Growing IN Christ

We have looked at what we are instructed to do regarding sharing Christ, now we look at growing in Christ.  

We are to help one another grow in Christ.  All too often we celebrate when someone professes their faith in Christ, but also all to often we just stop there.  “You have made your choice?  Oh GOODY!  Keep going and growing, see ya later.”  This is the same as telling your preschool aged child “you’re ready to go to school?  Oh GOODY!  Well go get an education, see ya later.”  

The point is that it is up to those with greater knowledge and wisdom to share with those with less knowledge and wisdom.  We have an equally important responsibility to help those new in faith to become students of that faith and to become more vital, more mature, and more capable in that faith.  Most of us are spending some amount of time on growing in our own faith, he also have the privilege of helping others grow in their faith.

We look at Colossians 1:9-14,21-29.  Colossians focuses on who Christ is and what He has done. Paul urged the Colossian believers to remain true to Christ. He taught about how the popular teachers of the day were incorrect in their ideas about the role of Christ, and sought to correct those errors.

Let’s look at Paul’s teachings about growing in Christ.

Colossians 1:9-14

9 For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, 10 so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. 14 In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Paul constantly prayed for fellow believers.  

When he received news about the Colossians’ growing faith he said that:

1. He prayed for them.
2. He asked that they learn more about God, wisdom and spiritual understanding.
3. He directed them to pursue a lifestyle, a life path, that was worthy of representing God and which produced good and beneficial results in life on God’s behalf.
4. He asked that they be fortified with all of God’s “light might” so that they could endure and be patient in their pursuit of God.
5. He directed them to joyfully give thanks to God, the father, who enabled them to share in the inheritance in the light.
6. He taught them that we have been transferred out of the darkness of having “no light” in our lives to the realm of the Christ who has paid the value of God’s forgiveness of Sins on our behalf.

Praying for other Christians is one way we can help one another grow in godly character and fruitfulness. More than just adding names to a list, this prayer must be a heartfelt entreaty of God for what is "right" for the person, for God and for our own growth.  More than just “praying for others” Paul indicated that we need to be filled with the knowledge of what God wants, God’s wisdom and spiritual understanding.  It is God’s Holy Spirit that does this filling.  God reveals His will to His children. This knowledge grows out of an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ and results in right living also called righteousness. 

The terms wisdom and spiritual understanding are synonyms referring to what God gives to believers. It involves the ability to both think and act in a godly, spiritual way. This comes from prayer and understanding the truths of God’s Word.  The believer’s part is to put himself in the position to receive what God gives. 

The word walk usually describes a person’s path, or way, in life.  It is the way one "writes" for the world what one believes. It describes how the believer should live in obedience to God. The Greek word for worthy points to the appropriate way believers are to live, and the ways of God are the standard for evaluating the believer’s behavior. What does God find pleasing? Those are the actions that fully conforms to God’s will.

The passage tells us what this entails:  bearing fruit.   The New Testament often speaks of bearing fruit as characterizing the believer’s lifestyle.  A fruit is a seed-associated fleshy structure (or produce) of plants that typically are sweet (or sour) and edible in the raw state, such as apples, bananas, grapes, lemons, oranges, and strawberries. We are to produce the fruit that produces the seeds that teach and spread the Gospel message. We bear these seeds through our Good works which refers to those actions which flow out of one’s salvation through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. 

 

This growth is called sanctification (becoming holy; growing to spiritual maturity) and results from such actions as prayer, Bible study, and living out one’s faith guided by the indwelling Holy Spirit.  Through understanding God’s Word, God’s will, and living out a Godly life, the believer grows more and more in his knowledge of God and how to apply that knowledge/understanding in his life. To be strengthened is to be enabled. Christ’s resurrection demonstrated this power and might.  Power means force in the sense of miraculous power. The word all means complete or unlimited, and describes God’s power that believers have access to through the indwelling Holy Spirit. The word glorious further describes God’s power, and might describes the ability to have dominion, sovereignty. This is the source of the believer’s power—God. 

Paul’s favorite designation for Christians, saints, are the holy ones set apart for God in Christ.  The believer’s inheritance is the result of his or her salvation. This inheritance refers to all the blessings the believer receives through Christ, both in this life and in the life to come. Because this inheritance comes from and is the result of the actions of God, believers will receive it. 

Light refers to God’s kingdom either on earth or in heaven or both.Paul says that we are rescued, delivered from an opposing force, a domain of darkness. This refers to Satan’s sphere of influence, the world system that stands FOR the glorification of humanity, or self, in opposition to God, and specifically the hearts of those who don’t pursue God. Darkness also symbolizes unbelief and the absence of God.  Specifically the absence of light.

