For the believer today, one worships and prays and serves in company with a vast array of people. No one worships, prays, or serves alone. Christians are a worldwide community of believers who transcend historical boundaries as the communion of saints. When we sit in a quiet place to pray and reflect upon the Scriptures (Matt 6:6), we do so participating in a wonderful spiritual dialectic: at once alone yet joined to the great throng of the faithful across the world and throughout history.
Filled with Knowledge of God’s Will
Wrong knowledge of God - getting God “wrong,” being hostile in mind (1:21) - leads to broken and misshapen lives. This is a major theme in the letter. So often today an anti-theological bent may be allowed to take over our spirituality. It is enough apparently to feel or experience something that we take to be the presence of God. The author of Colossians is wiser. He understands that theology - knowledge of God - and experience belong together. For without a true knowledge of God our piety will go astray. We will have no basis by which to interpret our piety and our spiritual experience. We will be in danger of being taken captive by plausible arguments (2:4) that will lead us into error. Thus Paul insists that we are to grow in knowledge of God (1:10). In this sense, every Christian is a theologian.
This knowledge, of course, is of a mystery (1:26, 27, and 2:2). It has been hidden throughout the ages but is now revealed. This mystery is also understood to be the life of Christ within the believer. Thus this is not a generalized mystery, or a vague sense of the numinous. It is Christ himself, who is the treasure of wisdom and knowledge. It is a mystery, a truth not reducible to our categories of thought. And even though we see as in a mirror dimly (1 Cor 13:12), nonetheless we do actually see something of the truth, enough for knowing the love and salvation of God.
Living in Christ
Colossians teaches that we must be rooted and grounded in Christ (2:7). Only in that way will we come to the fullness of our relationship with God and service to Him. Colossians 2:6-7 offer a pithy summary of the Christian life.
These verses immediately recall Psalm 1:3, where the exiles in Babylon have placed before them the two ways, scoffing at God or being rooted in the soil of the word of God. Those who chose the latter are like trees blooming in the desert, full of a fruitfulness that does not decline (note Jer 17:8).
Likewise, Christians are to be rooted and built up in the word, who is Christ. “In Christ’ is one of Paul’s favorite designations of being Christian (some form of this is used 164 times in the Pauline and deutero-Pauline epistles), implying an intimate relationship with the Lord. Rooted and grounded in Christ, Christians are a maturing people (1:28) who grow into the fullness of being pleasing to the Lord (1:10). This growth is guided by faithfulness to the teaching of the apostles, which acts like a trellis guiding the growth of a fragile flower. Christians’ growth is protected and nurtured by the apostolic teaching that has been given to them.
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