Complete in Christ

(Overcomer Wu)

"... And you are made complete in Him." Colossians 2:10

Fundamental to the progress of our Christian faith is to learn and apply the fact that Christ is the Source of our Christian life. Christ is our life (Col 3:4) and we are made complete in Him (Col 2:10). This is true of each one of us (bonafide, born-again)Christian. It is critical that we are cognizant of the fact that in Christ we have received all the nature, status and holiness we will ever receive. Our need for righteousness, holiness, victory over sin, Satan, the world, the flesh, death, Christ's resurrection power, our transcendency over all the earthly realm... all that Christ has attained and obtained are all true of us in Christ, for we are made complete in Him. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17). One does not earn a higher status with God, but a higher degree of our spiritual reality in Christ as revealed in His Word. These spiritual realities of what we are in Christ are to be apprehended, appropriated, and maintained through faith. By faith, we are brought into the practical realities of who we are in Christ in our daily experience.

Progress in our Christian life is determined firstly by our advancement in knowing the truths in His Word of who we are and what we are entitled to in Christ. Secondly, we need possess these facts as own experiential reality through faith in God's Word. Please note that I kept emphasizing the Word of God because faith in human concepts,thoughts, and imaginations are futile before God; only faith in God's Word is what instantiates a spiritual reality in our lives. Furthermore, we can say that the Word of God is what gives birth to our true effectual faith; hence, Romans 10:17 says, "So then faith comes... by the Word of God." To put it succinctly, we were saved initially by our faith in God's Word concerning our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God came to die in our stead to pay the penalty of our sins and sin (John 3:16, 2 Cor 5:21) and to regenerate us with His life through His resurrection from the death (1 Pet 1:3, 1Jn 5:12). And by in various other portions of God's Word such as Romans 10:9-13, we appropriated the spiritual reality of being saved from eternal perdition and are born again to be the children of God (1 Jn 3:1-2). As it is true in our need to have faith in God's Word for our initial salvation, it is also true for our continual progressive salvation of our soul. For instance, for us to be made perfect in the love of God, what does the apostle John exhort us to do in 1 John 2:5 ? To keep His Word: "whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him." And to be "in Him" is another angle of viewing how we appropriate the spiritual realities in Christ... by being in Him to identify with Him in all of His finished work and His attained positions. And by our union with Christ, we share in all His righteous, holy, victorious and glorious life that He lived through and took possession of for us.

Since we are made complete in Christ Jesus, we need not add anything to that finished work of God. Thus strictly speaking, God has given all that we ever need and all His blessings to us in the person of Christ Jesus (Eph 1:3). All the fulness of Christ is made available for us to receive (Jn 1:16). It is our responsibility to simply walk by faith and appropriate by faith the all-inclusive Christ that is revealed to us in God's Word through the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.