Turn to the letter to the Colossians, chapter 1. We will read from verses 15 through 19.
Colossians 1:15-19
Who is the image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation.
Because by Him were created all things, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, or lordships, or principalities, or authorities.
All things have been created by Him and for Him.
And He is before all, and all things subsist together by Him.
And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead, that He might have the first place in all things.
For in Him all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell.
Then the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1. We will read from verses 15 through 23.
Ephesians 1:15-23
Wherefore I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus that is in you, and the love which ye have towards all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him, being enlightened in the eyes of your heart;
so that ye should know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
and what the surpassing greatness of His power towards us who believe, according to the working of the might of His strength,
in which He wrought in Christ, in raising Him from among the dead, and He set Him down at His right hand in the heavenlies,
above every principality and authority and power and dominion, and every name named, not only in this age, but also in that to come.
And has put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body,
the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, we do praise and thank Thee for Thy precious Word. But we do pray that Thy Word may not just be words to us, but, through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, that Thy Word may become living to us.
Lord, we pray that Thou wilt grant us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of God. We do acknowledge that unless Thou dost reveal Thyself to us, reveal Thy Son in us, Thou art beyond us. We are not able to know Thee and to be filled with Thee.
So, our Father, our prayer tonight is that Thou wilt grant us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we may know Thee. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
The burden that God has put in my heart is this matter of unto fullness. Last night we began by saying that God has called us to fullness. Our God is a God of fullness; therefore, His calling cannot be anything less than fullness. Anything that is less than fullness cannot represent our God.
Therefore, His calling is calling us unto His fullness. And we mentioned last night that the calling and election of God knows no repentance. In other words, when God calls us, that is what He will have. He will not lower His calling. He will not try to lower His calling to suit our condition.
His calling knows no repentance. That is to say, He calls us to know His fullness, and nothing less than His fullness.
Because of this, we find that we have a tremendous responsibility, people of God. As we find in 2 Peter 1, we must make our calling and election sure. This is our responsibility. He has called us, and now He waits for us to respond to His calling.
Whether we will enter into the fullness to which He is calling us, or whether we would rather just be contented with a little that we know of Him; whether we will be like the children of Israel, who entered into the promised land and possessed their possession in fullness; or whether we will be like the two tribes, the tribe of Reuben and the tribe of Gad.
They were content to stay on the eastern side of the River Jordan. They did not want to go over the Jordan to know the fullness. They would rather stay in the plain because it was good for their cattle. In other words, they loved the blessings of God, but they did not want the Blesser.
Or, worse than that, we may be like the children of Israel who did come out of Egypt, but failed in the wilderness because they lived according to the flesh.
So, dear brothers and sisters, the calling is out. The calling is upon every one of us, and we need to be real before the Lord, asking Him to examine our hearts and show us what our heart attitude is toward His calling.
Now this evening we would like to continue with the vision of fullness. I believe, brothers and sisters, we are all very familiar with Proverbs 29:18:
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
In other versions, it says, “Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint.” Or, in another way, where there is no vision, the people disintegrate. The people scatter. The people go to pieces.
Vision is one of the most basic things spiritually. Now, in saying last night that our God is infinite but we are finite beings, we see that because we are so limited—limited in our capacity and limited in our understanding—it is very easy for us to limit our God.
God is really beyond us. For a finite being to comprehend the infinite God is impossible. That is why vision is so important. If it is left to us to know God, we will never be able to know Him.
You remember Job 11:7:
Canst thou by searching find out God?
Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
It is impossible. God is beyond us, and we are so limited. That is why we need vision. We need revelation.
When God reveals Himself, then we have a vision. Sometimes we quote Isaiah 45:15, that God is a God who hides Himself. But, if you read the context, you will find that this verse does not refer to God as a Person. It refers to the ways of God, the workings of God.
The children of Israel did not know what God was doing for them. God was working salvation for them, and yet they did not know it. In that sense, it was as if God hid Himself—not that He hid Himself, but that His ways and His working were unknown to the children of Israel.
