Complete In Christ: Part 1

Colossians 2:8-15

Thank you for joining us. Whether you’ve read the Bible many times or just recently started following Jesus, there is something here for all of us, and with God’s help, we will learn together.  

Think back to the first week of creation. God created the earth, and then each day, he created things to fill the earth. On day six, he created the land, animals, and man. Sometime after the first week, God saw that man was alone, and this was not good. So, God put Adam to sleep, and from his rib, God made a woman. This story is familiar, but it is incredible. Now, Adam has a wife; he is no longer alone.  

We would say Eve completed Adam. Before her, there was something missing; with her, he was now complete. This idea of being complete is the topic of today’s lesson. If you can, turn to Colossians 2, and we will learn how to be “Complete in Christ.” 

In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” That statement has frustrated many people.  

It’s hard for proud people to accept the Gospel because it is simple. It’s hard for them to admit that their knowledge, efforts, or whatever, are of no help in acquiring salvation.  

One author discusses her epiphany while reading the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas during graduate school. The passage was: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.” She says, “The strength of this saying is that it does not tell us what to believe but challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves….” This Gnostic perspective essentially says that salvation is within us and that it is in a process of self-discovery that we find redemption. Many prominent people, past and present, in organized religion, academia, and the arts, embrace this false gospel.  

But, German Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a different perspective. He wrote, “The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day. Our salvation is “external to us.” I find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ. Only he who allows himself to be found in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, cross, and resurrection, is with God and God with him.” Bonhoeffer understood that we can add nothing to our salvation; it is all of Christ, and we are complete in Him.  

As we continue our study in the book of Colossians, we are brought face-to-face once again with Christ’s preeminence. The Gnostics at Colossae promoted the idea that you had to embrace their philosophy to be a genuine Believer. The Judaizers said you had to keep certain parts of the Law to be accepted by God. People today are still trying to add things they say we need to be genuinely saved.  

In our text, Paul attacks both groups and refutes their errors, clearly teaching that we are “Complete in Christ.” That’s the title of our study today: “Complete in Christ.” Now, listen carefully as I read Colossians 2:8 to 15.  

⁸Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.  

⁹For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;  

¹⁰and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. 

¹¹In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,  

¹²buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.  

¹³And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,  

¹⁴having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.  

¹⁵Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. 

In this text, Paul sets forth the essential REASONS that reassure us that we are complete in Christ.  

The First REASON (that reassures us that we are complete in Christ) is, 

Because of His Person 

The importance of Christ’s person can’t be overemphasized. If you look at the cults, at all false religions, the one main similarity they share is – they don’t give Jesus His proper place. It is clear that what these false teachers wanted was for the Colossian Believers to accept what can only be called “additions to Christ.”  

And so, Paul begins this teaching section with a strong imperative – BEWARE! The sense of the warning is to watch out, pay attention, and always be on your guard because some are actively trying to lead you astray. They are trying to plunder you, that is, to steal what you have, your completeness in Christ. They try to take you captive with their smooth talking; they want to show you off as a trophy of their success. 

How many times have we seen this in our world today? A man with charisma and good speaking skills comes on the scene with a “new revelation, a new word from God.” He’s smooth, convincing, and even quotes Scripture, but generally, he’s out of context.  

I recall watching one teacher on YouTube talk about how, for 1900 years, the church has missed that whole sections of the New Testament don’t apply to the Church. I couldn’t watch the entire thing because of his arrogance, proof-texting, and twisting of the Scripture. And yet, the person hosting the video was convinced that this guy had the answers! I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat it: just because someone quotes the Scriptures doesn’t mean they’re not a false teacher.  

One interesting note in this warning is that “man” is singular. One influential teacher in Colossae did most of the damage by leading people away from understanding and embracing their completeness in Christ. A charismatic, persuasive teacher can do immense damage, especially to those not grounded in their understanding of Scripture. 

