Complete in Christ
“Ye are complete IN HiM.” — Col. ii. lo.
0 comprehend fully the bearing of the Apostle’s monogram in connection with these words, we require to advert to the circumstances in which the Epistle from which they are taken was written, and the peculiar phase of erroneous doctrine that Epistle was designed to counteract and condemn. The meaning of the writer can hardly be understood and appreciated without somewhat of a departure from the practical treatment of the themes of this Volume. It will require more than a passing and casual allusion to those strange phenomena of religious thought current during Paul’s lifetime and ministry. What was better known and more fully developed in a subsequent age as Gnosticism, with its pernicious leaven, was already at work with special activity in the Church of Colosse and the group of sister Churches in Asia Minor. It is difficult, in a few words, to state what the scope and nature really was of this outgrowth of Oriental mysticism. It was of a curiously complex character; compounded of dreamy speculation, rigid asceticism, and arrogant exclusiveness. Its fundamental tenet was the impossibility of reconciling the character of a holy, righteous, and loving God, with the existence of evil in the worid. In order, therelore, to sever the Supreme Deity from complicity with evil, the votaries of the system made all sin to be inherent in matter. They held that God, through His spiritual nature, could have no connection whatever with gross and corporeal things. It will be seen at a glance that the system was thus, so far, a modification or expansion of the peculiar Pagan doctrine of two principles — Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. The Divine Being, the “First Father “or” Good Principle,” they supposed to reside in a region of lofty elevation and abstraction, called the “pleroma,” or ‘’fulness of inaccessible light,” from which alone He could give forth His decrees. He had the further name of Bythos or ‘The Unfathomable,’ denoting the mystery that enshrouded Him in the ’ abyss ’ in which He dwelt. From this pleroma there issued forth, “like echoes from a sound,” emanations (peons); an intermediate race of spiritual beings, or races, occupying concentric circles in the pleroma. By means of one of these aeons, inferior to the rest (even his name is given, Demiurgus), the world was created out of pre-existing matter (Hyle) after the form of an ideal which had existed from Eternity in the mind of the Great Father. But the sluggish, inert mass from which it sprang being permeated with evil, it was brought into being without His knowledge or assent. In the hand of these aeons was placed the virtual government of the Earth, and indeed of all materialism which lay outside the ‘abyss.’ Through them alone the will of God was revealed. They were regarded as the visible embodiment of the divine attributes, Justice, Wisdom, Power, Peace, Truth, and others. We need not wonder that they became, as such, the objects of divine worship.
The doctrines of the Gnostics were esoteric; in other words, they professed that their mysteries were only capable of being understood by the initiated few,’ and were incomprehensible to the multitude. In order to be preserved from the malignant and baneful evil inherent in matter, they subjected themselves voluntarily, like the Jewish sect of Essenes which preceded and resembled them, to rigid austerities and self-mortifications. It is with very distinct allusion to their system, that reference is made in the concluding portion of the chapter following our mottoverse. In the “worshipping of angels” there was an appearance of “voluntary humility” (ver. 1 8). There was “a show of wisdom” — a counterfeit piety and devotion — in their “willworship and neglecting of the body” (ver. 23). There was even a ‘reverent religiousness’ in the effort, by their theory of a subordinate agency, to remove the responsibility of existing evil from the character and government of the Great Supreme.
But these doctrines, after all, were little else than a web of plausible and sophistical assumptions; engendering deceit and self-righteousness, and completely obscuring the glory and beauty of the Gospel * plan of salvation/
Tor in order to have a yet further adequate understanding of the Apostle’s references, we must not omit their views regarding the Person of Christ. These, like most religious errors, had, too, a semblance of truth in them, but only a semblance. He was considered to be the highest of the seons; and that, after dwelling with the Great Father in the pleroma, he was sent down to earth in order to remedy the evil existing in creation. Others amongst them appear to have held, that this delegated seon only descended. on the man Jesus at His baptism. In either case Christ was commissioned to reveal a knowledge of the true God; and thus to reclaim some higher natures among the race of men who had been led astray by the evil principle (or Demiurgus).
