I want us to look together at the theme of the infinite fullness of deity in the Son of God. for His people. So, really three things. The infinity of God, the infinity of God in the Son, and the infinity of God in the Son for the purpose of being shared with His people. With just then, to close it, we'll look at how that altered or gripped and fashioned Paul's views of things, Paul's prayer life, Paul's sacrificial service, and the way that Paul guided young believers through all the, you know, through all the ins and outs and the ups and downs of the Christian life, particularly dealing with issues like, how can I know that I'm really fully clean with God? How can I progress in sanctification? I feel that I'm stuck. How can I cure my heart of its tendency to drift to what we would call worldliness? Just to fall in love with the gifts that God gives and to forget the giver. Now that is a lot. I mean, just the introduction took, that was a lot of words. So we're only gonna be able to hit these things kind of from kind of a high view. And maybe you can later in the week follow up and look at them. yourself. Now, I want to start with a question, and there are some questions that we can ask ourselves as believers that I think carry more significance than we might suspect. It's not the questions that we normally think are the most significant, and those tend to deal with, you know, specific doctrines. So sometimes we will ask a person, what do you believe about? And it's a very specific thing, usually a thing that's kind of a hot topic right now. So where I'm at in North Mississippi, a lot of the Reformed people are asking questions about the nature of the law. What's the nature of the law for the believer? What do you think about that? And so, you know, you meet people and they hit you with that question. Or what do you think as a church about things? What do you think about the sovereignty of God? What do you believe about the sovereignty of God? And so you say, well, our church believes, I believe, What does your church believe about eschatology? That gets a little trickier because there might be more than one view among the members. There is where I'm at. And so we say, well, I believe this. And those are all fine questions, but there are some questions that get under the surface. And because they kind of get under the surface of those specific theological issues, I think that these questions may have more of an impact than you suspect. So let me ask you one of those questions today. How far are you presently intending to go with Christ? Not how far should you intend to go with Christ. I mean, in sanctification, in conformity. So not how far should you go. How far are you presently planning on going? Not, how long do you intend to go along with Christ? Like, well, I plan to follow Christ all the way to the end. Well, yes, every believer by faith will persevere. But I'm asking you, how far are you presently in your mind, if you could kind of Be honest with yourself. How far are you intending to go? Many of us tend to go with Christ in conforming to His image one step further than the church culture we belong to. So you're here and there's a certain level of Christianity here. And if you go to a church down the road, the level may be different. It may be higher. The expectations may be greater. It may be less. Usually when we show up at a church, we do put our best foot forward and we kind of want to look appropriate and act appropriate and talk appropriate. And so we're there and we watch and it doesn't take too long to kind of figure out what's expected to call yourself a Christian. And we tend to rise one step above that and say, that's really, that's far enough. Sometimes we go far enough so that we're not embarrassed anymore. So that in a small group study, someone says, what do you think about this thing? And you're able to answer. If they say, well, would you read this passage for us? And it's from a small book in the Old Testament, Zephaniah. And you think, I don't even remember where Zephaniah is. But now you've moved past that. And so you're able to participate. And you think, well, this is a nice comfortable spot. Maybe we'll stop here. How far do you intend to go as a church? How far are you actively planning right now in the thousands of little decisions you make? How far are you presently intending to go as a church? I find that many churches that are in the Reformed camp have a wrong destination, but it sounds so right. They'll say, we want to be a biblical church. Well, that's right. That's a good desire. We want to be a church that treasures the truth. We want to be the right kind of church. You know, many of us grew up in churches perhaps that weren't so careful, and now we want to be careful. But you do understand that if that's your goal, you can kind of reach a certain level as a church where you can tick all the boxes and you say, okay, I think we're, I mean, we're not perfect, but we're there. It's a good place to stop. I think a better goal would be we want to be a church that loves God with all our hearts and soul and mind and strength. And