Enjoying the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ as the Reality of All Positive Things

According to the book of Colossians, the all-inclusive, extensive Christ is the reality of all positive things, and no one should judge us of eating Him and enjoy Him as such a One. Hallelujah!

This week in our morning revival we come to the matter of, Knowing and Experiencing the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ as the Reality of All Positive Things.

What a Christ we have! On one hand we have been brought into Christ to experience Him and live Him, , and on the other hand, He came into us to be experienced by us and lived out by us.

These are the two aspects of our experiencing Christ, as seen in John 15: we abide in Him and He abides in us; we enter into Him to enjoy Him and experience Him, and He enters into us for Him to be enjoyed by us and experienced by us.

There are a number of New Testament books that show us that Christ is all-inclusive, such as the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of John, Colossians, Hebrews, and Revelation, but it is only in Colossians that we see Christ as being both all-inclusive and extensive.

In Colossians we see the all-inclusiveness and all-extensiveness of Christ being combined; when we enjoy His extensiveness, we are brought into the enjoyment of His all-inclusiveness.

In Colossians the matter of Christ being extensive is related to Him being the reality of all positive things in the universe.

This week we will enjoy exhibit after exhibit of Christ, masterpiece after masterpiece of Christ, and we want to take a look, admire, enjoy, and enter into the experience of all that Christ is in His all-inclusiveness and extensiveness.

Let us Enjoy the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ as the Reality of All Positive Things!

In Col. 2:16-18 Paul tells us that we wouldn’t let anyone judge us in eating and in drinking or in respect of a feast or of a new moon or of the Sabbath, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is of Christ.

Amen, may no one defraud us by judging us unworthy of our prize, the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ.

We have seen that Christ is the image of the invisible God, the Firstborn from among the dead, the One in whom all the fullness dwells, the One who is Firstborn in resurrection, the Mystery of God, the One in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

This universally great One, who has preeminence in the entire universe, can be brought into our personal experience and practical application so that He may be preeminent in our personal universe.

Based on these verses we can state categorically that Christ is the reality of every positive thing and that we need to know Him and experience Him as such a One. Oh, He is our prize!

Paul pursued toward the prize (Phil. 3:14), and he wants to recruit us and bring us into this, for his prize is our prize; this prize is the uttermost enjoyment and experience of Christ.

Our taking Christ as the reality of all positive things is for us to arrive at this prize of the ultimate subjective experience of Christ.

Let no one judge us in this; our enjoyment and experience of Christ as the reality of all positive things may be judged by others, for they may wonder how can this be, how can we experience Christ in such an extensive way.

Let no one judge us – inwardly or outwardly – from our enjoying and experiencing Christ.

Eating and drinking, in respect of a feast or of a new moon or of a Sabbath – these are representatives of and implies the life and living of the God’s Old Testament people.

In Colossae there were some persons bothering the believers and trying to bring them back to the Old Testament things…may we never return to these things, but may we see that all these feasts are a shadow of what we can experience today, which is the all-inclusive and extensive Christ!

The body of all these shadows is Christ. Let no one defraud us by judging us unworthy to enjoy and experience Christ, and may we not judge ourselves unworthy of this prize.

All the details of the living and feasting of God’s people in the Old Testament according to the Bible is a picture of the living and enjoyment we should have today as we apply Christ as the reality of every positive thing.

When we take Christ as the reality of all positive things, He will not be a mere doctrinal matter to us, but we will know by experience that He is the reality.

As with a man’s physical body, the body in Col. 2:17 is the substance, and like the shadow of a man’s body, the rituals in the law are the shadow of Christ, who is the substance and reality of the gospel.

The book of Colossians unveils such an all-inclusive Christ as the focus of God’s economy (Col. 1:17, 18; 3:11). There are many shadows, but the body is of Christ.

A shadow is what we cast on earth; for example, we may play hide and seek with a child, and he may hide behind a tree. We may see the tree and also the shadow of the child, and we may know that the child is behind the tree; when we trace the shadow, we get the person.

The shadow has the function of bringing us to the person, the reality. In God’s economy all the shadows have the function of bringing us to Christ, the reality of all positive things.

Taking Christ as the reality of every positive thing is the process of our utilizing the shadows to be brought to the reality, which reality then becomes personal to us as we are face to face with the Lord.

Lord Jesus, we love You as the all-inclusive, extensive One who is our portion for our enjoyment and experience! Amen, Lord, may no one judge us in eating and drinking, and no one defraud us by judging us unworthy of our prize, the utmost enjoyment and experience of Christ! Thank You Lord for being the reality of all positive things. We come to You again and again to take You in, enjoy You, experience You, and apply You as the reality of every positive thing in the universe. Amen, Lord Jesus, we want to enjoy You and experience You to the uttermost so that we may be Your Body, Your fullness!

