Now we read in verse nine a very
familiar scripture, For in him, that is in the Lord Jesus Christ,
dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are
complete in him, which is the head of all principality and
power. I have entitled this fullness
and full. Now, in this King James Version,
they have translated the same Greek word with two different
English words, and you might miss the connection. It says,
In Him, in Christ, dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And then it says, And ye have
been given fullness in Him. So you see there's a strong connection
between those two verses because he connects what Christ is with
what we have, and that's a good connection. We have what we have
because Christ is who he is. If he isn't who he is, we don't
have what we say we have. So much is this matter of who
Christ is, so great of importance it is. He said to the Pharisees
and other religious leaders that he gathered around, he says,
unless you believe I am He, you will die in your sins. Now, he
did not say, unless you believe that I'm going to die for your
sins, you'll die in your sins. He just said, unless you believe
that I am He. In fact, he said even less than
that. He said something with such power and force to them,
I'm sure it took them back. He says, unless you believe I
am. In the King James Bibles, you'll
notice that the word He is in italics. I've seen other translations
that put a whole phrase in there, unless you believe I am who I
say I am. But the fact is, the Lord said,
unless you believe, I am, making it pretty clear who he thought
he was. He said to them before Abraham
was, I am. And you can't take that any other
way than he's identifying himself with that one who spoke out of
the bush to Moses. And Moses said, who are you and
whom shall I say sent me? And he says, you tell them, I
am sent you. Brother Tim James calls him the
eternal isness. Forever is. He's not I was. He's
not I shall be. He is I am at all times. So Christ, the fullness of the
Godhead dwells in him. That word means to be housed
in him. Housed in Christ. And we have
been given fullness in him. Now the hallmark of human religion
is partiality. And I don't mean being partial
to one person or another. I mean incompleteness. Anytime they talk about something
that is not complete, anytime they begin talking in terms of
degrees, they've wandered off into human religion because the
scriptures don't know anything about degrees. For instance,
it says in verse 13, and you being dead in your sins. Now, there's no such thing as
degrees of death, is there? You can't be, we may use the
phrase halfway dead, but there isn't any such thing. You may
be horribly ill, you may be barely alive, but you are alive or you
are dead. And once you are dead, it is
of little consequence how you got there. You're just dead. And once you're
dead, it's of no consequence how long you've been that way. Because you're not coming back.
You're dead. See, there's no degrees there.
Dead. Now, man by nature, when he talks
about Christ, he talks about him in terms of partiality. They
think of him as half God, half man, when he is full God, full
man. They say, well, that makes him
two. Well, I can live with that. Actually,
he's just God expressed as a man. There's nothing about God that's
been left out of him, and there's nothing about man left out of
him. You say, well, sin. Sin isn't
natural to man. I mean, Adam didn't have any
sin to start with. Sin is something that was added on. You don't
have to be a sinner to be human. Christ was human. He experienced
and continues, I guess, to experience everything it means to be human,
even as he experiences and expresses everything it means to be God. Now, that's one of those things
that you can't understand. I've got a little mechanism in
my mind, or a little convention in my mind that kind of helps
me to understand it, but I realize this. We're way out of our depth
on this kind of thing. You're talking about a combination
of the uncreated and the created. And we can't even understand
uncreated. We can say the word, but we have no clue what it means. So we have these things joined
together in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, but natural
religion, man religion, doesn't, can't grasp that at all. In fact,
there was a, one of the early heresies of the church, and I
know I've spoken of it here, but I'll remind you of it, Gnosticism,
that's what the book of Colossians is dealing with, one version
of Gnosticism. and they had a belief that Jesus
was simply a man and that it is baptism that Christ's Spirit
entered him, and then shortly before the crucifixion, the Christ's
Spirit left him. Well, you can see how Paul is
dealing with that. In him is housed all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily form. This isn't just a part-time inhabitation. It says, In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That's
John chapter 1, verse 1. You go down, I think it's verse
14, it says, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Now, it didn't say that the Word
came down and indwelt flesh. It says the Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us. He was made flesh and He continues
to be. flesh, for there is one God and
one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Our hope is in a man, a remarkable
man to be sure, but a man. Mankind speaks of partiality
in the person of Christ. He speaks of partiality in his
offices. They set forth Christ that whatever
He does, He only does a half job or a three-quarter job. Or they may be kind enough to
