Colossians 3:11

ALL AND IN ALL

‘Christ is all, and in all.’

Colossians 3:11

How little can we see of Christ but a bare and faint outline! Why, it will take all eternity to exhaust that subject; it will take all eternity to learn how good, how wise, how great, how holy, how merciful is Christ. The Apostle seems to have got that idea here in the words of our text. He does not speak of His attributes, but he gathers up all into one cluster, and in six monosyllables he tells us ‘Christ is all, and in all.’

There are just two thoughts: first, Christ is all and in all in the Bible; secondly, Christ is all and in all in redemption.

I. Christ is all and in all in the Bible.—Wherever you open it I care not, you will come to Christ in the Bible. You will find as you read that book that everywhere, if we look for Him, everywhere we shall find the Christ.

(a) We go back to the Old Testament, and there in the heart of the Jewish administration we see the Lamb, the offering appointed by God and by Moses through God, smoking upon the altar, the Lamb of sacrifice for sin offered to God, and we say, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world.’ We go on, and turn over any page, and we are sure to encounter Christ. We come on to Isaiah, the evangelical prophet, and we find him declaring, ‘For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.’ I go back to the first book in the Bible, and there I find in Genesis that Jacob with his last breath tells us, ‘Unto him shall the gathering of the people be.’ I come to the last chapter of the Old Testament in Malachi, and find it declared, ‘Unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings.’

(b) I come into the New Testament, and there, of course, I expect to find Him. Christ in the Gospels; every miracle, Christ in the miracle; every parable, Christ in the parable; and afterwards in the Acts of the Apostles, the early story of Christianity—Christ in them all. I go on and find Christ in all the Epistles. I am just going to close the Book, and I find Christ in the Apocalypse, and the last word which He speaks to us after, shall I say, His Ascension, through His inspired and loving Apostle John, is, ‘Behold, I come quickly.’ Christ is everything, then, in the Bible, all and in all.

II. Christ is all and in all in redemption.—We were under condemnation through sin. It was Christ Who came down from heaven to earth and said, ‘Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.’ We are slaves through sin. It was Christ Who came and gave deliverance to the captives and opened the prison doors. We were in darkness: it is Christ Who says, ‘I am the Light of the world.’ And when we come to Him He gives us of the Bread of life. But more than this, we want to know as sinners how we can be justified before God. Well, here we have it—through redemption: ‘being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.’ But we want to know more than this. We want to know that we shall never be overtaken by the consequences of this sin. How do I know that I shall never come into condemnation? ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.’ Wherever you look for redemption you will find an answer to your fears, and a clearing of all your sins through Christ, if you just look up to Him Who achieved this great redemption for us.

—Rev. Canon Fleming.