BACK IN COLLEGE, when I first became a Christian, I was quickly socialized into ways of thinking and speaking that were widespread in American evangelicalism. We were taught, for example, the importance of having something called “quiet time,” meaning a specified time alone with God, usually in the morning, dedicated to activities like prayer and Bible study.

And we were taught to share our faith with others by telling them what Jesus had done for them and then asking if they wanted to “invite Jesus into their hearts.” No one, of course, took this literally; it’s not as if anyone believed that a tiny little Jesus would take up residence, say, in someone’s left ventricle. But it was one main way of describing a personal relationship with Jesus and still is.

Along with that, we’d also invite people to “receive Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord.” The two ways of speaking were often used together; “receiving” Jesus meant receiving him into your heart. And at first blush, the apostle Paul seems to say something similar to the Colossians:

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. (Col 2:6-7)

It does make perfect sense to read it that way: You’ve received Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior, so live in him…

But is that what he means? Probably not.

CONSIDER PAUL’S LETTER to the Corinthians. Previously, we tried to imagine the regret Paul carried with him, thinking back to his days of wrongly persecuting believers. He knows that he doesn’t deserve to be an apostle. But that’s why his appreciation of God’s grace spurs him to work so diligently for the gospel; to him, the commission given to him by the resurrected Jesus was everything.

When Paul mentions his regret to the Corinthians, he does so for a specific reason. Some of them have been misled by the false teaching that there is no resurrection. Paul seems flabbergasted, going on and on about how futile the Christian life would be without the hope of resurrection, indeed, how meaningless his own apostleship would be. But before he says this, he reminds them of the gospel message they had heard and believed when he was first among them:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. (1 Cor 15:1-5)

He uses the word “received” twice in this passage; it’s the same word he uses in our text from Colossians. Notice how he uses it here the second time: “For what I received I passed on to you…” He then reminds them of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, and of his subsequent resurrection appearances to Peter and the other original disciples.

These words, summarizing what Paul received and passed on to the Corinthians, are taken by many to be an early Christian creed that may already have been in circulation before the risen Jesus confronted Saul of Tarsus. Such creeds have long been part of the church’s teaching and worship. In some traditions, for example, worshipers still recite some version of the Nicene Creed, which dates back to the fourth century: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” and so on. Or the briefer Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth…”

For those of us who don’t belong to such traditions, think of the Lord’s Prayer, or the practices of baptism and communion. These go back even earlier than the creeds. Jesus himself was baptized. In the Sermon on the Mount, he taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. And in his final Passover meal with his disciples in the Upper Room, he instituted what we now know as the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.

Believers all around the world and down through the centuries have continued to be baptized, recite the prayer, and participate in the Supper — even if, at some level, they don’t know why. Kids, for example, may simply follow their parents’ lead and copy their behavior without understanding the full meaning of the behavior. And even adults may engage in religious rituals they don’t fully understand.

Does that make their participation in such rituals meaningless? No. True, it could be more meaningful, but that doesn’t make their behavior altogether meaningless. That way of thinking, I fear, is too individualistic, as if the spiritual life was solely a matter of individual conscience before God.

It is, of course, at least that, but it’s not only that. We engage in these spiritual practices as a community, a diverse collection of people with different concerns and histories. As the ritual unfolds, some people will be fully alert to the presence of the Spirit, others will be half asleep, and some will be distracted or even overwhelmed by the worries they brought with them into the room. That’s our human condition. And God still meets us there.

What Paul “received,” in other words, was not only Jesus but a tradition about Jesus which he passed on to the Corinthians. I imagine he also handed it on to Epaphras, who in turn passed it to the Colossians. But this is not like handing someone a gift which they then keep as an individual possession; it’s an invitation into a community which shares and embodies the traditions together.

And that, I think, is how we need to take the rest of what he says in the passage we read. Let’s explore that next…together.