NOW THIS MOST astonishing passage: “For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). The preceding verse gives the background out of which this verse comes. It was the background of Gnosticism with its belief in matter as evil and spirit as good. This brought forth the amazing statement of Paul: “For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily.” The emphasis was on the bodily. God came into matter in Incarnation and thus redeemed matter as evil, making it the vehicle of the divine revelation and redemption. Nothing could be more important for our existence on earth, environed as we are with matter.
The material was not alien; it was an ally. The spiritual would cease to try to manifest itself apart from the material and would manifest itself in material forms and in material relationships. “A body hast thou prepared for me . . . Lo, I have come to do thy will” (Heb. 10:5, 7). The will was to be done in and through the body.
The Greeks said, “Matter is evil”; the Hindus say, “Matter is illusion” (Maya); the Christian says, “Matter is God-made, God-approved (God saw it was good) and will be used by God and man for redemptive purposes.” The kingdom is to come on earth. The earth has a future and a goal. It has meaning.
To stop up all holes, such as saying that God may have come into matter temporarily and partially, Paul says, “In him the whole fulness of deity dwells.” There is nothing in God that isn’t in Jesus Christ—at least in character and essence. Jesus is God accommodated to human form. This did not happen only once; it still happens—“dwells (present tense) bodily.” The body was taken up into Deity, transformed and transfigured, as in the Mount of Transformation, and will probably bear the glorified nail-prints forever. So body and spirit were reconciled in Him, and now “beat out music vaster than before.”
O Lord Jesus Christ, the meeting place of God and man, matter and spirit, and the reconciling place of all, I come to Thee. Make all my conflicts into concords and all my cross currents into one current of love for Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: As the Word becomes flesh in me, so my body becomes word.
