Part 4: In Christ We are COMPLETE / Colossians 2:6-23

Discover the life-changing truth of who Jesus is and what it means to belong to Him. Through Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we’ll see how our identity, purpose, relationships, and mission are transformed as we learn to live fully in Him.

This week we see IN CHRIST we are COMPLETE

Transcript

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Growing up when I was off school in the summers, I loved watching game shows on TV. I was a game show junkie, and I don't know of where you grew up, what country you came from, but if that was not part of your experience seeing game shows on TV, you missed something. I love them. And in the States, eventually they had this thing called the Game Show Network, where all they showed was game shows all day. And things like Price is Right, Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune. But I had one game show I really enjoyed watching, and it was called Let's Make a Deal. These people would show up, and Week Martindale, who was the host, would come out and he would grab somebody from the audience, stand them up, and say, I'll trade you money in my pocket for what you have. And it would begin this bartering back and forth, back and forth, choosing this, choosing that. And it would always come down to the final moment where they would have to take what's in their hand and keep it or trade it for what's behind door number one or door number two. They didn't know. They had to choose. And I remember sitting there as a kid going, Come on, make the right choice. And I nobody knew. Nobody knew I was back there. And they had everything. Sometimes it was a car. I remember one time there was a goat behind there, a cardboard box and trash or, you know, whatever grand prize they had that time. And I would cheer for them like it was my family there, this tension that this show created of being able to make the right choice. And here's what I've realized as I've gotten older. A lot of us actually live our lives as if they work the same way. We treat it as a choice between two doors. That maybe we don't know what's behind. God's view of the world or the world's way, Christ's way or my way. But I want you to hear tonight our life is not a game show. We actually do know what's behind those doors. Scripture has already spoken to us about that. One door leads to incompleteness, pressure, and a life that never quite fills whole, and the other door is Christ Himself, fullness, forgiveness, and freedom. And yet somehow, sometimes in our life, we still get drawn toward that door that has the trash can behind it, or the goat behind it, the worthless thing behind it. We still hesitate in front of the better door, the best door, even when we know it's there. And this is exactly what Paul is going to challenge us tonight in Colossians 2 as we continue this series called In Christ. We've been discovering in the first few weeks that in Christ we were rescued from our sin. We were pulled out of a place that we could not save ourselves. Then we were reconciled in Christ. We were made complete. We were put back into right relationship with our Creator. And then last week we looked at the idea that we were rescued and reconciled for a purpose, and it was to be servants, to serve others, to live a life that pours into others. And today we're going to see the next step in this journey, and it's this idea that in Christ we are also complete. We're complete. We have been given all that we need. We have been made whole. Not just brought into relationship with God, not just made to be set aside as servants, but we have been put together whole, complete. There's nothing left to do. There's no work of salvation that's left in our hands. But completeness is not just this theological idea of like one day in heaven everything will be right. It actually changes the way we see ourselves. Most of us carry around a picture of who we were that's been shaped by a lot of different voices. What the world says we should become, what religion, what others, and even what our own internal processing say we should be instead of what the gospel tells us we should be. But Paul's going to give us a different picture, and it's the big idea that I want us to hold on to this week, and it's this. When we walk by faith in Christ, we begin to see a complete picture of ourselves. One that is bigger than the world, bigger than religion, bigger than culture, and even what our own hearts tell us. I have this app on my phone called Time Hop, and it goes back and it grabs all the pictures from this day in my life that are on Instagram, Facebook, in my pictures, wherever I have them saved, and it pulls it and says, This was your day two years ago, five years ago, 15 years ago. It's fun. I enjoy it. But sometimes I look at the pictures that it pulls up and I'm like, oh my, what was I thinking? Well, I actually wore that. I actually thought that was a good way to step out into the world. And I remember in that moment, I did. Like I had, I would, this was an amazing outfit. I had whatever it was, or choices that I was making that day. And I look back sometimes and go, man, what was I thinking? And I'm sure in five years I'll look back at pictures today and go, what was I thinking? And what we do sometimes in our lives are we have these snapshots that we will hear from other people that the world has put into us, and we think that's who we are. And it maybe is who we were, but in Christ we have become new creations. He shaped us, formed us, made us complete. And this is where we're gonna look at today. We're gonna actually look at different lenses that we can see ourselves through and why we should not choose door number one and instead choose door number two. Not this lens to look at our lives, but this lens. So let's start with Colossians 2, 6 and 7, and we're gonna see how these play out. It says, Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Paul begins this section by putting two different approaches to life side by side. And it's this idea of the world's view or the gospel view. And the worldview tells us this: that we must