3. Colossians 2:1–10 – Jesus is all the fullness of God

Key Truth: There is nothing in God higher than Jesus.

1. Absent but present – 2:1–5

The great battle in life is to grasp how big Jesus really is.

We tend to enclose Him in certain periods of history or certain areas of life. We might limit Him to “salvation” but ignore Him for day-to-day wisdom; or we might instead limit Him to be a great teacher, but ignore Him as the Eternal, Divine Son.

We might think He can help us on Judgment Day, but assume He is of little help here and now; or we might think that He is supposed to take away all our temporary suffering here and now, as if He is not able to bring fruitfulness from suffering.

Jesus is the key to everything – He must be our obsession and our passion.

The goal of life is to fall in love with Jesus – to realise that the meaning of life is to be married to the Eternal Son.

In Jesus is all wisdom, all creativity, all knowledge, all treasure, all understanding, all life, all light, all logic, all power, all justice, all beauty.

Yet because of our sinful, fallen nature, our understanding of who Jesus is and what it means to be “in Him” is dull and tiny, and so our attention and devotion is elsewhere.

The battle for our hearts and minds is the great battle of life, and in verses 1–3, Paul says that he is in that great conflict for the churches – not only in Colossae and Laodicea, but also for all those local churches that had no physical contact with him at all.

Paul says that he is struggling for them (verse 1). How is he struggling? Whom or what is he struggling against?

In 2 Corinthians 10:3–5, Paul explains more of the conflict he is in for the churches:

… though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Paul’s great struggle is against the ideas and arguments that hinder and warp the knowledge of the Living God. He wants to pull down and demolish the big ideas and assumptions that prevent the Colossians from taking every thought captive to Christ.

The truth is that the real LORD Jesus Christ will not be at the centre of our living and thinking unless we are always fighting for it.

It is very easy to assume that Jesus is important to us; that He is at the centre of our thought.

However, there are simple tests to check on this: 

How often do we really speak of Jesus, not just “god”?

How is our heart moved at the thought of Jesus?

How do we use our time and money for Jesus?

How do we sacrifice our body, our desires, our life, for Him? 

Is our love for Him enough to drive out our fleshly cravings and deceitful desires?

How precious are His commands to us?

Like the Beloved in the Song of Songs, do we search for Him and mourn for Him, if we do not feel His closeness to us?

This Christ who is the essence of the mystery of God is described as the One “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”. Two thoughts are contained in this statement: First, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ. The false teachers claimed to have, through their relation with a supposed hierarchy of supernatural beings, a higher knowledge than that possessed by ordinary believers. Against this, Paul argues that all wisdom and knowledge are in Christ and that their treasures are accessible to every believer. Second, the treasures of wisdom are in Christ in a hidden way. “Hidden” does not, however, mean that they are concealed, but rather that they are laid up or stored away as a treasure.

Vaughan, C. (1981). Colossians. In F.E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians through Philemon (Vol. 11, p. 195). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

Colossians 2:2,3 states that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Jesus. All that is valuable, precious, useful, and necessary to provide a right understanding of life on an individual basis – not only that, but to make sense of everything. This whole letter of Colossians is designed to establish that deep, confident truth in us.

But, if we are honest, we constantly need to be on guard if we are really going to believe that to be true. Do we really think that the physical world around us makes sense only through Jesus? That our businesses need the wisdom that Jesus taught? That our academic studies need the knowledge hidden in Jesus? That our daily decisions and actions should be influenced by the wisdom of Jesus?

Do we really believe that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Jesus … or do we actually limit Him to some “spiritual” or abstract areas of life?

The strongholds of big ideas and assumptions that can rule our thinking are not easy to pull down – and it is a great struggle and conflict to do it.

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (6:11,12), we learn that this struggle goes much deeper than we might realise. The ideas and assumptions that take away our power and understanding don’t only come from human beings – there are spiritual, invisible forces at work to undermine our Church life together. The devil schemes to set up these “big idea strongholds” and “assumption fortresses” in order to make us weak and vulnerable – to prevent us standing up in the power of God.

Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the Heavenly realms.

So, if we are really going to see Jesus as the Image of the Invisible God, as the One in whom everything holds together, the One who fixes everything with His blood … then we have a fight on our hands. The world, the flesh, and the devil resist this big vision of Jesus as the Treasure-house of all wisdom and truth.

Each day, as Psalm 95 warns us, we must resist the hardening of heart that will prevent us from hearing Him.

Notice in verse 4 that the arguments against this huge view of Jesus will sound persuasive and polished – “smooth rhetoric”. That is why this is such a hard struggle: the other words around us sound so appealing and persuasive. The Colossians had money and fashion, spirituality and diets, philosophy and fads … all trying to get the centre of attention, all wanting to grab their allegiance.

Think of the letter that Jesus wrote to the Laodiceans – the letter that Paul wanted the Colossians to read. That letter was telling them how utterly deceived the Laodiceans were. They thought that they were rich and could see the world clearly. They were probably proud of their political, economic, philosophical, social, and psychological wisdom … and yet Jesus thought they were poverty-stricken and blind.

The systems of thought that keep us from the glory, wonder, and love of Jesus appeal to us in terms of this Earthly age – they are appealing and attractive; they are persuasive and powerful; polished and profound. Yet, they are prisons that prevent us from obtaining “complete understanding” – they stop us from seeing the true Jesus and walking in His ways.

In verse 5, Paul says that he was absent from them in the flesh but present with them in the spirit – joyful about their good church order and steady trust in Jesus.