To transfer means to move from one place to another. In this context, Paul referred to believers being moved at the moment of conversion from Satan’s “domain of darkness” to God’s “kingdom of light,” the realm over which God exercises authority. God reigns in heaven and on earth in the hearts of believers. Jesus (“the Son”) inaugurated the coming of the kingdom in His presence and ministry.  Jesus, who accomplished salvation in obedience to the Father’s will, and through His actions demonstrated Himself to be the rightful ruler of the kingdom.

Believers possess salvation because of belief in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Redemption refers to the payment of a price that secures the release of a slave. Prior to salvation all people were slaves to the glorification of something OTHER than God.  This salvation frees or liberates us from guilt (the fact of having committed an offense or crime) or punishment (the infliction or imposition of harmful consequences), in this case from that related to sin. 

Paul further discusses reconciliation.

Colossians 1:21-23

21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions. 22 But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him — 23 if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.

He says that at one time all believers had alienation and hostility with God based on their thoughts and actions. To be alienated is to be estranged from someone. 

Alienation and hostility indicate one who is far away, separated from God in his thinking and in direct opposition to Him in both word and deed.  This is the status of all people before they are reconciled to God. Wrong thinking leads to evil actions. 

When a person puts his faith in Christ, he is reconciled to God. The believer moves from the state of hostility and separation from God to one of peace and fellowship with Him as His adopted children. This change of the individual’s relationship with God is only possible through Christ’s atoning work on the cross. Paul emphasized the importance of Christ’s incarnation in God’s reconciling believers. Christ’s willing sacrifice through the death of his physical body made reconciliation possible. 

To receive God’s reconciliation, the person being presented must meet God’s requirements: to be holy, faultless, and blameless. That is possible only through Christ’s righteousness, not through any individual person’s efforts. God accounts Christ’s perfect righteousness to the account of every believer.  Then they are counted by God as free from sin, set apart with a purpose, pure, innocent, and free from accusation. 

As long as we are stable, immovable, and persistent in the faith of the salvation of Christ we have confidence that physical death brings us into Christ’s presence and that we have an eternal home in heaven.

Colossians 1:24-29

24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and I am completing in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for his body, that is, the church. 25 I have become its servant, according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, 26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. 27 God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.29 I labor for this, striving with his strength that works powerfully in me.

Paul’s response to his suffering beatings, stonings, imprisonments, and other consequences for proclaiming the gospel was to rejoice because he was on the right track.  Jesus “got it right” and he was persecuted and even killed for it.  Our sufferings enable us to identify with Jesus and are but one way that we might know that we are on the right track.  

Paul’s experience with Jesus on the Damascus roadless him to understand that his mission was to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles–the peoples other than the Jewish nation–of God’s love for all the world. God commissioned Paul specifically to be an apostle to the Gentiles to make the mystery–something formerly hidden and now revealed–known.  That is that not only the Jews were God’s children, but the Gentiles as well.  What a novel idea, God created humanity.  Like a spoiled teenager humanity decided to “go it alone” and God provided a way for the spoiled teenager to return home…not just Jewish teenagers, but NON-JEWISH teenagers as well.  It would have been difficult for the Jews to accept that “other humans” would also be considered “God’s Children.”  It would have been difficult for the Gentiles to accept that as children of their gods, they would actually be adopted children of another God.  Where there are difficult concepts there is resistance and resistance leads to irritation, inflammation and pain.  Where there is pain you can expect opposition.

This was a mystery that began to be revealed with Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, but continued in Paul’s mission to preach to the Gentiles. The union of the believer and Christ, beginning with the conversion aspect of salvation and growing to spiritual maturity, describes the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence, giving God’s unlimited spiritual power to all believers. This hope is the confident assurance each believer has of God’s life-long presence in the present, as well as future glorification, an eternal home in heaven.

Paul warned of God’s discernment of the holiness or unholiness of unbelievers (no one is as good as God) and promoted teaching the gospel of salvation and Christ’s commands to everyone they encountered.  He used the ability to use spiritual knowledge in practical ways to grow Jews AND non-Jews towards full spiritual maturity in Christlikeness.  Paul said that he worked to the point of exhaustion for this striking a balance between his own efforts and recognizing God’s internal efforts in the individuals with whom he was dealing.  

We have to expend effort in growing in Christ, both for ourselves and on behalf of others as well.