The Fullness That Is in Christ

The Fullness That Is in Christ

By M.T. Clark — P-2062 | 09/07/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast

Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of tall wildflowers along a paved country road in the foreground of a dark silhouetted tree line, under a dramatic dawn sky glowing orange and peach through gray-blue cloud layers with power lines crisscrossing overhead, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this glorious morning light show during a walk on Waite Road in Easton, NY, on September 8, 2024.

Well, it’s Monday, and I share this photo of a glorious dawn light show over an open country field to remind us that even on the darker mornings, the Lord has a way of handing us gifts we did not go out looking for.

One of the sweetest things I have learned about walking with the Lord in the morning is that God is already up and at work when we arrive. He has been ordering the sunrise while we were sleeping, and He tends to hand us these little gifts of beauty and hope so that we can start our day on the right foot with Him. Speaking of finding everything we need in our relationship with the Lord,

Our series, “Rooted in Him,” continues today with the fullness that is in Christ and what it means to be complete in Him.

The Fullness That Is in Christ

The Apostle Paul teaches us why the world’s promises of “something more” can never deliver what they claim in Colossians 2:9-10 (NKJV), which tells us: “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.”

Paul doesn’t argue against the false teaching point by point. He simply holds up Jesus Christ as the standard of holiness, truth, and power. Once we see who Jesus really is, and once we see what we already have in Him, the world’s offer of “something more” stops sounding like an upgrade and starts sounding like a downgrade.

Let’s look first at what Paul says about Jesus. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. Jesus is not a portion of God. He is not a spark of the divine. He is not even a good man who taught us about God. He is all of God, in a body, walking around in Galilee.

That word “fullness” was a word the false teachers liked to use. They talked about spiritual fullness as something you climbed toward through secret knowledge and special practices, a little at a time. Paul takes their favorite word and applies it to Jesus. There is no fullness of God floating somewhere out beyond Jesus Christ, waiting for the advanced students to earn it. Fullness lives in Him.

Then Paul turns and says the thing that should settle a believer’s heart for good: “you are complete in Him.” He isn’t saying that we will be complete someday if we work hard enough. He isn’t saying that we are mostly complete with a few pieces still missing. He is saying that we are complete, right now, in Christ.

Everything God has for us, He has placed in His Son, Jesus Christ. And when we put our faith in Jesus, God places us in His Son. That’s why we are “In Christ”, right?  So, when God looks at us, He isn’t looking at a partial project He regrets starting. He is looking at someone who is joined to the fullness of the Godhead, and who lacks nothing that matters for life and godliness.

I want to be careful here, because this truth gets twisted in two different directions. Some people hear “complete in Him” and think it means they have already arrived and have nothing left to grow into. That isn’t what Paul is saying. Our behavior, our maturity, and our understanding all have a long way to go, and they grow over a lifetime with the Lord.

Other people hear it and can’t believe it applies to them, because they know their own failures too well. That isn’t what Paul is saying either. Being complete in Christ isn’t a report card on our performance. It’s a description of our position. We are in Him, and He is full, so we are not lacking. Our growth flows out of that completeness. It doesn’t earn it.

This is the difference between striving and abiding, and I lived on the wrong side of it for a long time. Before I came to Christ, I was always hunting for something that would finally fill me up. I chased it through alcohol and drugs and the wrong kind of relationships. I sought it through Eastern religions and through anything that promised to make me feel whole. Every one of those things promised to give me something – feelings of pleasure, a sense of power, or secret wisdom, but they all led me astray and took more from me than they gave. Instead of fullness, those things left me feeling empty and depressed.

It never occurred to me that fullness wasn’t something I had to earn or achieve. Being fulfilled or being made complete is only possible by having peace with God, through faith in Jesus Christ. Fullness was only possible through a Person I hadn’t met yet. When the Lord found me back in 2010, by God’s grace, I stopped trying to fill myself. God put me “in Christ”, and I discovered that the fullness I had been chasing my whole life was already living in me through the Holy Spirit. Faith in Jesus allowed me to stop striving and gave me the rest that I was looking for.

This fullness, this completeness, is the rest that Jesus promises his disciples (Matthew 11:28)

A person who believes he is incomplete is always on the hunt, and the hunting never ends, because there is always another conference, another book, another experience that somebody says changed everything for them. Some of those things are good, and I’m not telling you to avoid them. I am telling you that they can’t do for you what has already been done for you.

When you know you are complete in Christ, you can enjoy a good teaching without needing it to fix you, and you can walk past a bad one without feeling like you missed out on something.

To further see the fullness of Christ, let’s notice how Paul finishes the sentence. Jesus is “the head of all principality and power.” Paul isn’t just talking about Christ’s sufficiency for our inner lives. He is talking about the Lord’s authority over every power that exists, seen and unseen. Every spiritual force that would come against us answers to the One we are joined to in Christ.

That is why the enemy works so hard to get believers looking for something more. If he can convince us that we are lacking, he can keep us busy looking for what Christ has already given us. And a believer who thinks he is lacking isn’t a believer who is walking in authority. The accuser can’t take from us what we already have in Christ, so he tries to talk us out of believing we have it.

So what do we do with this? We stop treating our relationship with Jesus as a starter kit and start treating it as the whole inheritance that it is. When we feel spiritually empty, and there will be days when we do, the answer isn’t to go looking for a new experience or a new teaching to top ourselves off.

The answer is to go back to the One who is already full and draw from Him.  And that doesn’t have to be weird. That looks like doing the normal practices of the Christian faith, like reading God’s word, talking to the Lord honestly, or I no9 sitting with other believers. And it looks like telling ourselves the truth when our feelings argue with it. Ordinary faithfulness is how we draw on a fullness we already have.

So, hear this today. You are not a half-finished believer waiting on a missing piece. All the fullness of God lives in Jesus; you belong to Jesus, and that makes you complete in Him.

So, come to the Lord for what you need, stay rooted in the One who is already full, and let His fullness be the deep root that steadies you in your relationship with Him today.

Every step we take toward the Lord is a step in the right direction. So, keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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