Knowing Him, Growing in Him

Reading from God’s Word:

Colossians 2:6–7 CSB

6 So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, 7 being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.

Introduction

You’ve probably stumbled across one online.

Maybe you clicked on an article, started reading, and thought — this person really knows what they’re talking about.

The writing is confident.

The details are specific.

They’ve got the vocabulary down, the right references, and the tone of someone who’s clearly been around.

Maybe you’ve landed on a sports blog.

The guy breaking down the offensive schemes and roster moves like he’s been in the film room.

Confident

Detailed

And then you find out, he’s never played a down in his life.

He’s using AI to fill in the content.

He’s learned the vocabulary, figure out the format, and now he’s monetizing opinions about something he’s only ever watched.

Think about it … this person has never done the thing they’re writing about.

This is more common than you think.

There’s an entire corner of the internet built on it.

Bloggers who write about financial freedom and are quietly drowning in debt.

Travel bloggers curating a dreamy life abroad from a one bedroom apartment.

Parenting experts who’ve read every book and don’t have kids.

They’ve all figure out that you don’t need experience to sound authoritative online.

You need content.

You need clicks.

You need the right aesthetic and enough detail to make people feel like you’ve been somewhere you haven’t.

Now, alot of what they write isn’t even wrong. The information is often fine.

The tips are real.

The research is there.

But there’s a word for what they don’t have — experience. They know the subject — they don’t know the thing.

I want to ask you something - don’t answer it right off the bat — just let it sit.

Is it possible to know a lot about Jesus and know actually know Jesus?

Last week, we covered something that is worth carrying in to today.

The goal of this congregation isn’t attendance or more activity.

Paul wrote in Ephesians 4 that we’re being built up toward something specific:

Ephesians 4:13 CSB

13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.

That’s the target.

You can’t get there alone.

Growth in the body happens together — not solo.

But, what actually feeds that growth?

What’s underneath it?

What’s the root system that makes any of this possible?

Paul answers that question directly in Colossians 2.

The answer isn’t a problem.

It isn’t a discipline, exactly.

It’s a person.

So, before we dig into the Colossians passage, let’s quickly go back and see something in Ephesians 4.

Knowledge of the Son of God is the Target — Not the Starting Line

Let’s turn again to Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4:13 CSB

13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.

What is the goal? We are pressing toward unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son.

This is deep, personal, relationship, and experiential knowledge.

The kind of knowing that changes you because it costs you something to obtain it.

It’s the difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing them.

Jesus Himself draws the line.

Let’s go to John 17 & the night before the cross. He’s praying, and listen to how he defines eternal life:

John 17:3 CSB

3 This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.

Eternal life isn't defined as believing the right things, though belief matters.

It isn't defined as doing the right things, though obedience matters.

Jesus defines eternal life as knowing. Knowing the Father. Knowing the Son. That's the thing.

So, practically speaking:

You can be in a church for thirty years and still be the man who knows everything about football and has never played a down.

You can know the story of Jesus thoroughly — birth, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension — and still be keeping him at a distance.

Knowing the narrative of his life is not the same as actually living with him.

now, is that actually what's happening in my life?

Not "do I know enough about Jesus?" but "am I knowing Jesus? Is there a living relationship here, or have I been talking about the gamer without ever putting on the pads?"

That's the target.

And it's not just for new Christians.

Ephesians 4:13 CSB

13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.

Paul says until we all reach it — which means it's in front of every one of us, no matter how long we've been walking with him.

Now, how does that happen?

It is just something you either have or don’t?

Is it a feeling you wait around for?

Paul doesn’t leave us guessing.

In Colossians 2 he takes us from the target to the mechanics.

There we find an image, actually three images stacked on top of each other.

They all point to the same reality.

The Root System — Rooted, Built Up, Established

If you want to know Christ deeply? It starts here.

Colossians 2:6 CSB

6 So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him,

Just as you received him.

How did you receive him?

How did you receive him?

By faith. By trust. By surrender

Acknowledging that you were lost, that you couldn't save yourself, that you needed what only Christ could give.

You heard the gospel, you believed it, you repented, you were buried with him in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life.

That's how you came in. Not by merit. Not by effort. By grace, through faith.

And Paul says: that's still how you move. Same mode. Same posture.

You know, there is a subtle lie that creeps into long-term Christian living.

Especially among people who were raised in the church, who've been faithful for decades, who know the Bible well and have the patterns of assembly and worship deeply ingrained.

The lie sounds like this: at some point, you graduate.

You've done the work.

You've built up enough reserves, enough knowledge, enough years of faithful attendance, that you can run on your own for a while.

You came to Christ by radical dependence. But now you're established. Now you're self-sustaining.

And, we can be so careful about getting the obedience right that we quietly drift from the relationship that obedience is supposed to flow out of.

Faithful on the outside. Dry on the inside.

Going through every motion correctly and wondering why nothing feels alive.

Paul saw it in Galatia. He'd preach it in Colossae. And it's just as real here.

Look at what He says in Galatians:

Galatians 3:2–3 CSB

2 I only want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh?

In other words: you started the right way. What made you think the rest of the journey works differently?

There is no second-stage Christianity where you outgrow your need for Jesus.

The root keeps feeding the branch. Always.

A Christian who has walked with Christ for forty years needs him just as desperately as someone who was baptized last Sunday.

