Complete in Him

By Mrs. Elizabeth V. Baker

Originally published in Trust magazine, February 1910

Digital Edition @ 2012 Full Well Ventures

(More of these articles by Elizabeth V. Baker are available on Amazon for Kindle.)

Col. 2:9-10. “For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power.”

The head of all principalities and powers! It is a plain simple statement, yet so great, we have missed its blessed lesson. I have been waiting on God for some months that He would give fresh light on truth, for as I thought of the young lives in the school who were looking to me for instruction, it came upon me as a very great burden, that I must be certain to have the truth to give them. I am sure the Lord has been giving me fresh light on an old truth.

This thought of completeness in Christ is so simple I fear to handle it, lest it seem complex. He showed me the Lord Jesus and what God meant in giving Him to the world, and how completely he headed up a new creation, as did Adam the first creation. As we lean on what we got from Adam in that old creation, so in the new creation we must lean on Christ for everything; He takes Jesus Christ and makes Him unto us the supply of every need. While the new creation is clean and pure, it cannot live without Him. The life of the new creation is the Lord Jesus Christ, as much as the sould is the life of my body. The body has no life independent of the soul or spirit inside the body, so the new creation life has no power or life in itself. All this life is summed up in Jesus Christ, and only in so far as we take of Him, do we have the new life, or the sanctified or consecrated life; only in so far as we have learned to take Jesus Christ and let God make Him unto us “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” It is all in Him and never will there be any such work done in us that we can thenceforth go on in the strength of that work, rather than drawing continually from Him. Many have thought that our mistakes and failures are because of a lack of a work to be done in us. I am sure in many quarters that theory is taught, that if one fails or comes short, “Well, perhaps, after all I am not sanctified, have not really had the work done I ought to have had.” Therefore, our eyes are always upon ourselves.

The Lord said to me plainly, “I am never going to do any work in you that you can lean upon. I am in you for every breath you draw.” He wants us simply to be channels and He will live thorugh us the holy sanctified life He wants us to live. He does do a work in us, praise God, but the stability of even that experience hangs continually upon His ever-present working. (Col. 1:7). By experience it has been proven that the most brilliant light that science can produce, turns to darkness by comparison with the light of the sun. Like that is our human effort to live as He lives; it is blackness as compared to Christ, and God will have none of it.

Sometimes in the winter, looking at the snow as it comes down to earth, how dingy the white houses look, — though they seemed very clean and white before, — and when you look up against the sky, the very snow seems black against the heavens. So when we measure man with man, on the purely human plain, one is better than another, but measured against the life of Jesus Christ, how black all seem. So with every human effort, it is but failure. A human worker can only produce a human product, but a divine worker can bring to pass divine results. So God has provided Jesus Christ who will be in us the sanctification, the life, the power, the goodness, faith, gentleness, meekness, everything that He requires of us we can find in Christ, and until we cease to produce anything ourselves, and see that it is all in Him, we will fail.

Painful trials, etc., do not sanctify, but rather harden, unless one yields to God. When you have turned your back upon all human effort and expectation from yourself, it is but a step into the fulness of Jesus Christ, for He said, “In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in Him. His love and grace is all complete, and everything, as far as you are able to receive it, is completeness in Him. Love is perfect, because it is His, and the grace and the power for all, when He is permitted to live His life through us, is perfected.