III. The second clause of verse 22 begins with an emphasis upon the _object_ which the English Version fails to recognize: "and _Him_ He gave"--the Christ exalted to universal authority--"_Him_ God gave, Head over all things [as He is], to the Church which is His body,--the fulness of Him who fills all things in all."
At the topmost height of His glory, with thrones and princedoms beneath His feet, _Christ is given to the Church_! The Head over all things, the Lord of the created universe, He--and none less or lower--is the Head of redeemed humanity. For the Church "is His body" (this clause is interjected by way of explanation): she is the vessel of His Spirit, the organic instrument of His Divine-human life. As the spirit belongs to its body, by the like fitness the Christ in His surpassing glory is the possession of the community of believing men. The body claims its head, the wife her husband. No matter where Christ is, however high in heaven, He belongs to us. Though the Bride is lowly and of poor estate, He is hers! and she knows it, and holds fast His heart. She recks little of the people's ignorance and scorn, if their Master is her affianced Lord, and she the best-beloved in His eyes.
How rich is this gift of the Father to the Church in the Son of His love, the concluding words of the paragraph declare: "Him He gave ... to the Church ... [gave] the fulness of Him that fills all in all." In the risen and enthroned Christ God bestowed on men a gift in which the Divine plenitude that fills creation is embraced. For this last clause, it is clear to us, does not qualify "the Church which is His body," and expositors have needlessly taxed their ingenuity with the incongruous apposition of "body" and "fulness"; it belongs to the grand Object of the foregoing description, to "the Christ" whom God raised from the dead and invested with His own prerogatives. The two separate designations, "Head over all things" and "Fulness of the All-filler," are parallel, and alike point back to _Him_ who stands with a weight of gathered emphasis--heaped up from verse 19 onwards--at the front of this last sentence (ver. 22_b_). There has been nothing to prepare the reader to ascribe the august title of the _pleroma_, the Divine fulness, to the Church--enough for her, surely, if she is His body and He God's gift to her--but there has been everything to prepare us to crown the Lord Jesus with this glory. To that which God had wrought in Him and bestowed on Him, as previously related, verse 23 adds something more and greater still; for it shows what God makes the Christ to be, not to the creatures, to the angels, to the Church, _but to God Himself_![73]
Our text is in strict agreement with the sayings about "the fulness" in Colossians i. 15-20 and ii. 9, 10; as well as with the later references of this epistle, in chapter iii. 19, iv. 13; and with John i. 16. This title belongs to Christ as God is in Him and communicates to Him all Divine powers. It was, in the apostle's view, a new and distinct act by which the Father bestowed on the incarnate Son, raised by His power from the dead, the functions of Deity. Of this glory Christ had of His own accord "emptied Himself" in becoming man for our salvation (Phil. ii. 6, 7). Therefore when the sacrifice was effected and the time of humiliation past, it "was the Father's pleasure that all the fulness should make its dwelling in Him" (Col. i. 19). At no point did Christ exalt Himself, or arrogate the glory once renounced. He prayed, when the hour was come: "Now, Father, _glorify Thou me_ with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." It was for the Father to say, as He raised and enthroned Him: "Thou art my Son; I to-day have begotten Thee!" (Acts xiii. 33).