Scripture Reading: Col. 2:2, 7, 19; 4:2; Eph. 4:13
We have pointed out that the book of Colossians first gives us an objective revelation of the extensive and all-inclusive Christ. Then it presents the subjective ministry, the stewardship, by which the all-inclusive Christ is dispensed into us. Finally, it tells us of the practical experience of the Christ who has been ministered into us. Therefore, in Colossians we have the objective revelation, the subjective ministry, and the practical experience.
We who experience Christ have a close, deep, intimate, and subjective relationship with Him. But we need to ask three questions: Who is Christ? What is Christ? Where is Christ? Because Christ is so much, it is difficult to say adequately who He is and what He is. To begin with, Christ is the very God. According to Colossians, He is the Firstborn of all creation. The Bible indicates that Christ is the reality of many different kinds of trees: the fig tree, the olive tree, the vine tree, and the cedar tree. Christ is also the real ox, lamb, lion, eagle, and dove. Furthermore, Christ is our real food, water, milk, honey, air, sunshine, rain, dew, and snow. Eventually, Christ becomes our all-inclusive land, a land in which we have mountains, hills, valleys, fountains, brooks, streams, stones, iron, and brass. Because Christ is such an all-inclusive One, when He was on earth He could use various objects in nature as illustrations of Himself.
Concerning where Christ is, we need to realize that, although He is omnipresent and, in particular, is at the right hand of God in the third heaven, He dwells in us (1:27). However, it is not easy to realize that Christ is actually in us. We are complicated people, with many chambers, many inward parts. Proverbs 20:27 speaks of man’s inward parts, his inner chambers. These chambers include the mind, emotion, will, heart, soul, inner man, and hidden man. First Peter 3:4 speaks of the hidden man, and Ephesians 3:16, of the inner man. We may believe that Christ is in us, but in what chamber of our being is He to be found? Second Timothy 4:22 indicates that the Lord is in our spirit.
Now we must go on to ask what the spirit is and how it differs from the heart and the soul. The Chinese version uses the strange term “heart-spirit.” However, there is no such thing within us as the “heart-spirit.” How regrettable that the translators of the Chinese version used such a term in speaking of the human spirit! Although the translators were scholars, they were mistaken in this point. Others claim that the spirit and the soul are the same. On the one hand, the human spirit is not the heart; on the other hand, it is not the soul. The mind, emotion, will, soul, and heart are included among man’s inward parts, but not one of them is the spirit. The human spirit is in the center of man’s inward parts. For Christ to be in our spirit means that He is in the center of our being, in its very depths.
The spirit, where Christ dwells in the believer, is different from the body and from the soul. The Bible reveals that man is tripartite, composed of spirit, soul, and body. Since the spirit is different from the soul, we must be very definite in speaking of where Christ is within us. We need to say, according to the Bible, that Christ is in our spirit. In the words of 1 Corinthians 6:17, we are one spirit with the Lord. The Lord is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), who is one with our spirit. Therefore, these two spirits are one. The Lord not only indwells our spirit, but He has even made Himself one with our spirit. In this way, the two spirits — the life-giving Spirit and our spirit — become one spirit. How close and intimate is our relationship with the Lord! He and we, we and He, are one spirit. What relationship could be closer and more intimate than this? Surely such a relationship is the ultimate in closeness and intimacy. If we would experience Christ adequately, we need to realize that we have such an intimate relationship with Him.
However, to realize this is one thing, and to practice it is another thing. We may know that we are one spirit with the Lord, but in our daily living we may not practice living in one spirit with Him. Instead, we may confine the Lord to our spirit and live according to our thought, feeling, and choice. We may insist on the freedom to choose whatever we like, to think our own thoughts, and to allow our affection to run its own course. We may not want to be bothered by the Lord in our spirit. For this reason, in our actual daily living, we may limit Him to our spirit. We may even go so far as to deny our spirit, living as if we had no spirit, but had only a body and a soul. For example, if we want to be angry or talkative, we may do so according to our preference. We simply do not practice living in one spirit with the Lord. When we pray-read, we may praise the Lord that we are one spirit with Him. But in so many practical matters we may utterly neglect the Lord in our spirit.
The first part of 2:7 says, “Having been rooted and being built up in Him.” The antecedent of the pronoun Him is Christ in the preceding verse. According to 2:2, this Christ is the mystery of God. This brings us to another question: what is the mystery of God? Since Christ is the mystery of God, to be rooted in Christ is to be rooted in the mystery of God. All Christians are familiar with the name Christ, but not many understand the term the mystery of God. God is a mystery. Furthermore, God has a history, a story. What is the history of God, the story of God? God is infinite and eternal, without beginning or ending. According to His good pleasure, He created the heavens and the earth and all the billions of items in the universe. Therefore, God accomplished the work of creation. Christ is the story of God, the history of God. This means that Christ is not only God Himself, but is also God’s history. God’s history refers to the process through which He has passed so that He may come into man and that man may be brought into Him.
Genesis 1:1 tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But Matthew 28:19 speaks of baptizing believers into the name of the Father, the Son, and Spirit. We know that the Father, Son, and Spirit are the God spoken of in Genesis 1:1. However, the difference is that at the time of Genesis 1:1, God had not yet been processed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. The word in Matthew 28:19 was spoken by the Lord after He had entered into resurrection, having passed through incarnation, human living, and crucifixion. After His resurrection, He charged His disciples to disciple the nations and to baptize them not into the name of the Creator, whom we may call the unprocessed God, but to baptize them into the name of the Father, the Son, and Spirit. This is to baptize the believers into the processed God. The processed God is God available to His chosen people, and His people can be baptized into Him. Although it is not possible to baptize believers into God as He is revealed in Genesis 1:1, we can baptize them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; that is, we can baptize them into the processed Triune God.
