GOD’S WORD FOR APRIL 21~ ~ Colossians 2:6-7 ~ ~ “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him: rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding with thanksgiving.”
We’re beginning chapter 5, entitled, “As You Came to Him by Faith” in Andrew Murray’s classic book, “Abide in Christ.”
In these words, the apostle taught us the weighty lesson that it is not only by faith that we first come to Christ and are united to Him, but that it is by faith that we are to be rooted and established in our union with Christ. Faith is as essential for the progress of the spiritual life as it was for the commencement. Abiding in Jesus can only be by faith.
There are earnest Christians who do not understand this, or, if they admit it in theory, they fail to realize its application in practice. They are very zealous for a free Gospel, with our first acceptance of Christ, and justification by faith alone. But after this, they think everything depends on our diligence and faithfulness. While they firmly grasp the truth that the sinner “is justified by faith” (Romans 3:28), they have hardly found a place in their scheme for the larger truth: “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17).
They have never understood what a perfect Savior Jesus is and how each day He will do for the sinner just as much as He did the first day when He came to Him! They do not know that the life of grace is always and only a life of faith and that, in the relationship to Jesus, the one daily and unceasing duty of the disciple is to believe, because believing is the one channel through which divine grace and strength flow out into the heart of man.
The old nature of the believer remains evil and sinful to the last. It is only as he daily comes, empty and helpless, to his Savior to receive His life and strength, that he can bring forth the fruits of righteousness to the glory of God. Therefore it is: “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him: rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding with thanksgiving.” As you came to Jesus, so abide in Him…….by faith.
If you would know how faith is to be exercised in thus abiding in Jesus, to be rooted more deeply and firmly in Him, you have only to look back to the time when you first received Him. You remember well what obstacles at that time appeared to be in the way of your believing. There was first your vileness and guilt: it appeared impossible that the promise of pardon and love could be for such a sinner. Then, there was the sense of weakness and death: you did not feel the power for the surrender and the trust to which you were called. Then, there was the future: you dared not undertake to be a disciple of Jesus while you felt so sure that you could not remain standing, but would speedily again be unfaithful and fall. These difficulties were like mountains in your way. And how were they removed? Simply by the Word of God. That Word, as it were, compelled you to believe that, notwithstanding guilt in the past, weakness in the present and unfaithfulness in the future, the promise was sure that Jesus would accept and save you. On that word, you ventured to come and were not deceived: you found that Jesus did indeed accept and save.