Last week we considered how Paul could rejoice in suffering, and how we also, because of the riches of the glory of Christ in us, can face our trials with joy. This week we considered how our mutual loving encouragement, a deeper understanding of our Savior, and the actual practice of living out our faith leads to a stronger assurance of salvation. This assurance guards our hearts and minds against the plausible arguments of those who peddle the empty promises of deceptive philosophies as additions or alternatives to true faith in Christ.
Full Assurance of Understanding
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea —Colossians 2:1
Paul writes that in his prayers he is ‘going to the mat,’ as it were, for these precious saints whom he’s never met. Unlike the Galatian church, the Colossians and Laodiceans have not yet followed the false teachers down the rabbit hole of false faith (Gal. 4:9–10; Col. 2:5). But the danger still lurks, and if the believers are deluded by plausible arguments into adding the false teachings to their faith in Christ, their understanding of the truth of God’s revealed mystery in Christ will suffer and they will lose the assurance of their salvation in him. The charlatans are claiming to have a secret, higher knowledge of beliefs and practices which must be added to the simple faith of the gospel. But Paul writes that the Christ he proclaims—the Christ who is the “only hope of glory”—is the Christ in whom are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (1:27, 28, 2:3). The treasures hidden in Christ and revealed to his church are infinitely more true and valuable than anything offered by the heretics who would lead them astray.
And so he prays that “their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ” (2:2). The mutual encouragement of the body of Christ, loving one another and knit together as tenderly and skillfully as a child in its mother’s womb,[1] is a vital means of grace for individual members of the church. Together we grow in knowing God and his magnificent plan of salvation as revealed in the Scriptures, and therefore derive an ever deeper assurance that what he has begun in us he will bring to completion in the day of Christ.[2] In his wisdom, the Lord has given us to one another that we would share our lives and our growing faith, encouraging and strengthening one another as we walk arm-in-arm toward our heavenly home.
Rooted and Built Up
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. —Colossians 2:6–7
Paul rejoices to see the firmness of their faith in Christ (2:5), and so he encourages the Colossian believers to continue living in him in the same way they received him. The way that they received Christ Jesus the Lord was by faith, and this is how they are to walk in him. As Paul writes elsewhere, our faith is a gift—we didn’t do anything to earn it—and in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, and it is by his righteousness—not our own works—that we who believe now live by faith.[3] In contrast to the human traditions by which the heretics live, the believers are to live by faith in Christ, knowing that their salvation is secured by him, and this knowledge results in a heart overflowing with gratitude. Instead of the exhausting hamster wheel of more and more works to maintain one’s salvation, living by faith in Christ provides the rest for one’s soul which has been God’s plan for his children from the beginning.
Thus says the Lord:
“Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls. —Jeremiah 6:16
Paul employs two more metaphors for life in Christ which establishes us in the faith: rooted and built up. To be rooted in Christ brings Psalm 1 to mind, with its picture of the blessed man:
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away. —Psalm 1:1–4
This man is blessed because he lives by faith in God’s Word, delighting in and meditating on it day and night. Therefore he is not deluded by the plausible arguments or deceitful human traditions of the wicked, but is firmly planted in his faith, like a tree that sinks its roots deep into the soil by the flowing waters of a stream. Nourished by the water of God’s Word, he withstands stormy winds while the wicked are blown away, together with their empty deceptions, revealed for the hollow husks that they are by the barest puff of wind.
The metaphor of being built up reminds us of the strength and grandeur of the Temple in Jerusalem, with its stones precisely cut to fit perfectly together.[4] Paul elaborated on this picture when he wrote to the Ephesian church that they were “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”[5] Note again, that it’s God’s Word that accomplishes this growth—the firm foundation of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are what is meant by “the apostles and prophets”— and Christ the cornerstone sets the plumb and square of the entire building as it is built out and up from him alone.
