The Savior is complete. His work is complete. The question now is, how does/did this work come to have the effect on those who believe in Christ that they are complete? In other words, how do we come to be “in Christ”?
Before we speak of what Christ does, we need to see that the key for those who are “complete in Him” is their faith. In Col. 1:22-23 we see that God will present us holy, blameless and above reproach in His sight if you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven. Paul has already acknowledged that these people in Colossae are believers in Christ (1:4-8). But as he says it in 2:6-7, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith. Some of them were tempted to add something to the work of Christ. Paul is saying “no!” You need to continue, growing, becoming more and more solid in your faith in Christ. To grow in faith is not adding something to Christ or His work; faith is not a good work but an empty hand receiving. To grow in faith is to see that faith in the all-preeminent Christ applied to more and more of your life. If we buy into the idea that Christ did His work and now my work must be added to it, we are no longer living by faith.
I hope you are seeing this clearly, because it is one of the greatest, liberating truths for Christians. The same Christ of the gospel who saved us the day we first believed, is the Christ of the gospel in which we walk day by day.
Christ’s work IN the believer, Col. 2:11-13.
Christ’s work “in” the believer is given to us with two pictures: circumcision and baptism. Clearly, these are spiritual works. The circumcision is “made without hands.” The baptism is a picture of our death, burial and resurrection with Christ. We were not on the cross, in the tomb, and raised with Christ around 30AD while we were visiting Jerusalem. Even The Twelve could not say that and they were really there. No, our baptism is real and spiritual.
Just as the foreskin is cut away in physical circumcision, so in spiritual circumcision there is a putting off the body of the sins of the flesh (NKJV; I realize the NU omits “of the sins.”) From birth our physical body carried the sinful nature. Throughout our lives our body was used to carry out the sinful passions that come from that nature. God called on Israel to circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer (Dt. 10:16). Stephen preached to the Jews, You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you (Ac. 7:51). This spiritual circumcision has to do with cutting away sin. But under the law Israel could never do this. So God promised, the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live (Deut. 30:6). In Christ this promise was fulfilled.
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