Alive in Christ
Therefore, 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.
The organizers of the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible title this section of Colossians, Alive in Christ. Without even reading the rest of the text the implication of alive is that we, at one time, were dead. That is the point that Paul has been writing about up to this point. Now he wants us to know what that looks like in real life. What does it look like to go from death in sin and be made alive in Christ? He gives the above instruction in an interesting tense in the Greek. He uses the indicative-imperative to tell us about this being alive in Christ. The indicative-imperative is simply stated that God does something and I do something as a result of what God has done. As a result of God raising Jesus from the dead and giving us new life (totally by faith) we are to live in a different manner of life. There is to be no gap between what we believe about Christ and how we behave in Christ. The way we behave is still by faith. It is never-the-less a change in behavior as a result of believing in Christ’s death for us and being raised up in newness of life with Him. Paul give us four imperatives in the above text:
1. Walk in Him (Christ) - This is self-explanatory but a key to our life in Christ. If we receive Christ, our walk is to follow Christ’s walk.
2. Rooted in Him (Christ) - Again, easy to grasp. We are to derive our source of living from our being connected to Him as a tree is to its roots. He is the vine we are the branches (John 15).
3. Built up in Him (Christ) - Paul takes us from walking with Christ, to living from the nutrition provided by Christ, to being a building for Christ. He is both building us up as a building for Him to dwell in and making us part of a greater building, living stones, for God’s house (1 Peter 2:5; Hebrews 3:6).
4. Established in Him (Christ) - This might be the culmination of the previous three, or, even better, the result of the previous three. We are secure (established) as a result of walking with Christ, being sourced by Christ and being used by Christ as a building for Him to dwell. We have a stability in Christ.
We are to do all this in a spirit of thanksgiving. He has taken our dead life and made it alive for Him. And since were are walking, rooted, built and established secure in Him we out to burst forth with praise.
No comments:
Post a Comment