The Absolute Necessity and Sufficiency of Christ: .Complete in Him-Colossians 2:10

Introduction

“But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3). In this pas- sage Paul is showing his great concern for the spiritual welfare of the Corinthian church. In this case it was because of false teachers who were attempting to move the church away from the gospel that Paul had preached to them. Some were claiming to be apostles and were preaching a different gospel that would take the believers away from their devotion to Christ.

Paul was concerned that the believers would be deceived, just as Eve was in the garden when the serpent—our enemy, Satan—confronted her. Paul’s concern here is regarding sound teaching. False teaching always takes us away from Jesus Christ. However, Satan is not just bound to false teaching in his deception. He is constantly trying to take us away from our simplicity—our singular, pure devotion to Christ. This deception happens whenever we begin to look for life in anything but Him.
In this training, we will be reminded of the absolute necessity and sufficiency of Christ for all of salvation—initial salvation; assurance of salvation; sanctification; ministry effective- ness; all circumstances, negative and positive; and glorification into eternity. We will see that Christ alone is our only necessary, and more than sufficient, resource for life for all eternity. In fact, we will see that Jesus Christ is the only resource needed for all of life for all of eternity.
All of us as believers have a deep desire to walk singularly and purely devoted to Christ.

In this training:

• We will see that Christ alone is our more than sufficient resource for life for all eternity. In fact, we will see that Jesus Christ is the only resource needed for all of life for all of eternity.
• We will also discover how we can increasingly experience His sufficiency in our daily lives.
• As we get further into the subject, we will see more and more—in the message from Genesis to Revelation—that Jesus Christ is uniquely necessary and sufficient.

As we approach this training, we will be looking at Christ’s necessity and sufficiency from the standpoint of the three distinct parts of salvation, justification, sanctification, and glorification. As we begin the study, we will spend a significant amount of time on justification. If we don’t get justification right, we will never get sanctification right; and if we don’t understand sancti- fication properly, we will never get glorification right. We will be using justification to describe initial salvation when we are declared righteous before God because of Christ’s righteousness. And we will assume all the free benefits that come with justification—forgiveness, eternal life, Christ’s righteousness placed on our account, and so on.