If I were to ask you who or what "completes" you, what would you say? Would you say your job completes you? How about your spouse or children, do they complete you? It is your ministry service that makes you whole? Where is Jesus Christ on your list of things or people that complete who you are?
Have you lost your focus on Christ and begun to look at temporary situations and people as all there is? In our culture where people and things are idolized, there is a grave danger for the Christian of being lured away by worldly philosophies, as it causes us to refocus on temporal things and to lose our desire and vision for God. It has become easy to replace God in practice. "
A former Pastor of mine said, "Once we lose our vision for God, who He is, what He has done through His Son Jesus Christ, we get a vision for something else. God is put on the shelf, an abstraction. Christ's work on the Cross becomes a footnote in history that has application when I die but is irrelevant now."
I want to redirect you today from focusing on yourself, and your situation, and the things and people that you have built your life around to focus on Christ in the Bible.
In the NASB the terms "in Him" appear 94 times. The phrases "with Him" in them are written 114 times. If something is mentioned that many times, it has "got to mean something! "So let us look today at Him and discover some of the realities about Jesus. It is inevitable that we relate some of them to ourselves but it is important that you understand that these things are true about Him regardless of how they do or don't affect you.
....in Him you have been made complete (Col 2:10)... Jesus is able, by virtue of who He is to make us complete. I have heard women and men say of their spouse, "He/She completes me" in fact, I have said this. While my husband and I are one, and are perfectly suited for each other I cannot place all that I yearn for into him. If the Lord were to take him home today, I would be devastated but I would still live. I have no doubt that we can find someone who so matches our personality that it seems that we are incomplete without them, but the only One who can truly complete you is Christ.
Remember that you are born with that God-shaped void in your spirit. We were born sinners, spiritually dead, without life, and unable to do anything about it at all. We are helpless and as hard as we may try, as many good deeds as we may do we are still insufficient and incomplete without Christ.
Who else in the history of all the world can make a person complete? No one but Jesus.
When we are complete in Him, we are also immediately positionally secure. This means that no matter how you may feel about it God says that you are secure.
Allow me to give you this example: I recall several years ago watching the hurricane recovery efforts after Katrina. Like many Americans I watched New Orleans get turned into a third-world country. I watched both the best and worst of human nature on display through my TV box. I vividly remember watching a man being hoisted into a helicopter in the arms of a rescuer. The man had a security line tied around him, and he was being held tightly by the other man BUT I can only imagine that he was a little concerned about how secure he truly was as he was lifted hundreds of feet in the air.
The man who is the rescuer knows exactly how secure his charge is. He knows what it takes to rescue him, and he has done all that is necessary to harness the man in. Regardless of how that man being rescued feels, he is safe.
Jesus knew exactly what was needed to rescue you and He went the whole distance. He did not stop short of the necessary sacrifice to secure your eternal destiny. This is why as he hung on the cross he cried, "It is finished!" because all that needed to be done was done.
"He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NASB)
You and I cannot add nor subtract from that in any way because we did not do it! Our salvation was monergistic meaning it was a work done by One. We are passive in this process because we "have been" saved by someone else. Just like that man could not get up into that helicopter alone; you cannot get saved from your sin without Christ for He is your rescue.
There are times when by God's grace we realize that we are trusting in ourselves and in our own perceived power and ability to make ourselves righteous. It is grace that we realize that is a deadly mistake!
Jesus Christ is the "power source" of the believer's sufficiency and perseverance. Because of being placed in Him we "will" persevere and we "will "grow in our faith because we have received all that it is necessary to sustain us through trials and enter into eternal life through the power of Christ.
To experience the reality of our position, we must closely identify ourselves with Christ. It is in Him that we "...might walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:1-4) This means we must put on in practice who we are in Christ...
"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, BUT CHRIST LIVES IN ME; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me." Galatians 2:20 (NASB)
It means that the part of us that HAD to sin is dead and gone and lives no more! That verse means that we are no longer under the obligation to sin- ever. I pray this brings you incredible hope today! We have the ability to refuse to sin, even in the midst of trials, discomfort, pain, misery, sorrow, disaster, and anything else you can think of. You and I have been thoroughly equipped to say "no" to the flesh when we are tempted to sin because we are "in Christ!"
Christianity offers more than "just Christ" - it offers life, freedom from performance driven living, freedom from condemnation, freedom from shame and guilt of sin.
"Without Christ you have nothing. With Christ you have everything."
