Christ All and in All

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. COLOSSIANS 3:11

Moody preached on this text so often that it appears twice in the Ochorus library: as a chapter of The Way to God and as a separate sermon. Both are, in effect, a slow walk around the person of Christ, stopping at each of the names Scripture gives Him and asking the hearer whether he knows Christ in that way. It is Moody at his most devotional, and it shows that his gospel was never merely a plan of salvation. It was a Person.

A small Saviour or a mighty one

The chapter begins with a sentence that needs careful reading. “Christ is all to us that we make Him to be.” Moody does not mean that we decide who Christ is. He means that we enjoy only as much of Him as we are willing to receive. “Some Christians have a very small Saviour, for they are not willing to receive Him fully,” and others have a mighty Saviour because they let Him be great in them.

He adds that there are three ways of knowing a man: by hearsay, by a slight introduction, and by long intimate acquaintance. So there are three kinds of people in and around the church: those who know Christ only by reading about Him, those who have a slight personal acquaintance, and those who long, with Paul, to know Him and the power of His resurrection.

That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death. PHILIPPIANS 3:10

Saviour first

Moody’s walk around Christ always begins in the same place. Before anything else, Christ is Saviour from sin. “He did not come to save us in our sins, but from our sins.” The angels announced Him to the shepherds as a Saviour; Isaiah had long before heard God say that beside Him there is no Saviour. Other religions, Moody says, teach men to work their way up to God; the gospel is God coming down to lift men out of the pit. “So we start from the Cross, not from the cradle.”

And thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. MATTHEW 1:21

Deliverer, Redeemer, Way

But Christ is more than a Saviour. A man may save someone from drowning and be able to do nothing further for him. Christ also delivers. When Israel was sheltered behind the blood in Egypt they were safe from the angel of death, but they would still have heard the crack of the slave-driver’s whip if God had not also brought them out. Moody had little sympathy with a gospel that saves people and then leaves them in prison to their besetting sins.

Then Christ is Redeemer, who bought us back. He is the Way, who has gone ahead and blazed the trail through the forest, as frontiersmen cut marks on the trees so that others could follow. And Moody gives a test for whether we are following Him: when someone slanders you, do you treat him as your Master would have done?

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. JOHN 14:6

The Light, and borrowed light

Christ is also the Light of the world. Moody says he once thought a good deal of a picture of Christ knocking at a door with a lantern in His hand, but came to feel he would rather turn its face to the wall: “you might as well hang up a lantern to the sun as put one into Christ’s hand.” Christ is not a small light in a dark place. He is the Sun of Righteousness.

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. JOHN 8:12

That has a practical consequence. Many people, Moody says, go hunting for light and peace and joy. We are nowhere told to seek these things directly. When he was a boy he tried to catch his shadow and could not; but when he turned his face to the sun, the shadow followed him. So peace and joy come when we are occupied with Christ. Once someone asked Moody how he felt, and he had to stop and think; it was so long since he had thought about his feelings.

And the Christian is to shine in turn, with light that is not his own. “If we have any light at all it is borrowed light.” The moon shines only because the sun shines on it.

Keeper and Shepherd

Christ is our Keeper, the One who neither slumbers nor sleeps. He is the Shepherd, who in the tenth chapter of John says I will and I am again and again as He declares what He will do for His sheep. Moody loved the story of the Eastern shepherd who could not get his flock to cross a stream until he picked up two lambs, carried them over, and the sheep followed. A friend of his who had lost all his children to scarlet fever saw that happen in Syria and understood at last why the Shepherd had taken his lambs first.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. JOHN 10:27

Truly God

Behind all these names lies the conviction set out in another chapter of The Way to God, A Divine Saviour. Moody said that when he was a boy he thought of Jesus as a good man, perhaps the best man who ever lived. But he found that Christ claimed far more: to have come from heaven, to forgive sins, to be honoured as the Father is honoured, to receive worship. If Christ were a mere man, Moody reasoned, then either He was a deceiver or He was deluded, and worshipping Him would be idolatry. The only other possibility is the one the church confesses: He is God manifest in the flesh.

Before Abraham was, I am. JOHN 8:58

Moody was not a sophisticated apologist, and the argument can be made with more care than he gave it. But its heart is sound. Christ cannot be kept as a good teacher. He must be worshipped or rejected. A small Saviour is no Saviour at all.

A caution and an invitation

The danger of a chapter like this is that it becomes a list, admired and put away. Moody’s whole point was the opposite. He was not cataloguing Christ’s offices for the sake of theology. He was asking his hearers which of these they had actually received. Do you know Him as Deliverer, or are you still a slave to your temper? Do you know Him as Light, or are you groping in the fog? Do you know Him as Keeper, or are you trying to keep yourself?

For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power. COLOSSIANS 2:9–10

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is your Saviour small or mighty? In what part of your life have you not been willing to receive Him fully?

2. Which name of Christ in this chapter do you know least from experience — Deliverer, Way, Light, Keeper, Shepherd? Ask Him to show you that side of Himself.

3. Apply Moody’s test: think of the last person who wronged you. Did you treat them as your Master would?

4. Stop hunting for peace and joy this week. Turn your face to Christ in the Gospels each morning, and see what follows.

5. Read Christ All and in All in The Way to God, or the sermon Christ All in All, in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, forgive me for making You small. You are the Saviour, the Deliverer, the Redeemer, the Way, the Light, the Shepherd and the Keeper of my soul.

Where I am still a slave, deliver me. Where I am in darkness, shine on me. Where I have wandered, carry me over.

I confess that You are not only a good man but God manifest in the flesh, and I worship You.

Be all to me, and in all, and let whatever light I have be borrowed from You. Amen.