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Scripture Reading: Col. 2:9; 1:19; John 1:14, 16; Heb. 1:3; John 1:12-13; 2 Pet. 1:4; Eph. 3:19
I. The fullness of God dwelling in Christ bodily — Col. 2:9; 1:19:
А. The fullness of God’s grace and reality being in Christ — John 1:14.
B. The believers having received of Christ’s fullness, and grace upon grace — v. 16.
II. Christ being the expression of the riches of all that God is — Heb. 1:3.
III. The believers being redeemed for God’s expression:
А. The believers being redeemed back to humanity’s position at creation.
B. The believers being redeemed to become God’s children, having the divine life and the divine nature to express God and, thereby, becoming God’s fullness — John 1:12-13; 2 Pet. 1:4; Eph. 3:19.
Prayer: Lord, under Your precious blood, we worship You as those whom You have redeemed, saved, and visited. Lord, we are not merely gathering in Your name; even more, we are gathering with Your Spirit. Visit us again and come to each one of us. We need Your special visitation. We also need Your Spirit to deliver us daily from death that we may be freed from the old creation, the flesh, the world, and Satan. We believe that Your victorious blood cleanses us and also removes every shadow of the authority of darkness from this meeting place. Lord, refresh, uplift, and enliven our spirit so that You can move freely among us. Give us light, utterance, and a timely word to meet Your need. As the all-inclusive Lord, You are immeasurable, and You are able to meet the need of everyone here. Cleanse our ears with Your precious blood, and anoint us with Your anointing so that our heart may be opened to draw near to Your Word and to enter into the depth of the mystery in Your Word. Lord, have mercy on us and shame Your enemy. We bind him in Your victorious name. We declare once again that Jesus is victorious, and Satan is defeated! Lord, establish Your kingdom and Your sovereign authority among us. We exalt Your name and give You the glory. Amen.
According to the title of this chapter, “The Redemption of the Believers Being for the Fullness of God,” we are redeemed for the fullness of God. The fullness of God is a particular and profound phrase. Throughout the centuries Bible readers have argued and debated concerning this phrase. Some versions of the Bible translate Ephesians 3:19 as, “That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” This translation, however, is not according to the original text, nor is it according to the truth. The meaning of the original text is “that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.”
We need to be filled with the riches of God. The riches of God are the attributes of God, and God’s attributes are what God is. God has many attributes. For example, God is life, love, light, righteousness, mercy, grace, forbearance, kindness, authority, and power. These attributes of God are the riches of what God is. Many Christians say that they are filled with God. This is a very general statement. The New Testament clearly shows that to be filled with God is to be filled with the riches of what God is. Hence, when we are filled with God, we are filled with His life, love, light, grace, forgiveness, forbearance, power, and other riches. In other words, we are filled with all the attributes of God. This is the way we become the fullness of God. The ultimate meaning of fullness is expression. We first have God’s riches, and then we become God’s fullness. God’s fullness is the overflow of His riches from within us. When God’s riches overflow from within us, we become His fullness; we become the expression of God.
If we read Ephesians 3 carefully, we will see that the phrase unto all the fullness of God in verse 19 refers to the church. Christians who are cold and do not pursue the Lord in their daily life, but only worship Him on the Lord’s Day, are not filled. They are empty. They do not have anything to say, and they cannot function in their meetings. Therefore, the pastor leads the singing and the prayer, and a famous speaker is invited to give a sermon. This is not the church; neither is this the fullness of God.
In the book of Ephesians Paul speaks specifically concerning the church. In 3:16-19 he desperately prayed for the saints: “That He would grant you...to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” If we are filled with God’s life, love, and light, we will sing joyfully as we walk into the meeting hall, and everyone in our meetings will sing, praise, testify, and say Amen. We will have smiles on our faces, and we will overflow with joy. We will be filled with God. This is the fullness of God. God’s overflowing is His fullness, His expression. Such believers are the church, and this expression is the church.
There are two verses that we should study for a deeper understanding of the fullness. One verse is Colossians 2:9, which says, “In Him [Christ] dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” The other verse is Colossians 1:19, which says, “In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.” There is only one God, and the Bible shows that when the Lord Jesus was incarnated, He was God manifested in the flesh (John 1:1, 14). The two verses in Colossians show that what dwells in Christ dwells in Him bodily. What dwells in Christ is substantial, not vague or abstract. That which dwells in Christ is God’s fullness. But what is God’s fullness? Even though most people are not careless when they read other books, they are careless when they read the Bible. They skip the portions of the Bible that they do not understand, either because those portions are difficult or because they do not want to understand them. According to my knowledge of the Greek language, Colossians 2:9 definitely says, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” We should not take this verse for granted. Our attitude should not be that it does not matter whether or not we understand Godhead and fullness. This should not be our attitude. We must spend the time to study these words. The Bible is not incomprehensible. However, if we desire to understand the Bible, we need to pay the price and make an effort.
In addition to Colossians 2:9 and 1:19, John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us...full of grace and reality.” This verse shows that the Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us, is the Lord Jesus, who is full of grace and full of reality. In the Lord Jesus, who is the Word become flesh, there is not merely a little grace and reality; rather, there is the fullness of grace and reality. Furthermore, this grace and reality are of God. Initially, grace and reality were in God as riches; however, in the Lord Jesus they are the fullness. The riches are in God, and when the riches overflow from God to the Lord Jesus, they are the fullness.
The Lord Jesus is full of grace and full of reality. He is also full of life, love, light, holiness, righteousness, considerateness, endurance, kindness, faithfulness, power, and other virtues. All the attributes of God, His riches, are made full in the Lord Jesus. His virtues are the riches in God. When the riches overflow into the Lord Jesus, they become the fullness. The riches in God become the fullness in the Lord Jesus.
