The will of God for us – as revealed in Colossians – is that we know the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, experience Him, and live Him as our life.
The great will of God for us, His people, doesn’t have to do merely with minor things such as our job, our marriage, our house, our car, our health, etc; it has to do with Christ.
In Colossians we see a revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and how we as believers in Christ need to walk in Him, be rooted in Him, enjoy Him, experience Him, live Him, and even become Him.
What is Christ to us? Who is He to us in our comprehension, enjoyment, knowledge, and experience?
Many believers know Christ as merely their Savior and King, and they enjoy the fact that they have been saved, so now they are waiting for His coming again to take them with Him in heavens. This is an elementary and narrow view of Christ.
According to God and as revealed in Colossians, Christ is all-inclusive and extensive.
He is all-inclusive to include all the positive things in the universe; He is the reality of every positive thing, and He is the all-inclusive good land for us to enter into, be rooted in, grow in, labour on, live on, and build up the church.
Christ is the complete God and perfect man; in Him all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to well. In Christ the infinite God came to be a finite man, and in Him are all the divine attributes and human virtues; He Himself is the reality of all the positive things in God’s creation.
He is the Firstborn of the old creation and He is the Firstborn Son of God in the new creation so that He may have preeminence in all things. This all shows His all-inclusiveness.
What about His extensiveness? Christ is more extensive and vast than the universe. To Paul Christ was so extensive that he said that all the saints can apprehend the depth, the height, the width, and the breadth of Christ; His dimensions are immeasurable.
Christ is immeasurable, vast, unlimited, and inexhaustible; He is more vast than the universe. But in our experience this Christ may be limited, and we may have a limited experience and enjoyment of Christ.
Before we can enjoy and experience Christ as the all-inclusive, extensive One, we need to have a revelation of Him as such a One. Once we have a revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, we will enter into the enjoyment and experience of such a Christ.
Seeing a Revelation of the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ as revealed in Colossians
In the book of Colossians we see a revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ; Christ is both all-inclusive and extensive. In this book we see that Christ is everything.
Christ is the Firstborn of the old creation (the universe; see Col. 1:15) and of the new creation (the church, Col. 1:18). The old creation is both all-inclusive and extensive; the church as the new creation is all-inclusive but not extensive.
For Christ to be the Firstborn of both the original creation and the new creation means that He is both extensive and all-inclusive. In the church as the one new man there’s room only for Christ, for Christ is all and in all in the new man (Col. 3:11).
The fact that He is the Firstborn of all creation indicates His extensiveness; as Eph. 3 puts it, Christ is the breadth, length, height, and depth.
For the word of God to be completed we need to know the mystery of God’s economy – Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). Without Christ in us as the hope of glory, God’s revelation would not have a completion.
The will of God is in Christ, it is concentrated in Christ; the will of God is also for Christ, for Christ is everything in the will of God.
In Christ all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Col. 2:9); the overflow and expression of the entire Godhead – Father, Son, and Spirit – is in Christ.
In vv. 16-17 we see that Christ is the substance and reality of all the positive things, including eating and drinking and the feasts; our health is Christ, our real clothing is Christ, and our feast is Christ.
Christ is our purity, our life, our energy, our faith; He is both all-inclusive and extensive.
May the veils covering our mind and heart be gradually lifted so that we may see and behold this all-inclusive, extensive Christ as we have never done so before.
When we see Him as what He really is, we will radically change our life, and both our human life and our Christian life will be changed to the core. We will enjoy not only a limited Christ, Christ as our Savior and Lord, but an all-inclusive One, One who is extensive.
When we see a revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, we will realize that we can know Him, enjoy Him, experience Him, be filled with Him, grow in Him, and build up the church as His Body, the fulness of the One who fills all in all. May we open to the Lord and ask Him again and again,
Lord, unveil us to see a revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, the One in whom the will of God is centered! May we realize that our Christ is the Firstborn of the old creation and of the new creation, and He is everything to God and to man. May we see Christ as He really is, all-inclusive and extensive. Uplift our enjoyment of Christ and our experience of Him daily. Amen, Lord, You are our life, our peace, our joy, our purity, our food, our drink, our clothing, our covering, our shelter, and our everything!
