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Scripture Reading: Col. 2:7a, Col. 2:19; 3:10-11; 1 Cor. 3:6, 9; 6:17; Eph. 2:21; 4:13b, Eph. 2:15-16
Many readers of the New Testament consider Colossians a book of doctrine. However, Colossians is also a book of experience. The extensive, all-inclusive Christ revealed in this book is subjective to us, for He dwells in us as our hope of glory (1:27), and He is our life (3:4). Nothing can be more subjective to us than our own life. In fact, our life is us. To say that Christ is our life means that Christ becomes us. How could Christ be our life without actually becoming us? It would be impossible.
Some Christian teachers oppose the revelation we have seen concerning the subjective experience of Christ. According to them, we deify ourselves, we make ourselves God. They claim that we teach that the self becomes the same as God and that this is self-deification. Although we definitely do not teach that we become God Himself or that we shall ever be worshipped as deity, it is nonetheless true that Christ dwells in us and that He is our life. He becomes us in our experience. As Paul says, “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). We have pointed out that Christ cannot be our life without becoming us. Life is our very being. Hence, for Christ to be our life means that He becomes our being. For Christ to become our being is for Christ to become us.
To us, Christ is both objective and subjective. We know Christ both according to doctrine and according to experience. On the one hand, our Christ is on the throne in the heavens. On the other hand, He is in our spirit. We worship the enthroned Christ in the heavens, but we experience, enjoy, and partake of the indwelling Christ in our spirit. We are one with Him in a very subjective way. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:17, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” Christ is subjective to us to such a degree that He and we, we and He, have become one spirit. To be one spirit with the Lord is greater than to have gifts and miracles. Now that we have become one spirit with the Lord, in our daily life we need to experience being one spirit with Him.
Some years ago I stayed with some saints who talked a lot about Colossians 1:27. Although they could speak of the indwelling Christ as the hope of glory, they had very little experience of Christ. To them, the indwelling Christ was merely a doctrine, not a reality. In their practical daily living, they were ethical and religious, but they did not live Christ. Even their love was a natural, ethical love, not the expression of Christ lived out from within them. In these believers you could see religion and ethics, but you could not see much of Christ. This is true of many Christians today. They know Christ in doctrine, but they have very little genuine experience of Him. However, when Paul wrote the book of Colossians, he wrote both according to doctrine and according to experience.
In 2:7 Paul speaks of having been rooted and being built up in Christ. Both being rooted and being built up are subjective and experiential. We need a clear understanding of what it is to be rooted in Christ and to be built up in Him. We should neither take 2:7 for granted, nor avoid it because we find it difficult to understand. Instead, we should dwell on this verse, pray-reading it and studying it until we receive light.
Having been rooted in Christ and being built up in Christ are both related to walking in Christ (2:6). If we would walk in Christ, we must meet two conditions: we must be rooted in Him, and we must be in the process of being built up in Him. On the one hand, we have already been rooted in Christ; on the other hand, we are being built up in Him. When these conditions are met, we shall be able to walk in Christ. In experience we all need to know what it means to be rooted in Christ and to be built up in Him.
In order to be rooted in Christ, we must first be planted into Him. In a number of places, the Bible speaks of planting. In the song of Moses we read these words: “Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in” (Exo. 15:17). Psalm 92:13 says, ”Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God.” In Jeremiah 2:21 the Lord says of His people, “Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed,” and in 32:41, “I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul.” In Matthew 15:13 the Lord Jesus said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up.” According to John 15, the Lord Jesus regarded Himself as a vine and the Father as the husbandman, the One who planted the vine and cares for it. In 1 Corinthians 3:9 Paul says that we, the believers, are God’s farm (Gk.). He also declares, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6, Gk.). Now in Colossians 2:7 we see that we have been rooted into Christ. Christ is the land, the soil, and God has planted us into Him.
According to the Scriptures, Christ is the unique tree into which we have been grafted and also the land, the soil, into which we have been planted. We have been both grafted into Christ and planted into Him. Hence, the good land with the soil is equal to the tree. This is another indication that Christ is everything to us. Since Christ is both the tree and the good land, we can say that we have been grafted into Christ and also that we have been planted into Him. According to John 15, God the Father is the Planter, the Husbandman, whose Son, Christ, is the universal vine. This Christ is also the good land with the soil. We have been grafted into Christ as the vine and planted into Him as the soil. Colossians 2:11 speaks of circumcision, a type of cutting. This is related to being grafted into Christ. As we have pointed out, 2:7 speaks of having been rooted in Christ. This is related to being planted into Him. In this message our concern is not with the aspect of grafting, but with the aspect of planting.
As those who have been planted into Christ, we have been rooted in Him. Just as the tiny root hairs absorb the riches from the soil, so we absorb the rich nourishment of Christ. We are trees, and Christ is the soil into which we have been planted and in which we are rooted. Now we are absorbing His riches into us, and we grow by the nourishment we receive from these riches.
In 1 Corinthians 3:6 Paul says that he planted, Apollos watered, and God gave the growth. This indicates that the believers are plants and that Christ is the soil. Now we need to ask in what part of our being this planting has taken place. Certainly it is neither in the mind nor in the physical body. Rather, it is in our spirit. The experience of being planted into Christ and rooted in Him takes place in our spirit. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” When a plant is rooted in the soil, it becomes one with the soil. First the plant gets into the soil; then the nourishment in the soil comes into the plant. In this way, the plant and the soil become one in life. The nourishing element in the soil corresponds to the life in the plant, and something within the plant corresponds to the element in the soil. We may say that there is a fellowship between the plant and the soil. In this fellowship those factors in the plant and in the soil which correspond to each other become one in life. Thus, the plant and the soil become one unit in life.
