Complete in Christ

Paul is here arguing against the facets of the false heresy that was attacking the Colossians. And in the midst of that, he gets into this concept of who Christ is and what Christ can do and the idea is that you don't need any human philosophy, you don't need any human wisdom, you are complete in Him. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. In 1858, William Boardman wrote a book titled The Higher Christian Life. The premise of the book was this, a genuine Christian will experience, after his conversion, a second blessing from God, a blessing that makes the person instantly holy and even able to reach a state of sinless perfection.

Well, is that right? Is that how salvation through Christ works? Do you need something extra, a second blessing, in order to be truly saved? I invite you to consider that today as John MacArthur looks to the book of Colossians to see what it means to be complete in Christ. That's the title of John's series and now with the lesson, here's John. Colossians 2, 10 to 15. I'm going to read it to you just so you have it in your mind and get the total impact of it. Colossians 2, 10, And ye are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power, in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism in which also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised Him from the dead. And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us which was contrary to us and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it." Now that passage is so loaded with theology and doctrine that it just kind of oozes out of every phrase.

And we're going to endeavor to at least get a careful overview of all that is here. In our continuing study of Colossians, we have been made aware as we've gone verse by verse that the Apostle Paul is making repeatedly a tremendous statement regarding the person of Jesus Christ and His ability to save. And that is no less true in this section. Although this section is a rebuttal against the false philosophies and heresies which are right at the doorstep of the Colossians, as a rebuttal it comes out very positive because Paul's approach against false systems is always the positive approach. You don't need to argue against the falsity of the system if you just present the truth of Jesus Christ. And that's precisely what he's doing as he argues against human philosophy. You remember last time we began by looking at verses 8 and 9 and we saw that Paul says, beware lest anybody spoil you through philosophy which is vain deceit. Now Paul is here arguing against the four facets of the false heresy that was attacking the Colossians.

And facet number one was a heresy had as part of it human philosophy. And so Paul is digging into that. And in the midst of that, he gets into this concept of who Christ is and what Christ can do and the idea is that you don't need any human philosophy, you don't need any human wisdom, you are complete in Him. That's the great truth that he is signaling there in verse 10. Now in order to introduce our thoughts, I want to just kind of draw your attention to something else other than this passage. And it is the healings of our Lord. Because I think the healings of our Lord illustrate a great principle relative to salvation. So take your Bible and let's go back to the beginning of the New Testament in the book of Matthew.

And I want to see if you all by yourself without me making much editorial comment can pick out of the verses that I read to you a consistent pattern or principle. Matthew 9.22, Jesus turned about and when He saw her, He said, and I'm going to read you just the way the old English has it because the translation I think gives the complete meaning of the word, daughter be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour. Matthew 12, 13, then saith He to the man, stretch forth thine hand and he stretched it forth and it was restored whole like the other. Matthew 15, 28, then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt and her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

Verse 31, insomuch that the multitude wondered when they saw the dumb to speak, the maim to be whole, the lame to walk, the blind to see and they glorified the God of Israel. The gospel of Mark chapter 3, verse 5. And when He had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, He saith unto the man, stretch forth thine hand and He stretched it out and His hand was restored whole as the other. Mark 5, verse 28, for she said, If I may touch but His clothes, I shall be whole. Verse 34, He said, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole. Go in peace and be whole of thy plague. Luke 6, 10, and looking round about on them, He said, Stretch forth thy hand. He did so and His hand was restored whole like the other. Seventh chapter, tenth verse. They that were sent returning to the house found the servant whole that had been sick. Luke 8, 48.

I know you're seeing the pattern here, very obvious. Luke 8, 48. He said, Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.

Go in peace. And further on in the seventeenth chapter of Luke, the nineteenth verse, He said to him, Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. The gospel of John, no less a part of this same thought pattern. John 5, 6, Jesus said to him, Wilt thou be made whole? Verse 14, Behold, thou art made whole. Verse 15, Jesus had made him whole. John 7, 23, If a man on the Sabbath day received circumcision that the Law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with me because I have made a man whole on the Sabbath?

