CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Colossians 2:9. In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.—There is no minimising the significance of this statement. It is either true or it is the wildest raving of blasphemy. “Dwelleth”—has its settled abode. A change of prefix would give us the word in Luke 24:18. “Dost thou alone sojourn?” etc. Dualism separates God from matter as far as possible; the Incarnation unites Him for ever with it. “Great is the mystery.” “Godhead.” Though twice before in our A.V. (Acts 17:29; Romans 1:23), the word here differs from both.
Colossians 2:10. And ye are complete in Him.—These minor powers of whom you have heard are all subordinate to Him in whom directly you have all you need. There is no need to go viâ Philip and Andrew, Mary or Michael, when “we would see Jesus.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Colossians 2:9-10
The Divine Fulness of Christ a Pledge of the Believer’s Perfection.
Christianity is the true philosophy. Here are its profoundest depths, its loftiest themes, its most substantial discoveries. The philosophy that is not after Christ is vain and misleading. It was a false conception of the Colossian heresy that the divine energy was dispersed among several spiritual agencies. The apostle boldly declares that in Christ dwells the whole πλήρωμα, the entire fulness of the Deity, and that it is in vain to seek for spiritual life in communion with inferior creatures.
I. The divine fulness of Christ.—
1. In Christ is the fulness of the Deity. “For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead” (Colossians 2:9). A small text, but a great subject. These words contain the sublimest truth in the narrowest compass. Fulness is a term used to signify all that anything contains. Hence we read of the fulness of the earth, the fulness of the sea, and that the Church is Christ’s body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. In Christ inhere all the perfections, attributes, and qualities that essentially constitute the divine nature—power, wisdom, eternity, self-existence, omnipresence, truth, love, holiness. The deities of the heathen never pretended to possess more than a few divine attributes, some portion of divinity. But Christ contains in Himself the totality of divine powers and excellencies.
2. The fulness of the Deity in Christ is present and permanent.—“Dwelleth.” The present tense is used. It is not as a transient gleam or as a brilliant display to serve a temporary purpose, but as an ever-present and unchanging reality. Mystery of mysteries! the body that hungered and thirsted, that bled and died, that rose and ascended on high, is still the temple of illimitable Deity! The manifestations of God through angels and prophets were brief and partial. The Shekinah, or visible glory, that hovered over the ark of the covenant was a symbol only of a present deity, and disappeared as mysteriously as it came. But in Christ the transcendent fulness of the Godhead finds its permanent home, never to depart, never to vanish.
3. The fulness of the Deity in Christ has a visible embodiment.—“Bodily.” In the person of Christ every moral perfection of the Godhead was enshrined, and brought within the range of human vision. He presented and proved the fact of the divine existence. He embodied and declared the divine spirituality. He delineated the divine disposition and character in the days of His flesh. Gleams of the divine nature occasionally broke forth. “We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten Son of God.” And now, from that subtle, glorified human form of our exalted Mediator, the splendour of the Deity rays forth, filling the universe with light and glory and joy. In Christ the Godhead is revealed, not as a changing, shadowy phantasm, but as a positive, substantial reality.
II. The supreme authority of Christ.—“Which is the Head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10).
1. Angels are the principalities and powers of the universe.—They are called spirits to express their nature, and angels to designate their office as messengers sent by God. They are called sons of God, to indicate their lofty relationship; cherubim, because of their composite nature, and because they are placed under the presence of Jehovah, whose moving throne they appear to draw; seraphim, because of their burning ardour in executing the commands of God; stars of the morning, to set forth their brightness; a flaming fire, because of the fierceness and celerity with which they carry out the vengeance of Heaven; and they are called principalities and powers on account of their exalted rank and superior endowments.
2. Among the principalities and powers of the universe Christ has supreme authority.—He is the Head of all angelic hierarchies. He called them into being. He endows them with vast intelligence. He designates their rank. He controls their beneficent ministries. He fills the circle of their bliss. To worship angels, or to seek their mediation in the affairs of the soul, is not only gross idolatry, but an insufferable insult to the fulness of the Deity in Christ.
III. The believer’s fulness in Christ.—“And ye are complete in Him” (Colossians 2:10).
1. In Christ is the inspiration of the believer’s life.—The soul finds its true life by believing on the Son of God. “He that hath the Son hath life.” In ourselves we are like empty vessels; but in Christ we are filled up to the brim. As there is an original and divine fullness of the Godhead in Christ, so there is a derived fulness communicated to us. Every advance in Christian experience, every aspiration after a more exalted spiritual tone, every yearning of the soul after clearer light, every struggle for victory over self and sin, is prompted and accelerated by the impetuous inflow of the divine life.
2. In Christ is the perfect ideal of the believer’s character.—Christ has exalted human nature. He took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. He has shown what human nature can become, and what it can do. In Him we have the illustrious pattern after which our souls are to be fashioned and rounded off into a full-orbed completeness. “Christ is the mirror that glasses God’s image before us, and the spirit is the plastic force within that transfers and photographs that image; and so, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
3. In Christ is the interminable bliss of the believer’s future.—The present life is a training for the future. The more it is in harmony with the will of Christ the happier will it be. Every attempt, amid the multiform relations of life, to do our duty in a Christly spirit, is bringing us into closer sympathy with Christ, and preparing us for a joyous life with Him hereafter. The apostle expressed the condition of the highest conceivable bliss to the believer in the words, “And so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
Lessons.—
1. Christ is essentially divine.
2. There is an ineffable fulness of salvation in Christ.
3. All secondary mediators between God and man are superfluous.
4. The soul is complete in Christ only as it believes in Him.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Colossians 2:9-10. A Presentation of Two Great Truths.
I. That all Christianity centres in Christ.
II. That union to Christ makes the soul independent of others.—Dykes.
Colossians 2:9. The Fulness of Christ.
I.
Christ is full of the power of God.
II.
The love of God.
III.
The grace of God.
IV.
The faithfulness of God.
V.
The purpose of God to punish sin.—Preacher’s Magazine.
Colossians 2:10. The Completing of the Soul.
I. We are made complete in Christ by inspirations.
II. We have ideas and ideals in Christ.
III. We are set in a various scheme of relations that we may have a training in virtues equally various and be perfected in them and by means of them—Bushnell.
The Believer Complete in Christ.
I. Complete in Him with respect to the work which He hath already performed.—
1. His obedience and atonement were precisely what God Himself had prescribed.
2. That He obeyed and atoned, we have the perfect evidence of observation and testimony. He Himself declared, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” “It is finished.” To this the Father and the Spirit have expressly borne testimony: by signs and wonders; His resurrection; His ascension; the descent of the Spirit; conversions; the glorification of His people.
3. Into His righteousness thus perfect the believer is admitted.
II. Complete in Him with respect to the work which He is now performing.—
1. interceding in heaven.
2. Ruling on earth, and thus giving grace and affording protection.
III. Complete in Him with respect to the work which He is hereafter to perform.—
1. As the Resurrection.
2. As the Judges 3. As the Glorifier.
4. As the Consummation and Communicator of eternal blessedness.—Stewart.