“My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.”
This is “The Message” translation of Colossians 2:6-7, part of the passage that we will be considering this coming week. Hearing these words in this way is a stark reminder of what we have in Christ. It is also a stark wake-up call to live into that reality. Paul doesn’t want Christians to be tricked into thinking they need to add some other philosophy or human tradition or practice to Jesus Christ. When it comes to our completeness, to what we need, Jesus is the lone ingredient necessary – there is no need to mix anything else in the pot with him. This message is nothing new for those who have spent a lot of their lives in church. As Paul says, this is what we have received. It is what we hear from the pulpit and read in our Bibles. Jesus makes us alive when we were dead and gives us completeness. We’ve heard that and we’ve professed that. If that is the case, why is it so tempting to start mixing in other ingredients with Jesus? I don’t think most of us set out to do this - it is not like we wake up in the morning and think, ‘now what can I add to Jesus to make myself more complete?’ - Rather, these other things just begin to seep into our lives like water into a foundation, slowly weakening in us the power of what we have received in Christ. There are so many voices around us, and almost all of them are speaking to us about how we can be more complete or find more of our true selves. When all we hear are these voices, it is tough to not begin to mix some of these things in with Jesus. It can be striving to acquire certain things to try and feel complete. It can be the pursuit of what makes us happy or feel good. It can be the following of certain rules or traditions that make us feel secure. It can be the desire to get ahead in our jobs, or the busyness of life that consumes us or makes us feel accomplished. There are an endless supply of ingredients that we are tempted to add to Jesus to make ourselves feel complete. This is why we always need to be reminded of what Paul writes in v. 10 – in Christ you already have been given completeness! So, if we need these reminders, what can you and I do to keep this before us each and every day? Read a certain verse that points to what we have in Christ? Tape something on our desk at work or our computer so that we always see it? Write down or share in our families the ways that we see this in our lives day after day? There are countless ways that we can be reminded of this because the wonderful reality of our lives is that we are complete through Jesus’ victory on the cross. The challenge and God’s call is for our lives to be focused on this such that we overflow with thankfulness.