One of the recurring problems in the early church was the presence of people who tried to convince Christians that in order to be spiritually mature and overcome temptation, they needed something more than union with Christ through faith alone. The false teaching sometimes encouraged people to seek maturity through keeping various Jewish rituals, extreme asceticism, or the ecstatic experiences similar to those found in some of the surrounding pagan religions. In this introduction to the book of Colossians, Fr. Toms shows that St. Paul teaches that we are complete in Christ and that we find everything we need in him. Christians are often tempted to trade our sufficiency in Christ for something that is far less than relying completely on Him to find the fulness of the Christian life.