And the New Scofield has the clear meaning of that. It says entirely well on the Sabbath, whole. Now you have the same thing carried out in apostolic miracles as well. In Acts 4, 9, If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole? Be it known unto you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.

You find it again in Acts 9, 34, Peter said, Aeneas, Jesus Christ makes thee whole, Arise, make your bed and he arose immediately. Now what you see in all of those passages is a consistency in the style of healing that Jesus did. When Jesus healed somebody, he made them what? Whole, entirely well, no missing parts.

Now there are some synonyms used in those various things, but the dominant term is the word hugies from which we get the medical word hygiene. And it means healthy. Jesus made them well, healthy, sound, the best translation entirely well, the absence of any infirmity. Now listen, all the healing miracles of Jesus made people completely healthy.

There was no progression involved. They were whole instantly. Now you say, what in the world does that have to do with Colossians 2? Just this, it serves, at least in my mind and I trust in yours, as a beautiful picture of the way Jesus heals spiritually. If Jesus heals physical illness and makes people entirely whole, then that is precisely what is meant by the Apostle Paul in chapter 2 verse 10 when he says, And ye are complete in Him.

You could put the word whole in there. Just as Jesus Christ did miracles of healing that made people entirely well, so when Jesus touches a life spiritually and gives salvation, it is entire salvation, it is whole salvation. That person becomes spiritually entirely well.

In fact, if you want to choose another Pauline term, if any man be in Christ, he is a what? New creation. I mean, that is brand new wholeness.

Now this is nothing new. God has always done that. When David cried out in the midst of his sin in Psalm 51, 10, he knew what God would do and he said, God create in me a...what?...a clean heart, whole, no spot, no blemish. When God acts against sin in His saving grace, there is a wholeness. In Ezekiel 11, 19, I will give them one heart. I will put a new spirit within you. I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

And that's repeated later in Ezekiel, as you know. God says a new heart, a new soul, as it were, a new clean inside. So that spiritual healing, which is salvation, is as whole as is the physical. In John 1, 16, it's a great statement.

He's talking here about Christ. And John the Baptist says this, of His fullness have all we received. When you were saved, you received of Christ's...what?...fullness. You received the fullness of Christ. The wholeness of Christ became your wholeness so that somebody who becomes a Christian is spiritually whole. And that's Paul's whole standard here. That's his whole point here.

He's trying to say to these people, look, when you receive Christ, you are made whole. A healthy man doesn't need any more medicine. You don't need human philosophy. You don't need Jewish legalism. You don't need strange pagan mysticism. You don't need abstaining asceticism.

You don't need anything. When you received Christ and His salvation, you were made whole. And that's his point. And John says here, John the Baptist in John 1, 16, of His fullness have all we received and grace for grace in Galatians at the end and the sixth chapter and the fifteenth verse he says, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision, listen, but a new creation. Same as 2 Corinthians 5, 17, a new creation. Listen to 2 Peter 1, 3. Nothing as His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.

You say, but when do you get that? Next phrase, through the knowledge of Him. When do you come to know Christ at salvation? Then when do you get all things pertaining to life and godliness the moment you believe in Christ? And so I say if we can say the miracles of Jesus made people whole, we can also say the spiritual transformation of salvation makes them just as whole spiritually. So that when you become a Christian, you are a clean heart, a new heart, a new spirit, a soundness, a wholeness. You become spiritually well and you don't need to add anything to that, nothing.

Not legalism, asceticism, mysticism or human philosophy. Now let's look at Colossians 2, 10. Colossians 2, 10 says, and you are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power. Literally it says, you have been made full. You have been made full in Him. There's nothing missing. Christ fills you up.

There aren't any other things to add to that. You have been made full with the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Human philosophy based on the traditions of men, as verse 8 says, and the elementary marks of infantile human religion has nothing to add to what is already completed. When Jesus died on the cross, the last thing He said is, it is finished. And when He said it, He meant it not only in terms of His own deed, but in terms of securing the fullness of salvation by that deed. And this one who rules all principality and power, that is all other beings, all created authorities, all created rulers, particularly referring here to the angelic ones, He rules them all.

