Years ago, I spotted an odd sign. It said, “$795 Complete Cremation” and advertised a local funeral home. My first thought then was, “so if $795 gets you a complete cremation, does $500 get you an incomplete one?” (The sign is still there but now the cost is $995.)
That had me thinking about that word “complete,” so I checked it out in my concordance. What I found was that Paul used it a lot. He left that special word for Archippus at the end of his letter to the Colossians. “Tell Archippus: ‘See to it that you complete the work you have received in the Lord.’” [Col 4:17 NIV]
Some other translations use the word “fulfill” instead of “complete,” but both mean the same thing. In other words, “Archippus, finish the job God gave you!”
Finish the job … complete the work. We know from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that we were “created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” [2:10]
God created us for a purpose. That purpose is both the same and yet different for all of us. The “same” part is that we are called to worship our Lord and Savior in spirit and in truth.
The “different” part is how that worship is manifested in our good deeds. Some of us are called to do things publicly and some are called to do things behind the scenes. It doesn’t matter, our good deeds are uniquely ours, prepared individually by God for us.
Complete the job we must. I don’t want to stand in the presence of my Lord and King having left anything undone. Amen.
