The Christian Walk
Colossians 2:6–7
© Mike Riccardi
Introduction
Well, it’s a delight to be together again, and to return to our series on Paul’s letter to the Colossians. So please turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2. And we come this evening to a new section in Paul’s letter to the church of Colossae. In fact, we come to the portion of this letter that many commentators call the heart of the book. In one sense, (after his greeting,) everything that Paul has said so far—from chapter 1 verse 3 to chapter 2 verse 5—has been an introduction to what he will take up, starting in chapter 2 verse 6.
And you remember that he has written to this precious church primarily to safeguard them against the attacks of false teachers—who were undermining the true Gospel message that the Colossians had heard from Epaphras. And they were preaching a strange mix of doctrine, in which they blended Jewish ceremonialism with pagan mysticism. And it amounted to saying that simple faith in Jesus alone was not enough to deliver the fullness of genuine spirituality. These believers needed to observe the religious ceremonies of Old Covenant worship. They needed to ascend to exalted planes of spiritual fullness through mystical visions and the worship of angels. And of course, such teaching is entirely inconsistent with the supremacy of Christ in all things and the sufficiency of Christ for spiritual life and godliness. And so Paul writes to defend the truths of Christ’s supremacy and sufficiency for all of life.
But that defense is not purely theoretical. He recognizes that these false teachers have upset the faith of this precious congregation in Colossae. If their teaching goes unanswered, the Colossians will doubt the true Gospel message that Epaphras had preached to them, and that would wreak havoc in their own spiritual lives. And so Paul writes to assure them that the message they have received is the true Gospel, and that Christ Himself is the key to all spiritual life and fullness.
And so Paul has extolled Christ as the image of the invisible God, verse 15; the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler over all creation; the one for whom everything exists; the incarnate God-man, in whom all the fullness of deity dwells; who, by His death and resurrection, has reconciled God to man, by atoning for man’s sins, and who has become the head of the church by His triumphant resurrection from the dead, and exaltation to the throne of heaven. In verses 21 to 23, he exalts Christ as the Colossians’ Savior—not just the reconciler of the cosmos, but the reconciler of these particular sinners, who have cast themselves upon Him for forgiveness and righteousness through faith alone apart from works.
And then, in chapter 1 verse 24 through to chapter 2 verse 5, Paul turns to address the ministry that Christ has entrusted to him, in a way giving something of his credentials for writing to a congregation he’s never met, and also demonstrating the affection he has for them as his brothers and sisters in Christ: his sufferings on behalf of the Gospel are sufferings for their sake; he preaches the great mystery of the Gospel, which is Christ in them; he labors, strives, preaches, admonishes, and teaches, so that every believer would be presented perfect in Christ. And not just “every believer,” generally, but for the Colossians specifically. He struggles, so that their hearts would be encouraged, that they would be knit together in love, and they would come to a full assurance of understanding of Christ. This way, verse 4, no one will delude them with fine-sounding arguments.
And after all of that—all of that truth about Christ, all that reassurance about the Gospel they had believed, all that encouragement of his love and concern for them—he says, verse 6, “Therefore.” “In view of all that has come before,” “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” That is the first imperative—the first command—in the entire letter. Everything that has come before has been instruction, and encouragement, and truth about the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. And it’s as if Paul anticipates the Colossians asking, “Ok, Paul: What do you want us to do with all that?” And he says, “I want you to live your lives in Christ! I want you to live in a way that brings all these glorious truths about His supremacy and sufficiency to bear on your every thought, word, and deed!”
And of course, Paul often uses the verb “walk” as a metaphor for the Christian’s lifestyle. The way you live is how you “walk.” Romans 6:4 tells us we have been “raised from our spiritual death to walk in newness of life.” Ephesians 2:10 says that God has created us in Christ Jesus “for good works, that we would walk in them”—that we would do them. And so, for Paul to say, “As you have received Christ…, so walk in Him,” is to say, “I want the reality of your union with Christ—that you are in Him by faith, and are justified by His righteousness—to shape and drive the way that you live your daily lives.”