As a matter of fact, our God is a God who reveals Himself. The very name of the Lord speaks of the self-existing One who reveals Himself. It is the pleasure and delight of our God to reveal Himself and to reveal His Son in us.
Dear brothers and sisters, because this is so, there is hope for us to know Him. Our God is a God who reveals Himself. Paul says, “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.”
We need vision. By vision, we do not mean something that you see with your naked eyes. It is true that sometimes God does condescend to our level and allows us to see something even with our natural eyes. But we must remember that vision, strictly speaking, is an unveiling of God’s purpose.
Our dear brother T. Austin-Sparks, in a message called The Saving Power of Divine Vision, said that vision means three things:
The Holy Spirit unveils the mind of God to us. He reveals it in our spirit, and in our spirit we begin to see God’s eternal purpose. We begin to understand the principles that govern God’s purpose, and we also begin to understand why and how things have gone astray.
When we see these things in our spirit, we have seen a vision.
Vision is so basic to our spiritual life. Without vision, we perish. Without vision, we go to pieces. Without vision, we disintegrate. We cast off all restraint.
Why? Because only vision gives us direction. Vision shows us the goal. It shows us the way. It gives us strength. It unites us together. It enables us to endure.
In that same message, our brother says that vision is the dynamic of life. It is like a fire that burns within us and cannot be quenched. Vision is the cohesion of life. It is only when we have one vision that we are able to be really one.
And when there is vision, it means the elimination of self. Now, that is what vision is.
When we come to this matter of fullness, the fullness of God, dear brothers and sisters, we need vision. If we do not have a vision of the fullness of God, then we do not know what we are seeking.
And if we do not have that vision, we do not have that incentive within us. We will not have that inward force that drives us onward. We will not have that fire that burns within us and will not be quenched. Without vision, we will not be able to pay the cost that is always connected with this.
That is why you find the Apostle Paul praying. When he was trying to share with the Ephesian believers and the Colossian believers, he gave himself to prayer. In Ephesians 1, his prayer was that God would give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of God.
Paul knew very well that even if he tried his best to share with believers that which God had revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, unless they too received revelation, what they heard would just be words. They would not be life.
That is why he prayed that God would grant them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of God. He not only prayed once; in Ephesians 3, after he had shared some of the vision, he bowed his knees again, praying that the vision might not remain merely a vision but might become a conviction.
So, dear brothers and sisters, may we be before the Lord as we are sharing this evening, that God will give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we may catch a vision of the fullness that is in God.
In this matter of fullness, I think there are two aspects that we must see:
In the letter to the Colossians, we find it mentioned twice. Once in Colossians 1:19:
In Him all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell.
And again, in Colossians 2:9:
For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
And ye are complete in Him.
Here we find the phrase, “the fullness of the Godhead”—the fullness of God, the fullness of deity. Who can fathom the depth of that fullness?
Our God is a God of fullness. He is full, ever full. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. There can be no improvement to our God, because He is always full—perfect and complete. You cannot add anything to Him. He is the ultimate, the final. This is our God.
Think of His character and His attributes. Our God is eternal. His eternity is full. He has no beginning and no ending, because He is the beginning and He is the end. He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega. From eternity to eternity, He is God.
His eternity is not only a matter of time as we understand it; His eternity is also a matter of quality. He is eternally perfect, ever fresh, evergreen, ever living. There is no spot, no wrinkle, no aging.
Psalm 139 describes the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God. God knows everything. He knows your sitting down, your lying down, and your getting up. He knows everything about you.
No matter where you go, He is there. You cannot escape Him. He is ever present. And He is all-powerful. He created us and made us even in the womb of our mothers. His mighty power is working there.
The knowledge of God is full, not partial. The presence of God is full—everywhere. The power of God is full—almighty. There is nothing that He cannot do.
You may think of the love of God. The love of God is full. His love is not influenced or affected by an external environment. His love comes from Himself. No matter how we are or what we are, He loves, and He loves to the uttermost.