In our spirit we have the experience of being planted into Christ, for here we are joined to Him and become one spirit with Him. The Lord, who is the soil in which we are rooted, is the Spirit. If He were not the Spirit, there would be no way for us to be planted into Him. Praise Him that He is the Spirit and that we have been created with a spirit! If we had only a body and a soul but had no spirit, it would not be possible for us to be planted into the Lord as the life-giving Spirit. However, because the Lord is the Spirit and because we have a spirit, there is a correspondence between us and Him. When we were regenerated, Christ as the life-giving Spirit became one with our spirit. As John 3:6 clearly indicates, regeneration takes place in the spirit. When we were regenerated, we were rooted in Christ as the soil. This is the reason Paul uses the perfect tense in 2:7. We were planted and rooted in Christ when we were regenerated in spirit.
According to 2:6 and 7, we must be rooted in Christ before we can walk in Him. In order to walk in Christ, we must absorb the rich nourishment from the Spirit who dwells in our spirit. However, if we remain in the soul — in our mind, emotion, or will — we shall not receive nourishment or supply. We need to turn to the spirit, to the very place where we have been regenerated and planted into the divine Spirit.
The transaction that took place between the divine Spirit and our spirit at the time of regeneration remains forever. We may say that our spirit has married the divine Spirit and thus the two spirits have entered into an eternal union. With this marriage there can be no separation, no divorce. Although the natural mind may not like this marriage, our spirit appreciates it. Whenever we face difficulties in our daily living, we should not remain in the natural mind, but turn to the spirit. However, we often prefer to remain in the mind, emotion, or will. If we stay in the soul instead of turning to the spirit, we shall not be able to walk in Christ. To walk in Him we must be rooted in Him in a practical way in our experience. Only when we remain in the spirit are we actually rooted in Christ and thus able to walk in Him. We have been planted into Christ. But when we turn to our spirit, we have the experience of being rooted in Him. Having been rooted in Christ, we are able to walk in Him. In this way we experience Christ as the good land with the rich soil that affords us the nourishing life element. The more we are rooted into this soil, the more we absorb the nourishment of Christ into our being. This is not the objective Christ in doctrine; it is the subjective Christ in our experience.
As a result of being rooted in Christ and absorbing His riches into us, we grow in Him, just as trees grow by absorbing nourishment from the soil. In order for a tree to grow, it must receive some substantial nourishment. The nourishment in the soil becomes the substance by which a tree grows.
Not many of today’s Christians realize what genuine growth is. True growth is not the result of acquiring more doctrinal knowledge. It is the result of turning to the spirit, remaining in the spirit, and absorbing the nourishing element of Christ. Only by assimilating this element can we grow spiritually. The more this rich element is added into our being, the more we grow.
Colossians 2:19 says that by holding the Head the Body “grows with the growth of God.” To grow with the growth of God is to grow by having God Himself added into us. This takes place only when we are rooted in Christ as the soil. God Himself with His element and substance is the rich nourishment in Christ. If we remain rooted in our spirit, we absorb this element, and this causes us to grow with the growth of God. We grow with the addition, the increase, of God into us. This is altogether a matter of the genuine experience of Christ in our daily life.
We have seen that if we would walk in Christ, we must be planted and rooted in Christ, the divine Spirit in our spirit, and remain in Him. Whenever we find ourselves out of the spirit, we need to turn back to the spirit and stay there. By remaining in the spirit, we are rooted in Christ in a practical way and thereby absorb the rich nourishment into our spirit. As this nourishment flows into our inner being, it causes us to grow with the growth of God. Growth takes place as God is added into us, for the rich nourishment in Christ is actually God Himself. From our experience we know that as we are rooted in Christ, we grow and, spontaneously, we then walk in Him.
Colossians 2:7 also speaks of being built up in Christ. As we grow in Christ, we are being built up in Him. Years ago, I considered the building up in 2:7 to mean the building up with the saints. But this is not the meaning here. Rather, the meaning is that we ourselves need to become built up. For example, as a tree grows, it builds itself up. The same is true of children. They become built up by growing. The building up of the Body depends upon the individual and personal building up of all the members. If a particular member has not been built up, it will not be possible for him to be built up in the Body. To be built up in the Body we first must be built up in ourselves. When we have become built-up members, we shall then be able to be built up with others in the Body. Therefore, the building up in 2:7 is not that of the Body corporately, but the building up of the members individually. In Ephesians 4:16, on the contrary, we have the building up of the Body in a corporate way.
It is important to see that if we have not been built up individually, we shall not be able to be built up with others corporately. The building of the meeting hall in Anaheim illustrates this. The material used in the construction of the hall was first built up in itself; then it was used with other pieces of material to form the meeting hall. Redwood, for example, was used in the exterior. But a tender sprout of a redwood tree could not be used for this, could it? The redwood trees first had to grow and be built up in themselves by absorbing the riches from the soil. Only then could they become the proper building material. The same is true of us. We need to remain in our spirit absorbing the rich nourishment of Christ. As we absorb this element, we shall grow, and by this growth we shall then be built up. Then it will be possible for us to be built up with others in the Body.
If we would walk in Christ, we need to absorb His riches by being rooted in Him and to be built up as individual members of the Body. We need to sink our roots into Christ deeper and deeper so that we may absorb more of His riches. Then we shall grow and be built up in Him. Having fulfilled these two conditions, we shall then be able to walk in Christ.