give Him an A plus or close to it with a 99 and a half percent
or something like that. But no matter what they're talking
about with Him, whatever He did didn't do it all. Whoever He
is doesn't accomplish it all. They may say it does, but in
the end they're going to ask you to do something. Well, brethren,
if it's done, then it would just be stupid for me to ask you to
do something now, wouldn't it? But they presume that way. The
Roman Catholic Church, it'd be easy to pick on them. The only
reason that I mention them as opposed to others is they're
more honest about what they believe than most of your non-gospel
churches. Seriously, I mean, you know,
they just go ahead and say it. They'll tell you that works has
a place in salvation. A lot of churches say, oh, we
don't believe in works, we believe in salvation by grace, and then they give
you works to do. But the Roman Catholic Church is just kind
of up front about their non-scriptural views, and they have so elevated
Mary as to give her the title of co-redeemer. Now if you're
co-redeemer, that means you're only half a redeemer. Now she
shouldn't be elevated even to half a redeemer because she's
no redeemer at all. But in elevating her to half redeemer, what have
they done to Christ? You can't elevate someone to the position
or promote someone to the position of redeemer without demoting
Christ from the position of redeemer. So you've got a couple of redeemers
up there working together, you know, just half and half. Co-mediator. They call it. Now, other churches do similar
things. Like I said, they just won't be honest enough to say
it up front and out loud, because they'll put you a mediator down
at the front of the church at the end of the service for you
to come and shake his hand as though some spirituality might
rub off. They'd never say that out loud, but that's how people
are approaching it. They take you to the inquiry
room, and the fellow there who's trying to get you to pray the
prayer. I assume they still do that kind of stuff. I've got
to say, thank God, it's been a long time since I've been involved
with that. But somebody is interjecting
himself between the sinner and God as kind of a helper, supposedly. That's a mediator. So they've
got partials for Christ. Therefore, the salvation he brings
is only partial. It's only partial in this. Either
he can't start it without you, or he can't finish it without
you. One or the other. A partial salvation is a total
failure. Can you think on that a minute?
A partial salvation, or shall we put it this way, a partial
savior. is a total failure. You see, people are only partial
sinners in their own eyes. Therefore, a partial Savior is
pretty good enough. And while we talk about them,
let's not forget to talk about us. You will esteem Christ pretty
much in opposition to how much you esteem The lower you see yourself, the
higher you will see Christ. The higher you see yourself,
the more lowly will you esteem Christ. And the fact of the matter
is, there's not a one of us that has yet understood the depth
of our depravity, and not a one of us has yet understood just
what Christ has accomplished in our behalf. You say, well, I thought faith
was understanding that. It's the beginning of the understanding
of it. But Paul said this, we know in
part. Thank God it's not our knowledge
that saves us, or we'd only be partially saved, wouldn't we? God has told us enough in His
Scriptures to make us wise unto salvation, but God has not put
all the truth in the Scriptures. All the truth's in Christ, but
not all of it's in this book. Why? There's just too much of
it. It said you couldn't even fit the works of Christ in a
whole world full of books. How do you think you're going
to fit the whole truth of God in one book? I suppose that we're give an
eternal life, because that's about how long it's going to
take to learn it all. The scriptures set forth completion,
fullness, an offense to partial sinners, but a delight to those
who are dead in trespasses and sins. in him dwelleth all the
fullness of the Godhead bodily." There's two ways to take it,
two ways to understand that scripture. Both of them are true. Both of
them are helpful. In fact, both of them end up
pretty much taking the same place. And you couldn't have only one
of them true. The first one is this. that in the person of Christ
Jesus is housed all that it means to be God. Whatever God is, it's
housed in Christ. Now, people want to think that all
religions ought to be able to get along. Well, you know, we
ought to be able to get along with the people of other religions.
We understand why they believe what they believe. Because we
once believed it, didn't we? Well, I was raised in a sovereign
grace church. That don't matter. You once believed that you were
your own Savior. Everybody does. Because that's
how you come into the world. And you believe that way until
God changes you. And you spend the rest of your
life trying to unlearn what you knew by birth. We all start out that way. But God, get back to my point
here, God is fully in Christ, and everything that it means
to be God is in Him. Nothing's been left out. Now,
I know that when He was here, He did not express omniscience.
It says He marveled at things. He was surprised by things. An
omniscient one's never surprised. He says, of that day and hour
knoweth no man, not even the Son of Man, which He meant Himself.
Now, you say, how do you reconcile all that? I don't. I know this, though. He can know
anything He needs to know. And you've got to understand,
when He was here, He lived His life just as you and I live ours.
