Living For Faith is Harder Than Dying For Faith

Living for Faith is Harder than Dying for Faith

Read Colossians 2:6-15

Title in NIV: Freedom from deceptive philosophies.

Paul is talking to Christians in Colosse. He urges them to continue to live in Christ and be rooted and built up in Christ. He also encourages them to be full of thanks.

Think of your life as a straight line. When you are continuing in Christ, your line is never ending and complete. When you get side tracked and veer off the straight line, because of hollow and deceptive thinking, your line stops and breaks the flow. The great thing is that we can jump back on the straight path at any time. When we rely on the principles and traditions of this world rather on Christ, we are not continuing on our straight journey with Christ. Worldly things make us take a detour from Christ. Can you think of a human/worldly tradition that is important to you that really doesn’t matter for Eternity?

Our view point should only be Christ and his fullness. We have been given fullness in Christ. No human viewpoint should come before Christ. We should pray first. We should read scripture about our situation first. We should filter our situation through the Truth of  Christ’s teachings first. We should not ask others advice before we go to God in prayer. (When asking others for advice, we have to be careful our motives are not to get people on our side. Gossip is also a huge problem.) We should be aware of human arguments when we do ask for advice. Others may have false philosophies no matter how much they are trying to help. Christ is the head over every power and authority.

In Him we were circumcised (baptized) in the putting off of the sinful nature. Not physical  circumcision, but spiritual circumcision of the heart.  Faith give us the desire to put on Christ in baptism. We are raised from the water in the power of God as the Holy Spirit dwells in us.

Now we are dead to sins; we left them in the water. We are now alive in Christ. We live for Christ by listening to the Holy Spirit in us and doing what it prompts us to do. Before Jesus’ grace, people followed the Mosaic law. They tried to be perfect and look perfect before God. They washed their bowls the right way, they cut up their sacrifice the right way, they washed the right way, they even had rules for fruit trees. Their actions were motivated by living a perfect life to appear righteous before God. As Christians, we still follow rules, but our motivation is not the same. Now we follow rules because we want to show love to the One who saved us from our sins. We follow the rules because we know He has our best in mind for us. We know following the rules will not make us look righteous, but we know we can look righteous only if we are covered in the blood of Jesus. Our motive is not fear, our motive is love.

That concept is misunderstood to people who do not know Christ.  The ones who do not know Christ think we do good so we can look righteous and they are put off because they have so many things in their live they do not want to give up to follow Him. They also think our life should be great because we follow Christ and when they see Christians struggling, they wonder why our God is not sheltering us from the trials. Then they think they do not want to be a part of that if God is not going to protect us from bad stuff…what’s the point.

Our goal should be to teach the truth and try to disprove the deceptive philosophies. We should stand up for God. We should defend God when we hear the truth being misrepresented. Last night our preacher quoted, “Will you die for your faith? The harder question is… Will you live for your faith?” Living, acting, struggling, defending our faith may be harder than dying for it.

Sorry so long. Blessings!!