prove ourselves. Work harder, improve yourself, become enough, keep climbing until you finally feel whole. Your value and your completeness are something you have to earn and maintain. But the gospel view that he lays out here is that we are to establish ourselves in Christ and who Christ created us to be. Not your performance, not your progress in him. And Paul uses these four connected pictures, walking rooted, built up, and established in him to help us understand this. He says, be rooted in Christ, which means your ultimate identity. It's who you are in him, in Christ. It's where we find our nourishment is being rooted in him. This comes from being joined together with him. Roots go down into the soil to find the rich nourishment, to grow, to bloom. And this comes from being rooted in Christ. Finding your ultimate identity in Christ. That's what the gospel teaches us. Not in the world's view of success, but in the roots of who we are in Christ. Then it says, be established, right? Established means that you have settled into that foundation. That you are, it doesn't shift with whatever comes that day. Paul says, be established in the faith, and he's talking about the stability that comes from trusting what is already true about you, that you are a child of God. Created by him, known by him, loved by him, and then built up. It's tough to build something on an unstable foundation. I think a week or two ago there was a alarm that went off at one of the buildings here in Monaco that it had shifted a little bit. I would not want to be living in a high-rise apartment that shifted. When we lived in New York, there was a building they built, one of the tallest new skyscrapers there, and it was built to at the very top where it could sway 14 feet either direction in the wind. I don't know how much that cost. If I had that money, I wouldn't buy it. I wouldn't want to be moving like that 14 feet up in the air. But a foundation being established so you can a strong foundation to build your life upon. That's what Paul is talking about here. And when we do that, when we're built up, we're establishing him, we can begin to walk, to walk forward in our life, to walk with purpose. And a lot of times when we look at the worldview, we always feel behind. I've not done enough, I've not accomplished enough, I'm not haven't leveled up to the next level where in Christ we are already established. You're established in Christ. Nothing to prove. You're his. You're rooted in him. And that's a beautiful thought to hold on to. It's a different way of looking at life. And it brings us to the key idea. The world says work harder to become whole, but the gospel says walk with Jesus in complete surrender. In complete surrender. That's where peace comes from. Not in running ahead, not in building more, doing more, but in walking rooted, building up, established, and walking with Christ. Stop trying to prove you're enough. Practice living from the truth that in Christ you already are. But even this, we have to be careful. Because even with this good practice, learning to live what is already true in Christ can slowly turn into another form of just religion if we're not watchful. We can take what it means to walk in him and turn it into a new to-do list, a new way of measuring ourselves, a new ladder to climb. What began as a relationship quickly becomes a performance again. And this is why Paul doesn't stop with this call just to be rooted and established in Christ and the view of the world and the view of the gospel. Some of us hear this and think, well, isn't religion a bad thing? Isn't Christianity a religion? Aren't we just talking about different sets of beliefs and practices? And that's an honest question. And Paul anticipates it here because the next pressure the Colossians were facing that he was dealing with wasn't coming from the wider world itself. It was coming from the religious voices that claim to offer new, deeper, more impactful ways to God than Christ. And this is what he talks about in the next few verses in 8 through 10 when he says this. And we again here see two different points of view on life: the religion view and the gospel view. The religion view ultimately says you have to earn your salvation. Do the right things, keep the right practices, follow the right system, climb the ladder toward God. And if you work hard enough at the religious life, you'll finally reach Him and be complete. But the gospel tells us something completely different. Receive salvation. Receive it. God has already come to you in Christ. Fullness is not something you climb toward, it is something that has been given to us as we've joined with Him. Paul uses strong language here to push back on the religious culture. He says that it takes you captive, ensnares you. That word means to be carried off, taken over, taken away. And religious systems often promise freedom, but they end up slowly taking control of our heart and creating systems of control rather than freedom. He also calls them empty deceit based on human tradition, not godly wisdom. He says they look full of wisdom. They look good on the outside, but inside they're empty. And the contrast Paul draws as stunning. While religion offers captivity, emptiness, and human tradition, he says the gospel that in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, and you and I have been filled by this, by him. You're not climbing toward fullness. You're not, you have been filled. Because of the fullness of God lives in Christ, and you are in Christ, you have full access to God. There's not a hurdle to get over. When we have accepted Christ, when we have received salvation, there is a clear path between us and God now. There's not more hurdles, there's not more obstacles, there's not another mountain to climb that we have to get through. We actually get this cleared out pathway to God because of the full work of Christ. And this is the key idea. Religion tries to climb its way to God, but the gospel is God coming down to us in Christ. Him paving the way, Him clearing the path. Him making the way straight for us. So we have to stop treating the Christian life like it's