You Have Nothing Lacking In Christ!
I believe having a wrong understanding of impartation can make you feel like you are lacking and really hinder you from walking in God’s power. On the other hand, rejecting impartation can also cause you to miss out. Let’s talk about how impartation and having received fullness in Christ go hand-in-hand.
Colossians 2:9-10 (NIV) For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
Colossians 2:10 (ERV) And because you belong to Christ you are complete, having everything you need. Christ is ruler over every other power and authority.
Many versions express verse 10 as “You are complete in Christ.” This is where it may seem like impartation contradicts the scriptural promises of what we have in Christ. As we have examined in other articles, every manifestation of God’s grace is in Christ, who dwells fully in every believer. If we know God’s promises we live from a perspective of spiritual riches and abundance, not of lack. Not every believer has been given the fullness of Christ’s ministry, but every believer has been given the fullness of God’s Spirit. We may excel in a certain area depending on where God has placed us, but all of Christ’s riches are available to each of us.
The Holy Spirit Teaches Us What We Have In Christ
John 16:13-15, 23 (RSV) When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you…In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name.
John 17:10, 20-23 (NIV) All I have is yours, and all you have is mine…“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
Jesus’s words in the gospel of John also talk about the fullness we have in Christ. We are in Jesus and all that the Father has belongs to Jesus. We have received the same glory the Father gave to Jesus. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus, reveals Jesus to us, and teaches us what we have in Jesus.
Paul says the same thing in 1st Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 2:9-12 (NIV) However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
The passage speaks of the unlimited riches we have in Christ, including every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. But we need to understand what God has freely given us, so the Holy Spirit makes us understand what we have in Christ. God has revealed what we have through Scripture and continues to reveal it as we walk in communion with Him and the Holy Spirit teaches us.
We have everything in Christ, but we are growing in the knowledge of God and of Christ. You can have spiritual riches available to you because are risen and seated with Christ, but live like a pauper because you have become spiritually dull of hearing.
Hebrews 5:11-14 (RSV) About this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food; for every one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.
This is the case for many Christians. There are so many Christians who have been in church for decades but are still focused on their own needs and living from a perspective of lack instead of knowing the riches they have in Christ and giving away those riches to the world.
There are various ways that the Holy Spirit works to reveal to us what we have in Christ. One is reminding us of what scripture says and making it a heart-revelation that we live out. That’s why we can simply teach people that Jesus commands his disciples to heal the sick and gives them power and authority, and the result is miracles. We can teach people that Jesus’s sheep hear His voice, and they receive prophetic words. We can take a promise of scripture such as “I am seated with Christ in heavenly places” and act on it, and the result is a miracle, as when God challenged me “If you really believe you are seated with Christ and in Him have access to everything that’s in heaven, then you have what that woman in a wheelchair needs. So why don’t you give it to her?” I acted based on scripture and God’s power was released. That is the Holy Spirit teaching us through scripture.
So How Does Impartation Fit In With That?
I see impartation as another way that the Holy Spirit reveals to us what we have in Christ so that we grow in the experiential knowledge of Jesus.
Language and walking on two legs are built into the human DNA. Most animals cannot learn to walk on two legs, and if they do it’s almost always only for a short period of time. No animals can learn to communicate with language as humans can. But babies don’t start off walking on two legs or speaking fluently. They learn what they have and they learn to use it. Babies hear people talking until they also start talking. That is impartation.
Another great analogy is that of sympathetic resonance. This is what happens when a tuning fork is struck and it causes another tuning fork of the same frequency to also vibrate, or a note played on a stringed instrument causes another similar string to vibrate. It’s what happens when a singer hits a certain pitch, causes a glass to vibrate, and breaks the glass. Sound is the manifestation of the frequency of a string or instrument, just like every “grace-effect” is a manifestation of God’s nature.
This is closely related to our article Communion With The Holy Spirit. The gift of righteousness gives us the same nature as God. Having the Spirit of Christ indwelling us means that God’s DNA is inside of us. The external manifestation of God’s Spirit resonates with and awakens what is inside of us. This is another way that the Holy Spirit teaches us what we have in Christ and teaches us to walk in it.
We call this “impartation.” The Spirit of Christ is manifest through another Christian or the presence of God is carried by an angel, and that causes what is inside of us to respond.
Psalm 42:7 (NIV) Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.
In another post, I shared some of my personal experiences with impartation. One was when Randy Clark prayed for me and I physically felt something move in my belly. And I have wept with compassion more than ever before since then. Was all that compassion already included in the Spirit of Christ indwelling me before that? Of course, it was! But the external manifestation of God’s Spirit increased my experience of what was already inside of me. It resonated with the Spirit of Christ within me. This is one way of “growing in the knowledge of God,” as scripture says.
Another way of growing in that compassion is putting yourself in a place where the manifestation of Christ’s Spirit is needed, and acting in faith. It’s kind of like a dad in the old days throwing his son in the water to teach him to swim. Except that you’re jumping in the water! You’re taking risks because you believe what the Bible says, that you are rich in Christ and He wants to bless the world through you.
I have grown in the knowledge of Jesus in both ways: through impartation and through taking risks even when I didn’t feel like anything was going to happen. Just believe what the Bible says and act on it!
Since God works through impartation and the laying on of hands, we should value them. However, a wrong understanding of impartation can hinder people from walking in God’s power if they feel like they lack or don’t have enough of God to minister in a situation. A wrong understanding of impartation hinders people from acting in faith based on God’s promises. You have all these solid promises of God in scripture but a wrong understanding makes you disqualify yourself because you feel like you are lacking something rather than being complete in Christ.
