“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
Our anatomy discussions have been focusing on discernment, not just good v. evil but spiritual “things” exposed in our temporal and corporeal experience. In Adam, we are spiritually dead and totally bonded to time and space references. This all changes when we are born again. Our essence becomes eternal and we are faced with dilemmas of blending spiritual realities into corporeal experience.
Our spiritual “things”, however, turn into genuine, quality realities as we move from drinking milk and begin digesting spiritual meat. The “things” in our life turn out to be elements of deep relationships and the “things” become tools in growing out of circumstances into grace by faith.
Paul tells us in Romans 5 that since we have been justified by faith we not only have peace with God but we also have access by faith into grace in which we now stand. It is this moving into our grace relationship by faith that changes circumstances into opportunities for moving from milk to maturity. The important “things” in our natural life, our temporal and corporeal life, becomes a smaller part of a much bigger reality challenging our comfort zones.
Leaving the natural “things” which became our habit is sometimes not what we want to hear so … we don’t hear it. We like the “things” we have, so our spiritual transmutation becomes masked in a “milk” approach to grace. We choose not to eat meat because the cost is too high. “We are not quite ready,” we tell ourselves, but the reality is “we would rather do it our way.” This is one of those issues we keep just below our level of consciousness because we don’t want to deal with it.
We take with us our natural mindset into a spiritual culture rules we learn in corporeal life. We skillfully use these rules unaware they lead us away from faith. They don’t apply! Rules that worked in the “seen” world are very superficial in the “unseen” world. When we use corporeal rules for spiritual solutions we create moral principles that become barriers to “walking in Him”.
Paul provides a skeleton of our spiritual anatomy in the Colossians passage quoted above. As you received Jesus the Lord, walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith. Walk in Him in the same way you received Him? How do you do that? What part did “things” play in coming to Christ? Probably none! Get rooted, get built up and established in the faith!
When Paul says established in the faith, he does not mean learning a set of rituals or life rules to follow. That is not how we “received Him”! The key is walking in the grace He provides because we are IN HIM. Walking with anybody is about a relationship. How do we grow a relationship “in him”? By becoming rooted and grounded in Him so that we become established in this practice of being rooted and grounded. It is a process that actually becomes a passion after we open the door and continue walking in it.
The distinction Paul is making between being rooted and grounded is on the one side organic and structural on the other. In other words by being rooted we are talking about life giving organic nutrients that benefit our personal health and sustain a good spiritual life. Our spiritual health is dependent upon being grafted into the John 15 vine so that the root of God nurtures us to produce His own fruit. This is “life in His name”, John 20:31b, everything from God. This element of grace is God powerfully working in our soul through our spirit/Spirit.
Structural things, on the other hand, deal with form and shape our life because of external choices. These are outcomes brought about through our reason and calculations. Structure is seen in human design like character, education and behavioral choices. It is like building a tall structure. The deeper we put the foundation the higher our building can be safely built.
Our spiritual anatomy includes both of these categories in spiritual life. We have to be rooted and grounded because we are both spiritual and human. Paul is constantly addressing both of these constituents in his letters to the churches.
The living sacrifice passage of Romans 12:1-2 deals with choices we make. They are structural things we control in our own heart and mind. We will come back to this in a minute. A reminder here, “Knowledge trumps feelings.”
In Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, Eph. 1:17-23, we see both of these constituents, but they are dominated by the organic character of being “rooted.”
“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.”
This passage is loaded with clues about saints who have potential for more a spiritual reality in earthly experience. Paul is praying they experience a fuller experience of God’s “immeasurable” riches of grace in Christ Jesus while still living a corporeal experience, Eph. 2:7.
Here are specific spiritual things Paul is earmarking in these verses:
- A spirit of wisdom in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
- A spirit of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
- The eyes of our heart enlightened to know our hope.
- The riches of his glorious inheritance in us.
- The immeasurable greatness of His power toward us.
- An awareness of the power used to raise Jesus from the dead.
- An awareness of the power exalting Jesus Christ into heavenly places at the right hand of God.
Exploring each of these points would be delightful, but way beyond our scope here. Review these seven points and notice the power to execute on each point is dependent upon the continuing work of God’s power in our soul so that wisdom and knowledge of a divine person becomes known to our human, corporeal soul. This is clearly an organic work of God’s own Holy Spirit working within us.
