Gloriographs by Rick Reynolds

5 Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel 6 which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth. Colossians 1:5-6

11 Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. Genesis 1:11

As did God in his creation, bringing forth plants bearing seed, instilling in them the capacity to self-perpetuate, the gospel in us and the church causes growth and the sprouting of fruit, not in a particular season, but constantly. Authentic Christianity is evergreen, ever growing, and everlasting. We hear too much of spiritual falterings and derailments and desertions in the faith. He’s not walking with the Lord these days, they say. This cannot be in the true Christian experience.

Yes, there are times where a yaw¹ left or right is necessary, but stories of complete capitulations or abandonments from the tenants of the faith should not be, because as God gave his creation the capacity to grow and multiply, so too we have been blessed, without any capacity to withdraw, or decouple ourselves from Him, that is, if we were truly born anew in Him.

The temporary misery caused by waywardness is motivation alone to right the ship. This is the Holy Spirit’s main tool to tweak us, to get us heading straight again. To return to horticulture as the principal metaphor, with pruning we all have seen new and vertical growth from drastic, apparently painful but timely trimming of unnecessary or errant limbs.

In a sense, that is what Paul is wanting to do with his letter to the Colossian church. Some wild theological and philosophical branches needed to be excised in order to produce the uninhibited growth of its faith and love (v. 4) and hope (v. 5).

¹Rotation around the vertical axis is called yaw. In this case, can we consider God’s truth the vertical axis.