Even people who are already walking in power and regularly seeing healing miracles fall into this. Maybe you are used to seeing people healed of back pain and headaches, but now you have a person with epilepsy in front of you and you feel like you haven’t had enough impartation yet for the Spirit of God released through you to crush that disease. And you no longer pray with confidence because of it!
That is why we need to hold the truths of impartation and fullness in Christ together. A wrong understanding will either discard the truth that we have the fullness of Christ because of its emphasis on impartation or will discard the truth of impartation because we have fullness in Christ.
Receiving Something Doesn’t Always Mean You Didn’t Have It Before!
We have everything in Christ, and there is more. Both are true. We must see impartation as centered on the all-sufficiency of Christ and growing in the knowledge of HIm. There is a greater manifestation of God’s grace that can flow through your life than what you have known so far!
A Christian who walks in God’s power thinks differently and feels differently. There is the memory and emotion of what they have seen God do and the glory of the Lord revealed through his works filling and overflowing the soul. This can rub off on the people around and create a culture of power in the church. The reason it can rub off on other Christians is that they have the Spirit of Christ within them in order to be able to recognize and learn from the manifestation of Christ’s Spirit through another Christian. So if you want to walk in God’s power, do both. Don’t walk in a perspective of lack. Believe you have fullness in Christ and act accordingly. And also get around other people who are walking in God’s power.
Some things are mysteries and we must accept what scripture says before we fully understand them. Then the understanding begins to come.
Every Christian has all of heaven’s riches available in Christ, but we need each other! We are a body! We strengthen each other and build each other up in love!
Every Christian has fullness in Christ, but not all of Christ’s ministry has been assigned to every Christian.
Cells in the human body have specializations, but the DNA of the whole body is in each cell! It is the same in the body of Christ.
Jesus himself had the fullness of God dwelling in Him, but he received ministry from people and from angels. He was strengthened by angels.
Romans 1:11-12 (NIV) I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith.
1 Thessalonians 2:8 (NIV) …we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.
The word translated “impart to you” in Romans 1:11 is the same in Greek as the one translated “share with you” in 1 Thessalonians 2:8. The word translated “gift” in Romans 1:11 is “charisma” which is actually “grace” in Greek. We have abundant grace in Christ, yet we can share in God’s grace.
Thus the idea of impartation in scripture does not imply lack and a biblical understanding of impartation should not leave us with a mentality of lack. The gospel is freely available to all, and God’s grace is abundant in the gospel. The idea is not of one person giving a special superpower to another person, but it is of sharing Christ with each other and growing in the knowledge of Christ. The fact that I share God’s love and God’s grace with other Christians does not negate that they don’t already have God’s love and God’s grace. But this is how the body of Christ builds itself up! “Fellowship” is translated in the same way as “communion” in several languages, and it communicates the idea of sharing something in common. Fellowship builds us up as we share in God’s grace.
Some people are targeted with a specifically powerful impartation that results in a specific manifestation. How do we understand that? We all have the fullness of Christ’s spirit, but we don’t all have the fullness of His ministry. We are set in different places. Somebody who is set in a certain place needs a particularly powerful “strengthening” for what they are about to face and for where God is playing them. Does their need for strengthening mean they didn’t have fullness in Christ before? No. All the fullness of God dwelt in Jesus yet he was strengthened by angels.
Until we reach the full measure of the stature of Christ, some people will excel in certain areas more than others. But God’s intention is that they equip the rest for the work of ministry, not that they be seen as elites who have a special spiritual gift that other Christians don’t have!
Ephesians 4:11-16 (NIV) So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
The more you step out to minister, the more you put yourself in the place of needing to draw on God’s supernatural grace, and the more you will come to know Christ and manifest His glory. Stepping out in faith will place a draw on the Spirit of Christ inside of you and will put you in a place to receive the Spirit’s strengthening and empowerment. Receiving impartation can kickstart a person so they begin stepping out in faith to prophesy or minister healing. On the other hand, some people say they would like a powerful impartation but would do little with it if they were to receive it. Those who were acting in faith before receiving impartation usually will continue acting in faith after they receive it!
Every manifestation of God’s grace is found in His nature, so it’s all about knowing Him. The Holy Spirit, with the fullness of God, dwells in each person who has been born from above, but not everybody is filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit, with God’s glory inundating and flowing out of the whole being. We can be filled to the measure of the fullness of God by knowing His love that surpasses knowledge. There are different ways to be filled with the Holy Spirit, including the laying on of hands, praise and thanksgiving, and filling your heart with scripture.
How This Plays Out Practically
I have recently been teaching other Christians to minister healing and to hear God’s voice. Several of them have now seen Jesus do miracles through their own hands.
The focus is on God’s promises in scripture. I say “The nature of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us is to heal. We add our ‘amen’ to the ‘yes’ that God has declared in Christ, and this releases God’s Spirit into the situation. We aren’t begging God to do something. We are agreeing with what we already know is God’s will because He has revealed it in Jesus. Jesus taught all his disciples to heal the sick and said ‘He who believes in me will do the same works…‘”
It’s all about Jesus, not about some special superpower that only some followers of Jesus get. But I have also been praying and God’s glory manifests on people’s hands. This helps them get started. It gives boldness and experience with the Holy Spirit to help them grow! We teach people what they have in Christ, and we demonstrate it with the laying on of hands.
We have been given fullness in Christ, and impartation helps us to grow experientially in the knowledge of Christ and understand what we have been given. We must hold both of these truths together!
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Go to Heaven Now
Featured Image by Jefferey Neuffer from Pixabay