Continually Receiving, Enjoying, and Walking in the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ
The revelation in the Bible is clear concerning Christ, and especially in Colossians we see how He is both all-inclusive and extensive. But what about our enjoyment, realization, and experience?
Many believers think that to receive Christ is just to believe in Him; in their concept, Christ is rather simple, for He is the Son of God and the Savior who loved us and died for us.
However, receiving Christ is much more than this; He is all-inclusive and extensive, and receiving Him can be compared to breathing.
We need to daily receive Christ and enjoy Him by breathing in Him; just as breathing is a continual process, so our receiving of Christ should take place continually.
May we no longer be limited in our enjoyment and experience of Christ to an initial receiving of Christ but may we receive Him continuously!
Yes, we did receive Christ as our Lord and Savior at one point in the past, but we need to continue to enjoy Him, receive Him, and walk in Him as the all-inclusive and extensive One. Our receiving of Christ must be consistent and continual.
What about our daily living: how much did we walk in Christ today? How much of our actions, attitudes, and talk was in Christ, and how much was it in something other than Christ?
According to the book of Colossians, as believers in Christ we need to see this all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and we need to walk in this Christ who is universally vast and who is everything to us.
We don’t need philosophy – Christ is our real philosophy; we don’t need tradition – Christ is the best heritage; we don’t need elementary principles – Christ is every principle to us.
What we need is to not be held by the narrow view of Christ held by many Christians today but be brought onward, see the revelation of this all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and continually enjoy, receive, and walk in Him!
In Himself Christ is rich – He is unsearchable rich, and His unsearchable riches are for us to enjoy and continually receive (Eph. 3:8); but we may limit Him by our concepts, opinions, theology, and teachings.
We may limit Christ by our elementary understanding of Him. In Himself He is limitless, vast, immense, and all-inclusive, but in our experience He may be limited and constricted. Oh Lord Jesus!
May the Lord be merciful to us to grant us a revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ, and may this revelation bring us into the continual experience and enjoyment of all His unsearchable riches!
Something that may help us appreciate Christ more is reading the book of Colossians with an exercised spirit and an enlightened mind; when we read this book we will see how Christ is really all-inclusive and extensive.
What an unlimited and extensive Christ we have! As we pray over all that Christ is, we internalize His riches, and the way is opened for us to enter into the enjoyment and experience of such a One.
God wants us to know His Christ; but how can this happen, and how can we cooperate with God? Are we just passively laying there, like the lame man in John 5, waiting for an angel to stir the pool and for someone to carry us in?
Or are we paying the price to prayerfully read Colossians asking for the Lord’s enlightening and revelation, eating the word of God, and apply this Christ to our experience daily?
Lord, grant us to have a revelation of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ so that we may enter into the enjoyment and experience of such a One! Amen, Lord Jesus, we want to continually enjoy You, experience You, and walk in You as the One who is all-inclusive and extensive! May we realize that You are without limitation and inexhaustible, and may we give ourselves to You to both dive into the Word of God to enjoy Your riches, and continually breathe You in and experience You in our daily life!
Read this article in the Romanian language / citiți acest articol și în limba română la următorul link, Să vedem o revelație a Cristosului atotinclusiv și vast și să-L savurăm neîncetat.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Colossians, msgs. 8-10, 15, 39-41, 45-46, 48, 50 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing and Experiencing the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ (2019 Thanksgiving Conference), week 1 on the topic of, The Will of God concerning the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
– All God’s purpose is for Him, / That He might be all in all; / All the things in heav’n and earth / With Himself are made withal. / All creation is for Christ, / Everything was made by Him; / ’Tis by Him all things subsist, / He’s the hub and He’s the rim. (Hymns #495)
– Thou art before all creatures, / In Thee all things consist; / Of all Thou art the center, / By Thee all things subsist. / Thou art the sole beginning, / The Firstborn from the dead; / And for the Church, Thy Body, / Thou art the glorious Head. (Hymns #189)
– The universal Fullness / So pleased resides in Thee. / Within Thee dwells the Godhead, / And Thou, Lord, dwell in me! / Preeminent, transcendent, / Unique in all Thou art, / O’erflowing all the heavens, / Thou now dost fill my heart! (Song on, Christ in Colossians)