Back in chapter 1 verse 10, he says it this way. He prays that they would “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord”—that they would live lives that correspond with the glory and worthiness of Christ. He says the same to the Philippians in Philippians 1:27: “Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” In other words, live in a way that is consistent with the Gospel by which you’re saved. The Gospel saves you from sin, so you cannot go on living in sin.
Friends, this is nothing more than to say: sanctification is the necessary fruit of justification. The Christ who justifies is the Christ who sanctifies. The positional righteousness that declares us to be in a right standing with God before His law is in Him. And the practical righteousness that actually makes us more holy is also in Him. And so if we are united to Him by faith, we lay hold of both blessings. Everyone whom Christ justifies, He also sanctifies. Everyone who is raised to spiritual life in Christ must walk in Christ, in newness of life.
And that meets each of us right where we are, because all of us who are Christians live between two great days: the day of our past justification, and the day of our future glorification— in the present pursuit of Christlikeness, in the present pursuit of sanctification. And yet there is such great confusion about how God’s people are to live their Christian lives, how we are to pursue holiness. Even in our day, just as in the Colossians’ day, there are voices that would have us turn aside to legalism, or to mysticism, in order to live the Christian life.
But our text for this evening cuts through that confusion, as Paul begins to tell the Colossians how all of this truth and doctrine is to shape their everyday lives as they press after greater Christlikeness. And the short answer is: we never move on from Christ. We only press more and more deeply into Him. Christ is sufficient for the Christian walk. Let’s read it: Colossians 2, verses 6 and 7: “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.”
In these verses, we find six features of the Christian’s walk. Six distinctive elements that characterize the Christian life, as believers in Jesus aim to live out their faith in Christ, following Him in lives of obedience, in pursuit of sanctification—in pursuit of that practical holiness which is the pathway that we must walk as we journey toward heaven.
I. Grounded in a Gracious Reception (v. 6a)
And that first feature of the Christian’s walk is, number one, that it is grounded in a gracious reception. Verse 6, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” And this reception of Christ Jesus the Lord is a reference to our believing in Christ, savingly, at our conversion. John chapter 1 verse 12 identifies receiving Jesus with believing in Jesus. John says, “as many as received Him, … even to those who believe in His name … to them He gave the right to become the children of God.” To receive Christ is to believe in Christ.
Saving faith is to receive Him for all that He is. It is to receive Him as Christ—as Israel’s promised Messiah: God’s anointed Prophet who overcomes our ignorance by His teaching, full of wisdom; God’s anointed Priest who atones for our sin by His sacrificial death and intercession; God’s anointed King who subdues our sin and reigns in our hearts in for righteousness’ sake. It is to receive Him as Christ Jesus—as my incarnate Savior and Redeemer, the only substitutionary sacrifice that atones for my sin; the One who is all my righteousness, so that my only plea before the justice of God is that He has satisfied the law’s penalties and fulfilled the law’s demands in my place.
And it is to receive Him as Christ Jesus the Lord—the eternal and true God, the only Creator and almighty Sustainer of the cosmos; the One Lord and head of the church; the mystery of God and the only Mediator between God and men; who is Himself, therefore, the sole path to spiritual fullness—as opposed to the angels that the false teachers were commending as mediators to God. He is the Lord, not a fellow-servant in the house of God alongside Moses, whose law the false teachers were trying to impose upon the believers. But the Lord, who is the holy divine Son from eternity, who supersedes Moses in every way.
This saving reception of Christ is to receive Him as the pearl of great price, the great treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again, and from joy over it, goes and sells all he has to buy that field and lay hold of that treasure. It is to receive Him as the One worth suffering the loss of all things for—the One who is my highest joy and source of all satisfaction. It is receiving Him as Lord and Master, the One to whom I commit my entire life, whose Word becomes the rule of all my conduct, so that I am concerned supremely, Colossians 1:10, “to please Him in all respects.”
