Tuesday

Related Verses
Eph. 3:17-19
17 That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 May be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are
19 And to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.

Col. 1:12-13
12 Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you for a share of the allotted portion of the saints in the light;
13 Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,

Col. 3:4
4 When Christ our life is manifested, then you also will be manifested with Him in glory.

Col. 3:10-11
10 And have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto full knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,
11 Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all and in all.

Related Reading
If we would keep from paying attention to the self, we must concentrate on something better than the self. This is the reason we need a vision of the extensiveness of Christ, the vision presented in the book of Colossians. If we see this vision, we will concentrate our entire being on the extensive Christ, who will then fill us and occupy us. Because we are filled with the extensive Christ, we will have no need of Judaism, Gnosticism, mysticism, or asceticism. Our being will be occupied with the vast, unsearchably rich, extensive Christ. Spontaneously, this Christ will come in to replace every aspect of our natural human life with Himself. (Life-study of Colossians, second edition, p. 420)

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The book of Colossians presents a vision of the wonderful, extensive, all-inclusive Christ. Once we see this vision, our entire being will be attracted by this Christ and will be possessed by Christ and occupied with Him. Then gradually, the extensive Christ who occupies our attention will replace every element of our natural human life. He will even replace with Himself our kindness, our humility, and our love for our parents. At best, our natural virtues can be compared to polished copper, but Christ is gold. He far surpasses in value anything we possess by nature. The more we experience the Christ who exceeds everything and replaces everything in our natural life with Himself, the more we will be able to declare, “To me, to live is Christ.”…To us, to live will be the Christ who has taken full possession of us and who occupies us and fills us with Himself.

To be full-grown in Christ is to be filled and saturated with Christ. We remain ourselves, but we are permeated, saturated, and filled with Christ. Then our living spontaneously is Christ…We must be absolute with the Lord to allow Him to live in us day by day. If your husband or wife gives you a difficult time, do not defend yourself or vindicate yourself. Simply let Christ live in you. However, we must admit that it is easy to talk about this, but it is difficult to practice it.

Our relationship with Christ can be illustrated by the grafting of a branch from a wild olive tree into a cultivated olive tree. Christ is the cultivated olive tree, and we are branches from the wild olive tree. First, we are cut off from the wild olive tree and then placed into the cultivated olive tree, in the spot where an incision has been made. After this, the branch from the wild olive tree is bound to the cultivated olive tree. This is grafting. Through the process of grafting, the life-juice in the cultivated olive tree flows into the branch from the wild olive tree, permeates it, saturates it, and fills it. Eventually, the branch will bear fruit. Likewise, we are branches grafted into Christ as the cultivated olive tree. If we are permeated, saturated, and filled with the life-juice from the cultivated olive tree, we will be able to say, “To me, to live is the cultivated olive tree.” When a branch reaches this stage, it will be full-grown in the cultivated olive tree. This illustrates what it means to be full-grown in Christ. To be full-grown in Christ is to be saturated and filled with Christ. It is to have every part of our being occupied with Christ.

The Greek word for full-grown in 1:28 is the same as that used in Ephesians 4:13, where Paul says, “Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is simply a full-grown man. Eventually, this maturity will issue in the Body, the corporate expression of Christ. We all need to grow and become full-grown so that Christ may have a corporate full-grown man, the Body, as an organism to express Him. (Life-study of Colossians, 2nd edition, pp. 420-421, 423-424)

Further Reading: Life-study of Colossians, msg. 49; Truth Lessons—Level Three, vol. 1, lsn. 4