2.1 Principles of Completion

A Prayer for Completion

Salvation has two parts, redemption first and then completion. Redemption in our experience is instantaneous and total. God places us into completion, that is, into Christ, the moment we receive Jesus as our Savior. Yet our knowing of completion comes slowly over time.

In an upcoming lesson, we will consider redemption again. In this lesson we assume that Completion is now the only thing we know and the only place we live. The term “completion” is the best umbrella word, gathering with it such gospel terms as fullness, fulfilled, all, uttermost, consummation, and so on. The prominence of completion in the Bible is overwhelming.

Purpose. Every Bible study in any direction must be placed upon the certain foundation of God’s purpose, what God wants for Himself out of this whole thing. I have been teaching purpose and completion right from the start, yet only now, in this Passover season of the year of our Lord, 2022, have I come to know it for real.

I have included in the Appendix a list of New Testament verses containing the Greek words telos or pleroo and their many derivatives. Most of these principles are drawn from those verses, yet they also add to themselves other critical verses that we must have to understand Completion. Let’s list seven principles of completion and then we’ll expand on each.

Seven Principles.
1. Every Word Fulfilled
2. Synergeoing as Center
3. Full Assurance of Faith
4. The Ability of Christ
5. The Place of Church
6. The Fulness of Times
7. Calling Completion

Technically, each of these should be a chapter. If we designed this text in that way, however, it would be Covenant, not Kingdom. Because Kingdom is always coming out from Covenant, we will place these seven principles into our structure of the unfolding of that Kingdom in every way we can.

1. Every Word Fulfilled. Jesus said to them, “…Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44). When? – In this present age. Where? – On this present earth.

For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:16-17). Where? – On this present earth. When? – In this present age.

The absence of this absolute in Christian thinking is shocking.

MUST BE! Let’s bring Jesus’ words into our present day. “Everything that is written in Paul’s gospel and confirmed by John concerning Me inside My Church MUST BE FULFILLED.”

Consider this Word of Jesus that must be fulfilled. – “Love one another in exactly the same way that I have loved you.” If this Word is not fulfilled in totality, exactness, and permanence inside the present church, then there is no God and Jesus was blowing smoke.

This first principle of completion requires every believer in Jesus to contend face-to-Face with God concerning His Word. Pause a moment and think about the absolute certainty of every Word fulfilled.

2. Synergeoing Together. For this is age-unfolding life, that they may know You, the One true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent (John 17:3). To KNOW God is Life; not to know God is death. Neither the meaning of “to know” nor the God we are to know has any end. Nonetheless, there is a sealing into completion that marks a knowledge of God that is Life.

This experience in a believer’s life of being sealed into completion results in the full knowledge of sharing life with God and synergeoing with Him to make all things good, especially every next step taken. Sharing Life with God, that is, symmorphy, is the end purpose of Covenant; synergeoing with God is the outflow of Kingdom.

The Bond of Friendship. Completion means that God and the believer take every next step together, entirely by an equality of faith in one another, that is, Christ Jesus. Completion means true and continuous friendship with God.

We have defined friendship elsewhere as being a commitment to walk together in full equality of heart and with fully shared and open words and actions of harmony and honesty. It means enjoying one another inside of the deepest respect. Nothing is greater or more valuable than to synergeo with God as equals inside a fully shared Word, making all things good, calling all things into life. My bond of friendship with God is the only thing worth knowing.

3. Full Assurance of Faith. He did not judge [his] deadness through unbelief, however, but he was filled with power in faith, into the promise of God, giving God glory. Abraham was convinced to full measure and completion that what God had promised, He is also able to do (Romans 4:20-21).

Let us approach [everything inside the Holiest] with a true heart, in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:22). – For we have become partakers of Christ IF INDEED the source of our substance and assurance we should hold firm until all completion (Hebrews 3:14).

Look at me, God; I belong to You. Let it be to me according to Your Word (Luke 1:38).

Full Salvation. I finally know what full Salvation is. – Full Salvation is friendship with God. Friendship is full assurance of faith in one another. God always initiates; my response to Him is always giving back what He first gives to me. My certainty that God is speaking me in truth comes out from God’s certainty in me first, that I speak in truth.

God knows me, for I come out from His thoughts through the good-speaking of Jesus; God entrusts Himself to me, that I speak the truth. This trust enables me in return to embrace all that God speaks as the truth and to know that all that God is belongs to me.

