It seems most improbable that with two out of three significant words the same, the ellipse should be supplied by anything but the third. The meaning then will be—the whole abundance, or totality of Divine powers and attributes. That is, to put it in homelier words, that all that Divine nature in all its sweet greatness, in all its infinite wealth of tenderness and power and wisdom, is embodied in Jesus Christ. We have no need to look to heavens above or to earth beneath for fragmentary revelations of God’s character. We have no need to draw doubtful inferences as to what God is from the questionable teachings of nature, or from the mysteries of human history with its miseries. No doubt these do show something of Him to observant hearts, and most to those who have the key to their meaning by their faith in a clearer revelation. At sundry times and in divers manners, God has spoken to the world by these partial voices, to each of which some syllables of His name have been committed. But He has put His whole name in that messenger of a New Covenant by whom He has finally declared His whole character to us, even His Son, in whom “it was the good pleasure of the Father that all the fulness should dwell.”
The word rendered “dwell” implies a permanent abode, and may have been chosen in order to oppose a view which we know to have prevailed later, and may suspect to have been beginning to appear thus early, namely, that the union of the Divine and the human in the person of Christ was but temporary. At all events, emphasis is placed here on the opposite truth that that indwelling does not end with the earthly life of Jesus, and is not like the shadowy and transient incarnations of Eastern mythology or speculation—a mere assumption of a fleshly nature for a moment, which is dropped from the re-ascending Deity, but that, for evermore, manhood is wedded to divinity in the perpetual humanity of Jesus Christ.
And this indwelling is the result of the Father’s good pleasure. Adopting the supplement in the Authorized and Revised Versions, we might read “the Father pleased”—but without making that change, the force of the words remains the same. The Incarnation and whole work of Christ are referred to their deepest ground in the will of the Father. The word rendered “pleased” implies both counsel and complacency; it is both pleasure and good pleasure. The Father determined the work of the Son, and delighted in it. Caricatures intentional or unintentional of New Testament teaching have often represented it as making Christ’s work the means of pacifying an unloving God and moving Him to mercy. That is no part of the Pauline doctrine. But he, as all his brethren, taught that the love of God is the cause of the mission of Christ, even as Christ Himself had taught that “God so loved the world that He sent His Son.” On that Rock-foundation of the will—the loving will of the Father, is built the whole work of His Incarnate Son. And as that work was the issue of His eternal purpose, so it is the object of His eternal delight. That is the wonderful meaning of the word which fell gently as the dove descending on His head, and lay on His locks wet from His baptism, like a consecrating oil—“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” God willed that so He should be; He delighted that so He was. Through Christ, the Father purposed that His fulness should be communicated to us, and through Christ the Father rejoices to pour His abundance into our emptiness, that we may be filled with all the fulness.
II. Again, we have here, as before Christ and the Universe, of which He is not only Maker, Sustainer, and Lord, but through “the blood of His cross” reconciles “all things unto Himself.”
Probably these same false teachers had dreams of reconciling agents among the crowd of shadowy phantoms with which they peopled the void. Paul lifts up in opposition to all these the one Sovereign Mediator, whose cross is the bond of peace for all the universe.
It is important for the understanding of these great words to observe their distinct reference to the former clauses which dealt with our Lord’s relation to the universe as Creator. The same words are used in order to make the parallelism as close as may be, “Through Him” was creation; “through Him” is reconciliation. “All things”—or as the Greek would rather suggest, “the universe”—all things considered as an aggregate—were made and sustained through Him and subordinated to Him; the same “all things” are reconciled. A significant change in the order of naming the elements of which these are composed is noticeable. When creation is spoken of, the order is “in the heavens and upon the earth”—the order of creation; but when reconciliation is the theme, the order is reversed, and we read “things upon the earth and things in the heavens”—those coming first which stand nearest to the reconciling cross, and are first to feel the power which streams from it.
This obvious intentional correspondence between these two paragraphs shows us that whatever be the nature of the “reconciliation” spoken of here, it is supposed to affect not only rational and responsible creatures who alone in the full sense of the word can be reconciled, as they only in the full sense of the word can be enemies, but to extend to things, and to send its influence through the universe. The width of the reconciliation is the same as that of the creation; they are conterminous. That being the case, “reconciliation” here must have a different shade of meaning when applied to the sum total of created things from what it has when applied to persons. But not only are inanimate creatures included in the expression; it may even be made a question whether the whole of mankind is not excluded from it, not only by the phrase “all things” but also from the consideration that the effect of Christ’s death on men is the subject of the following words, which are not an explanation of this clause, but an addition to it, introducing an entirely different department of Christ’s reconciling work. Nor should we lose sight of the very significant omission in this section of the reference to the angelic beings who were named in the creation section. We hear nothing now about thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. The division into “visible and invisible” is not reproduced. I suggest the possibility that the reason may be the intention to represent this “reconciliation” as taking effect exclusively on the regions of creation below the angelic and below the human, while the “reconciliation,” properly so called, which is brought to pass on alienated men is dealt with first in the following words.
If this be so, then these words refer mainly to the restitution of the material universe to its primal obedience, and represent Christ the Creator removing by His cross the shadow which has passed over nature by reason of sin. It has been well said, “How far this restoration of universal nature may be subjective, as involved in the changed perceptions of man thus brought into harmony with God, and how far it may have an objective and independent existence, it were vain to speculate.”[1]
Scripture seems to teach that man’s sin has made the physical world “subject to vanity”; for, although much of what it says on this matter is unquestionably metaphor only, portraying the Messianic blessings in poetical language never meant for dogmatic truth, and although unquestionably physical death reigned among animals, and storms and catastrophes swept over the earth long before man or sin were here, still—seeing that man by his sin has compelled dead matter to serve his lusts and to be his instrument in acts of rebellion against God, making “a league with the stones of the field” against his and their Master—seeing that he has used earth to hide heaven and to shut himself out from its glories, and so has made it an unwilling antagonist to God and temptress to evil—seeing that he has actually polluted the beauty of the world and has stained many a lovely scene with his sin, making its rivers run red with blood—seeing that he has laid unnumbered woes on the living creatures—we may feel that there is more than poetry in the affirmation that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together,” and may hear a deep truth, the extent of which we cannot measure, in Milton’s majestic lines—
“Disproportioned Sin
Jarred against Nature’s chime, and with harsh din
Brake the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed.”