I need hardly add, however, that notwithstanding this apparent recognition of the divine mission of Jesus of Nazareth, there was virtually a supercession of His claims, as the One Mediator, by this throng of subordinate ones. These latter differed from the angels on the ladder of the Jewish patriarch, in that they utterly obscured the ladder itself; or rather Him whom the ladder symbolised. The atoning work of the cross was altogether left out. It was the vision of the Temple seraphim without the altar and mercy-seat.
The Apostle sets himself to vindicate the Person and work of his dear Lord against all that cumbrous system of angelic emanation — “science” (Gnosticism) “falsely so called” (i Tim. vi. 20). In the opening chapter of this Epistle to the Colossians, he depicts Him as the Eternal, Self- existent One. No mere intermediate aeon — no, nor the first of aeons — the head of these graduated ranks, “thrones and dominions and principalities and powers;” but in Him all are concentrated. “In whom dwelleth all the fulness” (pleroma) “of the Godhead bodily” (Col. ii. 9). With an absolute unchallenged control, His spiritual empire extends alike over the material and moral; the domain of matter — the domain of spirit, from its highest heights to its deepest depths; so that in His divine personality He was the only true and veritable Pleroma alike of the earlier Platonic and this later Gnostic philosophy. “Eor by Him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist: and He is the head of the body, the Church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence: for it pleased the Father, that IN Him should all fulness” {pleroma) “dwell” (Col. i. 16-19).
He was the Great, the only, Eeconciler of “things in earth and things in heaven” (Col. i. 20). “By the blood of the cross,” and the plenitude of His atoning work, He accomplished what myriads of seons — this alleged plurality of mediators — never could; opening up by His one all-sufficient sacrifice a way of pardon and acceptance — God’s way to the sinner and the sinner’s way to God. *Come,’ our Apostle may be supposed to say (if we may be allowed for a moment to paraphrase his meaning) in addressing those imperilled by these sophistries — ‘Come; and I shall unfold to you the true ‘Wisdom ‘: even Him In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. “And this I say lest any man should beguile you with enticing words” ’ (Col. ii. 3, 4). * We indeed,’ he seems further to aver, ’ are in one sense Gnostics: ’ — votaries of these esoteric doctrines. We dare not disguise that in the revelation of the Christ we believe in and love, we have a ’ mystery, ’ — the * Great Mystery of godliness — God manifest in the flesh* (i Tim. iii. 16); “The mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ” (Col. ii. 2). “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory” (i Cor. ii. 7).
But, away with all superficial, imaginary barriers between the soul and God: — all intermediate agencies; all carnal ordinances, all distinctions of meats, all washings and lustrations, all assertion of exclusive privilege and religious caste. “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an liolyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Col. ii. 16, 17). “Christ hath blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross” (Col. ii. 1 4). The Pleroma or Plenitude, groped after by the dreamy mystic, has its ideal and realisation in “the Image of the Invisible God — the first-born of every creature” (Col. i. 15); the true Light, with whom is no darkness at all. “Ye are complete IN Him.”
Surely one, if not the main, great lesson to be derived from the whole scope of the Apostle’s teaching, as we have endeavoured to unfold and explain it in the light of our motto-verse, is the necessity of jealously guarding against aught that would interfere with our unwavering trust in Christ, and our acceptance of the one only method of salvation in Him. Gnosticism is at work in a thousand subtle forms in our fallen nature. The aeons of these early dreamers have their reproduction, in proteus shape, in every era of the Church. In the present age, specially so under the two representative phases of Eomanism and Eation-
Various learned works might be mentioned where the doctrines ot the Gnostics are fully treated and explained. In none more so than Bishop Lightfoot’s commentary, with its dissertation on “the Colossian Heresy” and its excursus on Pleroma. See note, at end ol Preface to this Volume, with extract from same.