that way, truth is taken seriously, and church is taken seriously, and family is taken seriously, and holiness is taken seriously. But you just don't ever stop, because there's always opportunity to wake up tomorrow morning and to love him more. Where do you intend to stop? How far you intend to go really affects how you travel. I jokingly say I live at Walmart, but I do kind of live, I was at Walmart yesterday, you know, just to encourage your local Walmart. I haven't been at my local Walmart in two and a half weeks, it's probably shut down now without me, but I went yesterday and a couple days before. I don't really live at Walmart, but if I get in the car to go to Walmart, in my mind, without thinking, I have a certain preparation. Where's my phone? You know, do I have my money with me? But if I get on... plane to go to New Brunswick for two weeks, totally different way of preparing, totally different way of thinking. You know, when you take your kids on a short trip, so where are we going? We're going here, you know, to a friend's house, to a grandmother, grandfather's house. And so it's only five miles. But if you're going to go on a long trip, you know, the kids get in the car and depending on their age, within a few miles, they say, how long are we there yet? I had a friend that used to drive from Mississippi to New Jersey with a car full of little ones, you know, like age six and down, and they're all strapped into some giant suburban, you know, in their chairs, and they all start chiming in in the early miles. How long, Dad? I mean, it's gonna be like 20 hours total of driving. And the father turned around and said, we will never arrive, okay? Just think that way. Because, you know, how you think about the length of the journey kind of changes how you travel. If you think that the Christian life is a wonderful sprint, then, you know, four, five, six years in, you may feel like you're not making any progress. And you may despair, but part of the problem is you weren't thinking correctly about how far the journey is and how much there is to go. Samuel Rutherford, my favorite author, Scottish Puritan in the 1600s, was imprisoned. And when he was in prison, he wrote a lot of letters back to his church. And those are really the treasure that we have from Mr. Rutherford. His books are not as good as his pastoral letters. And in one of the letters, he was talking to a believer who was a young believer, and they were getting discouraged because they felt they weren't making much progress in sanctification. And they said, you know, like when I first came to the Lord, and you know, those early days, those early months, I seemed to really make so much progress, but now I feel like I'm not making any progress at all. Sometimes I feel like I'm going backward. and Rutherford being a Scot, you know, up in the Highland area, he compared the Christian journey to walking a long journey through the Highlands. He said, imagine a man who starts on a very long journey. He starts on the top of one of the Scottish mountains, and the destination is far away, but he can see it. There is a city on a mountain far away, at the very edge of his sight. And that's the journey. So it's not a journey of a day. He starts to journey and he, as he's walking along, you know, the ridge of that mountain, he's making good progress. And then he starts to go down and he's going at a good speed. But then soon, you know, with the Scottish mountains, there's not really like a ridge, it's like individual hills. So it'll wear you out. He's going up and as he's going up another mountain and down and up another, and he's in a valley, he can't even see this city any longer. And the road is harder right now. And he feels he must surely be going backward. But of course he's not. It's just that the different circumstances in his journey make it feel that way. How far do you intend to go? Is God enough for your church in this present cultural, political context? Is God enough for you to go just as far as he intends for you to go? So I want us to look at the infinite fullness of our God, the infinite fullness of our God in the sun, and the infinite fullness of our God in the sun for our sake. Now, when we talk about the infinity of God, we're talking about an attribute of God. And that means that's something that is essentially true of God, not something that is true of God because of his effort. So the best illustration I can think of is what is essentially true of us is humanness. Now we can be bad humans or good humans. We can be humans that sleep through church or we can be humans that are taking notes, you know, but we're human. Now to be a good human, to be a hardworking human, to be a successful human requires a lot of effort, but humanness just happens. No efforts required. It is the essence of what you are. When we think of the attributes of God, those things that God has described in the scripture to be true of himself, you know, his holiness, his all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power, his eternity, his self-existence, his justice, his love, his patience, his faithfulness, whatever