As You have received Christ: Gospel Today Devotional - 3rd October

Memory Verse: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.” - Colossians 2:6 (KJV)

There is a principle that runs through everyday life which most of us accept without question: what a person truly believes will show itself in how they live. Genuine conviction does not stay hidden. It expresses itself in decisions, habits, and in the direction a life consistently takes.

Consider a simple illustration. If a man knows the correct road to his destination, he will take it. He will not wander down alternative routes or double back on himself, not because someone is watching him, but because he knows where he is going and he knows which road gets him there. His knowledge and his movement are aligned. The road he walks is the proof of the knowledge he carries.

The converse is equally revealing. A person who claims to know the right road but consistently takes a different one raises a question — not about their intelligence, but about their conviction. Do they truly know? Or have they only heard?

This same principle applies directly to the life of the believer, and it is precisely what the Apostle Paul presses upon the saints at Colosse in our passage for today:

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him.” -  Colossians 2:6 (KJV)

Read: Today, 3rd October in Christian History

The structure of this instruction is important. Paul does not say, "Now that you have received Christ, begin to earn your standing." He says: *as* you have received Him, *so* walk. The manner of the receiving becomes the pattern for the walking. And how did we receive Christ? Not by works. Not by personal achievement. Not by moral qualification. We received Him by faith — trusting His Word, resting on His finished work, opening our hearts to Him and taking Him at His promise. That same posture of faith — that same trust, that same reliance on who He is and what He has done — is to characterise every step of the Christian walk that follows.

The Apostle John makes it clear what it means to truly receive Christ: *"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name"* (John 1:12). To receive Christ is to believe on His name — to accept Him for who He is: Saviour, Lord, and the Son of God. It is a transaction of the whole person, not merely the intellect. And once that transaction has taken place, something fundamental has changed. Paul says it plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:17: *"If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."*

This new creation reality is the foundation upon which Colossians 2:6 stands. The call to walk in Christ is not a call for the believer to produce by effort what they do not possess by nature. It is a call to live out, consistently and visibly, what is already true of them on the inside. The receiving has happened. The new nature has been imparted. The life of Christ has taken up residence within. Now the instruction is: let it show. Walk in it.

What does it mean in practice to walk in Him? It means allowing the life of Christ to govern the daily details of one's existence — one's words, choices, relationships, responses, and priorities. It means holding fast to the truth one has received, not relaxing one's grip on it when circumstances make it inconvenient. It means refusing to compartmentalise — to be one person in church on Sunday and another entirely through the rest of the week. It means that the Christ who was received in a moment of faith is the same Christ who is honoured in every ordinary moment that follows.

Paul gives the fuller picture of what this walking looks like just two verses later: *"Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving"* (Colossians 2:7). Rooted — drawing life and nourishment from the ground of Christ, not from the shifting soil of culture or circumstance. Built up — growing in substance and stature in Him, not remaining static. Established — standing firm, not easily unsettled by every wind of doctrine or difficulty. Abounding in thanksgiving — marked not by complaint or anxiety, but by a grateful acknowledgement of all that has been given.

This is the life to which every believer has been called. Not a performance, not a striving, but a walking — steady, consistent, and grounded in the reality of what has already been received.

May the Lord help each of us to walk worthy of the Christ we have received. Amen.

Daily Reflection

The word "walk" in Colossians 2:6 is the Greek *peripateō* — literally, to walk around, to conduct one's life, to order one's daily behaviour. It is a word of movement, of rhythm, of habitual direction. Paul uses it repeatedly in his letters to describe the Christian life, and this is instructive. He does not say "perform" or "achieve" or "attain." He says *walk.* Walking is something ordinary, something done every day, something that reveals — without drama or announcement — where a person is going and how they are getting there.

The question this word presses upon us is not "have you had a great spiritual moment recently?" but rather "in what direction is your daily walk moving?" Because it is possible to have had a genuine, life-changing encounter with Christ at the moment of receiving Him, and yet, in the dailiness of life — in the small decisions, the quiet compromises, the gradual drift of priorities — to be walking less and less in the direction that encounter pointed.

The exhortation today is not to manufacture a fresh spiritual experience. It is simpler and more demanding than that. It is to align today's walk with the reality of what happened when you first received Christ — to let the person you are in your most private moments be consistent with the person you became the moment you believed.

*"I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called."* (Ephesians 4:1)

Prayer Session

Lord Jesus, I thank You for the day I received You — for the moment when, by Your grace and through faith, I opened my heart to You and You came in. I thank You that that moment was real, that it was not merely a religious transaction but a genuine exchange of life: my sin for Your righteousness, my death for Your life, my emptiness for the fullness of all that You are.

Now, Lord, I come before You with this honest reckoning: my walk has not always matched my receiving. There have been days — and seasons — when the distance between what I professed and what I practised was wider than it should have been. Moments when I held the truth loosely instead of firmly. Times when I allowed the pressures and patterns of the world around me to shape my steps more than Your Word did. I bring those before You today without excuse, and I ask Your forgiveness.

Root me afresh in You today. Let me not merely know about Christ but walk in Him — genuinely, visibly, and consistently. Where I have compartmentalised my faith, integrate it. Where I have been double-minded, establish me. Where I have been ashamed or hesitant to let it show that I have received You, give me the quiet, steady boldness of someone who knows exactly whose they are.

Let the life I live today in my words, my choices, my relationships, and my private thoughts, be the unmistakable evidence that I have indeed received Christ Jesus the Lord, and that I am walking in Him.

In His name I pray. Amen.

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**ion is cing any argument the original was not already making.

- **John 1:12** added in the body to ground the definition of "receiving" Christ — the original asserted that receiving Christ means accepting Him as Lord and Saviour but did not anchor this in Scripture. John 1:12 is the precise text that defines the act of receiving in terms of believing on His name, and its placement here tightens the theological chain.

- **2 Corinthians 5:17** was