The Church as Fulness of Him that Fills All in All

Michael Hardt

‘And has put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all’ (Eph. 1:22–23).

The Ephesians lens

Every book of the Bible that presents the church does so under a specific angle or perspective. By way of example:

In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ foretells His building of the church.
Acts gives the report of how and when the building was started on the day of Pentecost.
In 1 Corinthians, we find teaching on many practical aspects to do with assembly life.

In Ephesians, we are brought back to the chambers of God’s eternal counsel. Here we learn about His thoughts, His aims, His wonderful design. Here the veil is removed and we find out what the church actually is — and, at the same time, what being a Christian is all about. The essence, in both cases, has to do with a fact that must fill us with wonder, praise and admiration: there is a Man at the right hand of God — and we are linked with Him!

What can you do with a dead man?

Let’s start with this question: what can you do with a dead man? Nothing, you will say. What about a more difficult question: who can bring a dead man back to life, and give him authority, and make him higher than any power on earth, and empower him to be over absolutely everything there is in the entire universe?

That’s unthinkable, you will say. But it is precisely what God did. He not only thinks the unthinkable but He plans it and then carries it out. To do so, He deployed the greatest power ever — towards Christ who had gone into death. This was God’s doing, it was ‘the working of the might of his strength, in which he wrought in the Christ in raising him from among the dead, and he set him down at his right hand in the heavenlies’ (Eph. 1:19–20).

And the church?

But, I hear you say, didn’t we want to focus on the church? Yes, but you cannot grasp what the church is unless you first come to realise the height to which Christ has been exalted, and the depth in which He lay.

This is why a worldly-minded Christian will not understand what the church is. A believer who looks for an earthly Christ, progress in the world and earthly blessings can only have a very dim view of the church and, inevitably, will fail to see the beauty of what it means to be linked with Christ in glory.

The essence and nature, indeed the whole being of the church, hinge on this point: association with Christ as the glorified Man in heaven. He is the ‘man of [God’s] counsel’ (Isa. 46:11). He has laid the foundation for God’s counsel to be fulfilled and He occupies the central place in it. Once we have realised the wonderful truth that God has raised Him and placed Him ‘at his right hand in the heavenlies’, the place of the highest honour and the greatest power (Ps. 110:1; Matt. 22:44), we can start considering the nature of the church.

What the church actually is

Having looked into the open heavens, and seeing the Man Christ Jesus there, exalted above every power that exists, we learn what the church is according to God’s mind and design from the closing verses of Ephesians 1:

Christ, exalted to unspeakable glory, is the Head of the church.
The church consists of people who are associated with that Man in the glory.
This is not a loose notional association, but a vital and indissoluble one: the church is His ‘body’.
Moreover, the church is to share His dominion over all things: He has been given as the ‘head over all things’ but ‘to’ (not ‘over’) the church.
The church is called His fulness: the fulness of Him who fills all in all!

This last point is the most unfathomable of all. That Christ will fill all in all, that His glory will pervade all things, we would readily accept, but how can the church, how can we, be referred to as ‘the fulness’ of this wonderful Man in the glory? We would never have dared to make this statement had not God Himself said it. The Lord will call His church to Himself. At that time, it will be perfect, without ‘spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things’ and ‘blameless’ (Eph. 5:27). It will be the greatest and perfect proof of His love. It is the vessel that will serve to show forth His glory and the glory of His grace in a very special way. In this sense, the church is His completion, His fulness.

In summary, Ephesians 1 starts by viewing us as individual objects of God’s grace but closes with presenting us as forming His body, His complement as a man throughout eternity.

What it means to be a Christian

There is an immediate implication of what we have been considering. If this is what the church is, being a Christian is much more than any Old Testament believer ever was or possessed. Being a Christian involves being associated, by a vital link, with Christ, the Man who was in the grave but is in the glory. Once this is understood, we realise that our life, our aim, our objective, our aspirations and our future are where He is. It will quickly dawn on us that our role is not to mend or embellish the world or to improve the ‘first man’ (1 Cor. 15:47–48), but to give testimony to the ‘second man’, that wonderful Man in heaven who is our Head.

The glory and the love

Considering these things, we cannot but be impressed with the glory to which Christ has been raised. It is the keynote of Paul’s first prayer in Ephesians (1:17–23). But there is more. Once we have taken in (at least to an extent) the glory to which Christ has been exalted as man — the Christ with whom we are associated — we are ready to move on to Paul’s second prayer in the letter (3:16–21), which goes even deeper. It shows us, not so much the glory, but the love; not so much the glory of the Man with whom we are linked, but the motive for bringing this about: God’s unspeakable love, and the love of Christ that passes knowledge.

Glory astounds and amazes; love touches the heart!

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From: Truth and Testimony, 2022