The first part of 2:7 says, “Having been rooted and being built up in Him.” The antecedent of the pronoun Him is Christ in the preceding verse. According to 2:2, this Christ is the mystery of God. This brings us to another question: what is the mystery of God? Since Christ is the mystery of God, to be rooted in Christ is to be rooted in the mystery of God. All Christians are familiar with the name Christ, but not many understand the term the mystery of God. God is a mystery. Furthermore, God has a history, a story. What is the history of God, the story of God? God is infinite and eternal, without beginning or ending. According to His good pleasure, He created the heavens and the earth and all the billions of items in the universe. Therefore, God accomplished the work of creation. Christ is the story of God, the history of God. This means that Christ is not only God Himself, but is also God’s history. God’s history refers to the process through which He has passed so that He may come into man and that man may be brought into Him.
Genesis 1:1 tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But Matthew 28:19 speaks of baptizing believers into the name of the Father, the Son, and Spirit. We know that the Father, Son, and Spirit are the God spoken of in Genesis 1:1. However, the difference is that at the time of Genesis 1:1, God had not yet been processed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. The word in Matthew 28:19 was spoken by the Lord after He had entered into resurrection, having passed through incarnation, human living, and crucifixion. After His resurrection, He charged His disciples to disciple the nations and to baptize them not into the name of the Creator, whom we may call the unprocessed God, but to baptize them into the name of the Father, the Son, and Spirit. This is to baptize the believers into the processed God. The processed God is God available to His chosen people, and His people can be baptized into Him. Although it is not possible to baptize believers into God as He is revealed in Genesis 1:1, we can baptize them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; that is, we can baptize them into the processed Triune God.
Today the processed Triune God is the Spirit. At the time of John 7:39, the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. He had not yet passed through death and entered into resurrection. Now that Christ has passed through death and has entered into resurrection, the Spirit is here. This Spirit is Christ, and Christ is the story of God, the mystery of God. As the story of God, Christ is the processed God, God processed to become the all-inclusive Spirit, who now dwells in our spirit and is one with our spirit.
The Christ in whom we have been rooted is this all-inclusive Spirit. This means that in our spirit we have the processed Triune God as our source. This source is a fountain springing up within us. The all-inclusive Spirit who indwells us contains the elements of divinity, humanity, incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. We have been rooted in Him, in this marvelous source, who is the processed Triune God as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit.
A tree rooted in the soil absorbs into itself all the rich elements from the soil. As these elements are absorbed into the tree, they become nourishment to the tree. The tree then increases, grows, with these elements. Apart from absorbing the riches from the soil, it would not be possible for the tree to grow. The more deeply a tree is rooted into the earth, the more it absorbs the rich nourishment from the soil. The principle is the same with our growth in Christ. We have been deeply rooted into Christ as the soil, the all-inclusive, life-giving, processed Triune God who dwells in our spirit. Now we are absorbing the riches from Christ as the soil into our being. As a result, we are being built up with what we have absorbed of the riches of Christ. What we absorb into us becomes the material with which we are built up.