You can think of the holiness of God. Even the heavenly beings hide their faces before God because God is holy—holy, holy, holy—God Almighty. You can think of the glory of God. When God appears, His glory appears, and how glorious it is.
So, brothers and sisters, when we think of the fullness of the Godhead, it is truly full. It is something that we cannot comprehend. Yet the Bible says that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ.
The word dwells does not mean a visit from time to time. It means to make its home. The fullness of the Godhead takes up its permanent residence in Christ. This is from eternity to eternity.
This did not change when our Lord Jesus came in the flesh, because all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. This is the fullness of Christ. If we can know the fullness of God, then we know the fullness of Christ, because the fullness of Christ is nothing less than the very fullness of the Godhead. He is God, the Son of God’s love.
Our understanding of Christ, our receiving of Christ, is often so small and so limited. Oftentimes, we think we have Him all. We are deceived. He is infinite. There is a fullness in Him that is infinite, and it is to that fullness that we are called.
Perhaps the best way to share on this matter of the fullness of Christ is to use the experience of one person. We do not want to make it too academic or merely theological and objective. We will try to approach it in a personal and subjective way, so that we may see that this fullness of Christ is not something we speculate about, but something we can truly enter into.
Before the Apostle Paul was converted, he was a great Pharisee. In those days, his view of Christ Jesus was bound by the traditions of the Jewish fathers. His view of Christ was distorted. He considered Jesus an impostor of Judaism, an enemy of Judaism, and he took it upon himself to wipe out the name of Jesus, thinking that by doing so he would do God a great service.
That shows how the natural man can never know Christ. But on the way to Damascus, a light shone upon him, and he fell under that light. He heard the voice:
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.
There he received a revelation. He saw a vision. He realized that Jesus of Nazareth, whom he despised, was actually the Lord of all. He could not resist Him.
On the road to Damascus, Paul saw for the first time that he had a Master. He thought he was his own master, doing whatever he felt he should do. But he began to realize that he was not free. He belonged to Someone, and Someone had a purpose for his life: to do the work of his Master, not his own work.
By revelation and vision, Paul saw the Righteous One. He realized that Jesus of Nazareth is not someone whom you can despise and wipe out. He is the Lord of your life. He is the Lord of all.
Immediately, he capitulated. He said:
Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?
Now You are my Lord, my Master. I belong to You.
But it is more than that. In Galatians 1, Paul says, “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” He refers to his experience on the road to Damascus. He not only realized that Jesus is Lord, Lord of his life; he also received a revelation of the Son.
This Jesus, who is now made Lord of all, is God’s beloved Son, God’s only begotten Son, the Son of God’s love, the very center of God’s heart, the very meaning of everything.
God revealed the Son not only to Paul, but in him. Not only who He is, but what He is in him. To know the Son of God, to know the Son in me—He is in me—this is a great revelation.
The Son in me can mean only one thing: the Son in me is to bring me into sonship. One day, the Son, the First One, will bring many sons into glory.
Of course, we cannot say that Paul saw everything at that moment. But it was the beginning. He began to see something of Christ. He began to see that Christ is the Son of God and that He is Lord of all.
There is another aspect of the fullness that is in God which we need to see: the fullness of the church.
In Ephesians 1, it says that God has made Christ Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. That is what the church is.
The church is a mystery. It was hidden through the ages. The prophets in the Old Testament did not know the church. They did not have this knowledge that there would be the church. God had not revealed it to them.
Though the children of Israel, the chosen people of God, serve in one sense as a type of the church of the New Testament, there is a great difference. The nation of Israel is an earthly people; the church is a heavenly people.
When our Lord Jesus was on earth, He mentioned the word church only twice. In Matthew 16, He said:
I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Then, in Matthew 18, He said that if a brother sins and will not hear the brothers who go to him, then “tell it unto the church.”
The church does not refer to a physical building. It refers to those who are called and gathered together unto the name of the Lord Jesus.
On the day of Pentecost, the church was born historically. Peter looked upon the church as a building. In 1 Peter 2:5, he said that we are as living stones being built up together into a spiritual house.