The difference is that the forty-year believer has hopefully learned to recognize that need more clearly — not less.

Now, back to Colossians. Three images. Rapid fire.

Colossians 2:7 CSB

7 being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.

Rooted.

That's agricultural language.

A root doesn't just anchor — it feeds.

Everything the plant becomes, it draws from what the root reaches.

You can have a tree that looks impressive above ground and is dying below.

The visible growth is only as real as the root that's feeding it.

Built up.

Now he switches to architecture. Construction. Progress.

There's movement here — this isn't just stability, it's development.

You're being built into something. Something is being added.

Established in the faith.

Structural. Load-bearing. Firm.

This is what last week was about — being a load-bearing wall, not a spectator.

You can't be established in the faith without being established in him first.

Three images. One reality.

A life that is genuinely, continuously, actively drawing from Christ as its source.

The question isn't whether you once were rooted. The question is whether the root is still going deeper.

Now here's where Paul does something I find really helpful.

Because up to this point you might be thinking — okay, I hear you. Stay rooted. Keep walking by faith.

Don't think you've graduated past needing Jesus.

That's all good.

But how do I actually know if it's happening? How do I take an honest reading of where I am?

Paul gives us a gauge. And it's not the one you'd probably expect.

He doesn't say "overflowing with theological precision."

He doesn't say "overflowing with spiritual disciplines."

He ends the sentence with this: “Overflowing with thankfulness."

That's the indicator.

And I want to spend some time here because I think it's one of the most practically useful things Paul ever wrote.

Overflow is the Diagnostic

Look at how Paul ends the verse:

Colossians 2:7 CSB

7 being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.

Notice:

Not "try to be grateful."

Not "remember to say thank you." Overflowing.

That's a specific image.

A cup that's been filled past what it can contain.

Something pouring over the sides. You didn't plan for it to spill — there was just too much.

Here's what I want you to see. Paul isn't just adding a nice devotional note at the end of his sentence.

He's giving us a diagnostic.

Gratitude at this level — overflow gratitude — is the natural, almost involuntary response of a soul that is actually, genuinely resting in Christ.

It's what happens when someone knows they've been given something they didn't earn and couldn't manufacture on their own.

Paul felt it himself.

In 2 Corinthians 9:15 he just stops mid-thought and writes:

2 Corinthians 9:15 CSB

15 Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

He can't even finish the sentence properly.

He can't find a word big enough.

That's a man overflowing.

That's epignosis producing exactly what Paul said it would produce.

So, how's your gratitude level?

Gratitude is a gauge.

It tells you something.

Because when gratitude dries up — when you go through the motions of worship without any overflow, when you say the right things on Sunday but there's nothing welling up underneath them — that's almost never just a personality issue.

It's almost always a symptom of something happening in your relationship with Christ.

There are three things that tend to kill overflow:

Striving

When you're trying to earn your standing before God — performing, managing your image, keeping score — gratitude shrivels up.

You can't be grateful for a gift you think you're paying for.

Grace received produces overflow. Grace worked for produces exhaustion.

Drift

When you've gradually floated away from the source — when the root has been slowly starving because prayer got crowded out, the Word went quiet, and time with the church got thin — you don't have overflow because you don't have much coming in.

The cup isn't full. There's nothing to spill.

Familiarity

This one is sneaky.

It happens to people who've been around a long time.

You've heard the gospel so many times that it stopped landing.

The cross became background noise.

Salvation became a past event instead of a present reality you're living inside of.

And when that happens, gratitude flatlines — not because you've stopped believing, but because you've stopped noticing.

The fix for all three, by the way, is the same.

It's what we've been talking about this whole sermon.

Get back to knowing him.

Not knowing more about him — knowing him.

Back to the root.

Back to the way of life of verse 6 — walking in him the same way you received him.

By faith. By dependence. By surrender.

When that's happening, overflow tends to take care of itself.

As We Close…

Paul's vision — in Ephesians 4, in Colossians 2, all through his letters — is a church that is growing.

Not maintaining. Not surviving.

Growing up into the full stature of Christ.

And what we've seen today is that you can't get there without this: a deepening, personal, relational, experiential knowledge of Jesus himself.

Not a knowledge about him. A knowledge of him.

The man who knew everything about football had all the right information. What he was missing was being out on the field.

Don't be missing the game.

So, this week, pick one. Just one.

Go after Christ in his Word — not to check a box, but to actually listen.

To read slowly enough that something has a chance to hit you.

Ask him to speak. Then be quiet enough to hear.

Go after Christ in prayer — real prayer, not a monologue.

The kind where you bring what's actually happening in your life and you wait.

Where you're honest about the distance if there is distance.

Or go after Christ through someone further along — find a person in this church who is clearly drawing from the root, and have an honest conversation.

Tell them where you actually are.

Ask them what's feeding them.

We grow together in this body, and sometimes the most direct path back to overflow runs through someone else's life.

One of those three. This week. Not someday.

Paul says we're pressing toward the knowledge of the Son of God until we all reach it.

Your growth in Christ doesn't just affect you.

It feeds this body. It makes the whole thing stronger.

And a body where people are genuinely knowing Jesus, genuinely rooted in him, genuinely overflowing?

That's a body that's hard to ignore.

Let's pray.