The doctrine and life of the church must align fully with Christ and be established upon God’s Word alone, without the slightest deviation according to the culture or heresies of the day, because “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority” (Col. 2:9–10). Here we find “one of the most explicit biblical affirmations of the deity of Christ” [6] to be found in all of Scripture. Christ is fully God, and that fullness dwells in him “bodily,” referring to “the hypostatic union: Christ is the one person with a fully divine nature as well as a fully human nature. Jesus Christ is God and man, neither nature being diminished by the other. . . [T]hrough the incarnation, God has so fully entered our world that divine blessings need not be sought anywhere other than Christ.”[7] Through union with Christ in faith we possess everything needed for eternal life.”[8] “Whatever menacing or benevolent powers there may be— whether demons or angels— they are all under the control of the sovereign Christ. Possessing him, we possess all.”[9]
Dead, Buried, and Made Alive in Him
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead —Colossians 2:11–12
Paul now calls us to consider the implications of our union with Christ by pointing us to the spiritual realities signified by circumcision and baptism. I’ll be drawing heavily from Richard Phillips’ commentary on this point. In Genesis chapter 17, God established circumcision as the sign of the covenant between him and Abraham. “This action from God symbolized the consecration of males in Abraham’s house from the fleshly sinful nature. From at least the time of Moses it was understood as calling for inward, spiritual consecration.[10] Now, under the New Covenant, Christians “do not need physical circumcision because they have already experienced the spiritual reality to which [it] points.”[11] “Whereas circumcision involved cutting away a piece of flesh, union with Christ effects a cutting away of our fleshly nature and sinful experience.”[12] But what does Paul mean in that we have been “circumcised . . . by the circumcision of Christ? Rather than referring to the physical sign of the covenant, this phrase likely refers instead to his death, and we see this paralleled in Isaiah 53 where the prophet anticipates the cross of the LORD’s Servant.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people? —Isaiah 53:8
“By believing in Christ our Savior, Christians are joined to ‘putting off the body of the flesh’ (Col. 2:1) that was his death on the cross (see Colossians 1:22, where “his body of flesh” is associated with “his death”). The reason why believers have ‘put off the body of the flesh’ through their regeneration is that through faith they have union with Christ in his crucifixion.”[13]
Baptism now replaces circumcision as a sign and seal of God’s covenant, but what Paul mentions next is not baptism as the sacramental sign, but as it refers to the believers’ union with Christ. Again, Richard Phillips is helpful on this point:
“Paul tells us that through faith in Christ our sins are dead and buried so that no condemnation can come to those who are justified through his blood. Christ was buried as proof that he had really died. So also, our union with Christ in his burial proves the death of our sin. John Eadie writes:
‘Burial implies a previous death, and what is death, but the off-casting of ‘the body of the flesh’? The reality of death is evinced by burial, for this body of sin which once lived with us is slain and sepulchered. This point of burial they had reached—when they were baptized—for then they personally professed a faith which implied the death of sin within them.’[14]
Together with the body of Jesus, our sins went into that grave, never again to come to light in the judgment of God. . . If we have trusted in Christ, then he was buried in the tomb on our behalf, together with our sins for which he died.”[15]
As Paul wrote to the Galatians:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. —Galatians 2:20
The Triumph of the Cross
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. — Colossians 2:13–15
Having been dead and buried with Christ, we are also made alive with him in his resurrection. We who were once dead in sin have, through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ been made alive because of our union with him. The record of debt that we could never hope to pay has been Paid In Full by the Lord Jesus Christ. And if the finality of that hasn’t yet sunk in, it has been nailed to the cross, which means that our sins have been added to the criminal charges against Jesus’ account. By his death he paid for them and by his resurrection the Father declared the payment to be entirely sufficient.
In the wisdom of God, what first appeared to be the defeat of Jesus and victory for Satan was flipped in the greatest upset in all of history. The triumph of the cross turned the evil plans of Satan on their head and displayed his shameful defeat to the entire watching universe. There will be no rematch.
Therefore, dear fellow believer, there need be nothing added to this great salvation we share in Christ. And so, as you received him by faith, walk in him by faith, rooted and built up in him, and abound in thanksgiving for his glorious and gracious gift.
[1] Ps. 139:13
[2] Eph. 4: 11–15; Phil 1:6
[3] Eph. 2:8; Rom. 1:16–17
[4] 1 Chron. 22:2; 1 Kings 6:7,
[5] Eph. 2:20–21
[6] Richard Phillips, Colossians & Philemon, Reformed Expository Commentary (P&R: Phillipsburg, NJ, 2024), 160
[7] Phillips, 160
[8] Phillips, 161
[9] Phillips, 162
[10] Deut. 10:16; 30:6
[11] Phillips, 166
[12] Phillips, 167
[13] Phillips 167
[14] John Eadie, cited in Phillips, 170
[15] Phillips,170
*Photo by Marlys Stahl
Grateful 