But it was given particularly to the Apostle Paul to receive revelation concerning the fullness of the church. On the road to Damascus, when the Lord said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” Paul received a tremendous revelation.
Without revelation, the natural answer would be, “I have never persecuted You. I only persecuted Your followers.” But by revelation Paul saw that the followers of Christ in Jerusalem, in Judea, and even in Damascus were parts of Christ.
When you touch a member of the body, the head complains. Thus, on the road to Damascus, Paul began not only to see the fullness of Christ; he began also to see the fullness of the church.
What is the church? The church is none other than the body of Christ, a body joined to the Head. Because the body is joined to the Head, it is the fullness of the Head. The Head fills the body, all in all.
If you see the truth of the church as the body of Christ, you see that there is not only a relationship between you and the Head, but also a relationship between you and the other members of the body. That is why Paul immediately joined himself with the disciples in Damascus.
You cannot be an independent Christian if you see what the church is. Oftentimes, we become very independent in our Christian life. We hear such terms as, “My Lord and I,” and that seems very spiritual.
“I do not care about you. I do not need you. I have my Lord and I, and that is all I need.”
But if you see the church as the body of Christ, then you find that you are not alone. You are related not only to the Lord, your Head, but also to your brothers and sisters. There is only one body.
All those who belong to the Lord are in that body. You have no choice. You cannot choose your brothers and sisters. You are born into that body, into that family. Therefore, it is better that you begin to love one another.
If you see the body of Christ, you are delivered not only from independence but also from sectarianism. Christ is not divided. The body is one.
But it is not enough merely to see that we are one body and cannot be divided. Paul says that this body needs to be built up together.
Unless we are committed to the Lord and to one another, there is no way to be built up together. God has sovereignly put us together, but our flesh rebels against this. We want to choose with whom we will be built up—those with the same temperament, those who are all like we are.
That is why God’s people, when God has thrown them together, are often just like a pile and are not built up together. Sooner or later, that pile disintegrates and scatters. There is no commitment.
For us to be built up together, we need to be committed—committed to the Lord, and in Him committed to one another.
As you go on with the Apostle Paul, you find that he saw more and more. What is this body? It is made up of believers, those who are called and gathered together unto the name of Christ. But it is more than that.
In 1 Corinthians 12, it says:
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is the Christ.
The church is the Christ in His corporate expression. The church is Christ in you and Christ in me. It is Christ and nothing else. It is the very extension of Christ.
The greatest problem with the building of the church is me. In the Christ, Christ is all and in all. This “I,” this self, has to be eliminated by the cross.
As you begin to see the fullness of the church, you see that it is nothing less than the fullness of Christ—Christ all and in all. Brothers and sisters, it really demands that our self-life has to go.
If you read the writings of the Apostle, you find that this is what God revealed to him. He was sent out on apostolic work, and what was this apostolic work? To build the church of God.
So, brothers and sisters, may we catch a vision of the fullness of Christ and also a vision of the fullness of the church. Without that vision, we will not have that incentive within us. In our spiritual pursuit, there will be no direction.
One thing that has touched me very deeply in my travel years is that people acknowledge that they love the Lord, but they say, “We have no direction. We do not know where we are heading.” There is no vision, and the people perish.
So let us ask the Lord to open our eyes, to reveal the fullness of Christ and of the church to us. When we see that fullness, brothers and sisters, we will be like Paul. We will forget what is behind us and press on, because of the goal that is before us.
Dear Heavenly Father, we acknowledge that we are finite; Thou art infinite. Thy fullness is beyond our comprehension. But we do praise and thank Thee, because Thou art the God who reveals Thyself, and it pleases Thee to reveal Thy Son in us.
So, Father, it is the prayer of our hearts tonight that Thou wilt continue to reveal Him to us in an ever-increasing way, that we may know the fullness that is in Christ. Oh, that Thou mayest draw us up, draw us into that fullness.
And we, as Thy people, not only individually but corporately, may know the fullness of Christ, that we may truly be that body.