We are dividing up the definitions of the word fulness, in the Greek is the word pleroma, which is the key to releasing Judgment and Recompense simultaneously. What we will see is what the fulness of the Godhead in Jesus means.
9 For in him the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 2:9–10.
Today there is an attack upon the doctrine of the Trinity. The fact is the word “trinity” is not found explicitly in the Bible. They then say that as it is not mentioned that it must be a heresy. It is not. The correct word for Trinity is “Godhead”. This Godhead explains both identity and nature of the members of this Godhead, and their objective both in terms of character and what they live for.
The things that modern day society longs for is harmony and peace, for which the Godhead lives, and it seems that the Father being the originator of all, is revered and obeyed by the other members of the Godhead. The fullness or pleroma is plainly demonstrated by Jesus, as the text above shows us, that this fullness was a constant demonstration of God’s intentions for man and society. Abraham saw this in the form of a celestial city having a symbolic and harmonious community living with and from that fullness of order, harmony, absence of sin and its implications, perfection in every sphere.
It is necessary that we see Jesus as this personification of fullness in that He comes to lift us out of spiritual, physical, psychological, physical emptiness. The emptiness of the humanist political process we are seeing right now. Jesus the King lived opposite to the kings of the earth. There is no living out empty privilege in the earthly mission of Jesus. Jesus goes to great length in the discourses around that Last Supper, to which John’s Gospel goes into detail about what Jesus said to prepare the disciples to walk through their most difficult of phases, in which this same demonstration of fullness meets the fullness of the evil of deranged religious power, and imperial power demonstrated through the impotence of religious power, manipulating the governor in his loyalties to Rome. They successfully maneuvered him into choosing between Christ or Caesar. This very evil, which in some instances in history has repeated and will come again, that political power will sacrifice sacred freedoms and rights in favour of emphasizing loyalties.
The whole life and mission of Jesus on the earth is to demonstrate fullness in every moment, and pleroma is a trigger to bring the incremental changes that ultimately open eternal and spiritual doors to higher realms of being. The Temple being revered as the place for the Resting Place of Glory, superseded by a corporate temple constituted of a collective of Kings and Priests, people who profess Jesus as Saviour and Lord. And successively the pleroma takes the emphasis from physical representations to emphasize the spiritual representations lived out by faith.
The life and teachings of Jesus cover a multitude of issues with confronting the decadence of the faith of that day, nothing more poignant than Mark 11, a sequence of events to demonstrate that a faith given in glory in Moses, is in decline through a rules based system. Jesus observes all in the Temple after coming into Jerusalem, on a donkey, to confound and confuse. This entry was not the entry of political revolution but spiritual revolution. What Jesus walks out from this Triumphal Entry is the wrapping up of the legitimacy of many aspects of Judaism to be completed by a whole different way. Pleroma does this in the spiritual life, manifesting in the physical as upheavals and changes. This Triumphal Entry is punctuated in Luke 19 with Jerusalem not recognising the hour of visitation. We not understanding the pleroma are also “not recognising our visitation” also, in that when pleroma begins to manifest in God’s people, either by revival, either by signs and wonders, we must know that there is a confrontation coming with the fullness of corrupt powers.
Jesus in Mark 11 curses the fig tree, it withers almost immediately, and fullness/pleroma will do that, it will demonstrate through signs what is going on in the spiritual. The fig tree withers from the roots up. The roots are unseen, but they sustain the life. So in the spiritual any system, any law, however gloriously given, can wither, can be taken down, in the spiritual realm, and from there a withering becomes a visible reality. The reason for the cursing is that this religious system no longer bears fruit, but has a display of leaves, it looks prosperous but bears no fruit. The fruit of love, joy and peace are absent. Hence why Jesus curses it.
When God grants through Jesus, in His Church, and through His Church that pleroma so society is submitted into a crucible, where all are tried and pressured, akin to Malachi where Jesus appears suddenly, “who can stand the day of His coming”? That is the question to demonstrate the pleroma of purification and refining. There it is the Levites, the people who are going through this trial, and who would continue on to a glorious ministry would be those who withstood and were steadfast in seeing this process to the end. So the Church through all its spiritual sacrifices coming into pleroma, the same that Jesus lived, will also try society, so it is not surprising when society kicks back with laws and practices that confront society with all manner of evils, and by each decade desensitise all those who live within the said society. The image that the Church is the tail of this process is erroneous in that Jesus has had the Fullness of the Godhead, and the Church partakes of this, will be steadfast when Jesus, through His Church demonstrate His Judgments. What we need to do is perceive Him as He is.
We must therefore confront in ourselves that our non comprehension of Jesus, is indicative of the distance between our experience now and the pleroma Jesus wants to deposit in His Church. And if we do not embrace, receive, perceive the pleroma then the trigger for judgments does not activate and the recompense for God’s people is not experienced. This latter expulsion of “mammon” from the Temple in Mark 11, single most hated act by the Sanhedrin would never have been a reality, then mammon would have ruled. This “love of money” is really a love of this world and all that is temporary over the love for God and the spiritual riches. This apparent act culminates in Jesus being crucified, and curiously through this the pleroma of this obedience afford the Temple being shaken, the Temple veil being rent from bottom to top, like the fig tree of Mark 11, exposing a house devoid of glory, devoid of God’s presence. And if God’s glory had departed where did it go, if not to those who understood that Jesus came to take the Glory and deposit it in the human heart. Ezekiel 36 is hereby fulfilled that the glory becomes the pen that writes the law of the Spirit and of life within the human heart.
The pleroma of the Gospels must therefore be complete in the Outpouring of the Spirit of Acts 2, understood by Peter to be Jesus now glorified and exalted, and sending His Spirit to demonstrate this reality of this King and His Kingdom. That the Sanhedrin now devoid of their proud and haughty position, cannot defeat this new impetus from heaven. I sense that in writing this we are on the threshold of a similar process in which “it pleased the Father that the fullness of the Godhead would bodily dwell” is about to be released again, so that in contrast with the Gospels, the fulness brought Christ, the Church must experience the Bodily Godhead fully dwelling to be a trigger for Jesus’ return. This return is glorious and a recompense for the saints, but a judgment for the religious and political. May Jesus come, may the Spirit and the Bride say Come, cry out, because when the Spirit and the Bride cry out this pleroma is complete.
And when this pleroma is manifest so authority as the King, starts to reign both visibly and invisibly. The disorder disappears and true Kingdom is manifest. Psalm 2 relates to this transition how the conspiring kings and governments try to thwart this ultimate reality, yet because the Father set His King on His Holy Hill so the nations become His by default. For the saints His rule and Reign will be heaven, a rest from the confusions and sufferings of human government, and all this must start by God revealing to us and in us His Pleroma! And as the Pleroma of the Godhead that bodily dwelt in Him, come also to His Church.
Maranatha!
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