“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” Col. 2:6–7
One of my favorite hymns is Amazing Grace. Written by John Newton in 1773, the hymn grew out of his experience of the abundant grace of God after he deserted from the Royal Navy, involvement in the slave trade, and almost being shipwrecked in 1748 during a violent storm. Fearing for his life during the storm, he cried out for God’s mercy and talked about that moment for the rest of his life as the turning point, where God’s grace met him in his brokenness and sin and turned his life around.
The grace of God worked slowly in John Newton’s life. He continued in the slave trade, was ordained as a minister in 1764, and didn’t repudiate the slave trade until 1788. There’s a significant gap between Newton’s night on the stormy seas and his rejection of the slave trade forty years later, which reminds us how slowly and steadily the grace of God often works in our lives (aligning our lives with God’s righteousness and justice is a gradual process).
We begin as disciples of Jesus only through the grace of God. And the way we begin is the way we continue. “As you received Christ Jesus as Lord, so walk in him” (Col 2:6). The way we begin our faith—reliant wholly on God’s grace—is the pattern of our whole life of discipleship. We are people saved and changed through grace, from beginning to end.
We also begin with empty hands. Jesus doesn’t welcome us into the family of God because of our credentials or our efforts. Our God is the God of the empty-handed, who come to him vulnerable, sinful, and needing forgiveness and salvation. On a scrap of paper, Luther once wrote, “We are beggars; this is true.” That empty-handedness must be the posture of our whole lives, from conversation to Christ to the day we meet him in glory.
The world, the flesh, and the devil all tempt us to drift from this posture. Paul writes to the Galatians, “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:3). There have been numerous times when I’ve started in grace and slipped back into human effort. Perhaps you’ve noticed the same in your life. Tim Keller puts this problem well: religion says, “I obey; therefore I’m accepted,” while the gospel of Jesus Christ says, “God’s grace accepts me; therefore I obey.”
Walking in grace is a daily decision. We are apprentices of Jesus, submitting ourselves to him, so that he can disciple us in his way, his truth, and his life. Being rooted in Jesus Christ is our settled state (Col 2:7 uses “rooted” as a perfect participle, meaning our rootedness in Jesus Christ is settled and done). But being “built up” in Christ happens continually, as we follow Jesus each day and build on ground that’s already secure.
Our growth as apprentices and disciples of Jesus is a grace too. We only mature and grow by the grace of God. John Calvin spoke of a “double grace” received in union with Christ: pardon and renewal, justification and sanctification, both given in the same Christ by grace. Through astonishing and extravagant divine grace, Jesus both forgives (saves and justifies) and changes (renews and sanctifies) us. God makes us holy by the same grace that he used to bring us home.
We all fall short. We’re human, so we make mistakes and need to repent daily. We must choose to start each day as if it were the first day of discipleship to Jesus. Our failures send us back to the same grace that first brought us to God’s love in Christ.
In Colossians 2:7, Paul closes his meditation with “overflowing thankfulness.” This reminds me of the contours of the Heidelberg Catechism, which describe the life of discipleship as one of guilt, grace, and gratitude, with the understanding that our obedience grows out of thanksgiving to God. When our hearts are grateful, we keep returning to God’s gift of grace, and that same grace keeps us on the path. God’s grace sustains and empowers our Christian lives, from first to last.
Having received divine grace, we pass it on to others, so they may know the same God of love who saved and transformed us. Paul says, “What I received I passed on to you” (1 Cor 15:3). Grace makes us disciples of Jesus who live in the humility of the Cross and the confidence of the resurrection. Our invitation to follow Jesus Christ carries the same grace that found us.
Graham Joseph Hill is the Mission Catalyst – Church Planting and Missional Renewal for Uniting Mission and Education. This post is from his Substack here.
