“And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.” – Colossians 2:10 (kjv)
The Christian life is a life of complete faith in God. We receive new life when we believe in the Son of God. Something great happens at the point of salvation. Jesus comes into our lives, complete and whole. He comes in with everything He is and everything He has. He lives in us with all the fullness of the Father and the Spirit (John 3:34; Colossians 2:9). Believing in Jesus brings us into this fullness.
Now here is the point: Christ is complete in us, and we know it is true. But are we truly complete in Him? The Scripture says we are complete in Him, but how many believers know it or experience it daily? The Bible doesn’t mention this truth just for the sake of information. This is the truth we are expected to experience everyday. If we are yet to experience our completeness in Christ, then we must have been believing wrongly or doing something that robs us of this experience.
What does it mean to be complete in Him according to the Scripture? Can we practically become complete in Christ? How do we become complete in Him?
To be “complete in Him” means we fully live like Him. It is to allow all His manifestations to show forth in us. It means to permit the things that make Jesus who He is to shine out in our lives. To get the true picture of what Galatians 2:10 means, let’s explain the other verses before it.
Colossians 2:6-13 (kjv)
[6] As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
[7] Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
[8] Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
[9] For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
[10] And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:
1. As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
When we received Christ, He came in complete and without any limitations. It’s sad how some believers claim to have Jesus and still feel weak and unable to live in daily victory. Jesus Christ in us is the same Jesus Christ who lived, died and resurrected. He is the same sinless, anointed and the greatest man who ever lived. He is the Son or God and Savior of the world. It is this same Jesus whom demons feared and flee from. He lives in us today.
The Bible encourages us to walk in the knowledge of whom we know Him to be. If the Jesus of the Bible is in us, He will continue to live a holy life and do wonderful works. If we truly received Him into our lives, we adjust our lives in a way that allows His nature and power to show forth through us. What we know as living right is merely the conscious efforts on our part to align with the nature and life of Christ in us. It is this perfect alignment that makes us complete in Christ. Why? Because we would have fully surrendered all areas of our lives for Christ to manifest Himself.
2. Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.
Now that we know that the Christian life is all about receiving the gift of Christ and making way for His nature, life and power to manifest fully in us and through us, what next? The next part is to willingly make His life our life, His words our words and His work our work. We no longer see God’s will as something different from ours or His demands as something difficult to meet. When we no longer struggle with adjusting, obeying, accommodating and following the life of Christ in us, we grow deeper, stronger, rooted and built up in Him.
Another important aspect we must never ignore is thanksgiving. Being grateful indicates two things: one, we show God how happy we are for making it easy for us to have eternal life just by trusting in Christ. Two, gratitude makes us show our faith in what we received. When we show gratitude, we confess that we are grateful for what we have received from God. In other words, it is a way to make confessions of faith.
For instance, when you are grateful for the life and nature of christ in you, you say something like this: “Father, I thank you for giving me the gift of your Son. I have Jesus Christ living in me. I know He is living in me. Right now, His life is my life and His nature is my nature. I am filled with the same Spirit and anointing that Jesus had while on earth. Thank you for this overflowing grace.”
Do you see how your prayer of gratitude is a biblical confession of faith? Sometimes, we need to find time to pray gratitude prayers for an hour. You will discover that you are making all kinds of prayer through your gratitude. You will notice that you are increasing the presence and power of Christ in you, glorifying God and even preparing yourself for a lifetime of fruitful service to God and His people.
3. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
The gospel does not flow in the same direction as human thought. People often think that they need to pay for everything. They also expect some form of punishment for being naturally bad and unbelieving. The gospel is good news, the good news that God forgave us without any payment from us. God also gave us the life of His Son. Jesus lives in us, and we draw eternal life from Him.
Eternal life has two dimensions. One, it is the name we call the life of God. The Creator Himself has neither a beginner nor an end. He lives forever! A life that has no end by death or darkness is eternal in nature. Two, the life we received through Christ has come to stay. It is a life that works and is inexhaustible. It is eternal! We are not supposed to run out of faith, patience and love. We should never say we cannot continue to forgive or put up with unpleasant people. We cannot get tired of praying, studying the Bible and doing good works. Why? Because the life we have doesn’t finish; it is eternal.
This is why we don’t follow the principles of the world. The world doesn’t forgive. It is a cruel place. You must pay for the food you eat, the water you drink and the house you live in. But it is different with Christ and the good news of the grace of God. We don’t pay for salvation or any other work of grace. We only need to trust in the Son of God in us. This is exactly why the Bible is so sure that we have overcome the world because the One in us is greater than the one in the world (1 John 4:4).
4. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
This verse points to the fact that Jesus Christ is God. The Bible cannot give the glory that belongs to God to a mortal (Isaiah 42:8). Only God can be called God, and only God is fully God. If the fullness of God is in Jesus, then it is right to say that Jesus is fully God. The Father is with Him and in Him (John 8:29). Even John the Baptist confirmed it (John 3:34).
It is wondeful to know that Jesus has the fullness of God, and He lives in us. We are not just “repenters” and “confessors”; we have the One who is filled with all the fullness of the Godhead bodily living on the inside of us.
5. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:
We are complete in Christ who is also complete God. We have the presence of the One who is greater than the one in the world. Principalities and powers have no power over us because Christ is greater than them all. That same Christ is living in us and we have Hm in us and with us. The world doesn’t understand the power of God’s grace, but we do. The world wants to pay for everything, but we know that no one can buy God’s gift with money.
We know we have the real Jesus in us. We know we received Him exactly as the Bible presented Him. He is complete in us – His nature, life, power, wisdom, knowledge, anointing, and grace are with Him in us. There is nothing about Jesus that is left out in the Jesus in us. We have Him in His fullness.
Now how do we walk in the completeness of Christ in us? When the Bible says we are complete in Him it is telling us who we are, what we have and what we can do through Christ. Some believers are already growing and becoming complete. Others still need to catch up with the truth of this scripture. The more we surrender our entire life to the reign of Christ, the more complete we become. If we withhold some parts of our lives from Him, we begin to grow incomplete. We must understand that it is not our works that qualify us before God; it is the finished work of Christ. Any work we do that is not packaged in the wraps of Christ is unacceptable.
We are not doing anything outside what Christ did. Whatever repentance, sacrifice and surrender we do daily are merely to give God room to reign in our lives. It is to allow Jesus take over and use us to change the world around us. We are trying to be like Him by living like Him. Once we live like Him in any area of our lives, He fills that area. In this way, we grow and come close to being complete. The more we surrender, the more complete we become. That is how we become complete in Him according to the Bible.