4. The Ability of Christ. Who will transform the outer appearance of our lowly individual physical bodies, as we are symmorphosed with [sharing the same form with] His entire glorious Body [the Church], down to the finest details of the Energeia, the mighty continuous and swirling action of His ability to cause ALL to be subject to Himself (Philippians 3:21). – Christ, Who is energeoing all down to the finest details of the counsel and deliberate wisdom arising out of God’s desire (Ephesians 1:11).

Jesus is capable of doing symmorphy. Jesus is capable of connecting God and me together in a shared life, in all things. Jesus is capable of living as me. Jesus is capable of taking my human qualities and making them part of God.

The Faith of the Son of God. Jesus is the most able Being in the entire universe, for He is able to do what neither God nor we can do. God cannot connect with us apart from Jesus. We cannot connect with God apart from Jesus.

The Bible does not say that God can do “anything”; rather, it means that God can do all that He speaks. Jesus is the all-speaking of God. Jesus is God’s ability to do inside creation. This is why Jesus as the Pro-Thesis of God, the Word set forth for us from the very start, is so important to God and to us.

More than that, the life I now live inside this sphere of flesh, I live entirely inside the sphere of the faith of the Son of God, this one having loved me and having given Himself entirely for me. – I have all the faith in the universe.

5. The Place of Church. The Church is His body, the fullness of Christ, that is, the full meaning that is Christ filling full all inside of all, that is, Jesus filling with Himself everything in everyone (Ephesians 1:23). – This is My full completion, that you love one another in full reciprocity just exactly as I have loved you (John 15:12).

Carry one another’s great weight of value, and thus you shall complete the law of Christ to full measure (Galatians 6:2). – Beloved, if God so loved us, we also are committed to loving one another (1 John 4:11). Friendship with God means friendship with one another, otherwise no friendship with God actually exists.

Going to Church. The gathering together of the Church is the place of Salvation; it is where true friendship with God takes place. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! – For there the Lord commanded the blessing—Life forevermore (Psalm 133).

The place of Church, then, is as true for God’s Completion as it is for ours. God cannot be complete except in Church. We cannot be complete except in Church. No one wants to go to heaven, for death cannot save anyone. Everyone wants to go to Church, even if they imagine otherwise. Salvation is NOT heaven; salvation is Church.

6. The Fulness of Time. The principle of the fulness of time is based upon God’s law of the relationship between substance and appearance. For that reason, this principle has two parts. The first part of this principle asserts that everything is already complete, though we may not see it outwardly. Then, the second part is a short time-period set by God in which everything will be seen as it truly is. That which has always been true remains, while the lie is KNOWN as a lie and then vanishes away.

Each, however, in their own order: the firstfruit Christ, then those of Christ inside of His presence, then the completion, when He shall give the kingdom to Father God, when He shall have rendered inoperative all other sources and authorities and powers (1 Corinthians 15:23-24).

Everything As It Is. Even more than that, those whom He pro-determined, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He has already made fully just and innocent; and even more than that, those whom He made just and innocent, these He has already fully glorified (Romans 8:30). With God, Salvation is Complete from the very start. Yet that completion is substance and not yet appearance.

The time is near. The one being unjust, let him be unjust still; and he who is filthy, let him be filthy still, and he who is just, let him do justice still; and he who is holy, let him be holy still (Revelation 22:10-11). God’s completion requires that everything be seen to be fully what it is by all. This apocalypse is certain.

7. Calling Completion. This One who is continuously giving life to the dead and calling into existence things not existing (Romans 4:17).

So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them (Mark 11:22-24). – Look at me, God; I belong to You. Let it be to me according to Your Word (Luke 1:38).

The reality of God requires that we call Completion into our lives. We do this through full assurance of faith.

Our Active Role. Calling completion is our active role. The Devoted Spirit, entirely on our side of things, anoints us to call, but calling completion upon ourselves is something we alone must do. Yet calling forth completion is always for the sake of others, and thus our call is always synergeoing with God, making all things good and true, that is, Complete.

In Philippians 2, Paul said that Jesus comes through the faith of others (beginning with Mary’s ‘Let it be to me’), but that Jesus Himself actively called God into visibility through His human appearance. This is our privilege, this is our responsibility, this is Salvation Revealed, that you and I call God into the lives of others through our human frame.

Our Glorious Salvation. This lesson is a first-go at setting out these seven principles of completion. That means that I see ever more into their meaning even as I carefully set out my first knowing of what God means by them. I expect that, as we apply these principles to our study of completion all the way through this course, at the end of it, we will have a much more accurate and thorough understanding of how we live in and by these seven things.

Yet I am just overwhelmed, even by this first time through this list, for these things are so clear and so simple and so overwhelmingly powerful and wondrous.

We live in all Salvation now. Our Salvation is Glorious and Complete.