“As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Col. 2:6–7). As we “receive” Christ, so he dwells in us. Thus, Christ’s indwelling is “through faith.”

Receiving Christ

Saving faith goes beyond confidence in Christ’s reliability, and receives him—not just his word, but himself, that is, all that God is for us in him.

The seminal text that connects believing in Christ with receiving Christ is John 1:11–13:

[Jesus] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John puts believing in Jesus’s name in apposition with receiving him. “All who did receive him, [that is,] who believed in his name . . . .” Receiving Jesus is one way of describing believing in Jesus in a saving way.

To Receive the Son Is to Have the Father, and Life

Since Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), receiving Jesus includes receiving the Father. This truth lay behind Jesus’s statement, “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me” (John 5:43). Receiving Jesus “in the Father’s name” means that when we receive him, we receive the Father and all that he is for us in Jesus. “Whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (John 13:20; cf. Matt. 10:40). A saving relationship with the Father hangs on receiving Jesus.

Receiving Jesus is saving because “as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:26). Therefore, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). Receiving the Son is how we “have” the Son. And only by having the Son do we have life. Indeed, only by “receiving” and thus “having” the Son do we have all that the Father is for us in the Son. Therefore, saving faith (John 1:12) is a receiving of Jesus Christ and all that God is for us in him.

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