And I say it is a gracious reception, because, of course, our reception of Him is not the product of our own ingenuity, or our own wisdom, or our own free will. No, our wills were bound in slavery to sin. In John 3:19, Jesus says, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, [but] men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” Romans chapter 8 verse 7 says that the human mind in its natural state “is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.” First Corinthians 2:14 says “a natural man does not accept”—does not receive—“the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”
The natural man loves darkness. He’s unable to submit to God’s law. He cannot understand or receive the truth of God in the Gospel until God intervenes, by the irresistible grace of His Holy Spirit, and transforms the natural man into the supernatural man by miracle of regeneration. He opens our blinded eyes. He quickens our dead and stony hearts. He frees our enslaved wills, so that now when we look upon Christ, we see Him for the treasure that He is; and then, by the sovereign grace of God, we receive Him for all that He is.
“As you have received Christ, so walk in Him.” Before we ever begin to “walk” in Christ, we must receive Christ, in saving faith, as our Lord and Savior. We could never hope to make any progress in practical holiness until we have first come to saving faith in Christ. Our being in Christ by faith is the prerequisite of walking in Christ in the Christian life. And that is just to say that the Gospel is the ground of our sanctification, that our Christian walk is grounded in the gracious reception of Christ by saving faith in the Gospel.
II. Conditioned by a Gospel Proportion (v. 6)
And that brings us, quite naturally, to the second feature of the Christian’s walk. Not only is it grounded in a gracious reception, but, number two, it is conditioned by a Gospel proportion. Verse 6 again: “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” “As” and “so” represent proportionality: “In the way you have received Christ in the Gospel, in that way, walk in Him.” In other words, “Let your Christian walk—your life of sanctification—be conditioned by the manner in which you came to believe in Christ in the Gospel.”
This relationship between the completed fact of our justification, on the one hand, and the ongoing necessity of our sanctification, on the other—that relationship is represented in a theological grammar that absolutely pervades the New Testament. It is the idea that the indicative of the Gospel is the ground and basis and fuel for the imperatives of the Christian life. Are you familiar with those terms? “Indicative” is a grammatical term that refers to statements of fact, like: “You have been justified.” “You are a child of God.” An “imperative” is a command, like: “Grow in grace,” or “Put to death the deeds of the body.” And this key theological grammar of sanctification in the Christian life is that the imperatives that guide us in our pursuit of sanctification are always to be grounded in the indicatives of Christ’s finished work in the Gospel.
We see that in our verse, Colossians 2:6. The indicative: you have received Christ Jesus the Lord. And so, on that basis, the imperative: walk in Him. We see it in Ephesians 4:1. After Paul spends three chapters celebrating all the indicatives—the established facts—of the Gospel that are true of the Ephesian believers, he says, “Therefore, I…implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” The indicative of our exalted position in Christ issues in the imperative of the holy practice that befits that position.
In the Book of Romans, there are two and a half chapters of glorious Gospel indicatives: “A man is justified by faith, apart from works of the law” (3:28); “To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness” (4:5); “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:1). And after all of those indicatives, he issues his first imperative in Romans 6:11–12: “Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts.” The imperative to not let sin reign, is grounded in the indicative that you are dead to sin and alive to God.
Paul didn’t have to write the New Testament that way. He could have just started in with apostolic directives and demands. He could have given the churches a new list of do’s and don’ts for them to follow. “Break these habits! Form these habits!” He could have guilted them into trying to pay God back for their salvation: “Since He has done so much for you, the least you can do is live for Him.” But he doesn’t do any of that. He grounds all of his calls to obedience and holiness in the grace of the Gospel itself.
He calls us to consider who we already are, positionally, in Christ—who Christ has remade us to be, by virtue of our union with Him. He has already changed our identity. He has already given us a new nature. He has already freed us from the penalty and the power of sin. And it is in the freedom of that grace that we are called to be who we are—to walk in the newness of the resurrection life He has already granted us by His grace, living in the strength of the truth of what Jesus has already accomplished for us!