So much so that everything he did, let me put this in the negative,
nothing he did was done under his own power. You realize that? Well, he's got miracle working
power. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to do thus and so. He could have, but you know why
he didn't work under his own special divine power? Because
you and I can't. And he's here to substitute for
us. He can turn stone into bread
if he wants to. Why doesn't he? Because we can't.
He can take a flying leap off the pinnacle of the temple and
live to tell about it. And angels would have held him
up lest he dashed his foot against the stone. Why didn't he do it?
Would it have been a sin? No. He's the Lord of all. He can do whatever he wants,
but he can't do whatever he wants and be our Savior. He's not allowed
to do more than what we do. In fact, I think it's remarkable
he didn't even allow himself to use all the privileges which
were rightly his as the son of the king. He and his disciples
come walking through a field of grain. It's a Sabbath day. And the Bible says that his disciples
picked some grain and ate it. You know what the Bible never
says? That Jesus Christ picked any grain to eat. Why didn't
he? He's substituting for us. There won't even be a shadow
of sin upon him. Peter says, how are we going
to pay the temple tax? The Lord Jesus says, well, who
pays tax? The king's sons? Peter says,
no. He said, well, we don't want
to upset anybody. And he sent him down to get a
couple of coins out of the fish's mouth. And he said to Peter,
he said, you go pay your tax and mine. What was the Lord saying? He's saying, I'm the son of God.
I don't have to pay taxes here, but I will because I'm here representing
others. He also told Peter something.
I doubt Peter caught on to it just then. The Lord didn't say,
I'm the son and I don't have to pay. Go find a coin and one
coin in the fish's mouth. He says the king's sons don't
have to pay. He sent Peter down. There's two coins. Why? There
were two sons. In fact, there were more sons,
but he was just dealing with Peter. But he's the son of God, God
in human flesh. And it also could mean this,
and this is the one I think that Paul's getting at. One of their beliefs was that
there was this whole ladder, as it were, of beings between
man and God. In fact, if you look down there,
verse 15, and having spoiled principalities and powers, and
I think that's those fellows that these Gnostics believed
in. See, they were trying to bring in some Greek philosophy
into it, and these were beings that were more and more like
God as you went up the ladder. And they believed that the Lord
Jesus was the top one of them. And to get to God, you had to
go through all of those beings, those powers and principalities
and all that. They were all like a ladder of
mediators. And maybe you could even work
your way up in among them. And they call that ladder of
mediators the fullness. And Paul says the whole fullness
dwells in Christ. Everything it takes to get from
you to God is in Christ. And he spoiled the principalities
and powers, proved them to be useless and needless. They're
not even saying, you know, Paul's not even really saying there
is such a thing as these principalities and powers. He's just making
a point of this. Once Christ stepped into the
gap, there was no need of anybody else. Even if there was such
things as these principalities and powers, they're useless. They can't do anything. You don't
need them. Job said, oh, that there were
a daismen. who could come between me and
God, put his hand on God and put his hand on me. Well, there
is one. There's only one single person
that can reach all the way from a sinner to God, and can identify himself with
a sinner, can touch him and not be spoiled by him, and can touch
God and not die. Paul said another place, there's
one God. and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Now, that isn't just to set forth
the exclusiveness of the gospel, as I've heard the phrase put.
It's setting forth the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's
only one mediator because that's all you need. To my knowledge, there's one
bridge across the New River in West Virginia. And it's a remarkable
one. I've been there a few times.
And there's only one because that's all you need. You can
get across that gorge on it. You don't need more. And you don't need anything more
than Christ. He came all the way to where we are. It says,
Who is man that you're mindful of Him, or the Son of Man that
you have visited Him? You have crowned Him with glory
and honor. Set Him above all the works of your creation. And
then the book of Hebrews goes on to say, but we don't see everything
under man's foot now, but we do see, we see Jesus, who for
a little while was made lower than the angels. He might suffer
death. What does that mean? He came
all the way to where we are. Death is our natural state. We're
born into this world, and the moment we are conceived, we start
dying. What's that movie that was out? 15 or so years ago, dead man
walking. About a man under a sentence
of death walking. Well, that's what we are. We're
dead men walking. We have no life in us. Death
is our natural state. Christ came all the way to that
condition. And then it says, But we see
Jesus, who was made for a little while lower than the angel of
the crown, with glory and honor. Wherefore God hath highly exalted
him, and given him a name above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that
he is Lord. So here's what we got if you
look at this historically. God made Adam and Eve, and he
made Adam and Eve in his image, and by that I assume he means
because man has spirit. which is what enables him to
communicate with God. It's the part of him that's like
God, because God is spirit. And man was a glorious creature.
