This is the third article in a three-part series. We recommend beginning with Is Christ Enough? and then What Is the Real Gospel? before reading this one.

We have asked the question. We have defined the gospel. We have traced the drift - how in every generation the most important announcement in human history gets quietly displaced by addition, by performance, by the deeply human need to contribute something to our own standing before God.

Now we stop arguing and start beholding.

Because the defence of the gospel ultimately rests not on the strength of our arguments but on the magnitude of the person at its centre. You cannot fully appreciate what is being traded away until you have stood long enough in front of what is being offered. So before we say another word about what the gospel is not, or what the Hebrew Roots Movement gets wrong, or what Paul meant in any particular passage - we turn and face him.

Who is this Christ, exactly, that everything depends on him?

The Most Concentrated Christology Ever Written

In Colossians 1:15–20 Paul writes something that stops every honest reader in their tracks. It is not an argument. It is not a polemic. It is a declaration - the kind that doesn't invite debate so much as silence. Read it slowly. Don't rush toward the application. Stay in it.

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." (Colossians 1:15–20)

Image of the invisible God. The one human being in whom the invisible became visible - not as a partial representation but as a complete one. If you want to know what God is like, look at Christ. Not at a law code. Not at a covenant structure. At him.

Before all things. Not chronologically prior to creation in the way that last Tuesday is prior to today. Ontologically prior - the one in whom all created reality finds its origin and its coherence. In him all things hold together. The universe does not maintain its own existence. It is held - moment by moment, particle by particle - in the grip of the same person who walked on water and wept at a tomb.

The fullness of God dwelling in him. Not a portion. Not a representative sample. The pleroma - the totality, the completeness, the whole undivided being of God - pleased to dwell bodily in this one person. And through him, reconciling all things to himself by the blood of his cross.

This is who died at Calvary. This is whose blood was shed. This is whose resurrection the gospel announces. And this changes everything about how we understand the word enough.

You Have Been Filled In Him

Two chapters later Paul draws the implication that makes the entire Colossian letter an answer to every form of religious addition - including the proto-HRM teaching that had infiltrated the Colossian church with its festivals, new moons, and dietary regulations. He writes:

"For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority." (Colossians 2:9–10)

You have been filled in him.

Not partially filled. Not filled in a preliminary sense pending further obedience. Filled - the same word, the same pleroma - with the same fullness that fills Christ himself. The believer who is in Christ participates in that fullness. Not by becoming divine. But by being united to the one in whom all divine fullness dwells - so that what is his becomes, by grace, the ground of their standing.

This is why Paul can say in the very next verses that the festivals, the new moons, the dietary laws are shadows - and that the substance belongs to Christ. Not because those things were meaningless. Because they were always pointing here. To this fullness. To this person. To this completed union between God and humanity accomplished in the body and blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A shadow does not become more real by being observed more carefully. It becomes more real by turning toward the light that casts it. And the light has come.

The Best Trade Ever Made

Paul knew what it cost to say this. He was not speaking theoretically about religious achievement. He was speaking biographically. In Philippians 3 he lists what he surrendered - circumcised on the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, blameless under the law. These were not small things. This was a lifetime of devotion, a heritage of covenant faithfulness, a religious identity built with extraordinary discipline and genuine love for God.

And he called it skubalon. Rubbish. Dung. Worthless - not because it was evil but because compared to what he had found in Christ it was not even in the same category. You do not mourn the candle when the sun rises. You do not return to the shadow when you have found the substance.

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord... that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ." (Philippians 3:8–9)

Not having a righteousness of my own. Found in him. This is not loss dressed up as gain. This is the recognition that what felt like everything was actually nothing - and what felt like nothing, this naked faith in a crucified and risen Christ with nothing added and nothing held back - was actually everything.

That exchange - everything I built for everything Christ is - is the gospel made biographical. And every person who has genuinely made it will tell you the same thing Paul tells you. You don't lose something when you let go of your religious scaffolding. You land for the first time.

Moses Pointed Here

We want to say something clearly before we close - because this trilogy of articles could be misread as a dismissal of the Old Testament, of Moses, of the Torah, of Israel's covenant history. It is the opposite.

Moses was one of the greatest figures in human history. The Torah is holy and righteous and good - Paul says so in Romans 7:12 and he means it completely. The covenant history of Israel is the most important preparatory narrative in the story of redemption. The feasts, the sacrifices, the priesthood, the tabernacle - every detail of the Mosaic system was given by God, for a purpose, with breathtaking intentionality.

That purpose was to point here. To this. To him.

The sacrificial lamb pointed to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The high priest entering the holy of holies once a year pointed to the great high priest who entered once for all with his own blood. The Passover pointed to the one who said this is my body broken for you. The temple pointed to the one who said destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up - and meant his body. The manna in the wilderness pointed to the one who said I am the bread of life. The bronze serpent lifted up in the desert pointed to the one who said as Moses lifted up the serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

Every signpost was true. Every signpost was given by God. Every signpost was pointing in exactly the right direction.

Christ is not the beginning of something that Torah completes. Torah is the beginning of something that Christ completes. And to turn back from the destination to the signpost - however lovingly, however sincerely, however devotedly - is to have misunderstood both the signpost and the destination.

The Silence After the Verdict

Paul ends his great sustained argument in Romans - eleven chapters of the most rigorous theological reasoning ever committed to writing - and he does not end with a conclusion. He ends with this:

"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:33–36)

He worships. After everything he has argued and established and defended - he worships. Because the thing he has been describing is not finally a doctrine. It is a person. And persons are not exhausted by description. They are encountered.

We have pressed in these three articles as far as careful argument can take us. We have asked whether Christ is enough. We have defined the gospel precisely. We have traced how it gets lost and why pure grace is harder to receive than a system of requirements. We have stood in front of Colossians 1 and let the fullness of who Christ is register slowly.

And now - like Paul, like John falling at his feet like a dead man, like Isaiah crying woe is me in the temple, like every person who has ever truly encountered the living God rather than merely a system about him - we go quiet.

Not because there is nothing more to say. There is infinitely more to say and we will keep saying it throughout every article on this site. But because the most important response to the gospel is not more argument. It is the response of the prodigal son who came to himself in a far country, who rehearsed his speech on the way home, and who never got to deliver it - because the father saw him while he was still a great way off and ran.

Come with nothing. Come empty. Come in the nakedness that grace requires and discover that it is not exposure - it is the moment the Father runs.

Is Christ enough?

He is everything.

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. - Romans 11:36

Continue reading: Empty Hands - The Spirit-Filled Life That Follows the Gospel