The strength for sanctification in the Christian life, then, is the Gospel itself. When we understand this, we come to understand what the Apostle John meant in 1 John 5:3 when he said that “the commandments of God are not burdensome.” They’re not burdensome! The fight for holiness is not fought only by white-knuckled self-denial, forcing yourself to do all the things you hate and to abstain from all the things you love. No, obedience to the commandments of God is the natural response of one who has been regenerated, who has been given a new nature in the Gospel.
The Scottish Puritan Henry Scougal, in his book, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, captured this well. He wrote, “The love which a pious man bears to God and goodness is not so much by virtue of a command enjoining him so to do, as by a new nature instructing and prompting him to do it; nor doth he pay his devotions as an unavoidable tribute, only to appease the Divine justice, or quiet his clamorous conscience; but those religious exercises are the proper emanations of the Divine life, the natural employments of the new-born soul” (38–39). You see, if the Divine life has been sown within you by the regeneration of your heart, the fight for obedience is simply acting in line with your new nature.
And so when Paul says, “As you have received Christ, so walk in Him,” he’s saying, “Let your Christian walk by conditioned by the Gospel.” “As you have received Christ by grace, so walk in Him by grace!” Bring the gracious indicatives of the Gospel to bear on the imperatives of the Christian life. Since the Father has made you His sons and daughters in Jesus, live like obedient children! You are His children, so live like His children. That’s only fitting. Since God has made you citizens of heaven—which is a place of pure and unmixed holiness—then live like you’re citizens of heaven! That’s only consistent. Since Jesus is your Lord because He has conquered the dominion of sin in your life, then walk in the truth that He is your Master. Do you see how much strength there is in that? Don’t obey to become a child of God; obey because you’re already a child of God!
And so what Paul is telling the Colossians is: just as your entrance into the Christian life was entirely centered in Christ, so also your continuance in the Christian life must be entirely centered in Christ. We do not move on from Christ as we pursue sanctification; we only press further into Christ, because He is where all spiritual fullness is found.
And there is never any shortage of half-baked ideas that are marketed as the secret key to success in the Christian life. In chapter 2 verse 18, Paul speaks of “the worship of angels.” It seems the false teachers were telling the Colossians that the key to the Christian life was communion with God through the mediation of angelic beings. Now, you may think that’s not exactly a common struggle in our day, but is that all that different from the so-called “veneration” of the saints in the false Christianities of both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy? Paul says, “We don’t move on from Christ to angels, or from Christ to Mary, or from Christ to the saints!”
In that same verse, Colossians 2:18, Paul speaks of a false teacher “taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind.” The key to the Christian life was in the attainment of ecstatic, mystical visions—spiritual experiences that capture the emotions and make you “feel” closer to God. And that is exactly what permeates so much of the Charismatic movement. Churches made to look like night clubs, dimly lit with the theatrical, colored lighting, with saccharine, man-centered songs that manipulate the emotions and put people almost into a trance as they try to “experience God” and “sense His presence.” Paul says, “We don’t move on from Christ to mystical experiences and emotionally-manipulative worship.”
In chapter 2, verses 20 to 23, Paul speaks of an approach to the Christian life based on legalistic rule-following. Verses and 20 and 21, “Why do you submit yourself to decrees, such as ‘Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!’ … in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?” In verse 23, he calls that “self-made religion” that has “no value against fleshly indulgence.” And this is so widespread. Paul’s saying, “It’s not as if you get saved by grace, and justified by faith, and then you move on to get sanctified by works and law-keeping.” He deals with that very issue with the Galatians, chapter 3 verse 3: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
And I get why this is attractive. When you’re in Christ, you do want to please Him. You want to come out from the world and be separate. You want to put to death the deeds of the body and put on habits of righteousness. And so you start to make rules for yourself (and for others) that get more specific than Scripture gets. And you wind up attempting to apply biblical principles by making up man-made laws that are often rooted more in preference and culture and human tradition than in the Word of God. Abstaining from this food or that beverage. Entertainment choices. Even rules about how often you read your Bible and pray and go to church. There is this innate tendency in the human heart toward legalism—toward establishing our own man-made system of righteousness. And Paul says, “We don’t move on from Christ to extrabiblical, man-made rules.”