I don't know what he looked like, but he looked a whole lot better
than what we do. Remarkable creature. I tend to think, and I admit
this is speculation, Scripture don't say it, but I think what
the disciples saw Christ look like on the Mount of Transfiguration,
I think that's what Adam looked like to the sin. He was a glorious
creature, crowned with glory and honor. And he fell. And he lost that glory. Remember
it says that they knew they were naked? Well, what do you mean? They didn't know beforehand?
They just suddenly realized, whoa, I'm not got any clothes
on. No, they knew what it meant to be naked because they weren't
covered in anything. They were inglorious, naked creatures. no righteousness. And so it fell, went down to
death. And the day ye of it shall die.
And that's where man lived. And if you take the chronology
of the Bible, literally about 4,000 years later, the Lord Jesus
Christ took the same trip. He laid aside his glory. He became
naked with our nakedness. One of the more charming pictures
of Scripture is our Lord there when he washed the disciples'
feet. It says he got up from his place. He took off his outer
robe and wore a tunic under that. They would refer to that as being
naked, but they weren't naked like we think of naked. It just
meant they didn't have their outer clothes on. He stripped
himself down to a slave's clothes is what he did. But he took off
that robe, that single piece robe. And he went around and
washed their feet, a symbol of forgiveness. And it says, and
when he was done, he put back on his robe and returned to his
place. And that's exactly what the Lord
did. He made himself of no reputation, humbled himself, became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross. He came down as low as we are. But he's gone back up. God took
him back up. And here's the thing. Verse 13, and you being dead
in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh. There we are. We're down there. And that's
where He went. Hath He quickened together with
Him. When Christ was glorified, He's
not the only one that was glorified. Everybody in Him was glorified.
And we will experience that glorification. God crowned Christ with glory
and honor. and he's going to crown everyone
in Christ with that glory and honor. We fell. Christ followed us down. He went back up, and we follow
him up. He is the fullness, and you need
no one else You cannot add to him. He is the one thing in all
the creation to which it is impossible to add anything. For the moment
you add to him, he disappears, and all you have is what you
added. Paul says, if ye be circumcised, and by that he meant if you be
circumcised thinking that improves upon what Christ has done. or
makes what Christ has done effective for you or something like that.
If you believe it's going to help you establish a righteousness
with God and make you acceptable in His sight. If you be circumcised,
Christ profits you nothing. Nearly everything you know of,
if you add to it, you improve it. Christ is the one thing you
add to it, you render it entirely useless. You say, we can't talk
about Christ being useless. I'm not talking about Christ
being useless. I'm talking about Christ plus something being useless. The word plus ruins the gospel. Utterly destroys it. And the
moment you add anything that comes from you, Christ is going
to step off the stage because he will not sing a duet. He's
just not going to do it. And so if you add to him, he'll
say, well, you can have that if you want, but you can't have
that and me. And he's gone. So Christ profits you nothing.
All you're left with is what you added to it. And here's one
thing. That wasn't enough before Christ
came and it's not going to be any good once he stepped away,
is it? It must be Christ alone or not
Christ at all. It's Christ alone or you alone.
Really, that's what it comes up to. Christ alone or you alone. He stretches all the way and
you need nothing more. And here's the result, and ye
are complete, that is, you have fullness in him. Now this word, it was a technical
word of the Gnostics to indicate that whole string of mediators
that they believed was there. Paul said, no, it's one mediator,
and he stretches the whole way. Paul loved to make plays on words,
and he said, he's the fullness, and in him You've got fullness. This word also means to be filled
up. And from His fullness have we all received grace upon grace. Grace upon grace. In fact, that
word can mean not only just full, but just abundant and flowing. And the picture I get is of,
well, the Bible says that Christ is full of grace and truth. It says that he grew in wisdom
and stature and favor with God and men. And that word translated
favor is one almost everywhere else translated grace. He grew
in grace. And he so grew in grace, he had
more grace than a man can hold, so to speak. And we partake of
the overflow, the fullness, the artesian well of divine grace
which flows from Christ And there he stands, bigger than us, and
it's just coming out of him, and we're like under a shower
of grace, of favor from God. And here's the wonderful thing
to think of now. We think of God being gracious
to us, and we stand in wonder, and well, we should. Why would
God have favor on me? But look at it this way. It might
be a little easier to understand. He has favor on Christ. And we
are favored with the favor that he gives to Christ. And that's kind of an exciting
thing to think of. When I think of what the Father
must think of the Lord Jesus Christ and realize that that's
how he looks at me. I mean, I know full well how
God says this is my beloved Son and Him I'm well pleased. I know
full well why I said that, but I probably shouldn't say full
well. I can certainly grasp that. Jesus Christ is worthy. You know,
we say that the word grace means unmerited favor, and in the context
of the gospel it does. But the Greek word doesn't necessarily
mean that. It just means favor however it was gained. Jesus
Christ grew in grace because he earned it. He was earned grace. The Father had favor on him because
he deserved it. He did everything the Father
wanted him to do. And everything the Father thinks
is good, he finds it in Christ. And so his favor is upon Christ.
