Saturated! Colossians 3:16

Introduction

Pastor Chris challenged us to live dependently on Christ. His key verse was and the command “Be filled with the Spirit.” To help us understand how this command (which we cannot keep!) is to be obeyed he provided us with an acronym: PASSS. The P stands for passage: go to the Bible! We need to start with the Bible. tells us, “Let the word of Christ dwell richly within you”. Let’s look at these words in a sentence diagram to see what we should be doing with scripture to help us live dependently.

Colossians 3:16 NASB95PARA

16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Sentence Diagram

Teaching Point

Believers are expected to be SATURATED with the Word of God.  What does that mean and how do we do it?

The WHAT of Saturation

As we see in the sentence diagram, the subject of the sentence is the Word of Christ. Remembering that the early church was dependent on the public reading of scripture and even then did not have a completed scripture, we can conclude that the Word of Christ can be interpreted as the message about Christ and salvation through Him. That means that the Word of Christ is equivalent to the Word of God.

The WHEN of Saturation

The predicate/verb for this sentence is “dwell”. It’s the word for house or home. It’s a place where someone lives. So the Bible is to come and make a home with us. Since this is a verb we have more to say about this living. First, this The Bible is not a temporary guest in our lives. It is a permanent resident (present tense). Second, It is our responsibility to be getting more of the Bible (active voice). Third, It’s a command so it is not a suggestion. To choose not to have the Word of God consistently in our lives is disobedience.

The HOW of Saturation

We find two modifiers or descriptions of this dwelling of the Bible. The first one is the word “richly”. When used in a literal sense, it means to have plenty of earthly treasure. You are wealthy. Here and other places it is used In a figurative sense of having an abundance. The idea is to get as much of the Bible as you can!

The WHERE of Saturation

The second modifier is the phrase “within you”. There are two different ways of looking at these words. Either Paul means to say that the Word of Christ is to live in us a group (a local church), or it is to live in us as individuals. It is difficult to include one idea without also including the other as well. Can a church have the Word of God abundantly as a church body if the individuals themselves are not saturated separately? Not likely.

Conclusion

How does saturation with the Word of God happen? What does it look like? In previous studies we have talked about How we use our Bible (hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating). These are things that every Christian can and should be doing.

How that looks will be different for each believer. If you are a mature, experienced Christian, then you will stretch yourself to go further, to do more. That may include a deeper time of study. A young, inexperienced believer will need assistance to see how it all works. That’s called Discipling: an intentional relationship for the purpose of becoming more like Christ.

It doesn’t matter whether you are

New to being a Christian

A long-time Christian with much experience

Someone who has been a Christian a long time, but minimal experience.

Everyone who says they are a follower of Christ is expected to have a desire for the Bible (). So what does matter is this: what are you going to do to be saturated with God’s Word?

Life on Life Question

What actions will you take so that God’s Word is continually saturating your life?