attribute you think of, these are things that are all essentially true of God and none of them require effort. So when we think of God, we don't want to think of categories that we have some acquaintance with, like power. And we think, well, God is just really, really, really powerful. But like us, but just bigger. But that's not true. He's actually solitary in his power. He's unlike everyone else we've ever met. And when we think of attributes, we can discuss them separately, but really they are all part of one perfect whole. They are woven together. They're like a river that is flowing. And sometimes it goes across the shallows and there's a bunch of rocks, you know, sticking up above the surface. And so the river divides itself into, let's say, 10 small streams for a few, you know, meters, and then it comes back together. And it's like that. We can discuss the different attributes of God, like that stream that gets divided for a second. but they don't actually ever exist isolated from each other. There can be no conflict within God. The old writers said it this way, God has no parts. We have parts, sin fragments us. We have good intentions and sinful thoughts. We have love and patience, but we also have wrath and justice, and sometimes those conflict. I don't know what's the right way to respond. I feel I should say this, but I don't want to say that. We feel conflicted. God never feels conflicted. When we think about the infinity of God, what are we talking about? Well, just quickly, God being infinite means that everything that is essentially true of God, we're not talking about his activity, because he may choose to limit the expression of his perfections. He may not always, you know, he may restrain wrath. He may limit patience. But when we're talking about God's person, his nature, his essence, this is the only being who is without measure, without limit. We cannot limit God in any way, and he is not limited in any way. He is ultimately incomprehensible. Psalm 145, we read this, great is the Lord, and great not meaning really, really good, but great is in the Bible, great is a word of immensity, big. Goodness, that's moral perfection. Greatness, that's a word of immensity, the transcendence, the bigness of God. Great is the Lord, or you know, enormously, immeasurably big is the Lord, and highly to be praised, and His greatness, His immensity, is unsearchable. That is, If we were to spend our entire life together, if the deacons lock the door and say, we have an announcement for the whole church, John is not going home, and neither are you. We are staying here until we die. and we'll be brought food and we'll send messages to your family but we're going to stay here and we will all from the youngest infant to the oldest great-grandparent we are going to spend the rest of our life working on one project and when the youngest infant who's here right now or in mom When they die, the project will be finished, and here's the project. We are all going to devote ourselves to researching one of God's attributes. And so we gather the greatest books from around the world, we use our computers, and we do all this research, and year after year, decade after decade, we study, and at the end of the youngest infant's life, when that book has been written and handed over, you would not be any closer to fully comprehending that one attribute than the day you started. Not that you wouldn't know more, but you do understand that if God is infinite, there's no edge. So think of an ocean with no shoreline. No matter how far you swim in that ocean, if it has no shoreline, you can go further in, but you can never get closer to the shore because there is no shore. God is infinite. We can know him personally through the wonderful work of the triune God in our rescue, but we cannot comprehend, we cannot get our brains around him. Job says it this way, what man knows of God is merely the edges of his ways. or a whisper of a conversation. Those are simple pictures. That helps us. The word infinity isn't very helpful. You know, we just think of the symbol, you know, that sideways eight and well, there's no beginning or end, but that doesn't help our finite minds. Here's what infinity is like, Job says. The infinity of God, the limitlessness of God, the immeasurableness of God, is like this. It's like a dad coming home every day from work, and he's a young father. Mom's there with an infant, and the infant's on, you know, he's on his little Tower is a little blanket on the floor. And dad comes in and walks by, gives mom a kiss, says hi to the kid, walks into the kitchen. And all the child can see of dad at that age is the bottom two inches of his trousers and his shoes. There they go. So if you could get that child to talk, let's say in nursery, they lean over and they say, what have you been doing this week? Oh, I've just been studying, dad. Like, well, what'd you learn this week? He's got brown trousers too, not just blue. And he's got some other shoes. I thought he only had one pair, but I've learned he has three or four pair and he's got these and he wears certain pants on