But of course: Christianity does change the life. Christians don’t do a lot of things that they used to. They put off foul language. They turn from drunkenness. They put away fornication. But if you reduce the Christian life to, “I don’t curse, I don’t get drunk, and I don’t fornicate,” you’ve turned vital communion with Christ into behavior modification! Why don’t I use foul language? Because God has put a song of praise in my mouth through faith in Jesus Christ! And so it’s not fitting, James chapter 3, for blessing and cursing to come from the same tongue. Why don’t I surrender myself to sexual immorality? Because I’ve died to sin in union with Christ, Romans 6; how then could I still live in it? Why don’t I get drunk? Because, 1 Thessalonians 5: those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since I am of the day, I am to be sober. Do you see the difference? One is a list of extrabiblical rules that depend on fleshly willpower. The other is a set of imperatives that grow out of the soil of Gospel indicatives.
Of course we are to engage in good works! Ephesians 2:10 says God prepared these works that we should walk in them. Titus 3:8 says, “those who have believed God [must] be careful to engage in good deeds.” James 2: Faith without works is dead. But it’s not as if we switch from faith in justification to works in sanctification. Good works are not the instrument by which we lay hold of holiness. Good works are the evidence and result that God has worked holiness in us by the means of grace. Faith is the instrument of justification, and faith is the instrument of sanctification. Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
We run the race of the Christian life, Hebrews 12:2, by “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of faith.” We look behind us to God’s displays of past grace, and we gain confidence as we look ahead to God’s promises of further grace to be brought to us, and in faith, we believe those promises: that there is more satisfaction to be had on the path of obedience than on the path of disobedience. And believing those promises, then, we delightfully forsake sin and pursue holiness.
That’s how we got into Christ, isn’t it? As the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, and everyone who looked at the serpent was to be saved, so was the Son of Man lifted up, and we looked unto Him in faith and laid hold of eternal life. John 6:40: “Everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life.” “As you received Christ, so walk in Him.” When we received Christ for salvation, we looked upon Him in faith and were healed. We are to walk in Christ in the same way: looking upon Him in faith, and following after Him for the joy set before us.
III. Founded on an Objective Union (v. 7a)
And so, the Christian’s walk is grounded in a gracious reception, and it is conditioned by a Gospel proportion. A third feature of the Christian walk is that it is founded on an objective union. And that comes in the first part of verse 7: “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted.”
Notice the verb tense: “having been firmly rooted” is a perfect participle. It refers to something that has taken place in the past, but that has results that continue into the present. And notice how the language of union with Christ sandwiches this phrase: “walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him.” And that second “in Him” doesn’t only modify “being built up”; it also modifies “having been firmly rooted.”
And so what Paul is saying is: this Christian walk is carried out by the believer, who has, in the past, been firmly rooted in Christ. Sanctification—the believer’s subjective increase in personal holiness—is founded on that believer’s objective union with Christ by faith. First Corinthians 1:30 says, “By [God’s] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us”—through that union—“wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification.” Christ becomes our sanctification by our being in Him! Our actual moral transformation flows from union with the Holy One!
And Paul pictures that by likening the believer to a tree that bears the fruit of holiness only insofar as we are rooted in Christ—which is such a rich metaphor. It reminds us of the Lord’s own teaching in John 15, verses 4 and 5, where He says, “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” Apart from Christ the vine, we the branches can bear no fruit. We are destitute of any spiritual vitality unless we remain sapped to our Vine! Just as the tree draws life, nutrients, and strength from its roots, so also does the believer draw from Christ our root all spiritual life, nourishment, sustenance, and growth. And just as a tree finds its stability from its roots being strong and sinking deep into the earth, so also, the believer, firmly rooted in Christ, will not be “carried about by every wind of doctrine,” Ephesians 4:14, but will “grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.”
