* See, however, Meyer’s note on the variation of the Septuagint from the Hebrew in this rendering.
Cu. LJ THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 473
Him, etc.* Rev., it was the good pleasure of the Father. Fulness, Rev., correctly, the fulness. See on Rom. xi. 12; John i. 16. The word must be taken in its passive sense— that with which a thing is filled, not that which jils. The ful- ness denotes the suim-total of the divine powers and attributes. In Christ dwelt all the fulness of God as deity. The relation of essential deity to creation and redemption alike, is exhibited by John in the very beginning of his gospel, with which this passage should be compared. In John the order is: 1. The essential nature of Christ; 2. Creation; 3. Redemption. Here it is: 1. Redemption (ver. 13); 2. Essential being of the Son (15); 3. The Son as Creator (16) ; 4. The Church, with Christ as its head (18). Compare 2 Cor. v.19; Eph. i. 19, 20, 23. Paul does not add of the Godhead to the fulness, as in ch. ii. 9, since the word occurs in direct connection with those which de- scribe Christ’s essential nature, and it would seem not to have occurred to the apostle that it could be understood in any other sense than as an expression of the plenitude of the divine at- tributes and powers.
Thus the phrase in Him should all the fulness dwell gathers into a grand climax the previous statements—image of God, Jirst-born of all creation, Creator, the eternally preéxistent, the Lead of the Church, the victor over death, first in all things. On this summit we pause, looking, like John, from Christ in His fulness of deity to the exhibition of that divine fulness in redemption consummated in heaven (vv. 20-22).
There must also be taken into the account the selection of this word fulness with reference to the false teaching in the Colossian church, the errors which afterward were developed more distinctly in the Gnostic schools. Pleroma fulness was used by the Gnostic teachers in a technical sense, to express the sum-total of the divine powers and attributes. “From the pleroma they supposed that all those agencies issued through which God has at any time exerted His power in creation, or manifested His will through revelation. These mediatorial
* The explanation which makes all the fulness the subject, all the fulness was pleased to dwell in Him (so Ellicott) is against New-Testament usage.
474 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. (Ca. L
beings would retain more or less of its influence, according as they claimed direct parentage from it, or traced their descent through successive evolutions. But in all cases this pleroma was distributed, diluted, transformed, and darkened by foreign admixture. They were only partial and blurred images, often deceptive caricatures, of their original, broken lights of the great Central Light” (Lightfoot). Christ may have been ranked with these inferior images of the divine by the Colos- sian teachers. Hence the significance of the assertion that the totality of the divine dwells in Him.*
Dwell (xatoc«fjoa). Permanently. See on Luke xi. 26. Compare the Septuagint usage of xatovxetv permanent dwelling, and sapoxeiy transient sojourning. Thus Gen. xxxvii. 1, “ Jacob dwelt (permanently, «at@«er) in the land where his father sojowrned (mapodxncev, A. V., was a stranger). Perhaps in contrast with the partial and transient connection of the pleroma with Christ asserted by the false teachers. The word is used of the indwelling of the Father, Eph. ii. 22 («atovxnrn- pov Tod Ocod habitation of God); of the Son, Eph. iii. 17; and of the Spirit, Jas. iv. 5.
90. Having made peace (eipnvotoijcas). Only herein the New Testament. Having concluded peace; see on Jolin iii. 21. The participle is parallel with to reconcile, and marks peace- making and reconciliation as contemporaneous. The kindred eipnvotrowds peacemaker, only in Matt. v. 9. The phrase mak- ing peace,in which the two factors of this verb appear separ- ately, occurs only Eph. ii. 15.