Ephesians 1:22-23 NASB [22] And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, [23] which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. …
Colossians 2:9-10 NASB [9] For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, [10] and in Him you have been made full, and He is the head over all rule and authority;
Ephesians 4:10-13 NASB [10] He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.) [11] And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, [12] for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; [13] until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge e of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. …
I believe that the calling of the church corporately and individually is to go after the experience and the manifestation of all that Christ is. The Colossians passage says that we have been made complete in Christ. If you are a Christian then you are in Christ and have therefore been plunged into the fullness of His life. You are in Him, that is His life, and therefore, His life in fullness is in you. That has been true about you since the day you were born again.
Christian growth is an ever-increasing discovery of and manifestation of the fullness of Christ which you already possess. You do not earn fullness, which has got nothing to do with what you deserve, and you don’t have to jump any spiritual hoops to achieve it. Jesus achieved it for you 2000 years ago when you hung on the cross with Him and were raised up with Him as a new creation. When you became a Christian, you simply said yes and received what He had already accomplished for you.
In Ephesians 4 in the verse that follows the one that I posted above, it talks about the fact that the result of going after the fullness of Christ is the church won’t be deceived and tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. The reason being that experiencing and revealing all that Jesus is is the foundational doctrine of the church. We are called to reveal the Christ in us to a lost and dying world so that they may experience the wonders of the new creation that they, too, can participate in as their life story. This is the reason that I believe the church today get so easily deceived and runs after every new pop doctrine. We’re always running after the next new big thing that will be the final answer that finally gives us the breakthrough we are looking for. As a Christian you were born into the breakthrough which is Jesus Himself, all that He is and has, indwelling you. That is the prize that Colossians 2 talks about and that Paul warns us to not be defrauded from.
May we soon again, as in the apostolic origin of the church, make Christ and our union with Him and His fullness the great doctrine of the church from which every other minor doctrine has its proper place.