22—23.
still that of the Headship of Christ over all things. Having that supremacy He is given by God to the Church, and as given in the capacity of universal Head He is given to the Church as her Head also.
Ver. 23. ἥτις ἐστὶν τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ : which is His body. The ἥτις (not ἥ) introduces a profound statement, the in- terpretation of which is much contested. It is supplementary to the preceding, and further defines the relation between Christ and the Church in respect of His Head- ship. The ἥτις, therefore, has something of its qualitative force, pointing to what belongs to the nature of the Church (Meyer), and in that way giving the ground of God’s gift of Christ to the ἐκκλησία. Or (with ΕἸ]., etc.) it may be taken in the subdued, explanatory sense— “which indeed”. The word σῶμα, which passes readily from its literal meaning into the figurative sense of a society, a number of men constituting a social or ethical union (cf. Eph. iv. 4), is frequently applied in the NT Epistles to the Church, with or without τοῦ Χριστοῦ, as the mystical body of Christ, the fellowship of believers regarded as an organic, spirit- ual unity in a living relation to Christ, subject to Him, animated by Him, and having His power operating in it. The relation between Christ and the Church, therefore, is not an external relation, or one simply of Superior and inferior, Sove- reign and subject, but one of life and incorporation. The Church is not merely an institution ruled by Him as President, a Kingdom in which He is the Supreme Authority, or a vast company of men in moral sympathy with Him, but a Society which is in vital connection with Him, having the source of its life in Him, sus- tained and directed by His power, the instrument also by which He works.—7ro πλήρωμα τοῦ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν πληρου- μένου: the fulness of Him that filleth all in all, The preceding sentence carries the idea-of the Church far beyond the limited conception of a concrete institu- tion or outward, visible organisation, and lifts us to the grander conception of a great spiritual fellowship, which is one under all varieties of external form and constitution in virtue of the presence of Christ’s Spirit in it, and catholic as em- bracing all believers and existing wherever any such are found. It is the conception of the Church which pervades this Epistle (ται: LO, στον δα 255) 27: το 99]: It appears again in similar terms in the sister Epistle (Col. i. 18, 24), and else- where in the varied phraseology of the