one day. But on the weekends he wears different pants. And that infant, his friend might say to him, man, you know so much. My goodness, you figured that out. Well, how much does the infant know? Well, the bottom couple of inches of the pant leg, the edges. It's like landing on the American continent. You can imagine the first Europeans landing on the shoreline of the American continent. And let's say they walk in a couple of miles off the shore. And they think, this is such a big place compared to England. Oh my goodness, look at this. But we would say to them, you know nothing. You're on the very edge. You've got 2,700 more miles of this. No matter how grown up we are as Christians, the infinite nature of our God means we gladly accept that we are the only people of all humanity who could never figure our God out. And we glory in that. We only know the edge. But what God has revealed is sufficient for every expression of obedience, for every day's troubles, for everything we need to believe. Well, let me just give you a few verses that kind of point out how God is infinite because everything about God is infinite. You know, His knowledge is infinite. Power is infinite. His presence is infinite. His rights over us are infinite. His holiness, love, justice, anger, patience, faithfulness, and joy in their essence are all Boundless and no matter how much we know of them. We only are at the edge Jeremiah says this about the infinite presence of God Jeremiah 23 am I a God near at hand says the Lord and not a God far off Can anyone hide himself in secret places so that I don't see him? Says the Lord do I not fill heaven and earth I? So if you want to think of the presence of God in kind of a very literal way, expand your brain to the edges of our universe. And if you say, well, now they say it's a multiverse. I don't care. You could have a multiverse. Expand it to the edges of a multiverse. But somewhere there's an edge. And draw a line around all of it. And say to yourself, are you saying that our God fills it all, all the time? That our God fills every place so he doesn't actually ever have to travel? That all of that is contained in a sense just, you know, in the palm of his hand? Yes, but actually he spills over the edge. And no matter how far your imagination can push the edge, God will always flow right over it. He's infinite. Think of another verse, Job 42, talking about the power or the ability of God. He says this, I know that you, God, can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you. God has the ability to all, to do everything his perfect, holy will delights to do. Think of the sovereignty of God or the rights of God. You do know the difference between power and sovereignty. Power is the ability to do. Sovereignty is the right to do. Some people in human history had the power to rule. So they usurp the throne. They, you know, by their armies, they conquer another nation and they establish themselves as the ruler. So they have the power but they don't have the right. Some monarchs have the right to rule. You think of like a monarchy like in England where you still have a queen and now you have a king, but though they have the title, the right, they don't have the power to rule. But in our God, there is the union of absolute ability and absolute right. Psalm 115, our God is in heaven. He does whatever he pleases. Think about the knowledge of our God. It's infinite. Job 34, his eyes are upon the ways of man. He sees all his steps. There is no darkness or deep shadow where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. Think about the thoughts of God, his thoughts toward us, his works. Psalm, pardon me, Psalm 40. Many, O Lord my God, are your wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts toward us could not be recounted to you in order. If I would declare and speak of them, of the thoughts and the acts of God toward his people, they are more than can be numbered. Because God is infinite, that means nothing can be added to his person and nothing can be taken away from his person. And that's important for churchgoers because I find that no matter how many times we say the right phrases in church, we have an innate, natural tendency to think that if I had a really, really, really good week this week as a Christian, I have added something to God, essentially. He's a better God for it. And if I had a really, really bad week, in fact, if everybody in my church had a bad week, in fact, if every believer on planet Earth all at once had a bad week, maybe God would be ever so slightly lessened. Listen to what Job says, or the book of Job says about that. It says in Job 35, if you sin, what do you accomplish against God? Or if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give Him? Or what does he receive from your hand? Your wickedness affects a man, such as you, and your righteousness, the son of man. In other words, our choices do affect people, they affect us, they affect everybody around us, but they do not add anything to God or take anything from God. In Nehemiah chapter 9, Nehemiah says, ultimately, God's character, His name, is infinitely above our best statements. Stand up and bless the Lord your God, he says. Bless Him forever and ever. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. In other words, if you're talking biblically and you are describing God in the highest terms that you know how to describe Him, You cannot exaggerate. Every great biblical statement about God is an understatement, without exception. More has been left unsaid then has been said. Every display of God's perfection from creation to ruling over all things, to the incarnation, the crucifixion, the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus Christ, and finally one day the judgment and the recreation, the making of a new heavens and new earth, All of those show us something of God, but guys, every one of them is an event where more has been hidden than revealed because God is infinite. Now, the infinity of God in the sun. Turn to Colossians 1. There are two passages in Colossians, chapter 1 and chapter 2, each have a wonderful passage that speaks about this. In Colossians 1, we see that the mystery of all of this is that the greatest display of the infinite deity of God is actually in the human life. and ministry of his son. In the God-man, who he is and what he did, you have the clearest portrait of the perfections of God, and that does include the infinity of God. Look at Colossians 1, verse 15 through 19. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church, and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. Stop. Paul's in prison because of this person he's talking about. He's in a Roman prison writing to a group of young believers that he's never actually met. Someone else brought the gospel to Colossae. Now, Paul, you've been bragging on this Jesus of Nazareth, and it's cost you everything, and now you're in jail. What do you say about him now? And Paul, from verse 15 to 18, just soars high above almost every other description of our Lord from Genesis to Revelation. Why can Paul see that? Why does he write those things? It makes me think of the Song of Solomon where the wife, you know, the husband's gone and the wife, the bride of the king, which I think is a wonderful picture of the church or the believer. She's searching for her husband throughout the streets of Jerusalem, but it's past curfew. And so the soldiers in the streets stop her and say, what are you doing? Oh, it's the queen. And why are you out here? I'm looking for my husband. And maybe they don't recognize she's the queen. What kind of husband do you have? I'm looking for my love. Well, what's he look like? We haven't seen anybody out in the streets tonight except you. And then she goes into this wonderful poetic description of how altogether lovely he is. Could you write these things about Christ? If someone says to you, well, who is your Jesus? Would you say, I'm going to have trouble finding words, not to make myself look like I really love him, but I'm having trouble finding words to describe his infinite beauty, the love and the loveliness of Christ. Does it grip you like it does Paul? And the reason it does is verse 19, for it was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him. Everything which renders the divine nature perfect and complete Is united to humanity In the son of god Think about the trinity as god the son he possesses eternally and fully and identically the same undivided infinite divine nature as the Father and the Spirit. And what Paul is saying in Colossians is this, not one third of God lives in Jesus and then one third is the Father and one third is the Spirit. We tend to get that wrong. But all the fullness of the infinite God is in the eternal Son and all the fullness of the infinite divine nature is possessed by the Father and the Spirit as well. Co-eternal, co-equal, co-glorious, and all that fullness was placed in the womb of Mary into a human. It's a great mystery. But Paul says it's true. Now look at chapter 2 verse 9. That brings us to our third truth this morning. All that fullness So everything we just said about infinity and infinity, you know infinite power infinite knowledge You know all those aspects of an immeasurable deity. Those are all in your savior now chapter 2 verse 9 and 10 Show us that all of it's in the savior to be shared for us with us Verse 9, for in him all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form, and in him you have been made complete, and he is the head over all rule and authority. Now, a couple of things I want you to notice about the passage before we go further. A couple of important words. First is the word bodily. I'm reading from the New American Standard, so yours may be a little different, but the idea will be the same. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus Christ bodily. Now the point here is this, up to this point, the earth has seen times, experienced places where God has manifested something of his fullness. So think about the Old Testament with the temple and the holy of holies and this blazing light and the priest has to go in there offering sacrifices and smoke fills the room and he's only allowed to go in once a year and the smoke in a sense you know that the the smoke off of the sacrifices symbolic of how he could even walk near the lord and he comes into the presence of the lord but that is a symbolic presence Mount Sinai, God comes down, the whole mountain shakes, Moses walks up into this cloud of glory. That is a symbolic presence. It is not until the God-man, that bodily, substantially, not symbolically, not of type that is pointing us to something that's to come, but actually, really, truly, the infinite fullness of deity is here in a man. So, Paul's not talking about a beautiful symbol of the fullness and the infinite, you know, boundlessness of God, like they've seen before. He's talking about the actual fullness. And he says, he uses a Greek word twice, and sadly, many of our English translations translate the same Greek word differently, and they mean to convey a truth, but in doing that, we kind of miss a truth. I believe the new King James does it best, from what I remember. Let me read you the New American Standard again. See if you can spot the Greek word that shows up twice by the English translation. Verse 9, For in him all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form, and in him you have been made complete. Well, in the New American Standard, the English words are fullness and complete. Those are the same Greek words. So if you were in that day, you would hear it more like this. In Christ, all the fullness of God dwells, truly, bodily, actually, and you are made full in Christ. Or this, in Christ all the completeness of God dwells and you are made complete in Christ. The point is there is a common fullness that the Christian has with the Lord. Being united to Christ, you know, so much more than just committing my life to follow Him. The Spirit of God places us in the Son when we turn in repentance and faith. And your life is now woven together with the Son of God and you can never be separated again. You can never go back to belonging to yourself again. And in that wonderful union, Paul over and over and over throughout his letters, probably the most significant theme in Paul's letters, in Christ, union with Christ, Paul says, you have the same kind of fullness that Christ does. Now, not the same degree. He's infinite. We're not infinite. We don't contain the infinite fullness of God when we embrace Him. And you will not contain the infinite fullness of God when you stand before Him complete at the end of time, and there's no more sin, and we are glorified, or the work is finished, and we are with Him forever. We'll still not be infinite. Think of it this way. in the humanity of Christ pours that boundless fullness of every perfection of God the Son. But overflowing that, there is this, you know, Niagara Falls, and you and I are at the bottom, and it is pouring out onto us each moment. The fullness of God, shared, enjoyed by every believer, Now let's look at Paul and how he applies it. Paul who rejected christ and then Meeting him on the road to damascus Embraces him and spends three years ransacking his old testament to understand Who is he and he gets that clear in his head and he listens to the eyewitness testimonies Of what happened and by the grace of god and by that unusual work of the spirit Paul is able to write things that are the word of god for other people But when you look at paul you you lose every excuse Sometimes I say to God quietly, so nobody else can hear it because I would be embarrassed for other people to hear it. I say, well, if I would have been three years with Jesus, like John, Peter, James, I'd be a better Christian. I'd find it easier to believe, or I'd find it easier to obey. Paul didn't have that. Paul listened to eyewitnesses talk about the life of Jesus Christ. Then they wrote these down for us here in the Gospels. Paul has faith, Paul has the work of the Spirit, Paul has the scriptures, and that's what you have. Now, we don't have the same task, but when it comes to growing in Christlikeness, Paul steals all my excuses for why I'm stuck. How does Paul follow Christ? Because in Corinthians, twice he says to the Corinthians, imitate me because I'm imitating Jesus. So if I'm going to imitate Paul, I don't mean I have to go around the Middle Eastern world and modern Turkey and Greece and Thessalonica and get put into prison. I'm going to imitate Paul here in America, but that means I'm going to have to think the way Paul thought about Christ. And then my desires and my choices are fashioned by the same things that fashion Paul. Have you ever said to yourself, I wish I could pray like Paul? I wish I could be as good a theologian as Paul. I wish I could serve sacrificially like Paul. Well, the answer is, Why don't you start with the things that fueled that which is Seeing christ is infinite because surrounding that description of the infinite christ. We're going to find a lot of things that Paul thinks and does because of that. Look at the prayer life of Paul. Number one, it's found in chapter one, verse nine. For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience with joy, or joyously giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. Now, that's a prayer. In that prayer, you see what an infinite Christ does to Paul's prayer life. Do you notice the measurements of that prayer? And this is for a baby church, not for a mature Christian. This is the baby Christian. This is the new church. I'm praying that God would open your eyes spiritually so that you could understand what His will is so that you could, and then the list starts and the measures Do all his goodwill, meeting every wish that he has? Strengthen with all his might? Paul, how can you really still hope after meeting Christians and serving in churches, which can be very disappointing, how can you still have these measures in your prayer? And the answer is, because of the measure of Christ. An infinite Christ produces that kind of praying. What about Paul's theology? I wish I was a theologian like Paul. Look at verse 20 through 23 of chapter 1 in Colossians. Through him God has reconciled all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross. Through him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven, And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind and engaged in evil deeds, yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach. If indeed you continue in the faith, firmly established and steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister." Paul, where do you get that soteriology, if we use the technical term? Where do you get that doctrine of salvation? How is it that after so many years of disappointments, you still have that level of confidence in the gospel? Why haven't you said, we need the gospel, plus we need to add a few more things now. If your church is going to be healthy, Jesus plus. Why does Paul have those theological views? And the answer is what he just said in verse 15 through 19 about Christ. With that Christ comes that view of the gospel. What about service? Look at verse 24 in chapter 1. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of his body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. We're not talking about Paul adding to the cross for a people's justification, forgiveness. We're saying this, Christ in heaven, still through his body, still there is a cost being paid through the church, the cost of loving people. And Paul says, I gladly embrace the cost of loving people on behalf of Christ. And he goes on to say, because God made me a part of the unfolding of this kingdom, which will include Gentiles and Jews, men and women from every place. And my goal is that they would come to maturity in Christ. And I'm laboring by the strength of God for that task. Let me ask you, as a church, do you find it easy to labor to bring each other to maturity, to completion in Christ? Well, no, that's not easy, but we're glad to do it when we see it's working, right? Do you disciple people and you see them growing? And so someone says, how's so-and-so doing? You know, they made a profession last year and I know you've been meeting with them and you say, man, it is so encouraging. What about when it's not encouraging? What about when your church is reaching out and you spend so much time, maybe resources on a person, and they seem to come to the edge of embracing Christ and then they walk away again. And it's not the first time. It is not so easy to wake up in the morning and say, I gladly suffer loss and hardship for the sake of bringing people to maturity in Christ. I'm glad to do that. I can't say that very often. I have to struggle to kind of say, I'm willing to do that. You know, do you want to talk to so-and-so again about a dangerous path they're on? Last time you talked, it didn't go so well. And I think, no, God, let someone else talk to so-and-so. You know, I think I should go travel some more. I, you know, everybody in my church will say, wow, You're going to Canada for two weeks and then to Philly and then back home. Ooh, that's hard. I say, it's easier than real life. You know, like pastoring beats me up every day. I feel like a little coward. But then I look at Christ, infinite, and I say to myself, what Paul says in Corinthians, how will the new covenant not be more glorious than the old? We have an infinite savior. Does an infinite Christ fashion your view of suffering for other people? Now, I don't have time to go through it very much because I've spent too much time on the introduction. But let me also say that in chapter two, you will see Paul guiding other people and what he thinks of Christ affects it. Can you imagine all that Paul would have said as a budding young Pharisee before he met Christ? If someone came to him and said, I'm struggling, I don't know if I'm forgiven. Paul would have had a lot to say. Not one bit of it would have had to do with the cross. Or someone said, you know, I'm a believer. I've joined Judaism. I'm a proselyte. I came from the Greeks over into Judaism. But I don't know if I'm really progressing. How can I progress better, Saul? And Saul of Tarsus would have given a lot of Bible advice, and none of it would have had to do with being connected to Christ. And if someone was