alism, corruptions 0/ the truth and substitutions /or the truth. The former what, for lack of another term, may be called “Ecclesiasticism,” with its feasts and fasts, priestly absolution, sacramentarian efficacy, sacerdotal exclusiveness, and party shibboleth. The latter in the not less insidious garb of false dogma, doctrinal error and defection: — the seons of Reason asserting their unauthorised mission from some ple7^oma-s’plieTe of their own, unrevealed and unauthenticated in God’s Holy Word, with unworthy humanitarian views of the Person of Christ, and inadequate views of His atoning work; desecrating the refined gold of God’s own sanctuary with daubs of untempered mortar. These, and other cognate forms that might be stated, are “beggarly elements,” “the rudiments of the world:” counterfeits of the truth: “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men,” “the show of wisdom in will-worship,” “not after Christ;” artificial lights, striving to supplant the all-sufficient and only true Light. With not a few such, it is what the Apostle calls “spoiling” and “beguiling” (vers. 8, 1 8). It is putting shackles on the freed spirit — loading the wings with cumbering weights only to hamper and impede them in their upward soarings; mocking the * man in Christ ’ with food for babes.
In Him there is “all-sufficiency in all things,” — the entire pleroma. “He is the only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John i. 1 4). As it is said in one of the Messianic visions of Zechariah — “He shall bear the glory” (Zech. vi. 13); or yet again in the typical words of Isaiah — “And they shall hang upon Him all the glory of his father’s house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons” (Isa. xxii. 24). “Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things.” If we are alive — the life is His. If we are growing, the growth is -His; if we are strong, the strength is His. How stable, too, and enduring is that union and fellowship! “He unites Himself,” says Luther, “to me, with a tie so close and permanent that no man on earth, by the firmest bonds of the most endearing friendship, by the holiest rights of the nearest kindred, could be related more truly or given up to me more intimately. From Him I may and should expect greater things than from the person in the world most devoted to me, because His love to me is to an infinite extent more fervent than the love of the most tried and steadfast friend, than the love of brother to brother, than any love on earth.”
With some lowly measure of appropriating faith are we individually able to say in the parallel words of the Apostle of Love — “And out of His fulness” (pleroma) “have all we received, and grace for grace:” “Co7Jiplete IN Him.” Complete, as in a panoply of divine armour: complete (as we have found described in a recent chapter), in a castle fortified with battlement and bastion. “The name of the Lord” (the attributes by which He is known) “is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it, and is safe” (Prov. xviii. 10). Or, as in the already familiar verse, wherein the believer in Christ is similarly described as encircled with a four-fold defence — “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (i Cor. i. 30). Upon which words John Howe has the following appropriate comment — ‘All that is IN Christ belongs to those that come to Him. Are we foolish creatures? He is wisdom. Are we guilty? He is righteousness. Are we impure? He is sanctification. Are we enslaved? He is redemption. This, if we be in Him; but nothing at all to us if we be not in Him’* “It is an unspeakable mercy,” says another, “when the soul seems to see all those perfections — once a brazen wall to keep him out, now a brazen wall to keep him safe.... Our altar is foursquare. It has a face each way, and it has a horn upon each corner, that the manslayer who flies for safety may touch it.”
If every day be revealing to us our own miserable shortcomings, the deficiency and defilement of our best obedience: in one word, our incompleteness; let it only lead us to exult more and more in the infinite inexhaustible /2/i?zess of the true Plekoma;^ clinging
“Happy would it be if puzzled and perplexed Christians would turn their eyes to the fulness of Christ’s obedience, and see themselves complete in Him.” — Flavel. with more unwavering confidence to the sustaining assurance of our Apostle in another Epistle we have already dwelt upon, — a promise which neither in his case, nor in ours, can be belied by failure — “My God will supply all your need out of His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” “If we were always,” says a writer above quoted, “realising the truth, we are IN Christ, we should never be downcast any more.”