Exhortation

“Fullness” is a key word in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  The Lord has made known the mystery of His will in a way “suitable to the fullness of the times” (1:10).  Christ is exalted above every name, and about all rule and authority, and is head over the church, His body, the “fullness of Him who fills all in all” (1:23).

Paul wants the Ephesians to grasp Christ’s love in four dimensions, so that “you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (3:19), and in Pastor Purcell’s sermon text today Paul talks about the process of maturation by which we grow up to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (4:13).

Underlying this is what Paul says about Christ Himself in Colossians.  It pleased the Father, he writes, “for all the fullness to dwell in Him” (Colossians 1:19), and he adds later that “all the fullness of Deity dwells [in Christ] in bodily form” (2:9).  Because the body is Christ’s body, we the body share in the fullness of God that dwells in the Head.  In some astonishing fashion, as Christ fills and completes us, so we the body of Christ complete Christ, who without us would be a bodiless Head, a brideless Husband.  For Jesus too, it is not good for man to be alone.

As Paul makes clear, this doesn’t happen all at once.  It happens over time.  Through the gifts that the ascended Christ gives to His church, Jesus is making the church what in fact it is, the mature fullness of the one who fills all things, the one in whom the fullness of God dwells.

Since maturing to become the fullness of Christ is a process in time, it is not automatic.  We mature only if we put into practice Paul’s exhortations: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you . . . and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us.”  Our sins inhibit the growth and maturation of the body, and we reach our high calling only as we walk in continual confession and repentance.