The all sufficiency of Christ

Is Jesus Christ sufficient for you?

To ask the question another way, is Jesus Christ enough for you?

We have perhaps said these words a thousand times that Jesus Christ is enough for us but do we really mean this when the rubber hits the road?

I think we get to know if this is true when we go through periods where we lose the things that are most important to us or when we feel the satisfaction of our desires fade away or elude us.

For example, when you didn’t get that grade, that job, that girl, is Christ all sufficient for you in those moments? Are you still satisfied knowing that to gain Christ is to loose nothing or are you still thinking that perhaps to have those things will complete you and enrich your joy.

Or perhaps when you lose a loved one, when you are stricken with illness, is the joy of your foundation diminished? Are you not feeling at this moment that to gain Christ is too lose nothing at all because Christ is all of your life?

When we act or behave in ways that diminishes the truth that Christ is all sufficient for us is to really belittle Christ. This is because Jesus Christ himself said that he is the Life. He is the fullness of life and in him there is a complete life. So if there is life in Jesus and no one else, then how can we begin to lose our joy or feel incomplete when we have Christ? To feel this way is to really miss the essence of Joy which is the presence of Christ in our hearts.

Some of you may feel at this moment that you have received the sentence of death, that right now what you are going through is beyond your strength and therefore find it hard to see or believe the all sufficiency of Christ. Paul once felt this way and this is how he would counsel you in your situation:

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 2Cor 1:9-10
Did you see it in the text? Did you see that in the end this was all to make them rely ultimately on God. When everything gets taking away Jesus Christ is enough.
Paul understood this principle when he was very happy to consider all things as loss so that he could gain Christ. Paul understood that his sufficiency in life was all rooted in Christ therefore no circumstances could ever take away his joy or destroy it, because whatever happens to him in his life, whether hunger, persecution or death, Jesus Christ was always enough.

 

Therefore my friends, if Christ is enough and all sufficient for us then let us start living like it not being moved up and down by our different circumstances but by being rooted in the all sufficiency of Christ for our lives.  

If I don’t get that job, Jesus is enough, if I lose my loved ones, Jesus is enough, if I fall sick, Jesus is enough, if that girl or boy doesn’t love me back, Jesus is enough, if I am poor Jesus is enough and if I have all things, I will live in such a way to show that it is not these things that makes me happy but Jesus. In all things Jesus is enough.

So let us live our lives with such vivacity that shows to the world the all sufficiency of Christ in relation to everything. Let us give him his proper glory and rejoice in it as well.

 

K.Oni