They have nothing to add to His work. These people who are influencing the Colossians are dead wrong. You don't need to get to God through a series of intermediary eons or angels. Listen, good angels can't help make you complete and bad angels can't harm you once you are complete. And so Paul deals a blow to the heresy of human philosophy and religion which tries to deny that Christ has the power to give complete salvation. And we've discussed that enough to know that that was the basic heresy they were facing. The Colossians who have in Jesus Christ the fountain that never fails would be fools to listen to these false teachers who would have them hew out broken cisterns that hold no water.

You don't need philosophy and you don't need angelic intermediaries. Christ is the completer. He makes anything He touches whole. All His healing miracles, whether physical or spiritual, instantaneous and complete. These two things of physical healing and spiritual salvation are brought together, I think, beautifully. In the statement of 3 John, verse 2, it's kind of tucked away there.

This is kind of beautiful, really. John is writing to his beloved Gaius whom he loved in the truth and he says in verse 2, watch this, it's beautiful, Beloved, beloved Gaius, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, now watch this, even as thy soul is healthy. He says, O Gaius, if your physical body could only be as healthy as your soul, would you be in terrific shape?

Now what's the implication? The implication is that because the guy is a believer, his soul prospers. His soul is healthy. Now sin plays a part in the practical aspect of this, but positionally, the soul is healthy.

And John is simply saying, if your body could only know the health that your soul knows. Back to Colossians 2, you're complete in Him. You have been made complete.

Now what does that mean? You say, well, what do you mean, John, when you say complete? Complete what? What is the definition of that completeness? Well Paul can't just say it either, so he's got to preach a sermon on it just like I would. He's got to explain it, so he does in the next verses. And he shows you three ways in which you are complete.

These are just basic, beautiful things. Three ways, three kinds of completeness, three aspects to our completeness. Number one, complete salvation. Number two, complete forgiveness, and number three, complete victory. Complete salvation, verses 11 and 12. Complete forgiveness, verses 13 and 14. Complete victory, verse 15. Let's look first of all at the complete salvation. How are we complete, Paul? Number one, your salvation is complete. Verse 11, in whom also you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. In putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism in which also you are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God who has raised Him from the dead.

Now we'll look at this. He says, look, your salvation is absolutely complete. There's no need for you to be circumcised.

You've been baptized. Now remember, the heresy which the apostle is combating is a somewhat baffling mixture of the pagan beliefs of these various intermediaries and Jewish beliefs of legalism. And along with it, they're trying to propagate the idea that you have to be circumcised.

And this isn't anything new, the Judaizers did it in Galatia, didn't they? So that's fine that you believe. It's wonderful that you believe, but you've got to get circumcised. You have to have this operation, surgical salvation. And he says, look, verse 11, in whom also you are circumcised. Don't let anybody come along and woof you about some circumcision. You've been circumcised.

Oh really, how? How could these Colossian Gentiles have been circumcised with the circumcision made without hands? We're not talking about surgery here. We're talking about putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision which Christ did.

We're talking about a spiritual operation, not a physical one. Now all through the history of Israel there were two views of circumcision. Every little Hebrew boy was circumcised the eighth day after he was born. And that was the sign of his belonging to the nation of Israel.

And it became a controversial thing and there were two schools of thought on it. One there was the view that circumcision in itself was enough to save, surgical salvation. If you just got circumcised, you were in the covenant people and that was it.

The physical act is all that was required. And you know, many in the history of the church picked that up and that's where infant baptism came from. And the Israelite believing this would argue it didn't matter whether an Israelite is good, didn't matter whether he was bad, all that mattered was he was circumcised. That was the typical view of the Jews in Jesus' day, the typical view of the Jewish leaders in Paul's day as well. That's why in Romans chapter 2 and verse 25 he says, circumcision profits if you keep the law.

It's fine if you keep the law, but if you break the law, circumcision is just like uncircumcision. My dad used to always tell the story about the fighter that went in and before every fight he crossed himself. And a guy says, does it help?

Somebody else says, does it if he can punch? If you can't, it won't do him any good at all. Same thing with circumcision. If you keep the law, it's fine.