Seeing and Enjoying the Universal Extensiveness of the All-inclusive Christ

Daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, Christ is the reality of every positive thing; this implies the universal extensiveness of the all-inclusive Christ.

In Col. 2:16-18 we see that eating and drinking are daily, the Sabbath is weekly, the new moon is monthly, and the feasts are yearly.

This indicates that when we eat and drink on any given day, we can experience Christ as the reality; every week and every month and every year we can experience Him.

This doesn’t merely mean that when we want to experience Him as the reality of all the shadows, He is there waiting for us to experience Him; rather, there’s a progression here, and we can enjoy Christ and experience Him progressively, for He is both all-inclusive and extensive, filling our living and time, to enlarge our experience and enjoyment of Him in a progressive way.

On any given day, we can enjoy Christ to a certain extent, and as we enjoy Him daily, He enlarges in our experience; He calls us to take another step and enjoy Him in a further way…and we gradually find out that He has an expanding presence for us on any given day.

So we have a Christ-day, and as He fills us daily, we can experience Him the entire week – we have a Christ-filled week, and then as we contact and enjoy Him again and again, our weekly experience becomes a month-filled experience of Him, and eventually the whole year is filled with Christ.

Paul’s intention in choosing these five aspects of the life of God’s people shows that, just as these things were the whole life and living for him inclusively in the Old Testament age, as we experience Christ as the reality of all positive thing, He enlarges in our experience from day to week to month to year, and He becomes inclusive and extensive in our experience as the New Testament people.

Daily, Christ is our food and drink for our satisfaction and strengthening (1 Cor. 10:3-4).

Weekly, Christ is our Sabbath for our completion and rest in Him (Matt. 11:28-29). Monthly, Christ is our new moon as a new beginning with light in darkness (John 1:5; 8:12). Yearly, Christ is our feast for our joy and enjoyment (1 Cor. 5:8).

We can daily eat and drink Christ as the reality of our food and drink; as we eat the physical food, we are reminded that Christ is the reality of our food, and inwardly we apply Him and take Him into us.

As we eat Christ day by day, he becomes the reality of our nourishment and life supply, and He satisfies us and strengthens us within to live the Christian life. The result is that weekly we rest in Him, we are completed in Him, for we take Him as our Sabbath.

As we daily enjoy Christ, we are being enlarged, for He is being enlarged in us and we enjoy an ever-expanding Christ.

As our enjoyment of Christ enlarges and expands, we pursue Him and enjoy Him as the reality of all the positive things. he becomes our new beginning with light in darkness, and He is our feast for our joy and enjoyment.

Praise the Lord for our rich, all-inclusive, extensive Christ who can be applied to our daily life for our enjoyment and experience!

Lord Jesus, thank You for being our food and drink daily for our satisfaction and strengthening; we take You as the reality of food and drink, and You satisfy us and strengthen us to live the Christian life. We take You as our real Sabbath for our completion and rest in You. We take You as our new beginning with light in darkness. Lord, You are our feast for our joy and enjoyment! We come to You daily and we take You as the reality of all the positive things in the universe. We want to enjoy You day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year until You expand in our experience and we apprehend with all the saints the universal extensiveness of the all-inclusive Christ!

Read this article in the Romanian language / citiți acest articol și în limba română la următorul link, Să-L savurăm pe Cristosul atotinclusiv și vast ca realitate a tuturor lucrurilor pozitive.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Rick Scatterday for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1964, vol. 2, “A General Sketch of the New Testament in the Light of Christ and the Church, Part 2—Romans through Philemon,” ch. 19, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing and Experiencing the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ (2019 Thanksgiving Conference), week 4 on the topic of, Knowing and Experiencing the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ as the Reality of All Positive Things.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Christ is the one reality of all, / Of Godhead and of man and all things else; / No man without Him ever findeth God, / Without Him man and everything is false. / All types and figures of the ancient time, / All things we ever need, both great and small, / Only are shadows of the Christ of God, / Showing that He must be our all in all. (Hymns #496)
  – Christ is my sabbath and new moon, / My morning and my day, / My age and my eternity / That ne’er will pass away. (Hymns #510)
  – We have seen Christ is reality: / But it’s not sufficient just to see: / He in our experience must be / Everything to us. / We in prayer behold Him face to face, / In the Word and meetings know His grace; / But in daily life, in every place, / What is He to us? (Hymns #1178)