What does it mean to believe in the sufficiency of Christ?

The true secret of peace is to get to the very end of a guilty, ruined, helpless, worthless self, and there find an all-sufficient Christ as God's provision for our very deepest need. This truly is rest — a rest which can never be disturbed. There may be sorrow, pressure, conflict, exercise of soul, heaviness through many temptations, ups and downs, all sorts of trials and difficulties; but we feel persuaded that when a soul is really brought by God's Spirit to see the end of self, and to rest in a full Christ, it finds a peace which can never be interrupted.

The unsettled state of so many of God's dear people is the result of not having received into their hearts a full Christ, as God's own very provision for them.

Not only is God fully revealed to us in Christ, but believers are fully presented before God in Him. All the blessing that God has purposed for believers, and that Christ's work has secured for believers, is set forth in Christ Himself, in His place in the glory above every principality and power. Our portion and position, as set forth in Christ, is complete.

Not only have I all I want, but I am all I need to be, in Him. I must appear before God, I have to deal with God, as a responsible being — looked at as to what I am in myself, I am lost; in Christ, I am complete, as complete as Christ is, for I am complete in Him.

If we are leaning upon our fancied goodness, upon any righteousness which we think we possess, upon not having done any harm to anyone, upon our not being worse than some of our neighbours, upon our church membership, upon our attention to religious ceremonies; if we are leaning upon any or all of these things, or if we are adding these things to Christ, then we may be sure we are not ready in title, not ready in conscience... To bring anything else is to declare that Christ is not needful: to bring anything besides is to affirm that He is not enough.

Philosophy goes no further: it could not give us anything, much more where the truth of God is in question; anything we find added only tends to destroy... So the Christian should seek for nothing outside Christ. We are in Him in whom all fullness dwells: what can we want more? We are complete and perfected in Him.

There is treasured up for him in Christ all he can possibly need, whether it be to meet the claims of his conscience, the cravings of his heart, or the demands of his path. We shall seek, by the grace of God, to prove that the work of Christ is the only true resting place for the conscience: His Person, the only true object for the heart: His word, the only true guide for the path.

It is a blessed truth that we cannot be in circumstances Christ is not sufficient for. Whether it be the church or individual saints, it is impossible to be in a place for which Christ is not sufficient.

There is the ocean of grace at one end of the sentence, and the thimble of our need at the other, and the ocean is enough for the thimble; and that not for special days of stress only, but always and for all.

He habitually leaned upon that grace, and not on his own strength... His ordinary course was not to go on, like many in a spirit of careless, unconscious independence, until some great difficulty made him feel his dependence and turn to the source of his strength. But even he had to learn that there was a fuller sufficiency in Christ's grace than he had ever yet experienced, or even imagined.