NOW THE APPLICATION of the previous verse: “and you have come to fulness of life in him” (Col. 2:10). The Gnostics had bypassed the Incarnation saying it was beneath God’s dignity to come into matter and that you could attain fullness of life in knowing God directly and immediately, without the revelation of the Incarnation. Hence they were called the Gnostics or Knowers. Anything that attempts to bypass the Incarnation perishes, as Gnosticism, and as the Unitarianism, which tries to bypass Jesus, is now doing.
We come to fullness of life in Jesus Christ or we don’t come to fullness of life. Apart from Jesus we know little or nothing about God, and what we do know is wrong. He is life, and apart from life we cannot and do not come to fullness of life.
There are those who in the interests of universality take Christ and something else, to piece Him out. The attempt to piece Him out by adding other ways reduces the universality, for He is the Universal. “In him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). To be in Him is to be in everything that is of reality in the universe. The more Christian you are, the more universal you are. A Jewish shop girl said, “It is good to see a real Christian—they are so gracious and kindly. All I’ve seen have been Christmas shoppers.”
“And you have come to fulness of life in him”—fullness of life for mind, spirit, and body. There is a renewing of the mind, a unifying of the spirit, and not only a face lifting but a total body lifting—a rejuvenation. You will have the best mind, the best spirit, and the best body you are capable of having if you live wholly in Him, all the time, with all you have. Live wholly in Him and you live wholly. It is as simple as that—and as profound! “All great discoveries are a reduction from complexity to simplicity.” This is the greatest discovery of living: live fully in Him and you come to fullness of life.
O Jesus, my Lord and my life, I bring everything to Thee to be transformed from existence to life. In Thee everything lives and out of Thee everything perishes. I see and know the secret. Help me to act on it, beginning now. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Fullness of life in him; emptiness of life outside of Him—this is the verdict of all life.
