you get the idea. The moth might flit around, but you know you’ll usually find it near the light. In the same way, hover, or walk, in the vicinity of Jesus!
v7 Four key actions here: being rooted, being built up, being strengthened, & overflowing. The first three are passive—you do not root yourself, build yourself up, or strengthen yourself. The last—overflowing—is not passive, but with what exactly are we to overflow? (Hint: it’s not the Spirit; we can’t muster up the Spirit.)
The key phrase repeated in each verse is "in him." Consider the following examples of being in him:
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col. 1:17)
In whose hands does our spiritual life rest?
Application
Pastor and professor Ray Anderson in his new book An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches says, "... it was not a matter of my having all of the Spirit, but more a matter of the Spirit having all of me" (p75). Just as we receive Christ by surrendering our lives over to him, our ongoing spiritual life is sustained by the continual and daily surrendering of our lives to him. Here’s our problem: we surrender our lives to Jesus ... and usually try to work on our Spirit-filled life on our own terms. We try to employ worldly techniques to spiritual life ... and then we’re frustrated (and surprised) when it doesn’t work. Why should it?
When we try to work out our spiritual life on our own terms, we even quote Bible verses like Phil. 2:12-13 to back us up:
continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.In doing so, we focus on the aspect of work, forgetting the remainder of the verse: it is God who works in you to will and to act!
So our ongoing spiritual life is sustained by the continual and daily surrendering of our lives to him. This is not meant to be burden and a duty, but simply giving up. We give up trying to do it ourselves, just as our salvation comes only when we give up trying to save ourselves. There is no end to giving up, of course, no end to picking up our crosses daily and following (Luke 9:23). There are days when this seems easier, or harder, than others, but our continual walk with Christ begins every day with giving up ... and accepting what comes into our lives as gifts from God.
Can we be thankful for who, what, and where we are as gifts from God? God is not asleep at the wheel, and he is at work today, right where you are, no matter how hopeless it looks.
Consider those three passive verbs from v7, being rooted, built up, and strengthened:
Just as a plant depends on the soil in order to be rooted (would you rather pull weeks out of sand, or rich soil?) so we depend on God. However, we need to depend on God in the place where he has planted us. It’s not just that we’re rooted in God—we’re rooted in God in the world. Jesus picks up his cross and goes forth into, and for the sake of, the world. He knows he will meet the Father on the cross; that is the model we are supposed to follow. It’s not sufficient to depend on God in church—that makes us hothouse plants good for little. Rather the spiritual life that God desires for us comes from giving up and depending on God to supply all we need, in his timing, in the world.
Just as a brick by itself has no steadfastness on its own and needs a mason to incorporate it into something rugged (would you rather kick a single loose brick, or a brick wall?) so we depend on God. The temptation is to see the church as that brick wall and quote verses like 1 Peter 2:4-5 to back us up. In reality, as we receive Christ, we are brought into and incorporated into the kingdom of God, of which the church is just a part (and sometimes not a very evident part!). Consider an iceberg, which is 10% visible and 90% hidden below the waterline; in the same way, the church (at best) is a visible part of the kingdom of God, but God is at work invisibly in the world. We are being built up to be an effective part of the kingdom of God in the world!
Just as a ship depends on its anchor to hold its position at times (would you ever leave a boat unsecured?) so we depend on God to give us strength as his is our anchor. A boat in dry dock or in storage doesn’t need an anchor. The boat needs an anchor when it is out on open water and is subject to wind and waves. Likewise the times when we are subject to trials is when we need God to keep us from being blown and tossed by the wind (James 1:6) Here again, our spiritual life is defined by our relationship with God as we live in the world, not in the dry dock of church.
Points to Ponder
Where have you beaten up yourself for a supposed lack of spirituality? (Worse yet, whom have you beaten up about their lack of spirituality?)
Where do you need to give up trying to fill yourself with the Spirit & let God lead you?
If you have surrendered to Christ, you are in him. Where is God is working around you in the world?
If you have surrendered to Christ, you are in him. Now, what do you have to be thankful for?
End Notes
1 - Later, Jesus echoed the same words on the cross. In her diaries, Mother Teresa revealed that she was plagued by doubts and a loss of faith for years. A London Telegraph article quotes Mother Teresa, "In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist." If Jesus, David, and Mother Teresa can suffer that degree of doubt, isn’t it OK for us to have doubts as well?
2 - I wonder ... most of the things we want overflowing in our lives are gifts of God: e.g. faith, Spirit, fruit of the Spirit. Categorically these are not things we can muster up on our own. At least according to this verse, if we’re walking in Christ what we are to try to muster up is appreciation for what he’s done!
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