Sunday, July 28, 2019. Rev. Scott Ramsey, preaching.Scripture Readings: Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 11:1-13

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SERMON TEXT

Today we are concluding our 4-week summer sermon series, “Bearing Each Other’s Burdens.”  We began the series by considering the Apostle Paul’s command in Galatians 6 to ‘bear each other’s burdens, which fulfills the law of Christ.’  We saw how bearing each other’s burdens leads us to the awareness that Christian freedom is not freedom from other people, but is actually freedom for other people, always oriented towards the common good – with our hearts turned especially towards two groups of people: those who are suffering and those with whom we disagree.  Last week, Pastor Annamarie preached on the story from Luke 10 about Mary and Martha, about how the work we do to bear each other’s burdens – the work of mercy, of justice, of hospitality – must be grounded in our prayerful love for God and listening for the Word of Jesus, or else we will become anxious and distracted and resentful.

This morning our text from Colossians 2 embraces all of these within the comprehensive umbrella of our life in Christ.  Bearing each other’s burdens is not something additional that we have to do on top of everything else.  It flows out of our life in Christ.  Our life in Christ is something that has already been established, and it is something towards which we are always growing.  We do not need to do anything to justify or deserve our life in Christ, but you and I know that we are not yet fully living out our life in Christ.  We need to become what we already are.  Our life in Christ has already been established, but it is not yet fully embodied.

“Life in Christ” is the central focus of our text from Colossians 2.  The prepositional phrase “in him” or “with him” occurs 8 times in this little passage.   As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith.”  Our whole lives, from beginning to end, from the time we were rooted, through being built up and developed, all the way through being established, it’s all in Christ.  Your entire life already takes place in Christ.

Christ is the soil in which our lives are planted, Christ is the blueprint according to which our lives are designed, and Christ is the goal towards which we are journeying. You are not on your own, trying to figure out what to do with your life; you are not on your own, trying to figure out how you belong in the universe.  Our direction is found in Christ; as we build a relationship with him, he will lead us to know what we are to do and how we are to live.  Our lives are in him.  We just need to become what we already are.

When Paul wrote to the Colossians, he appears to have been writing to people who were being told that they still lacked something.  Other leaders were telling them that they lacked something, they needed to do something else to be complete, needed something else to be secure.  Whatever this other teaching was, it was beginning to seduce the Colossians away from their sense of being sufficiently rooted and grounded in Christ.  Scholars argue about exactly what this teaching was, but Paul wants the Colossians to know that they already have all they need to be secure.  “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.”  You are in Christ, Paul tells them, you have come to fullness in Christ, so you do not need to chase anxiously after other sources of approval, or other sources of security or control or power.  If you try to build your sense of worthiness on anything other than God’s love for you in Christ, if you try and build your sense of worthiness on your good behavior, or the size of your portfolio, or your professional su