What did he mean by that?

The phrase “absent in body, but present in spirit” has come to mean something like, “I’m thinking about you even if I can’t be with you.” 

It might mean that here in the original context, but it might be worth considering the possibility that Paul has more in mind.

2. The fullness of God in bodily form – 2:6–10

Paul holds up a vision of Church life – verse 6 – a life with four creative metaphors: walking; rooted; built; and strengthened.

Walking – the way we live; our patterns of daily life. To “walk in Jesus” means that we are living our lives in Him … as if He were the total context and framework for our living, feeling, and thinking. We sometimes might talk about “having Jesus in our lives”, but perhaps Paul is lifting our vision here to see that the deep question is not whether He is in us, but how we are in Him.

Rooted – the idea is of a plant pushing roots down to get stability and nourishment. We are thinking here of the image of Jesus as the True Vine from John chapter 15. We can have a very fruitful life, if we are connected into the Vine, abiding in Jesus – pruned by the Father, given the life of the Spirit.

Built – the image of a building that is solid and structured with foundations. Think of all the preparation and planning that goes into a building, and how much time and effort it takes to be completed. To be built up in Jesus is not something that happens overnight. This is the outcome of consistently enduring in following His way. Think of that story Jesus told at the end of the Sermon on the Mount about the wise and foolish builders: the building of their lives all depended on the foundations, and the rock foundation is defined as not just listening to Jesus, but actually doing what He says.

Strengthened – a picture of training, exercising, and developing. When we are immobile and stagnant in life, our muscles waste away. Even just a couple of weeks of lounging around leads to serious loss of strength … and if this goes on into later life, we find our whole frame is bent and vulnerable. Our capacity for movement and action withers away. So, we cannot passively lounge around in our Church life together: this is a struggle; a call to action; a battle. We are to become and remain strong in this Church life of Jesus.

But how are we to be walking, rooted, built, and strengthened? We are to hold onto what we have been taught – to the truth about Jesus. The Colossian believers “received Christ Jesus as Lord” – now they are encouraged and inspired to continue in this mindset, “strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness” (verse 7).

Truth and gratitude are the keys to this life of fruitfulness, stability, and strength. So, the greatest threats to this kind of strong and fruitful Church life are not just the obvious temptations, but the ideas and systems of thought that destroy that big view of Jesus.

In verse 8, Paul says that there are three possible sources for our thinking: Jesus; humanity; or “spiritual beings”.

Christ Jesus Himself is the One who holds everything together in all creation; He is the Logic, Life, and Light of the universe.

Yet, we are very aware of all the human thinking and opinion that crowds into our hearts and minds every day. Just consider how much of our day is spent tuning into “human philosophy and empty deceit” – through all kinds of media platforms. 

How do we begin each day? What is the first word that we listen to? Which version of “truth” do we allow to set the tone for our day? Psalms 3–5 are all about how the LORD Jesus would start each day. It is important to take time to consider that. In Psalm 1, of course, the main feature of the Blessed and Fruitful Man – Jesus Christ – is that He meditates on the Word of the LORD day and night, and does not listen to the mocking, scornful words of the wicked.

Yet, notice that Paul speaks about the “basic principles” of the world there in verse 8. He uses a word – stoicheia – which is used in the New Testament for the spiritual powers that try to govern and control the world. They are the powers that will be burned away from the universe in 2 Peter 3:10. 

Again we see that the systems of thought that cloud our minds from Jesus are not only the basic human ideas that we battle with every day, but also that there is a higher level to this – a sense of Satanic power planning and scheming to shape the world in such a way that we settle for a small and powerless view of Jesus.

The deep point here comes out in verses 9 and 10. Perhaps we are thrilled by the cleverest and most brilliant human communicators and influencers … or maybe, without realising it, we are caught up in big-scale cultural systems that have been manipulated by “spiritual” forces. The Colossians maybe even took pride in having systems of thought that connected to spirit guides and “angelic beings”.

However, Paul has given us a vision of Jesus that should make both human and angelic wisdom seem foolish in comparison.

Do we grasp who Jesus really is?

Look at Colossians 2:9,10: “... in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the Head over every power and authority.”

Jesus is not just a sample of what God is like. He is not a diluted form of divinity.

Sometimes people might say that Jesus is God diluted or scaled down to a size or level that we can manage. However, that is completely wrong. If anything, Jesus is God scaled up, or concentrated into a form that is stronger, fuller, more intense!

He is all the fullness of the Deity – not spread out across the universe but concentrated into one bodily form.

There is nothing in the Infinite and Eternal Divine Being that is above or beyond what we meet in the bodily form of Jesus of Nazareth. When we look at Jesus, our whole view of the human body is transformed. Far from being worthless, ugly, or evil, through Jesus the human body is caught up into the fullness of the Divine Life and Nature.

So, when we begin our thinking and living from Jesus – “all the fullness of God in bodily form” – we see how our own perfection, completion, and fullness is all found in Him. If we want to know what we were designed to be and do; if we want to see what human potential really is; if we want to know our destiny … then we need to turn away from the con artists and gurus who try to flatter us with self-improvement programmes; from the clever, polished rhetoric and “spiritual” concepts that deceive and disappoint us; and from a worldly, small, and insignificant view of Jesus that relegates Him to one amongst many. Instead we must cling to the real, true Jesus as LORD – the One in whom all the fullness of the infinite God lives, the One who has taken our humanity to the very highest level of all: into the Eternal and Infinite Life of God!