But now nothing the Father finds good is in us. And we don't do
anything that the Father says should be done. How are we going
to ever have any favor? we get the overflow of His. Brethren,
it's enough. My grace, says the Lord, is sufficient
for you. That overflowing grace for the
Lord Jesus Christ. We are given fullness in Him
so much that we do not lack anything. We haven't experienced everything
yet. Don't need to, but we don't lack anything. A child in a wealthy
household may have a trust fund that makes him essentially one
of the wealthiest people in the world. Now, he may not get to spend it yet,
but it's his, and he's assured of it at the appropriate time.
And you and I have a trust, so to speak, a trust fund. The Bible
calls it an inheritance. We've been given a down payment
on it, an earnest, the Holy Spirit, who made us alive in the Spirit
and gave us faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith enough to
see that trust, that inheritance, and time will make us possessors
of it. Paul says, I will lay hold of
that for which I was laid hold of. Someday we will. We're given fullness in Him.
In Him we have all the righteousness we need, because His righteousness is
ours. In Him we have all the wisdom we need. Well, preacher,
I just don't understand everything, neither does anybody else, except
Christ. And it says in Him are hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If you get sick, you
go to the doctor, he says, you got such and such, and gives
you a word about that big, you go, okay. He says, now I want
you to go down to the pharmacist, and he writes out a prescription,
or nowadays they fax it over, you know, but they used to write
it down. And he says, you give that to the pharmacist. Now,
he doesn't say, now you take this prescription, and you go
to pharmacy school, and you find out the chemistry behind this,
and you come to a full understanding of how it works, and then you
can go to the pharmacist and get it filled." No, he says, you take this to
the pharmacist. Why? He'll know what to do with it. So he gets the right pill out
of the bottle, or if he's one of those compounding pharmacist,
they call it, knows how to make up his own medicines. He mixes
up the stuff in the right thing. I don't know if he can make it
into a pill or puts it in a capsule, but whatever he does, he hands
it to you and you say, take this twice a day. And you go home
and you take it twice a day, and you're cured. And you didn't
have a clue why it works. You just know it did. Because
in the medicine is all the wisdom. is necessary to heal, and in
Christ is all the wisdom you need. He has made unto us wisdom. We often speak of that particular
scripture, Christ has made unto us wisdom and redemption and
sanctification, or wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,
those four separate things. But the way it's worded, it's
really, He has made unto us wisdom from God. That is, He's our righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption. That is the wisdom of God. That
the very things we could never be, Christ was made to be for
us. He didn't just produce my righteousness.
He is my righteousness. You see, you can get rid of Him.
You can't make me a sinner inside of God either. He doesn't just
produce holiness. He is my holiness. Holiness means
to be set apart. What set me apart? What's the
dividing line between me and the lost? It's Christ. He is my redemption. He didn't
just pay my redemption. He is my redemption. And I cannot
be put in debt again until Christ no longer exists. We have been given fullness in
Him. Well, you read through this chapter
with these things in mind. In Christ is all the person of
God and all that distance between
the sinner and God. And you'll see why then Paul
makes all the statements that he makes. Let no man judge you
with regard to what you eat or drink for these holy days and
new moons and Sabbaths People try to add to Christ. Don't let
anybody beguile you. Don't let anybody mesmerize you
and fascinate you with something other than Christ, as though
there's somewhere to go beyond that. Well, now we've got you
in Christ, now we want to go on to maturity. Our maturity's
in Christ. Don't be beguiled. It's Christ.
All Christ. was a brother there, and then
Jackson, Missouri, Brother Drew Deet says, and I think it's kind
of what they put on their bulletin, all their advertising, says, we preach Christ, nothing more,
nothing less, nothing else. And that's it. Everything's in Christ, and therefore,
if you've got Him, you've got everything.