worldly, he might have said some things to them, but it would not have had anything to do with Christ. And I am shocked at how many evangelicals, when you hear them talking to their kids, or their neighbors, or the person sitting next to them on the pew, or preachers preaching, how they give advice for how to be clean, how to grow, how to avoid the attraction of the world, and it's all worldly wisdom. and legalism. And it has nothing to do with Christ. I remember a man who had two boys that were hustling at the back of our church one time. And so they were really getting into it. And then they got mad. Then they quit. It wasn't just having fun. They were fighting then. So we're talking like five and six, seven year old kind of age. And so they're socking each other and angry. And so the dad pulls them apart and he says this. Do I need to put you in diapers? Well, you know, a seven-year-old boy doesn't like to be put in diapers, so their pride rises up. I don't need diapers. Oh, maybe you do, because you have no self-control, self-control. The Bible talks about self-control, one of the fruit of the Spirit. But you don't have self-control, so maybe I should put you in a diaper, because you know, who else doesn't have self-control? It's little babies, and so we put them in diapers. So maybe I should put you in a diaper, because you can't control yourself. You get mad and you punch each other. Well, that made the fight stop. They didn't say, dad, do you have a couple of diapers? Cause if you go ahead and give them to us, we'll continue our fight. You know, their pride rose up and they're like, well, we'll, we've got self-control. And I thought to myself, the dad claimed to be a Christian. I thought, you know, you said nothing of Christ. When we are in the grip of the infinite fullness of God dwelling in the God-man for us, and someone is struggling, Christ will be at the heart of every cure. Just look at chapter two. He talks about Christ on the cross. The infinite Christ had your sins written above him, and he carried them from you on the cross and publicly trampled your enemies. Keep reading. Paul talks about people who are in the Colossian church who are saying, well, you need to add to Jesus for sanctification. Sure, you're forgiven, but to grow, you need all these special rules. And I'm not talking about New Testament or biblical rules. I'm talking about, you know, Jesus plus, and then your own ideas. And Paul wrote and said, all of that sounds great for holiness, but none of it actually works. Read chapter two. What his advice is, that you live as a man or a woman, as a young person, who is a part of the body of Christ, and with that vital living union with the infinite Savior, you will have all you need for holiness. Chapter three, don't set your mind on the things of the earth. Set your mind on things above. How can we keep from being constantly entangled in the kind gifts that we enjoy here? And they become our God instead of God. We all struggle with that. And the only answer is you can fill up on Christ. So in a sense, Paul's answer to all these is this, not starve yourself, but feast, stuff yourself, go to him, fill up on him so that sin has very little attraction to you. That's not all that there is to the Christian life, but that's the heart. Well, let's close. With one encouragement that I could maybe leave you with, that I have to say to myself, if our Christ is infinite, and all that infinite deity lives in him for us to draw upon, then here's my encouragement. I wouldn't settle for any Christian life that didn't require infinite. How much Christ do you need to get up on Sunday morning? Not too much. There are a lot of people that are more consistent in church attendance than maybe you are who have no Christ. There's a lot of other motivations that get me out of bed. You can go a long way in religion with no Christ at all. But when you look at the infinity of Christ, don't think, wow, there's so much. It's all extra. No, it's not extra. You need an infinite Savior. Don't settle for a Christian life that doesn't require an infinite Savior. Go to him with your neediness. Go to him like you went the very first time, desperately, arms outstretched, hungry, yearning, but hopeful, and get all you need to know him and love him and live for him in this present moment. To be so happy that even if you were like Paul, stuck in jail, having lost everything, If someone asks you in your prison cell, so what's this Jesus like? You would say, oh, let me tell you, he's altogether lovely. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the descriptions that Paul gives us. We thank you that it is ultimately beyond our best efforts, but though it's beyond our intellect, it is not beyond our heart. And we bow before you and say that you are all and in all. Forgive us when we fill up on the empty things, God. All of us can see the shame of that. but entice us to come and to draw. If He has all the fullness, surely we can live complete in Him. Help us, Father, for the glory of Your Son, His reputation in our homes and towns, and for our own soul's sake we ask it. Amen.