Complete in Him

complete in Him

“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.

For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:” Colossians 2:9-10

There are a few words in this passage that I am going to define from the dictionary.

Spoil means to damage, destroy, or ruin something in a way to make it unfit for use. If food begins to or is spoiled, it has gone bad and is unfit for consumption. It has been corrupted.

Rudiments are a fundamental principle or skill, especially in a field of learning. If someone knows the letters of the alphabet, then they know the “rudiments” of reading. “Rudiments of the world” means having the knowledge of the world, put simply.

Complete means to make whole or entire. If a puzzle is complete, there are no more pieces that need to or can be added because it is finished, it is done. If a person completes a marathon, they have run the entire 26 miles. They don’t have to run anymore, because they have finished, or “completed” the entire race.

Don’t let the teachings of the world come and push out the teachings of Christ. There is nothing that you can learn about the world that is more important than what you can learn in the Bible.

I would say that the “theory” of evolution is a rudiment of the world. It is how the world wants to believe that the world was created. Because they choose to reject the fact that there is a God, they need to come up with a story of how the universe came to existence, while Christians believe the accounts in the book of Genesis.

We don’t need to know the entire periodic table of elements. We don’t need to know each event that happened in every century. All the things and knowledge that you could ever acquire about the world cannot compare in value to knowing the love that Christ has for us. The grace and forgiveness that He offers is worth more than all the knowledge that can be learned.

“And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” Ephesians 3:19

There are some people who just seek continually after worldly knowledge. They are constantly reading, studying, and searching, trying to increase in the knowledge of the world. If they would only put that much effort into studying God’s word. The knowledge of the world will only profit a person for the short while they are on Earth, but the knowledge of God will last forever.

“And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” 1 John 2:17

There were some people in one of the churches that were trying to get others to go back into the Jewish Law. But Paul explained to them that whether a person was circumcised or not didn’t matter anymore. That was a part of the Old Testament-Judaic law. They were set free from the bondage of the Law, and were made free by the blood of Christ. Instead of having to observe special feast days, and trying to do everything in the Law, he told them how Jesus came to make it easy for us. No longer were they under the Law, but under grace.

We are complete in Christ. Someone could not know anything more than how to read, and know everything that they need to know because they know God’s word. 

Someone could have everything that they own taken away from them, but there is something that no one can take, and that is the knowledge of the love of Christ. We are complete in Him.

In Christ,

Andrew