If you don't, it doesn't help. Therefore he says, even if the uncircumcision keeps the righteousness of the law, in other words, people who haven't had the operation obey the law, that'll be like being circumcised. They'll move into the covenant blessing. Verse 28, he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision outward in the flesh, he is a Jew who is one inwardly. And circumcision is of the heart. You see, that's what we're getting at, but this was the typical Jewish view that if you just had the external operation, you were in good shape. But there was another view, and there were some true spiritual Jews. There was a remnant all through Israel's history, and they believed that circumcision was only an outward mark of a man inwardly committed to God. And they believed right. They believed that it just really was simply a symbol on the outside, and what really mattered was the heart. And this had always been what God told them anyway.

You can go clear back to Exodus when God was first laying down the rules. Exodus 6, 12, Moses spoke before the Lord saying, the children of Israel have not hearkened to me. How then shall Pharaoh hear me who am of uncircumcised lips?

And here you see, Moses at the very beginning is using the concept of uncircumcision in a metaphorical sense, showing that what God is really after, God is really after is somebody who's got a circumcised heart, that is heart dedicated to God, circumcised lips, lips dedicated to God, not simply the act of surgery on a child, but that the real issue was the heart. When you repent and believe the gospel, you receive the fullness of Christ, everything you need for a joyous spiritual life. John MacArthur, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, showed you that today as he continued his series called Complete in Christ here on Grace to You. Now, John, this idea that we are complete in Christ is a far reaching, profound theological doctrine and it's filled with practical implications.

So talk about that for you personally. How does this truth affect your everyday life? Well, I think the recognition that nothing is absent in terms of your spiritual needs, your spiritual arsenal, I go back to the idea that you have all things that pertain to life and godliness.

That's a complete statement. You have all things that pertain to life and godliness. A promise that would go along with that is my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

So the Lord lavishes on us the riches of his grace. I think for a Christian, that's where you have to start. If you want to live confidently as a believer, you've got to recognize that nothing is missing. And that's against the grain of the traditional sort of second blessing notion that you sort of get saved at the front end but there's a whole lot of stuff that you haven't gotten. You need a second blessing or a third blessing or you need to attain a deeper life or a higher life.

That's a terminology that's been around for centuries. And a true understanding of salvation is that Christ is in all and Christ is all. I love that. Christ is all and in all. So if you have Christ, you lack nothing. So then it just becomes a matter of learning to live my life in the fullness of Christ, to be obedient to him, to make my life constantly an act of worship to him, to seek to love him, to love him more. So I think you have to start with the fact that you have everything because you have Christ.

Nothing is missing. And the means of grace then are the ways that you tap into that tremendous treasure. We're doing a series on Complete in Christ, taken from Colossians 1 and 2.

You don't want to miss this. And to help you along with it, we have a study guide titled Complete in Christ, 250 pages of in-depth study, gives an outline of every message, detailed explanation of how to understand and apply the truths we're teaching from Colossians. So these study guides are perfect for your use at home or for a Bible study or a class. Many of you received this study guide titled Complete in Christ a few weeks back, and you've been using it along with the series.

But for those of you who didn't get that, we have some available. And you'll find it a tremendous, tremendous resource and asset, a bit of a discount by the way, if you purchase 10 or more, which you might want to do for your family or Bible study. Yes, and friend, this is a great resource to use while listening to these lessons again. And it's excellent for studying the book of Colossians with your small group. So to order the brand new Complete in Christ study guide, get in touch today.

Our number here is 855grace, or you can shop at our website, gty.org. The Complete in Christ study guide costs $10.50 and shipping is free. Again, to order the Complete in Christ study guide for yourself or for your home Bible study, call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Now just a reminder about the difference you help make in people's lives when you support Grace To You financially. We recently got a letter from a listener named Molly. She told us how our Bible teaching has helped her distinguish biblical truth from error.

She left the false church she'd been trapped in for years, and now she finally enjoys the assurance of salvation. And friend, when you support Grace To You, you help people like Molly all over the world. To partner with us, go to gty.org. One more time, that's our website, gty.org, or call us at 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for starting your week off with Grace To You and join us tomorrow when John continues his look at why every believer is complete in Christ. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.