Paul explains how this deception is attempted – through his philosophy, the philosophy of the false teacher. We don’t see that important detail in our English translations, but it’s in the original. This is the only time this word for philosophy is used in the New Testament. Perhaps Paul used it here because the Gnostics were so fond of it.  

As we learned in our previous study, Paul was not anti-knowledge. He encouraged his readers to reach for full knowledge in Christ. But he was opposed to false teaching. He refers to this philosophy as vain deceit, hollow, and deceptive teaching. In 1 Timothy 6:20 and 21, he warned, “O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge –by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith.” Paul was using the terminology of the Gnostics to refute their heretical teachings and point out that their philosophy was falsely called knowledge.   

Paul goes on to outline the specifics of this false teaching. It relies on the tradition of men. The word, tradition, by itself can refer to either good or bad tradition. The context gives us the sense of meaning, so, here, it is negative. It is used in the same way in Mark 7:3 when Jesus speaks to the Pharisees about their traditions. Paul uses it in the positive sense in Second Thessalonians 2:15, where he tells the Believers to “hold fast to the traditions they have been taught.”  

Paul further identifies this false teaching as having its source in “the rudiments, or basic principles of the world.” We can understand those principles because Paul said they were the opposite of Christ’s person.  

The traditions of the Judaizers and the Gnostics measured spirituality by things of the flesh, particularly asceticism, in Colossae. They emphasized their esoteric spiritual understanding, which means something confined to a small group of people who are especially initiated into certain understandings. They saw themselves as the spiritual elite!  

One scholar said, “Christ is the yardstick to measure philosophy and all phases of human knowledge. The Gnostics measured Christ by their philosophy, as many men do today. They have it backward. Christ is the measure for all human knowledge since he is the universe’s Creator and Sustainer.”¹  

In verse nine, Paul gets to the heart of the matter regarding our completeness in Christ because of His person. The reality of Christ’s person is why we shouldn’t listen to those who teach that He is insufficient. The false teachers at Colossae acknowledged Christ but said, “You need these other things, too.”  

Paul’s reasoning about why Christ is sufficient is that, in Him and His physical body, lives the very fullness of God’s essence. That fullness existed before Jesus came to earth in human form and continued throughout His time here on earth. By His testimony and the affirmation of the biblical writers, He was God in the flesh.  

Here, Paul shows the fallacy of two theories the Gnostic false teachers promoted. Because Gnostics taught that matter was evil, one theory said that if Jesus was God, he couldn’t have had a human body. They argued that He only seemed to have a human body; it was an illusion. He wore his humanity like an actor wearing a costume or role-playing.  

The other heresy was that “the Christ” was actually a spirit being that came upon Jesus at His baptism and then left Him just before the crucifixion. So, in this view, Christ and Jesus were two different persons. The perpetrator of this heresy claimed that Jesus wasn’t born of a virgin but was conceived just like all human beings.  

Both of these falsehoods leave us with a Jesus who is unable to be our Savior. The writer of Hebrews 2:14 to 18 specifically refutes these falsehoods. “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, in all things, He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.” 

In our text, the verses I just read, and many other places, we clearly state that Jesus’s deity and humanity were present and visible in His person. Therefore, He alone can satisfy God’s wrath against humanity’s sins; Solus Christus! 

Agreed! I 100 percent agree that being complete in Christ starts with who He is. Thanks, J Mark, for sharing the first part of this teaching. This is a great place to start, and there is so much we could say about Jesus’s person. As the centerpiece of history, the more we meditate on him and understand how His life impacts ours, the better off we will be. If you can, please join us next time for the rest of this lesson.  

If you miss next week, no worries. Here are a few other ways you can get our teaching. You could email us and ask for it—our email is [email protected]. Or go to our website, which is heraldsofhope.org. There, you can contact us or go straight to the listen tab and hear just the teaching you want to hear. Use any method you choose. We would love to hear from you and help you.  

Thanks again for being with us today. Until next time, I hope you have a chance to meditate on the majesty of Jesus Christ. In Hebrews, it says this about Him: “God has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, through whom also He made the worlds;who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.” Jesus is God.