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us in One who has the greatest love and sympathy and

understanding in relation to us. So we can come in complete

confidence to Him and draw upon Him. And we do experience

it.

It is not something unknown to us. We feel our weakness, and

it is right that we should do so.

Paul could say—and how remarkable that he, one so gifted,

should say it: “And who is sufficient for these things?” Who is

sufficient?—none of us is sufficient in ourselves, but Paul also

says, “Our competency is of God; who has also made us

competent, as ministers of the new covenant”. May we greatly

desire to be in the gain of the resource that the Spirit, and the

Lord Himself, would grant us. All we need is in Him—we need

nothing outside of Christ in whom dwells all the fulness of the

Godhead. We were speaking of baptism to the name of the

Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let us be

encouraged that all that the Father is toward us, all that Christ

is, all that the Holy Spirit is, is freely, fully, unreservedly toward

us, as we hold fast the Head. Then, again, we have a contrast.

Paul says in verse 18, “Let no one fraudulently deprive you of

your prize, doing his own will in humility”. How deceptive that

is! A very humble man outwardly, he would seem to be very

lowly, and yet he is doing his own will. If a man does his own

will flagrantly, powerfully carrying everything before him, it is

pretty obvious, but here is a man doing his own will in humility.

How deceitful are the flesh and the natural man! The answer

and the remedy are in Colossians 2: 19, “holding fast the

head”. Not only holding, but holding fast—you are deeply

conscious that you have no other source of supply. “From

whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the

joints and bands, increases with the increase of God”; that is,

there is a vessel here, the body, which is being ministered to

constantly from heaven that it might be formed and enriched,

endowed with heavenly grace and intelligence in the increase

of God.