a ladder, a competition, and instead practice receiving what God has already given you in Christ. Imagine it like this: if you at Christmas or a birthday, somebody gives you a gift. Beautifully wrapped. You don't know what's inside, but you know it was handpicked for you, it was given to you, chosen for you, and it's going to add value when you open it. But instead of receiving it, you set it aside and say, I'm not gonna open this until I've earned it. Until I prove that I am worthy of this gift. And you set it aside and let it sit there and dust collect on it because you're still waiting for the day when you feel like you have become worthy of this. And you never open that gift. Never let it begin to add value to your life to do it. We would not do that. Somebody gives us a gift on our birthday or our Christmas because they love us, because of grace. And we open it, we take it, we receive it. And this is what we sometimes do with God's gift of salvation when we keep it in this religious format, is we treat it like this gift that I can't open it yet until I earn it. And we've got to stop treating it like something we have to earn. But there's another pressure here that follows right behind this empty religion, and it's one we as a world fall into. If religion tries to climb up to God through human effort and tradition, culture tends to take the next step, and it then elevates man himself to the central point. This is the different from the broader worldview we looked at earlier. The worldview says you have to prove yourself, but a culture is more specific, more personal. Every culture has its own uniqueness, it's shaped by tradition, history, shared values, and they can even shift over time. But underneath those differences, most cultures share a common direction and they become man-centric. They quietly place human achievement, human identity, human opinion, and human progress at its center. And if we're honest, this is often where empty religion eventually leads. When a system cannot actually deliver fullness, the focus slowly turns from reaching God to elevating ourselves and making ourselves look worthy. And Paul addresses this in the next few verses in 13 through 15. And he says, This, and you who were dead in your trespasses, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross with Christ. These next two lenses we look at are the cultural view and the gospel view. And the cultural view says that we must overcome guilt. We shouldn't be guilty. We have to deal with our guilt. We have to manage it, minimize it, rise above it, prove that you're better than your failures, cover your own sense of debt, make you look better than the person beside you through achievement, image, self-acceptance, progress, whatever label you want to put on it. And when we feel like we have to overcome our guilt, you know what it's often easier to do is not turn ourselves better, but to push the other people around us down. To push our guilt on to them. To push them down to make myself look higher. And this is what culture often teaches us when we live in a man-centric culture, woman-centric culture is that we must have our head the highest above everyone else. But the gospel says again something completely different. It says, embrace grace. Embrace grace. You don't overcome your debt by becoming impressive enough by standing head and shoulders above everybody else. Paul begins with a very hard truth for us. He says, You were dead. What worth is a dead person? Zero. Not you were sick, you were lame, you could at least feed yourself. No, you are dead. Worthless. A dead person has no power to improve themselves, to elevate themselves, to overcome anything. There is no value or potential left in a corpse that can fix its own condition. This single statement undercuts the entire man-centric approach to culture. If we are spiritually dead, then elevating ourselves was never a real option. But then comes the miracle. He says God made us alive together with Him. We were not improved, we were made alive. New life was given to us through Christ. And he says he did this by forgiving our trespasses, canceling the record of debt that stood against us. He did not reduce it, he put it away. He didn't put us on a payment plan. And this is why the gospel can set people free in a way that culture never can. I can make myself look better and feel better, but I'm still dead without Christ. But grace gives me life, gives me newness, gives me put together again in a new way to walk in freedom. And the key idea we hold on to here is while this culture keeps score and uses shame to control, the gospel cancels the record completely and sets people free. What a beautiful truth to hold on to. That you and I we don't wake up every day behind. We don't have to get ahead today because we fell behind yesterday with God. Stop trying to overcome your guilt by elevating yourself. Practice resting in the grace that has already canceled the record. So we've looked at this view of the world view versus the gospel, and then how that can turn into when we look to religion, how it can even become captivating and captive to us and pull us away. And then when that doesn't work, we look to a cultural answer of elevating ourselves above others so that we can prove who we are and finding our identity in that. And even if we stop doing all those things, there's still another voice that's sometimes tough to overcome. And it's our own voice. We struggle to stop looking at ourselves through our own eyes. And those eyes often challenge the reality of grace in our life. Somehow, deep down we still wonder if grace is really true. And if it is true, is it true for me? Or is God, now that he's given me something, is he gonna come one day calling for me, wanting repayment for all that he's done? And as long as we keep looking over our shoulder, waiting for God to collect a debt we think we still owe, we will never really live free. We may understand the gospel in our minds, but we will still carry the quiet weight of obligation in our hearts. And that's why Paul finally turns to this personal pressure that we put on ourselves, and he shows us that the gospel doesn't leave us half forgiven and still in debt in Christ. We have full liberty. Look at uh 16 through 23. These are condensed uh for us to grab the truths out of, but this is what it teaches us. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you. These are a shadow, talking about different things that we use to try to create meaning. These are the shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom, but they are no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. He's talking about here things we do to make ourselves feel valuable. And he brings us to this truth of self versus gospel. And our self-view tells us that we have an obligation to repay. Even after receiving grace, something still whispers in your mind, you owe God for this. You need to make it up to him. Prove yourself to him. Let him know how much you appreciate it, or he'll take it away. We live under a quiet sense of a remaining debt. Grace, something completely different. It's the obligation to live free. To live free. Not free to do whatever you want, but free to live as people whose debt has actually been canceled. That our sin is no longer defining us. That we walk in freedom. Paul starts here, he says, let no one pass judgment on you. That can include the culture, the world, religious voices around us. But it also includes your voice. You don't get to pass judgment on yourself. Your voice is not more powerful than God's. You are not to let even your own hearts keep scoring us by old standards, old failures, old systems of measuring worth. The old ways of evaluating ourselves, it says, are a shadow of how we're supposed to live. They're not the real thing. The true substance, he says, is in Christ. The real life, the real maturity, the real relationship with God is found in him. And then Paul puts it bluntly: all these other things are of no value. Everything you try to repay God, they're of no value. Look at my good works. I pray every day. I read my Bible. I come to church, I give, I do that. All those are good things. I'm not telling you to stop doing them, but when we do it to try to, as a repayment to God, they're of no value. They're value to us as believers, they're value to us to grow in our faith. But they don't pay God back for his grace. Can I tell you something about grace? If it needs to be repaid, it's not grace. It's not if it's got to be repaid, it's not grace. And if you're mine, you still think you owe God for forgiving you and for loving you. You're missing out on the power of grace. And the key idea is simply this personal perspective says I still owe God something for his grace. But the gospel says I have full liberty in Christ. And that's more than just freedom. What's the difference between freedom and liberty? Freedom often means that we are no longer under restriction. Like I'm not in the cage of death anymore. I've been brought to life, but liberty means I get to walk in it. I get to walk in my freedom. I get to live it out. I get to experience it. I get to most importantly share it with others. And that's that principle. We have to stop living as if you still owe God a debt and instead practice walking in full liberty with Christ through this world. We've looked at our lives through four different lenses: world, religion, culture, and even our own hearts. Each one offers a version of how to become complete, how to deal with guilt, how to relate to God, and each one in its own way still leaves us carrying the weight. Paul's burden in this part of chapter two is to lift our eyes to a better and more complete picture that we find in Christ. This is not a game show, as I mentioned. We know that is behind both doors. We've seen it clearly in front of us. Paul has painted the picture. One leads to that endless striving, religious climbing, cultural scorekeeping, and a quiet fear we still owe something. But Christ, through that other door, will find fullness, forgiveness, freedom, and liberty. Which brings us to the question of the day today. As we close, what lens are you using to look at your life through? What lens? If you step back for a minute and go, when I wake up in the morning, do I still feel guilty? Do I feel like I have to prove myself, have to earn something today? I'm not talking about how we work and how we go about life when some of life's struggles, but ultimately in my base core identity as I stand before God. Do I feel I owe and I have to earn? Or do I feel freedom and liberty? What lens? I was actually on a game show once when I was in high school. It was called Hi Q. It was a quiz show where high schoolers from different places in our, when we grew up in the States, would come together and compete in a game show of knowledge and understanding about school subjects, general knowledge, science, math. It wasn't a game of chance. It was a game of choice. We had to offer the right one, a game of knowing the right answer and actually speaking the truth. We won, I'll give you that. But we actually won that day. But the truth is this. We may have known the right answers. But there came a point where you actually had to hit the buzzer and speak it. And put it out there and actually begin to live it, to let it become truth. Many of us, maybe as we're listening today, you realize that you've maybe known some of these answers. You've walked around the Bible before, you've been in spiritual circles, but you've never hit that button and said, that's what I want. I actually want freedom. Living in Christ, I know what the gospel is. I know Jesus, that God came to this earth in the form of Jesus, lived a perfect life, went to the cross for my sins, died, rose on the third day, and now offers me the Spirit of God to live within me. But I haven't actually chosen it. I know it, but I haven't put it into practice. Today's the day you can do that. Wherever you are in your faith journey, if you're investigating God, if you think you've known him, but tonight you realize, you know what, I've never stepped fully into grace. It's an easy moment to do that. Just to call out to God and say, God, I need you, and I have nothing to offer. I need your grace. Will you pray with me?