Complete in Christ

For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete. Colossians 2:9-10

In Jesus, the entirety and fullness of the divine reality, the mystery of what we name “God”, is made tangible and relatable. This is the central claim of Christianity. The mysterious and seemingly inscrutable nature of the divine is now human and sensible to us.

We may be astounded to discover that the divine, which seems so remote and strange, dwells in our human reality, as a man in a time and place, experiencing life just like we do. That was Paul’s first revolutionary claim in this text. He had become convinced that Jesus was the Christ of God.

But a second remarkable claim in this sentence is that in Jesus ”you have been made complete.” The word he uses, that is translated “complete” here, is another form of the same word he used which was translated “fullness” previously. The parallel is intentional but may be missed in some English translations.

For Paul, the truth is that the fullness of the divine was present in a normal human being, Jesus, and in him we have been made to have fullness as well. Jesus is completely divine and we have been brought to completeness through him, to share in his divinity within our humanity. Dare we believe this? Is this really the central claim of Christianity about the work of Jesus?

No wonder in this letter Paul is telling these believers that they don’t need to listen to anyone who instructs them about additional things they need to do or believe! They are lacking nothing! The extraordinary and unbelievable work of God’s mercy is that God brings us into a union with himself like that which we see in Jesus. Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the one in whom we begin and in whom we end.

What we know by experience, however, is that between that beginning and end is a journey, which inevitably involves going away from what we did not realize is our true home. We experience ourselves as being separated, not united to God. We may find it hard to believe that we have been brought into the fullness of Jesus through him.

This is why the Colossians might think there is more they need to do or believe, that they are not yet “complete in Christ.” Much of the time we are not perceiving the truth and reality of who we are in Christ. Fullness or completeness, in the terms that that can be applied to Jesus, seems like a myth because that is not where we seem to be.

Though our journey is away from our home, it is also back again. We stray in ways that miss the mark of God’s glory, that is, which are sinful. But our true destiny is to return to the One who made us.

Under God’s loving guidance, we do return because we are drawn to Christ from our self-imposed exile. The journey has been necessary in certain ways, and we became wiser through it all, having grown through our own particular experiences. All this occurs under God’s loving help.