What does it mean that in Christ the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 1:19)?

What gives a more wonderful view of Christ than this truth which the simplest believer knows, or ought to know, however little able to explain it? There is nothing like it. There alone we have the truth. We know God now; and how? Not by reasoning, as if thus we could search and find Him out. We know Him in Christ as a living Person who lived once bodily in this world, who still has His body above the world. We know from God, from His Word, that in the Person of Christ "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," not merely in His spirit, but really in Him bodily, though He be now glorified. He had a real, true body from the incarnation; but He had all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him thus.

V. 9. Having warned us of this snare the Apostle at once brings before us the great positive truths that would preserve us from being turned aside by the emptiness of human wisdom. First, he turns us to Christ — "In Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Instead of the misty speculations of men, we have God perfectly revealed in all His fulness in Christ. There is not a single attribute of the Godhead that is lacking in Christ. Moreover, it is in Him "bodily". Christ has taken a body and become manifest in flesh, so that the fulness of the Godhead could be presented in a way that can be known by the most simple of men. It may require a giant intellect to understand even the terms in which philosophy struggles to express its speculations; simple fishermen of Galilee can see the fulness of God in Christ, and thus enter into truths that lie outside the comprehension of the greatest natural intellect. One has said, "To faith which saw through the veil of His humiliation when here, there was not a trait in His character, an act in His conduct, or an expression of the feeling of His heart going out to the misery around Him, that was not the revelation of the Godhead" (J.N.D.).

And first, as to Colossians 1:19, "All the fulness was pleased to dwell in Him" (as it must read). The Spirit keeping Himself in the background in Colossians would present pre-eminently to the saints the glory of the Person of the Lord Jesus, and that in a wonderful concentration of the light of it. The verse surely refers to what is more specifically stated in chapter 2:9, "All the fulness of the Godhead." It sums up first all the varied glory of verses 15-18, but would go beyond such expression of His glory in "All the fulness." So that nothing can be conceived of the Godhead as revealed, that did not find its revelation in Christ personally. For instance, the Father was so fully revealed that He could say, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Then Matthew 12:28 shows the Spirit of God was the power by which He wrought and spoke — "given without measure." Again, besides creatorship and redemption glories, the Father dwelt in Him, John 14:10, and He was in the Father, verse 11. Even as Son of Man speaking to Nicodemus He was in heaven divinely according to the mystery of His Person, which meets us everywhere. "Before Abraham was I am" — the infinite expression of it. And all this true of Him in incarnation. "Bodily" is added in the second passage; God in His perfect Fulness in Christ as Man, and this as true in resurrection, as before it (Luke 24:39-40; 1 John 1:1), and this emphatically to meet the Gnostic heresy that He had only the appearance of a human body — was but a phantom, etc. I say in Resurrection also, because of the next verse which could be only true of us thus — in Him in whom the Fulness dwells, as to His Person, in Him Who is above all principality as to His position and rights as Christ exalted on high, as Mr. Darby has put it. If "filled full" seems to make the word "complete" clearer to anyone, I have no objection from the original to make. The difficulty is to preserve in the comparative poverty of English, the direct connection between the "Fulness" (substantive) and "Complete" (participle of the verb). If the change would at all weaken the wonderful all-inclusive statement of the position as "in Christ" I feel I should be a loser: condition I can hardly conceive it to express. Oh, for adoring hearts in presence of such realities that God prepared for us in Eternal counsels, and that needed the incarnation and death and resurrection of the Son to make good for us.

There is a strong likeness between Col. 1:19 and verse 9 of our chapter; only there it refers to that which was true of Him in the days of His sojourn on earth, whilst here it is stated as being true of Him today. It is hardly possible to imagine a stronger statement of His deity, and yet it plainly infers that He still is Man in saying, "bodily." If then we are rooted and built up and filled full in such an One as He, it would be manifestly very foolish to turn aside to the philosophizings of poor little human brains that ere long will be eaten of worms.

We can see then the necessity of the addition of this word "bodily". The fulness must be toward us in that blessed Man. It is of course an assertion that Christ is still in Manhood in a glorified body in the presence of God. Not merely a spirit, but in bodily form He is glorified in the presence of God.

Surely the Fulness of the Godhead has always dwelt in Him. It did not begin to do so, either at the incarnation or at His baptism. This verse counteracted the ideas of the gnostics who were saying that there was some fulness, some power, apart from Him. Here Paul says in Him was all Fulness.

With the pre-eminence of Christ in all things, two great considerations stand before us. First, all fullness was pleased to dwell in Him. It was not a partial nor ever so full manifestation of God; this might have been in any man; but here all fullness was pleased in Him to dwell. This is the truth of Christ's Person, the glory of the incarnate Lord. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." "If I by the Spirit of God cast out devils, the kingdom of God is come unto you." "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Yet we know it was always by the power of the Holy Ghost that everything was done and said. So truly was all the fullness pleased to dwell in Him.

All such insinuating questions are anticipated and answered here; for the Spirit writes, “In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19, W.K.). The Son has no inferior or secondary position in Deity, since the whole fullness of the Godhead has a permanent abiding-place in Him. It was not an incomplete fullness, nor a portion only of the fullness, but the fullness in its perfect entirety, nothing of Deity lacking nor anything diminished in any respect or at any time. He is “the Son of the Blessed," and “God blessed forever" (Mark 14:61, 62; Rom. 9:5).

There are the two great facts as to Christ's person, First, He is divine; secondly, He is human, both true, absolutely borne witness to by God Himself; and we cannot lose sight of either of them. This blessed Person whom we know is "God over all, blessed for ever." You cannot use any language too strong to express the divine dignity of the character of the Son of God. He is the Creator, He is the Almighty, He is the Upholder of all things. In Him was life, in Him was light, in Him all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily. No language is too strong, I say, to set forth the divine character of our blessed Saviour. I feel like dwelling upon that in days like these. People are apt to weaken on that point; they are apt to tone down something of that divine, — absolutely, untreated divine glory that there is in the Son of God. Let us hold fast to it. He is God; He is God over all, blessed forever. Nothing less than that will do. People may call it what they please, if they give Him not His divine place, they are blasphemers against His holy name; and when we give Him His divine place, everything else that belongs to divinity goes with it.

The apostle was often in conflict with these tools of Satan. Peter also mentions them. Here Paul sets forth, by the word of God, the whole fulness of the divinity of Christ. Far from being something inferior, an emanation, or having a place however exalted in those endless genealogies, all the fulness itself dwelt in Him. Glorious truth with regard to the Person of the Lord our Saviour! We may leave all the foolish imaginations of man in the shade, in order to enjoy the perfect light of this glorious fulness of God in our Head and Lord. All the fulness was in Him. We know indeed the Father, but revealed by Him. We possess indeed the Spirit, but the fulness of the Spirit was in Him, and because, having accomplished our redemption and our purification, He then received that Spirit for us. And God Himself in all His fulness was revealed, without any reservation, in the Person of Christ; and this Christ is ours, our Saviour, our Lord. He has been manifested to us and for us. What a glorious truth for us! —