“Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him…”
(Colossians 2.6)
Many people seem to feel, it would appear, that accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour is a one-off thing which we then move on from. Accept the truth of the Gospel and then get back to it, kind of thing. Greet the Gospel and then back to work at being good.
Receiving the Gospel is perhaps the single most spiritual moment of your life, but it shouldn’t be an isolated event. The same Gospel that is initially accepted is also the perpetual fuel for the fire of a life lived for the Lord. The way Paul writes ‘as you received Christ Jesus as Lord…’ tells us that the Colossians took this on practically too. Rather than an intellectual understanding or a spiritual feeling, receiving Jesus as Lord and Saviour truly does change the way we live practically.
The counsel here for the Colossians – and for us too – is to never move past the good news of Jesus (2.8). The same Gospel that allows us to be forgiven and restored to right relationship with God also powers each and every subsequent day. As they were being tempted to accept Jesus and move on, Paul will passionately plead with them that, really, we never move on from the Scripturally-accurate, long-prophesied and predicted Jesus. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being (cf. 1.17). F.B. Meyer wrote this, a fitting thought to take into the day:
“He does not receive his qualities and attributes [of holiness] as things apart from the Lord Jesus; but receiving Him, he obtains them. The holy man is he who has learned the art of receiving Jesus.”
James Travis 