Having received Christ, we should walk in Him. To walk is to live, to act, to behave, and to have our being; it implies everything in our daily living. To walk in Christ is to live, move, act, and have our being in Christ. We should not live, walk, move, act, or have our being in anything other than Christ. Furthermore, to walk in Christ means not to have any substitute for Christ. Because of man’s fall, culture replaces God in man’s life. Man was made for God and needs God to be his life, his enjoyment, and everything to him. But because man lost God, he invented culture as a substitute for God. Now in His economy God has ordained that Christ, His Son, should accomplish redemption, bring man back to God, and then replace all the substitutes with Himself. The various factors and elements of our human life are all replacements for Christ, but the factors and elements that have become substitutes for God must now be replaced by Christ. In order for this to be our experience, we need to walk in Christ. Christ is not only the sphere, the realm, in which we walk, but He is also every factor and element of our human life. To experience Christ in this way is to walk in Him.
We should walk, live, and act in Christ so that we may enjoy His riches, just as the children of Israel lived in the good land and enjoyed all its rich produce. The good land today is Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit (Gal. 3:14), who dwells in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:16) to be our enjoyment. To walk according to this Spirit (v. 4; Gal. 5:16) is the central and crucial point in the New Testament.
In Galatians 3:14 Paul says, “That the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” Here Paul refers to the blessing of Abraham and the promise of the Spirit. This blessing refers to the good land, and the fulfillment of this blessing for us today is Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit. Therefore, according to Paul’s concept, to walk in Christ as the good land is to walk in the all-inclusive Spirit.
In Colossians 2:6 Paul tells us to walk in Christ, but in Galatians 5:16 he charges us to walk by the Spirit. Furthermore, in Romans 8:4 he speaks of walking according to the spirit. These verses indicate that the good land for us today is the all-inclusive Spirit who indwells our spirit. This all-inclusive Spirit is the all-inclusive Christ as the processed Triune God. After being processed, the Triune God is the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit for us to experience. Today this all-inclusive Spirit indwells our spirit to be our good land.
Christ is the embodiment of God and the expression of God. Through incarnation, He became the last Adam, who was crucified for our redemption. In resurrection this last Adam became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Therefore, in 2 Corinthians 3:17 Paul says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” Because Christ as the life-giving Spirit dwells in our spirit, we are one spirit with Him. In 2 Timothy 4:22 Paul says, “The Lord be with your spirit,” and in 1 Corinthians 6:17, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Therefore, Christ as the all-inclusive good land is now in our spirit.
Since the all-inclusive Spirit is mingled with our spirit, we should set our mind on this mingled spirit (Rom. 8:6). By doing this, we are spontaneously setting our mind on Christ. Then we must go on to walk in this mingled spirit. This means that we must live, move, behave, and have our being according to the spirit. In this way we will experience Christ and enjoy Him as the good land. Nothing in the New Testament is more central, crucial, and vital than walking according to the mingled spirit. Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit dwells in our spirit to be our life, our person, and our everything. Our need today is to return to Him, to set our mind on the spirit, and to walk according to the spirit. This is to walk in Christ as the mystery of God.
In our experience Christ should be the good land in which we live and walk. This should not merely be a doctrine to us. We need to pray, “Lord, I want to live and walk in You. Lord, I ask that You be the good land to me in my experience and that every aspect of my living may be in You.” To walk in Christ is a way to experience Christ as the mystery of God (Col. 2:6).
After charging us to walk in Christ, Paul in verse 7 immediately adds the words, “having been rooted and being built up in Him.” If we would walk in Christ, we must fulfill the conditions of having been rooted in Him and being built up in Him. Our basis for walking in Christ is that we have already been rooted in Christ and that we are in the process of being built up in Him.