Today the processed Triune God is the Spirit. At the time of John 7:39, the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. He had not yet passed through death and entered into resurrection. Now that Christ has passed through death and has entered into resurrection, the Spirit is here. This Spirit is Christ, and Christ is the story of God, the mystery of God. As the story of God, Christ is the processed God, God processed to become the all-inclusive Spirit, who now dwells in our spirit and is one with our spirit.
The Christ in whom we have been rooted is this all-inclusive Spirit. This means that in our spirit we have the processed Triune God as our source. This source is a fountain springing up within us. The all-inclusive Spirit who indwells us contains the elements of divinity, humanity, incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. We have been rooted in Him, in this marvelous source, who is the processed Triune God as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit.
A tree rooted in the soil absorbs into itself all the rich elements from the soil. As these elements are absorbed into the tree, they become nourishment to the tree. The tree then increases, grows, with these elements. Apart from absorbing the riches from the soil, it would not be possible for the tree to grow. The more deeply a tree is rooted into the earth, the more it absorbs the rich nourishment from the soil. The principle is the same with our growth in Christ. We have been deeply rooted into Christ as the soil, the all-inclusive, life-giving, processed Triune God who dwells in our spirit. Now we are absorbing the riches from Christ as the soil into our being. As a result, we are being built up with what we have absorbed of the riches of Christ. What we absorb into us becomes the material with which we are built up.
Paul’s use of the words “being built up” in 2:7 do not refer in a direct way to the building up of the Body of Christ. Rather, this expression denotes an increase in our spiritual stature, which can be compared to a person’s increase in stature as he grows physically. The only way a child can grow physically is by assimilating nourishing food. In the same way, we grow spiritually by assimilating the rich nourishment of Christ. This is what it means to be built up in Christ, as mentioned in 2:7. First Paul tells us that we have been rooted in Christ. Then he goes on to say that we are being built up in Christ. No tree can grow up without first being rooted. The growing up of the tree is also the building up of the tree.
If we are lacking in spiritual stature, it is of no avail to speak of the building up of the Body. In Ephesians 4:13 Paul says, “Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The Body of Christ has a stature, and this stature has a full measure. We all need to grow until we arrive at the full measure of the stature of the Body of Christ. For us to be built up does not first mean that we are built up as the church, the Body. It means that we are built up in the Lord and experience an increase of stature. Hence, in Colossians 2:7 to be built up actually means to grow up. First we are rooted into Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit, and then we grow up in Him. We build ourselves up by growing up. Our being built up depends on our assimilating into our being the riches of Christ as the soil. Having assimilated these riches into us, we shall grow and be built up. When we are fully grown, we shall be built up. Therefore, to be built up simply means to grow up. In order to grow, we need nourishment. Our growth depends on how much nourishment we assimilate into us by being rooted in Christ. Because we are rooted in Him, we absorb into us the riches of the all-inclusive Spirit. Then we grow with the nourishment we derive from these riches.
According to 2:19, by holding the Head we grow with the growth of God. Out from the Head, the Body grows with the growth of God. God here is the processed Triune God, as in Matthew 28:19. Out from the processed Triune God as our source, the Body grows by absorbing the riches from the Head. The Body does not grow with biblical knowledge, but grows with the growth of God. In Himself, God is infinite, perfect, and complete. Therefore, in Himself God cannot grow. But in us God can grow and He needs to grow. We grow by the growth of God in us. Because we have so little of the Triune God within us, we need the addition of God for our spiritual growth. We grow with what we absorb from the Head.
The vital and crucial point is that we grow by absorbing the riches of Christ. In order to absorb His riches, we must be rooted into Him as the all-inclusive Spirit. Remember that this Spirit dwells in our spirit. The soil is not our mind, emotion, or will; it is the all-inclusive, processed Triune God dwelling in our spirit. The source of the riches we need for our growth is the processed Triune God in our spirit. Just as we go to a faucet to get water, so we must turn to our spirit to get the riches of the Triune God.
In order to become more deeply rooted into the processed Triune God, we need to exercise our spirit, not our mind, emotion, or will. However, our environment does not favor the exercise of the spirit. On the contrary, everything in our environment works to keep us away from the spirit. For example, throughout most of the Lord’s Day, a brother’s wife may be very pleasant to him. But just before the Lord’s table meeting, she may speak an unkind word to him. In his reaction to her unkindness, he is immediately drawn away from the spirit. In the midst of such a situation, the brother needs to exercise his spirit and call on the name of the Lord Jesus. By this exercise of the spirit, he will become more deeply rooted into Christ as the soil and automatically absorb more of the riches of the all-inclusive Spirit. This will produce more growth.
We need to continually exercise our spirit. This is the reason that toward the end of the book of Colossians, Paul charges us to persevere in prayer (4:2). However, if, instead of exercising our spirit, we exercise our mind, emotion, and will, Satan will keep us from enjoying the all-inclusive Spirit in our spirit. Satan, the subtle, evil one, uses the environment to keep us out of the spirit. Thus, we need to exercise our spirit continually by calling on the name of the Lord in order to become more deeply rooted into the all-inclusive Spirit. Then we shall absorb the riches of Christ, grow in Christ, and spontaneously be built up in Christ. As a result, we shall walk in Him. If we understand this, we shall know what it means to walk in Christ by absorbing His riches and by being built up with what we have absorbed. This is the practical experience of Christ we all need.
