Colossians 1:19Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Everything that belongs to the Father he ascribes also to the Son, and he is especially concerned with this because He was dead and united Himself to us. He called Him the firstfruits in the sense of the firstfruits of some harvest. He did not say “resurrection,” but “firstfruits,” showing that He sanctified us all and, as it were, offered sacrifice. “Fullness” he said of the Godhead, just as John says, “and from His fullness we have all received” (Jn 1:16). That is, whether it was the Son or the Word, no mere activity dwelt there, but the essence.

The fullness of the Godhead means this: wherever the Son and Word was, it was not His activity that dwelt there, but His very essence. And Paul finds no other reason for this than the good pleasure and will of God.

And in Him the Father was pleased that the whole fullness of the Godhead should dwell. This means either the Father in the Son, or the Son in the flesh.

The Son of God possesses glory according to His Divinity, so that the Father and the Son have one glory. For He is not less in radiance, since the Father and the Son have one glory. He is not less in Divinity, for in Christ dwells the fullness of the Godhead (Col 2:9).

In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Apostle called the Church “the fullness,” because the divine gifts were fulfilled in her. Of her, the Apostle said that God “was pleased” that she should dwell in Christ, that is, be joined to Him, be under His protection, and follow His laws.

“For the fullness to dwell,” τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικήσαι (Jn 1:14). Not without reason do the interpreters observe that the Apostle uses here the very expressions of the false teachers, in order to refute them. Among them the name πλήρωμα was given to one of the lower aeons, in whom the Deity dwelt temporarily. With the Apostle Paul, by contrast, the Godhead dwelt in Christ eternally. Therefore such an appearing may be called the whole fullness. The Colossian false teachers, probably following an Essene view, imagined this fullness as angels who express the fullness of the divine essence. Among such expressions they also placed Christ. The Apostle says that Christ alone contains in Himself the whole fullness of the Godhead.

"For in Him God the Father was pleased that all the fullness should dwell" (Col 1:19), that is, that every perfection should be contained in His Son. This explains why our Savior is preeminent in all things.

This is precisely because in Him alone every fullness has dwelt, "everything in full that might be required for anyone, both in time and in eternity" (Bishop Theophan).

Here one also notes the Apostle's deliberate thought against the Colossian Gnostics. According to their teaching, the fullness, or pleroma, of divine being is defined or composed of a numerous series of beings possessing various perfections. According to the Apostle, by contrast, every fullness or every perfection of being is concentrated in the one Son of God.

Turning to the God-manly ministry of Jesus Christ, the Apostle first speaks of His headship in the Church. Then he speaks of Him as the center of Christian life, its beginning and end, and in general as every fullness and perfection.

In a few words, infinitely much is said here about the great properties and actions of Christ in relation to our salvation.

One recent interpreter thinks that the basis for calling Christ the head of the Church is defined by the names placed beside it: beginning, firstborn, fullness. But it can also be understood this way: headship is the basis of preeminence. This is all the more so because the headship here concerns the composition of the Church as a body, in which the preeminent significance of the head is indisputable (cf. 1 Cor 11:3; Eph 1:22).

God granted Christ preeminent significance in all things because, in the divine counsel, it had been predestined precisely through Him to reconcile the world to God. This predestination began to be fulfilled when God determined that all the fullness of the Godhead should dwell in Christ (πάν τό πλήρωμα; cf. 2:9).

It must be noted that the Apostle intentionally uses a term borrowed from the scholastic language of the Colossian false teachers. They gathered the angelic powers, which in their opinion acted in the work of our salvation, into one divine pleroma, from which, according to the heretics, they then flowed into the world.

He proves that it was truly appointed from eternity that our Savior should have preeminence in all things. For God was thus pleased: that every fullness should dwell in Him alone, everything in full that might be required, for anyone and for anything, both in time and in eternity.

The reason He is such is that He is the God-man. Therefore the dwelling of all fullness in Him also means that "in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col 2:9).

"By every fullness the Apostle meant the fullness of the Godhead. As He is the Son and Word, as God, so He also dwelt in Him. It was not His operation that dwelt there, but He Himself, in His essence or in His full hypostasis" (Chrysostom, blessed Theophylact, Oecumenius).