Our subjective growth is founded on an objective union. Christ Himself—and not esoteric mysticism, or secular philosophies and psychologies—Christ Himself is the source of all spiritual fullness and holiness.
IV. Grows by Progressive Transformation (v. 7b)
A fourth feature of the Christian walk is that it grows by progressive transformation. Back to verse 7: “…having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and [being] established in [the] faith.”
Paul gives us two more participles that describe the Christian walk: built up and established. But notice the shift in tense, here. You have been firmly rooted, in the past, but you are “now being built up in Him and [being] established.” Those are both in the present tense, and so they indicate that sanctification is an ongoing transformation throughout the Christian life. The sanctification that begins definitively when we are united to Christ at conversion necessarily progresses and grows as we walk in Christ.
To put it in the language of Colossians 3:9–10: Though the old self has been laid aside once and for all, “the new self” is continuously “being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.” And therefore, though the dominion of sin is ended as a result of union with Christ, though the penalty of sin has been paid and the power of sin has been broken, the presence of sin still remains in our flesh and therefore it must continually be put to death.
Though we would love to be done with all trace of sin immediately upon conversion, in the wisdom of God, He has ordained that we be freed from the presence of sin by means of progressive transformation, in which we make daily, hourly, moment-by-moment use of the means of grace; in which we behold the glory of the Lord Jesus in Scripture, in prayer, in fellowship with the saints, in the unfolding of providence, and on the path of obedience; and, beholding Him, Paul says, we “are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,” by the Spirit of God.
And whereas Paul used an agricultural metaphor to express that sanctification is founded on an objective union, here he uses a metaphor from building a house. The same word appears in Ephesians 2:19–22, where Paul says believers “are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
The church is this spiritual building, laid on the foundation of the divine revelation communicated by the apostles and prophets, which we now have in Scripture. And the cornerstone of that building’s foundation is Christ Himself. It is in Him that we are growing and being built up into a holy temple. And so he’s saying to the Colossians, who are tempted to look elsewhere for sanctification and growth in holiness: “It is only by being built on Christ our Cornerstone that our spiritual existence, support, and security is well-founded! The growth, the edification, the unity and stability of the church all depend on being united to and abiding in Jesus, our Cornerstone and Foundation! We grow and are being built up and are being established in Him!”
V. Holds Fast to the Old Paths (v. 7c)
A fifth feature of the Christian walk is that it holds fast to the old paths. Verse 7 again: “…and [being] established in [the] faith, just as you were instructed.” Paul is telling the Colossians: “The faith—that body of teaching concerning Christ and salvation—that you were instructed in by Epaphras: that faith, that you received from that faithful minister of Christ, is the faith in which you must continue. Don’t turn aside to what these false teachers are peddling, but hold fast to the old paths, just as you were taught in the beginning!”
And this taps into something that seems to be a perennial temptation in the hearts of God’s people. In every age, whether in Israel under the Old Covenant, or throughout the history of the church under the New Covenant, there is a perennial temptation to become dissatisfied and impatient with the sound teaching that has been received, and to lust after novelty—both in substance of doctrine and style of presentation.
It’s a plague in the hearts of God’s people, this juvenile infatuation with novelty. Like the pagan philosophers on the Areopagus in Acts 17, some professing Christians “spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.” You hear it often, “Oh, that Pastor So-and-So! He just brings things out of the text that I’ve never heard!” And of course, it’s fine to appreciate those teachers that correct our misconceptions or teach us things that we’ve not yet learned. But so often, the reason people haven’t heard or seen what the preacher sees in the text is because it’s not there.
