All the Fulness, Bodily
Colossians 2:9
All the Fulness, Bodily
The Father set His dwelling in the Son, as once in the temple
The fulness dwells in the Son because the Father placed it there --- and what is given is not the Giver.
--- The Standing Stone ---
Behind “LORD” in your Bible lies a hidden name --- in the Hebrew it is Yahuah Psalm 83:18**; Yahuah is the Father** Isaiah 63:16**; Yahuah is the only God, beside Him there is no other** Isaiah 45:5**; therefore Yahuah the Father is the only true God, leaving no room for a second or third person** 1 Corinthians 8:6**.**
Few verses are pulled into the question of who Yahushua is faster than this one. It is short, and at first hearing it sounds as if the whole matter is already settled.
Colossians 2:9
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
The reading most people are handed goes like this: all of God lives in Yahushua, therefore Yahushua must be God Himself. One verse, case closed.
But read in its own letter, and in its own Bible, this verse is not telling us that a body is God. It is telling us where the one Yahuah, the Father, has chosen to make His home. This is a temple verse. Let us walk it slowly, one step at a time.
1 --- The Word They Lean On: “Godhead”
The whole popular reading rests on one English word: “Godhead.” Modern ears hear it and think “the three persons of God.” But that is not what the word means, and it is not what Paul wrote.
θεότης
theotēs
Deity; God-ness; the state of being God. Strong’s G2320.
The Greek word is theotēs. It means God-ness --- the full divine nature, everything it means to be Elohim. It says nothing whatever about how many persons share that nature. That idea was carried to the verse; it was never found in it.
And “Godhead” itself is simply an old English word for “Godhood.” The ending “-head” is the same as “-hood” in words like manhood or childhood. “Godhead” just means “the state of being God.” It was never a word for a committee of three.
In fact, “Godhead” appears only three times in the whole King James Bible --- Acts 17:29, Romans 1:20, and here --- and each time it translates a different Greek word. Not one of them means three persons.
2 --- To Dwell In Is Not To Be
Now look at what the verse actually claims. The fulness dwelleth in him. The Greek is katoikeō --- to settle down and take up residence in a place.
Read that slowly. To dwell in something is to be one thing living inside another. You do not say that a man dwells in himself. The very word separates the fulness that comes to dwell from the body it comes to dwell in.
Yahushua said the same thing in plain words:
John 14:10
…the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
The Father dwells in the Son. That is not two names for one person. That is the Father making His home in Another.
3 --- It Pleased the Father
If there were any doubt about who is doing the dwelling and who is being dwelt in, Paul settled it three verses earlier, in the same chapter’s argument.
Colossians 1:19
For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.
There it is. The fulness is in the Son because it pleased the Father to put it there. It was the Father’s decision, the Father’s good pleasure, the Father’s gift.
Think carefully about what that means. A thing that is placed in you by Someone else’s choice is not your own eternal self. The Father did not decide to become God; He simply is God. But He did decide to cause all His fulness to dwell in His Son. The Giver and the gift are not the same one.
This is the hinge of the entire verse. Colossians 1:19 tells you who is in charge of the dwelling --- and it is the Father.
4 --- The Fulness Is His Spirit
So what is this “fulness” that the Father placed in His Son? Scripture does not leave us guessing. Long before, the prophet Isaiah described the Spirit of Yahuah resting on the coming Branch:
Isaiah 11:2
And the spirit of the LORD (Yahuah) shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD (Yahuah).
Count them: the Spirit of Yahuah, and then six more --- wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and the fear of Yahuah. One Spirit, described in seven facets. And seven, all through Scripture, is the number of fulness and completion.
Now hear how the Revelation speaks of the Lamb, who is Yahushua. He has the seven Spirits of God Revelation 3:1, and in the throne vision:
Revelation 5:6
…a Lamb…having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth.
Those seven eyes were already named by the prophet:
Zechariah 4:10
…they are the eyes of the LORD (Yahuah), which run to and fro through the whole earth.
So the seven eyes of Yahuah become the seven eyes resting in the Lamb. “All the fulness” is no riddle: it is the complete Spirit of Yahuah Himself, resting upon and dwelling in His Messiah, exactly as Isaiah promised. The Father gives Him the Spirit without measure John 3:34. Once again --- the one Yahuah indwelling, not a second person standing beside Him.
5 --- Bodily: The Temple on the Move
Return to the last word of the verse: bodily. The Greek sōmatikōs means “in bodily form, in a body.” This is the key the popular reading walks straight past.
All through the Torah and the Prophets, the fulness of Yahuah came down to dwell in a place. When the tabernacle was finished:
Exodus 40:34
Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD (Yahuah) filled the tabernacle.
When the temple was finished, the same thing happened:
1 Kings 8:11
…the glory of the LORD (Yahuah) had filled the house of the LORD (Yahuah).
The pattern never changed --- only the dwelling place did. First a tent. Then a house of stone. And in the days of the prophets, Yahuah spoke to His people from the outside, through messengers:
Hebrews 1:1—2
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son…
Now the dwelling place is a body. The same glory that filled the tent and filled the house came to dwell bodily in Yahushua. He said it Himself when He called His own body a temple:
John 2:21
But he spake of the temple of his body.
Colossians 2:9 is not announcing a second God. It is announcing that the long story of Yahuah’s dwelling has finally reached a Person. The presence that once filled a building now fills a body.
6 --- Christ In You
And the story does not stop at one body. This is the part the popular reading misses altogether --- and it is the very heartbeat of the renewed covenant.
In this same letter, only a chapter before, Paul names the mystery he was sent to preach:
Colossians 1:27
…which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
The same indwelling presence that dwells in the Son now comes to dwell in His people. Paul says it again and again:
1 Corinthians 3:16
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
2 Corinthians 6:16
…ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them…
Now see the trap in the popular reading. If “the fulness dwelling in him” makes Yahushua a second God, then that same Spirit dwelling in you would make you a god too. No one teaches that --- because everyone already knows what indwelling means when it happens to us. It means the one Yahuah has come to live in His people.
That is the message of the renewed covenant in a single breath. Yahuah is no longer speaking from the outside through prophets. He has come to dwell within --- first in His Son, and through His Son, in all who belong to Him. The tabernacle moved into a body, and the body opened the way into a people.
So when someone hands you Colossians 2:9 to prove that Yahushua is the Most High, hand it back gently and show them what it truly says. The fulness dwells in the Son because the Father placed it there. And what the Father gives, the Father is not.
All the fulness dwells in the Son because it pleased the Father to place it there --- and what is given is not the Giver.