As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him. Colossians 2:6
The words ‘as’ and ‘so’ in our text have only two letters apiece, but they are huge with meaning. Without these two little words, we would have two statements ‘ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord’ and ‘walk ye in Him’. But if we add the ‘as’ and the ‘so’, we discover that we are to walk in Christ Jesus the Lord in the same way that we have received Him. How did we receive Him? By faith. So, how do we walk in Him? By faith.
God had promised a Messiah, and He provided a Messiah. The Old Testament describes Him and the New Testament declares Him. We call Him the Christ, and recognize by faith that He is the One Who fulfilled all of the requirements of a holy God to be the Lamb of God. Consider His own words, as He announced to His relatives and neighbours in Nazareth the beginning of His earthly ministry: The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised (Luke 4:18). We have received by faith the Anointed One. And by faith, we walk in the Anointed One. We do not walk in any other, no religion, no human leader, no creed or doctrine, but in Him, the Anointed of God.
What does the name ‘Jesus’ mean? At His birth, Joseph and Mary were directed to call Him Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21, Luke 1:31). Jesus means Saviour, and so He is. His family members called Him Jesus, as did His neighbours, and as did His disciples and others who would have known Him personally. Jesus is His human Name, a Name He still bears because He is a man. As a man, He pleased God where Adam failed, and so proved His credentials to bear the sin of Adam’s race. This is the One Who we have received by faith, and He is the One in Whom we walk by faith. He is our great Example, and our walk is worthy only inasmuch as it is like His walk.
What is the prescription for salvation? That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved (Romans 10:9). Let us paraphrase this verse a bit: it tells us that if we by faith confess the lordship of Jesus, and believe in His resurrection, we are saved. It is only by faith that we can acknowledge His lordship. This is unknown to those who are not saved. The religious bow to the lordship of their religion. The profane curse His lordship. The careless disregard His lordship. Only those who fall in repentance before Him can exercise submission to His lordship in salvation. And only those who have by faith acknowledge His lordship in salvation can walk in submission to His lordship. If He is our Lord, we will submit to His direction in every facet of our lives, living in obedience to His Word. And we will do so by faith.
He is Christ Jesus the Lord. We have received Him, now let us walk in Him. – Jim MacIntosh