Fifty2
Sunday’s ~ Listening to God
Sunday I attended a
church that meets in an old factory that has been converted into a bar that is
closed on Sundays. It has thick bare brick walls, wide plank wood floors and
dim lights that give it a rustic quaint sort of charm. The songs sung were ones I had never heard
before and the sermon was from Matthew
28:16-20. What I heard that ‘spoke’ to me happened before the sermon in the
scripture reading, Colossians 1:15-20;
specifically it was verse 19 that really caught my attention; “For God was
pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him”.
The word “fullness”
has a certain essence of completion, maturity and finality about it-like a
woman when she has reached the end of her pregnancy-there is certain ‘fullness’
about her or a piece of fruit-like a peach—when it has become fully ripe. Vines
Dictionary of New Testament Words offers that this verse (above) is the
description of: “God, in the completeness of His Being” as in: Ephesians 3:19; Colossians 1:19, 2:9 (Vine's Expository Dictionary). I like that description and yet it seems difficult to fathom that the “completeness”
of God was embodied in the person of Jesus Christ.There is nothing I can add to that to better quantify or state the significance of the fact that everything about God
was fully existent and exemplified in Christ.
Clarke’s commentary says this about Colossians
1:19: “For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell - As the
words, the Father are not in the text, some have translated the verse thus: For
in him it seemed right that all fullness should dwell; that is, that the majesty,
power, and goodness of God should be manifested in and by Christ Jesus, and
thus by him the Father reconciles all things to himself. The πληρωμα, or
fullness, must refer here to the Divine nature dwelling in the man Christ Jesus.”
Here are the other
verses that share this same explanation of fullness:
Ephesians 3: (18 &) 19: “And I pray that
you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all
the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the
love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to
the measure of all the fullness of
God.”
Colossians 2:9
& 10: “For in Christ all the fullness
of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.”
These
two verses are about us as
believers and followers of Christ—and the fact that any deficit or lack in us
has been filled by the grace of God in Christ. Here is the connection to the key points of
the sermon taken from Matthew 28: 18-20:
- Jesus Christ fully embodies God - Matthew 28:18: the “Great Claim”: “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”;
- Jesus' purpose is to reach everyone with his love and to invite them to become his follower - Matthew 28:19 the “Great Commission”: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
- Jesus wanted them to learn of him and have confidence that he would be with them - always - Matthew 28:20 the “Great Comfort”: “…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
We have much to be grateful for-therefore let us rejoice in being made full in Christ! Amen~
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