The Fullness of God

This is Pastor Zarling's sermon for the Shoreland Lutheran Teachers' Conference at First Evan and WLS on Friday, February 22. 

Colossians 2:9-15 For all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ. ¹⁰ And you have been brought to fullness in him. Christ is the head over every ruler and authority. ¹¹ You were also circumcised in him, with a circumcision not done by human hands, in the putting off of the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, ¹² when you were buried with Christ in baptism. And in baptism you were also raised with him through the faith worked by the God who raised Christ from the dead.

¹³ Even when you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ by forgiving us all our trespasses. ¹⁴ God erased the record of our debt brought against us by his legal demands. This record stood against us, but he took it away by nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ After disarming the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them by triumphing over them in Christ.

Charlie was a ten-year-old boy who was finding fourth grade public school math to be the challenge of his life. His parents did everything they could to help him with his math.

Nothing worked.

At the beginning of the next school year, Charlie’s parents enrolled him in fifth grade in the Lutheran elementary school in town. The math was even harder because it was fifth grade and it was now in the Lutheran school. When Charlie came home after his first day in his new school, he immediately went to the dining room table, pulled out his math book and Chromebook and worked diligently for an hour straight on math. This routine happened every day as soon as Charlie came home from school. On the weekends, Charlie would do extra Math Facts on his Chromebook.

When the first quarter report card came in the mail, Charlie’s parents saw that not only did Charlie have a straight A in math, his teacher added the note that Charlie had the highest math grades of anyone in fifth grade!

Charlie’s parents were ecstatic! They were thrilled at the remarkable progress of their previously math-deficient son. They quickly found Charlie and began peppering him with questions. Was it the new teacher? The math curriculum? The textbooks, Chromebook or Math Facts? What had driven Charlie to become so good at math so quickly?

Charlie gave up the secret. He said, “I knew those people meant business when I first walked into the lobby of the Lutheran school and I saw the guy they nailed to a plus sign!”

Your teachers’ conference today is on technology and math. The sermon text that was chosen for this morning is all about math – addition and subtraction. The key verse of the text – and really the key verse of St. Paul’s entire epistle to the Colossians is verse 9. “For all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ.” 

St. Paul warns that the heretics in Colossae were actively trying to take the Colossian Christians captive through “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Colossians 2:8). These heretics were denying the sufficiency of Christ. They denied the completeness of Christ’s atonement, as well as Christ’s power to furnish believers with spiritual strength to live godly lives.

In his epistle to the Colossians, St. Paul does not debate the false teachers. The apostle never dignifies the Colossian heresy by describing its features. He simply overwhelms their errors by confronting the Colossians with the full riches of the gospel in Christ.

The heretics taught that spiritual things like angels, thrones, powers, rulers and authorities emanated from God and were meant to be worshiped alongside God. God was said to divide himself among these and other emanations and divine beings.

Paul defends the truth by powerfully stating, “For all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ.” 

Paul uses the Greek word “pleroma” (πλήρωμα) meaning “fullness,” “entirety,
 “totality.” With a single word, Paul demonstrates that God is not divided at all. All God’s “pleroma” – his fullness – is present in one individual: Jesus Christ.

As teachers, you may complain that your day is full. It is full of teaching, correcting, fist bumps and hand sanitizer. It is full of parent emails and phone calls. It is full of faculty meetings and curriculum planning. It is full of coaching sports, leading drama, and teaching music.

I’ve also learned that teaching means lots of full bladders. When do you find time to go to the bathroom?

Even though you are in the public ministry, your day is also full of sin. The absence of confidence that you don’t know what you’re doing. The lack of preparation for the next school day. The false humility when a parent compliments your teaching style. The frustration when another parent criticizes your teaching style. The pride that you know what you’re doing in your classroom. The irritation when your principal or conference suggest better ways of classroom management. The guilt over the time spent away from your family. The resentment that you don’t get the recognition you feel you deserve for your full days in the Lord’s ministry.

Oh, the devil has so many ways to assault our pride, humility, vanity, efforts and work ethics. We so often become our own little heretics. We discount the power of sin inside called workers like ourselves. We discount the power of Christ to make us into the public servants he has called us to be.

We would make the Colossian heretics proud!

As far as math equations go, your can look at your sin as either fullness or emptiness. Full of anxiety, stress and resentment – full of sin. Empty of empathy, personal devotions and prayer – empty of righteousness.

Paul says that we have a Savior who defies math! He is greater than any calculus, geometry or trigonometry. Christ is bigger and better and wiser than math. “For the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ.” Jesus is 100% God and 100% human. That answer would be 100% wrong on your math test. But in Scripture, it’s a rock-solid truth!