We do not control the power creating these revelations and wisdom within our temporal, corporeal self. Notice in Paul’s list, above, there is an orderly giving of these spiritual things. They are sequential in their effects in our lives. We first need to have the spirit of wisdom in the knowledge of Christ before we can discern the knowledge of His person through revelation. It is this knowledge and revelation that prepares our heart to be enlightened concerning our hope in Him. When we realize the reality of our hope, we begin to understand the immeasurable greatness of His power working within us and so it goes down the complete list.
So how do we get to the place where we can push down the first domino? How do we create the condition for this organic work of God to become active in our spiritual-corporeal experience?
For this we need to go back to the structural part we referenced in Romans 12:1-2. For God to continue growing us in His grace, post new birth, He requires our 100% participation. If we don’t comply with His requests, we continue to drink milk. If we continue not to respond to His grace in our life, He waits for us to catch up corporeally. A little circumstantial discipline may be coming our way as He provides more spiritual grace. If we still continue not to respond with our natural self, we begin to harden our “heart”-soul against what God is doing. We may end up professional milk drinkers, which may lead to that sin which is unto physical death, 1 John 5:16.
I hope this sufficiently makes the case for the organic “rooting” critically needed to grow into maturity from being milk drinkers. But, in order to get this organic process in motion, we need to turn to the human side of “walking in Him” by way of being built up, or as Paul says in Ephesians 3:17 “grounded.”
Man is viewed with a tripartite nature consisting of spirit, soul and body, 1Thess. 5:23, Hebrews 4:12. When sin entered the equation through the first Adam, man’s spirit became dead before God. Man’s fellowship connection was terminated and man became spiritually dead. People become solely dependent upon soul and body to survive without a fellowship connection with God.
The soul of man became egocentric and had to rely upon reason and feelings for decision-making. It is the soul, or the mind, of man that became the decision maker for man’s “world view” and his daily body behavior.
When a person is “born again” this all changes because man becomes alive spiritually. Man’s spirit is created new and joined to the Spirit of God. This is the believer’s essence or nature in Christ. This new life source provides new dynamics in the life of a 2 Corinthians 5:17 believer. The believer is now connected to God by provisions of Jesus. Man becomes justified, redeemed, regenerated and reconciled to God through the work of Jesus. This all happens as a result of faith on the part of man in response to God’s working of grace toward man.
God’s grace into a person’s spiritual new birth is itself a miracle. Our question becomes how do we, as ordinary people, keep ourselves continuously in the flow of God’s grace into our soul and body after being born again? How do we move from milk to maturity?
Psalm 119:11 says, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” Anything that is not of faith is sin, Romans 14:23. In these two verses we can unlock the mystery of moving from milk to maturity. Faith is moving our soul toward God in the expectation He is good and will do what He has promised.
“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
A reasonable strategy is to saturate our soul with God’s word in the expectation this will lead us into a “spirit of wisdom” and “knowledge of Jesus Christ.” In this way we are giving our mind and heart food from God’s own word to permeate our temporal-corporeal soul into a spiritual structure receptive to God’s organic work and growth.
Jesus used the parable of the seeds in the field from Matthew 13. Read the first 23 verses, which deal in large measure with what we are discussing. The seed in this parable is the word of God. These are the seeds of God’s word, which if I plant in my heart will keep me from sinning (Ps. 119:11). God’s word planted in my heart and mind becomes exposed to the organic rooting of God’s Holy Spirit. This combination of grounding and rooting prepares a spiritual structure in my body allowing the glory of the Lord to be shown. This is how the life of Christ is manifested in our mortal flesh, 2 Corinthians 4:11.
Grounding ourselves in the word will not build the spiritual structure we need unless we also permit the word to be rooted by the Holy Spirit of God. The word is an organic sword when it is spiritually alive, Heb. 4:12.
Each of us is part of Jesus’ holy organic body, His dwelling place. It is our job to manage the structure he has put in our hands so that He is glorified in us. We are in Him and He is in us. The work He began in us He will complete, but how and when it gets done can be up to us.
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”