Adapt to the realm of Christ!

Colossians 2:6-7

So then, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord continue to walk in Him, rooted and build up in Him; established in the faith, just as you were taught.

I was meditating on this verse a couple of weeks ago; and was wondering what “continue to walk in Him” would mean. I realized that the Greek word which is translated to English as “in”; means to be literally inside someone or something. It also means to be in a realm or in a kingdom.

What is a realm?

We live on the land, which is a realm. Every realm has its own principles and the one who lives in that realm has to live under those principles. For e.g. on land there is gravity so all those who live on land are under gravity. On land, you have to breathe in a certain manner, you can’t breathe the same way inside water; which is a different realm. There is no gravity in that realm and therefore one who lives inside water can’t walk, rather they swim. Those who live in the realm of water has to obey the principles of that realm.

With this knowledge, let’s try to understand Colossians 2:6-7.

So then, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord continue to walk in Him

How did we receive Christ? By trusting in the *gospel of Christ.

By faith, as soon as we received Christ as the Lord, we are virtually put into a new realm where the principles of Christ apply. We must therefore continue to live our lives according to the principles of this realm.

Even though we are currently in the realm of the world where its principles like envy, jealousy, independence from God etc. are present but, we are virtually placed into the realm of Christ and therefore principles of this realm such as love, kindness, dependence on God etc. must apply on us and not the principles of the world.

Consider an astronaut who’s going to travel to space. He doesn’t go to the space until he has trained himself to adapt to this new realm of space. He takes training in a space training center. This training center is in this land but the principles of this land such as gravity doesn’t apply inside it, so that the astronaut can adapt himself to the principles of space before he finally travels to space and be able to survive there.

Something similar God is doing with us. We also call this process as sanctification. We are in this world but we practice to live by the principles of Christ so that we can adapt to realm of Christ where God is one day going to take us permanently.

In the next part, Paul teaches us how do we practice to live by the principles of this new realm:

rooted and build up in Him; established in the faith

To be established in the faith, we must first know:

What is our faith? And how to be established in it?

Our faith is in the *gospel of Christ. That is our faith.

And to be establish in it simply means to be sure of it. It doesn’t mean to be adamant about it but rather to be convinced about it. We’ll be convinced about our faith, if we are rooted and are build-up in the realm of Christ.

To be rooted is to remain in one place, in this context it implies to remain in the realm of Christ, and as the root grows it also gets firm in that place; it symbolizes that we must first know the principles of this realm (by meditating on the word of God) and then more importantly obey them. The more we obey the more we’ll build ourselves up i.e. to say adapt ourselves to this new realm.

As Paul taught us, let us therefore be rooted (don’t give up and be firm) in the realm of Christ and keep building (adapting) ourselves up by meditating in His word and obeying Him, till He comes to take us physically into His realm.

May our God uphold us in these training days!

*Gospel: 

God promised through His prophets that He’ll save the world by sending His Messiah and accordingly, Jesus Christ was born in Israel. He did many good works, He gave eyes to the blind, healed the sick and many believed in Him however, some did not believe in Him. Those who did not believe in Him, killed Him by crucifying Him on a cross; just as God foretold through His prophets. However, on the third day God raised him up from the dead and He was seen by many people whom God selected and He told them to proclaim now that God has made Him LORD over all, both dead and alive; and whoever trusts in Him will be forgiven of their sins.