We confess this in the Nicene Creed: “[Christ is] true God of true God … of one being with the Father.” Our Lutheran Confessions comment: “In this personal union the two natures have such a grand, intimate, indescribable communion that even the angels are astonished by it” (FC SD VIII 30).

After our first parents succumbed to the assaults of Satan, God knew he needed to fix the creation that his creatures had broken. You know that if you want to fix something right, you fix it yourself. That’s what God did. The God who made flesh out of dust then made flesh cover his Son. He took everything that is human – body and soul, eyes, ears and all our members – and pulled them into God. The Athanasian Creeds summarizes: “Not by changing the deity into flesh, but by taking the humanity into God.” The fullness of God is in the person of Jesus the Christ. God became man. God got hungry. God sucked his thumb. God laughed. God cried. God went to school, made friends and did math.

We have a God who undoubtedly does miracles. Plagues, water, quail and manna in the desert, storms calmed, water into wine, diseases healed, dead raised, demons dispossessed, and miracle births. But there is no greater miracle than the fullness of God dwelling bodily in the God-Man Christ Jesus. The God whom the universe cannot contain contained himself within the womb of an unwed teenage mother. The God who deserves unending praise of saints and angels is crucified by those he came to save. When Jesus died on the cross, God died. We are saved by the blood of Jesus. But if Jesus was not human, he would have not blood. If Jesus was not God, we could not be saved by a dead Jew’s blood. The fullness of God dwells bodily in Christ.

C.S. Lewis in the “Screwtape Letters” writes about the “abominable advantage” that Jesus has over the devil because the devil never became human (Letter I).

This is the mystery and miracle of the fullness of God in Christ.

In his People’s Bible Commentary, Pastor Harlyn Kuschel offers this illustration: “We see God in Christ as if a man were to hold all the world’s oceans in a single pitcher of water.”

Verse 9 is doctrinal. Verse 10 is practical. “And you have been brought to fullness in him.”

We needed Someone so full that he could empty himself … and then give that fullness to us through faith in him!

When we are connected to Christian faith, we, too, are filled to the limit. We have all that we need for time and eternity, the fullness of every spiritual blessing. The power of the Creator. The love of the Savior. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The home of the King of heaven and earth. All this is ours!

The Colossian heretics insisted on a physical circumcision by human hands to be counted as a condition of salvation. Paul teaches in verse 11: “You were also circumcised in him, with a circumcision not done by human hands, in the putting off of the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ.” The Holy Spirit cuts away at your sinful nature. He subtracts your pride, impatience, apathy, disunity and general crabbiness before you get your coffee. He cuts it away like an old, shabby piece of clothing and throws it away.

The Holy Spirit then clothes you with the white robe of your baptismal gown. “When you were buried with Christ in baptism. And in baptism you were also raised with him through the faith worked by the God who raised Christ from the dead.” The Holy Spirit adds Christ’s righteousness to cover over your unrighteousness. Now through your baptismal waters you are given humility, patience, empathy, unity, faithfulness, joy and peace. Christ fills you up with his nature after he has cut away your sinful nature.

God has recorded all our late lessons plans, our mailed-in efforts, our uncaring attitudes, our unwillingness to change our teaching styles, and whatever else we try to get away with in the classroom. He has written a record of our debt against him.

We can’t rub out this debt with a big pink eraser. We can’t hit the delete button on our computer. Nothing we do changes that record. It silently, eternally condemns even called workers to hell for our violations.

There is nothing we can do to erase our record. So, God did it all. Verse 15 reads: “God erased the record of our debt brought against us by his legal demands. This record stood against us, but he took it away by nailing it to the cross.” God picked up the record condemning us and nailed it to the cross of his Son. Jesus’ bloodied back was pinned against that cross for six hours on Good Friday. Jesus shed his divinely human blood as punishment for our sins. When Jesus died, they took his body down to bury him, leaving the record pinned to the cross.

That record is now erased. Not with an eraser or computer or good works or our divine call. It is erased by the blood of God. Erased by the God-Man. Erased by the God whom the universe cannot contain who contained himself with three nails on the cross.

Christ is sufficient. He is sufficient at subtracting our sins and adding his righteousness. Sufficient in circumcising our sin and filling us with baptismal watchers. Sufficient in the classroom. Sufficient in your family home. Sufficient for pastors and teachers. Sufficient for our daily lives and our eternal salvation.

Charlie had it partly right. Although he became very good in math, he was still lacking a lot of things in theology. That’s why he was in a Lutheran school. Our Lutheran schools mean business. Not mainly about math. But especially about salvation – for Charlie, our students, parents and ourselves. Christ is sufficient because all the fullness of God … is on a plus sign – the cross. Amen.