But mark it: false teachers who would defraud you of your inheritance in Christ will exploit your lust for novelty until they’ve turned you away from the old truth that is your only hope. Their pride causes them to steal the words of Jesus: “You have heard that it was said, but I say unto you.” “You may have heard this text used to teach the deity of Christ, or the virgin birth, or the eternal generation of the Son, or penal substitutionary atonement. But I say unto you that this text teaches no such thing!” And they steal your birthright for a mess of pottage.
And it’s interesting. Back in Colossians 2:6, when Paul says, “as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,” he uses that term, paralambano, that he so often uses to speak of the passing down and receiving of apostolic tradition. In 2 Thessalonians 3:6 Paul warns the believers there to “keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us,” same word. In 1 Corinthians 11:23, concerning the Lord’s Supper, Paul says, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you.” “Delivered” is the verb paradidomi, and “tradition” is the noun paradosis. “Tradition” is that which is delivered by one and received by another. And, of course, it’s just two verses later, in Colossians 2:8, where Paul opposes this reception of Christ in verse 6 with “the tradition of men.”
And so one commentator says, “When he says that they have ‘received’ Christ Jesus as their Lord, he uses the verb which was specifically employed to denote the receiving of something which was delivered by tradition. In other words, the Colossians have received Christ himself as their ‘tradition,’ and this should prove a sufficient safeguard against following the ‘tradition of men’ (v. 8)” (Bruce, 93). He goes on to say, “Protestants sometimes overlook that ‘tradition’ in the NT has this better sense as well as a worse one; it is good to recognize and hold fast the true tradition, while rejecting all tradition which runs counter to the gospel” (94).
And that’s what Paul is after, here. As he said to the Galatians in chapter 1 verse 9: “As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!” And so you, people of God: mortify this lust for novelty! Put to death your impatience for the old teaching! Recognize that the Gospel you’ve received is the true Gospel, and so continue to walk in that truth, just as you were instructed. We have received such a legacy! We stand on the shoulders of fifty-six years of faithful exposition. We are reaping the fruit of 70 years of faithful obedience, on the shoulders of families like Burton and Dolores Michaelson, and Sam and Emarie Britton, and so many others. Continue in that faithful legacy! Don’t grow impatient with the ordinary means of grace that turned sinners into extraordinary men and women of God!
Thus says Yahweh, in Jeremiah 6:16: “Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, Where the good way is, and walk in it; And you will find rest for your souls.” Don’t say what Israel said: “We will not walk in it.” “Give us something new! Give us something fresh! I’ve heard this all before!”
No, say, “Tell me the old, old story! Tell me again of the glorious Gospel by which I’ve been saved! Teach me more of sound doctrine, the pattern of sound words passed down from the Apostles, recorded in Scripture, which has built up and established the church throughout the ages, that I might nourish my soul in those green pastures of the old Gospel! The Christian walk holds fast to the old paths.
VI. Abounds in Humble Thanksgiving (v. 7d)
And then, finally, a sixth feature of the Christian walk. It is grounded in a gracious reception, conditioned by a Gospel proportion, founded on an objective union; it grows by progressive transformation, it holds fast to the old paths, and, number six: it abounds in humble thanksgiving. Those last three words of verse 7: “overflowing with gratitude.”
Each of the three previous participles that describe the Christian walk are all in the passive voice: “having been rooted,” “now being built up,” “being established.” They’re all actions that are done to us, by the grace of God working mightily among us, as a gift. This final participle, “overflowing with gratitude,” is the only one in the active voice. Which teaches us what? God gives us grace, and we give Him thanks. As much as the entrance into the Christian life was all of grace, so the whole of the Christian life continued is a gift of God’s sovereign grace. And that ought to humble us. And as He “works in us both to will and to work for His good pleasure,” Philippians 2:13, so then let us, Hebrews 13:15, “let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.”
Whatever progress we have made in the Christian life, we owe it all to His grace. All of it is a gift of God. The whole of the Christian life is, John 1:16, grace upon grace. And therefore, the whole of the Christian life is thanking God for the indescribable gift of Christ, and for all the fullness of blessing that we lay hold of in Him. Let’s give Him thanks now.