Complete In Him

For three weeks we have been climbing. The supremacy of Christ. The fullness of God in Him. Christ in you, the hope of glory. This week Paul takes everything he has built and swings it like an axe. Here he names the lie out loud and cuts it down.

Philosophy and empty deceit. Human tradition. The rules. The rituals. The higher experiences. Against every one of them Paul lays down a single reality. In Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in Him. Five days this week we lay the ladder down and learn to rest in a completeness we could never earn.

Walk the Way You Received Him

Here is the thesis of the whole chapter in one sentence. As you received Him, so walk in Him. How did you receive Christ? By grace. Through faith. Not by earning, not by climbing, not by rules. Then walk the same way you started. You began at the root, so keep drawing from the root.

Paul stacks two pictures. A tree sinking its roots down into Christ, and a house being raised up on Christ. The ground and the foundation are the same Person. And the fruit of that rooted life is thanksgiving. A person rooted in Christ overflows with gratitude. A person still earning it lives in anxiety.

The Greek word rhizoō (ῥιζόω) means to sink roots down and take hold, a settled and permanent planting, not a pot you keep moving. Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17 already told you a fruitful life comes from roots sunk into the stream, not from striving harder in the sun. Paul just names the stream. His name is Jesus. The tree does not make the soil. It draws from it.

You Cannot Add to Full

Do not let anyone take you captive. The word is the word for kidnapping. False teaching does not just disagree with you. It steals you, carries you off from Christ with smooth words. And here is the wall Paul builds. In Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in Him.

The pull is always Jesus plus. Jesus and the discipline. Jesus and the experience. Jesus and the level you have not reached. Paul answers with one truth that ends it. There is nothing above Christ to reach and nothing missing in you to add. All of God lives in Him, and you are full in Him.

The Greek word plēroō (πληρόω) means to fill completely, to make full to the brim. The same fullness that lives in Christ has been poured into you. You are not almost complete. You are not one rule, one experience, one rung away. You have been filled in Him. You cannot add to full.

The Debt Canceled, the Powers Disarmed

Watch what God already did. You were dead in your trespasses, and He made you alive together with Christ and forgave you all of them. Then the picture that should undo you. He canceled the record of debt and nailed it to the cross. Your signed confession of guilt was driven through with the same nails that held Jesus, and the curse that belonged on your record fell on Him instead.

Then the powers. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them. In the Roman world the conqueror marched his defeated enemy in chains through the streets for the whole city to see. The cross looked like Jesus losing. It was the parade where every power that accused you was marched through the streets in defeat. God did not lower the bill. He paid it.

The Greek word cheirographon (χειρόγραφον) means a handwritten note signed by the debtor in his own hand, the ancient IOU. Your record had every sin on it, in your own handwriting. God did not tear it up quietly. He nailed it to the cross of His Son. When you read your old sins back to yourself at night, hear verse fourteen. It is canceled. Leave it there.

Hold Fast to the Head

Do not let anyone pass judgment on you over food and festivals and Sabbaths, because those were a shadow, and the substance is Christ. A shadow is only proof that a body is standing in the light. Passover pointed to the Lamb, and the Lamb is Christ. Every Sabbath was a rehearsal for the rest you now have in Him. The One every holy day pointed to is already in the room. Why go back and marry the shadow?

And here is the disease under all of it. The false teachers were not holding fast to the Head. The problem was never too few rules. They had too many. The problem was they let go of Jesus to grab something else. The body grows only from the Head. You do not grow by gripping rules. You grow by gripping Christ.

The Greek word krateō (κρατέω) means to grip, to cling, to hold on for your life. Not holding fast to the Head is the whole failure in one word. Let go of the Head and every rule in the world cannot grow you an inch. Grip Christ, hold Him for your life, and He grows you Himself, nourished and knit together, with a growth that is from God.

You Died to the Rules

If with Christ you died, why are you still taking orders from the rules? Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch. A dead man does not flinch when his old master shouts. Those rules had authority over the old you, and the old you is in the grave. Do not climb back into the cell you were carried out of.

And do not think Colossae is far away. We build the same cages with newer bars. Jesus and my quiet time streak. Jesus and never missing a Sunday. Jesus and my discipline. The moment your peace with God rests on the streak instead of the Savior, the discipline has become a cage. And the cage cannot even kill the sin. Only union with the risen Christ puts sin to death. So stop reinforcing the bars, and hold the Head.

The Greek word ethelothrēskia (ἐθελοθρησκία) means self-made religion, will-worship, devotion a person invents and then hands to God. These rules have an appearance of wisdom. They look holy, serious, disciplined. But they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. The rule looks like a cathedral. It is a cage. And a decorated cage is still a cage.