Colossians 2:6-7
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.
This is the only occurrence of the specific name “Christ Jesus the Lord” in Scripture, which is no accident. In one fell swoop Paul was attacking two early heresies about Jesus—Docetism and Cerinthianism. The former claimed that Jesus’ body was just an illusion, and the latter separated the “Christ Spirit” from Jesus the man. Both were wrong and in one phrase, Paul hit them both head on by uniting Jesus the man with both his humanity and his deity as LORD and God.
The reason the major cults are cults is because they have defective doctrines of Christ. The Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, etc., say, like the Gnostics, that they believe in Christ—but what kind of Christ? Certainly not the Christ of the Scriptures. This is also true of virulent forms of legalism and some of the extreme forms of the “prosperity gospel” which eat away at the fringes of evangelicalism. The safeguard against this is a perpetual bowing before Christ Jesus the Lord, in line with our initial awareness that we are Christ’s, and our sins are forgiven. These cults may use a similar vocabulary…but a totally different dictionary…and that disqualifies them from being truly Christian.
So…because we have been saved by Christ Jesus the Lord, we are to “walk in him,” as well as being “rooted and built up” in him. In short, live out who is living in you! Every one of us is on a pilgrimage called “sanctification” heading for the land of glory. We need to continually walk in the sphere of the truth that is found only in Christ Jesus the Way. God did not just give us the map—he also gave us the Spirit of Christ, the Guide for this journey called life (Jn 16:13). Study how Jesus walked and what he taught and then emulate it in your own life, enabled by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
In terms of being rooted, the original word is rhizoo, and means to become stable, be rooted, strengthened with roots and figuratively to be firmly fixed, thoroughly grounded. The verb is in the passive voice indicating that this rooting has been done to you by God’s act of sovereign grace. The perfect tense indicates past completed action with continuing effect and thus pictures the initial “rooting” the moment we trusted Christ with the result that we continue to be rooted because nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39). You may have seen tress that were upended—roots and all—by a terrible storm. The roots that we have been given never do that. No storm is strong enough.
Finally, the idea of being built up in him is likened to building on top of a firm foundation—brick by brick and layer by layer. As previously mentioned, this is the sanctification process, and it is accomplished in much the same way as you would eat an elephant…one bite at a time (does anybody really do that, by the way?). We are rooted into God’s family and our life is being built on a firm foundation, but there is still more building to do. Study. Prayer. Fellowship. Works. Accountability. Confession. Repentance. Brick by brick and layer by layer. Wash. Rinse. Repeat…until Christ Jesus the Lord returns or calls us home.