Hymns, #187 has twenty-six stanzas that speak of the fullness in the Lord Jesus. When we read through this hymn, we sense the fullness of the Lord Jesus. Whatever we need He is; He is neither poor nor empty. The Lord Jesus possesses life, but He does not merely have a great measure of life; He has the fullness of life like a waterfall. He does not merely have love; He has the fullness of love. John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world.” However, the verse does not end here; it continues: “That He gave His only begotten Son.” The words so and that show that the love which was in God entered into the Son. The love of God was rich in God. When the love of God entered into the Son, it became the fullness of love. The love of God with which He loves the world is rich, but when the only begotten Son came, God’s love became the fullness. When we receive God’s love, we are receiving what is in the Son, not what is in the Father. Hence, the love we receive is the fullness of love.
John 1:16 says, “Of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” It is not easy to understand this verse. A teacher of the Greek language once said that grace upon grace can be compared to the waves of the sea, which roll in wave upon wave without interruption. In this verse grace does not refer to the riches of grace but to the fullness of grace. The riches of grace are in God, but the fullness of grace is in Christ Jesus. Hence, the grace that we receive is the fullness of grace. The Jews do not know the Lord Jesus, and they do not receive Him. They only have the Father but not the Son. Hence, the most that they can enjoy is the rich love of God. They cannot enjoy the fullness of the love of God as Christians can.
Now we can understand John 1:16. This verse says that we have received “of His fullness,” not “of His riches.” Fullness, not riches, is used in this verse. This can be compared to water within a cup being the riches and to the water that overflows the cup being the fullness. The Lord Jesus is the overflow of God; the Son is the overflow of the Father. Here is an illustration. Before I was married in 1928, I was a bachelor. Even though I was young and strong, I did not have an “overflow.” Today, however, my eight children, their spouses, and my third generation add up to more than thirty people. This is my overflow. The riches are seen in the father, and the fullness is seen in the children.
In God the Father love is rich, light is rich, and grace is also rich, but we cannot see the fullness of these items in the Father. When the Son came and walked on the earth, people saw the overflow, something that surpassed the riches. Based on this light, when we read the record of the Lord Jesus in the four Gospels, we need to see that His life and walk were not merely rich in life, love, and power; His life and walk were the fullness of life, love, and power. When we describe the Father, we use the word rich. God is rich in this, and He is rich in that. However, when we describe the Son, we need to change rich to full. Christ is full of this, and He is full of that. The Lord is not only rich, but He is also full. The Lord Jesus is the fullness of God, and fullness is expression. Hymns, #501 says, “O glorious Christ, Savior mine, / Thou art truly radiance divine.” When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He was full of grace, full of reality, full of light, and full of life. He was full of the attributes of God; He was full of all that God is. This is God’s manifestation, God’s expression.
We are now clear concerning the fullness of God dwelling in Christ bodily. In Christ is the fullness of God’s grace and reality, and we have all received of Christ’s fullness, and grace upon grace. This is like wave upon wave of grace coming upon us. This surely is fullness. The grace we receive from the Lord is the expression of God. Hence, the more grace we receive, the more we express God.
We have seen that Christ is God’s fullness; He is the expression of the riches of all that God is. Concerning Christ, Hebrews 1:3 says that He is the effulgence of God’s glory. Effulgence is the fullness of glory. It is the overflow of glory; therefore, effulgence is the expression of glory. God is glory. Christ is the effulgence of God’s glory; He is the fullness of God and the expression of God.
The believers are redeemed for the fullness of God. By redemption the believers are brought back to the position of humanity at creation. The original position of man at creation was to be a vessel to contain and express God. After man fell, he lost this position, but in His death on the cross the Lord Jesus accomplished redemption to bring man back to his original position.
The believers are also redeemed to become the children of God who possess the divine life and the divine nature in order to express God and become the fullness of God (John 1:12-13; 2 Pet. 1:4; Eph. 3:19). Eventually, not only is Christ God’s fullness, but all those who belong to Christ will also be God’s fullness. Two thousand years ago there was only one man, Jesus in the land of Judea, who was God’s fullness to express God. Today, however, there are countless expressions of God on the earth. Even though our expression falls short, we at least bear some resemblance. We are redeemed, we have believed into the Lord, we are born of God, and we are children of God. We have God’s life and nature. The divine life and nature within us will continue to increase until they become the fullness, and we are “filled unto all the fullness of God” (v. 19).
Many of the young brothers live together in the brothers’ houses. When you sit together around the table after dinner, you should exercise to see how much you express God. As brothers, you should not be political or hypocritical when you speak to one another. Rather, you should consider how much God is expressed among you. You should also consider which aspects of God are expressed, whether it is grace, love, light, or life. You need to express God, and you should remind one another to express God.
There are brothers’ houses and sisters’ houses in the United States and in Taiwan. In the past, most of the testimonies we heard from these brothers and sisters were about washing dishes. If the saints who live in the brothers’ houses can overcome in the matter of washing dishes, they will have the fullness of God. They can overcome by calling on the Lord while they wash dishes. The Lord Jesus is the fullness of God, and the believers who are redeemed by God have the overflowing God within them. In God the divine life is rich; when this life enters into us, it becomes the fullness. When we receive and enjoy the divine nature that overflows from God, we become the fullness of God and His expression.
May the work of the Spirit of the Lord touch us all and enable us to see that being a Christian is not a matter of ethical cultivation or self-improvement; rather, it is a matter of being filled unto all the fullness of God. We need to be filled with the riches of God’s life, love, holiness, grace, and power. When we are filled with the riches of what God is, we will become God’s fullness and spontaneously express Him. As a result, we will be those who enjoy and express God. This is what it means to be a genuine believer; this is the genuine Christian life.
