Riches of Christ 5

Philippians 4:19 And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Colossians 1:25 Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, 26 that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, 27 to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. 29 For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

The riches of Christ have to do with Christ Himself and not what He has, though that must be kept in mind as well. The true riches of Christ are the riches sinners have in having Christ Himself. All sinners are needy, though they may not recognize that about themselves. All sinners are completely and totally dependent upon the living God, though again they do not recognize that. Good meets the true needs (not just what people want) of His children and He does so in accordance with His riches in glory. It is not just that He does this out of His riches of glory, but in accordance with His riches in glory. Those riches of His glory are located in Christ Jesus and only in Christ Jesus.

On the one hand we must recognize that if we are seeking riches of any kind in another place, we are looking in the wrong place or places. We must seek true riches in Christ Jesus as that is the only place where they are. In another sense the very things we absolutely need are only found in Christ Jesus as well. It is God alone who supplies those, but He supplies them in Christ. There are no true riches in the world or anywhere else that are not found in Christ. That is a foundational truth that we must grab a hold of and not let go. But again, Christ Himself and all that He is cannot be anything less than our truest and greatest riches. He is not just the grand dispenser of riches, He is the greatest riches of all and the more we have of Christ the more riches we have. We do not just seek Christ to obtain the riches He has that He can give apart from Himself, but we seek Christ for more of Himself.

When we meditate upon this, we can see that this truth can show us the idolatry of our hearts. In seeking Christ for things and even for spiritual things, that is not the same thing as seeking Christ for Himself. Our hearts may be used to seeking Him to obtain spiritual things or things we can excuse as a spiritual need, but we are to seek Christ Himself above all things and He is to be the main reason we are to seek for anything. As Augustine said so beautifully, “He loves Thee too little who does not love all things for Thy sake.” Our hearts are not to be set on worldly riches and they are not to be set on spiritual riches. Our hearts are to be set on Christ and Him alone.

This may sound odd to many folks at first read, but when we realize that God made us in His own image for His own purposes, this should grab our attention and make us think that we have been made for a real purpose. All human beings are made through Christ and for Christ. We are commanded to love God with all of our being and our first petition in prayer is to be for His name to be hallowed and glorified. Unless we love Him and His glory above all things, our prayers will hit low ceilings made of brass (so to speak). We must have Christ to pray and it is His name alone that we are to seek the Father with and for. The Father does not give us secondary things as best, He gives His best which is Himself in His Son.

Once again we should stand in amazement at the patience and grace of God as we think of the depths of our sins in loving things rather than Him and only seeking Him for other things. If God did not love His own glory, we would be destroyed forever simply because we have not sought Him as our greatest love. We may have sought some good things, yet we did not seek Christ as our chief love and we did not seek Him as our greatest good. We must have our hearts turned and changed so that we can see that Christ is our greatest good and that all we have from Him comes by grace and grace alone. We should seek Him and in Him we have the sweetest and greatest riches by having Him and sharing in His life. All else is man-made religion.

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