There is a difference between a person who is standing in a place and one who is rooted there. Standing is something you can do on borrowed ground, with someone else’s permission, for as long as conditions allow. Being rooted is something else entirely. A root does not respond to the wind the way a loose object does. It holds not because the conditions are favourable, but because it has gone somewhere deep.
What Paul Is Describing
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Colossians 2:6-7
Paul uses two images here that do not usually appear together. A root and a building. One goes down; the other goes up. The first speaks of what holds you in place when the ground shifts beneath you. The second speaks of what is being constructed on top of that foundation over time. The life Paul is describing is both anchored and growing, both secure and being built.
He is not talking about an abstract spiritual concept. He is talking about the specific, daily, practical shape of a life that has received Christ and is now continuing to live in him. The receiving was a moment. The continuing is a posture. And the posture is what produces the roots.
What the World Offers Instead
The alternative to being rooted in Christ is not being rooted in nothing. It is rooted in something else. In performance, where your identity is as secure as your last result. In comparison, you are as significant as the people you are being measured against. In approval, you are as valuable as the most recent thing someone said about you.
These are not shallow anchors because the people who use them are shallow. They are shallow because what they are anchored in is unstable by nature. Performance changes. Comparison shifts with every new comparison point. Approval is one opinion away from withdrawal. An identity built on any of these is not a building on a foundation. It is a structure that is always one event away from coming down.
Rooted Means Undismantlable
What Paul is pointing toward is the possibility of an identity that cannot be dismantled by what the world says about you, what it withholds from you, or does to you. Not because you are immune to difficulty. Not because rejection or failure, or disappointment do not land. But because what is most true about you has been settled somewhere that those things cannot reach.
You are in Christ. That is not a feeling that needs to be maintained by favourable circumstances. It is a reality that holds in unfavourable ones. The root goes deeper than the drought. The building is on a foundation that does not shift when the surrounding terrain does.
Built Up Means Still Being Constructed
There is something else in this passage that is easy to miss. Paul does not just say rooted. He says rooted and built up. The second image implies ongoing construction. You are not a finished building. You are a foundation that is solid and a structure that is still being raised.
That means your identity in Christ is not just a fact to be held onto. It is a reality you are growing into. The rootedness is given. The building up is also happening, through the disciplines of faith, through the community of people who are also being built, through the ordinary acts of choosing to live in alignment with what you have received.
What the world says about you is not irrelevant. But it is not the final word. The final word was spoken before you had done anything to earn it, and it will stand long after the opinions of this season have changed.
Rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
Colossians 2:7
An identity rooted in Christ cannot be dismantled by what the world says about you, what it withholds from you, or does to you. The root goes deeper than the drought.
