Christ All, and in all.
I. Christ is the substance or fulness of "all" things that which really goes to make the being of everything. Let us pause a little, and help ourselves to begin this year with worthy views of the dignity of Christ in the whole physical and spiritual universe. Everything that is was first a thought in the mind of Christ. There it lay from all eternity, till, by His will and power, that thought became matter. That was creation. Therefore every created thing is a development of the mind of Christ. "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." Therefore Christ is all things. Christ is "all" in every believer. "Without Me ye can do nothing."
II. Christ is the one characterising feature, the determining test of everything. This is the precise meaning of the verse. All characteristics merge, all distinctions are done away in Christ. "There is neither Greek nor Jew, there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all."
III. Christ is the bond that unites "all." For so we have it, "Christ is all, and in all." The same Christ in many makes many one. That is God's unity, the only unity God recognises. Here lie the deep mysteries of our religion, and here is the power of the sacraments. There are two things which take place in every regenerate man. You pass into Christ, and Christ passes into you.
IV. Christ is the sufficiency and the satisfaction of life. Ask the years that are gone! Take council of the past! What is satisfaction? Where has desire rested? When has ambition had enough? It has pleased God to treasure up all that man really wants in one treasury, the Lord Jesus Christ. And, excepting there, no man, since the foundation of this world, ever found it. He fills all things. He must fill your hearts. You will date your peace, your first true peace, to that day when you could say of Christ, "He is all, and in all to me."
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 268.
References: Colossians 3:11. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xvii., No. 1006; J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity,p. 249. Colossians 3:12. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 501; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ix., p. 29. Colossians 3:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1841.