πλήρωμα

How much of God was in Jesus?

It is the question that has bothered every Christian who has stopped to think about it for more than a moment. Some heretics in the early church said Jesus was just a man God adopted. Some said He was a created being, less than God. Some said He was a kind of in-between figure, partly divine and partly created. Some said He was God who only seemed to have a body.

The New Testament’s most concentrated answer fits in one verse and turns on one Greek word.

The verse is Colossians 2:9: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” The word is plērōma — fullness, the whole of something. The whole of God dwells in Christ. Bodily. Not partly. Not approximately. Not in a way that bypasses His actual flesh. All of God. In one body.

This is the chapter where that confession gets its weight.

The Word

πλήρωμα (plērōma), pronounced PLAY-ro-ma. A neuter noun, third declension. From the verb plēroō (πληρόω), “to fill, to fulfill, to complete.” The family includes the adjective plērēs (full) and the noun plērōsis (fulfillment).

At its lexical baseline, plērōma simply means “that which fills” or “the condition of being full.” A patch sewn onto a garment to fill a hole is a plērōma (Mark 2:21). The leftover food that filled the disciples’ baskets after Jesus fed the five thousand is a plērōma (Mark 6:43). The everyday sense is concrete and unremarkable: it is the stuff that fills the gap.

The theological use builds on the lexical baseline. The plērōma of God is what fills divinity — not a piece of God, not a representation of God, but the whole of God. When Paul reaches for plērōma to describe what dwells in Christ, he is reaching for a word that already means “the whole of something.” He is not saying “a divine quality” or “a measure of God’s nature.” He is saying everything.

Range of Meaning

In its New Testament usage, plērōma covers a wider field than the theological sense alone:

• That which fills something. The patch in a garment (Mark 2:21, Matt 9:16). The everyday sense.
• The leftover or remainder — what fills the basket after a meal (Mark 6:43, 8:20).
• The condition of being full, completeness, totality.
• The fullness of God or of Christ — the dominant theological use in Paul.
• The fullness of time — a temporal sense meaning the completion or ripening of an appointed period (Gal 4:4, Eph 1:10).
• The church as the fullness of Christ — a derivative theological use (Eph 1:23).

The word’s center of gravity is the idea of completion or totality. What fills something to its full measure is the plērōma of that thing. When Paul applies the word to God, he is saying that God in His entirety — not God in part, not a divine extension, not a divine subset — has taken up residence in Christ.

Where You’ll Meet It

“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” (Colossians 1:19, ESV)

The first of the two great plērōma passages in Colossians. Paul has just called Christ the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation (we met that verse in Chapter 5 on eikōn). Now he says why the image is reliable: the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Him. The dwelling is not an accident or an arrangement of convenience. It is what God wanted. The Father purposed it.

“For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” (Colossians 2:9, ESV)

The verse that has carried more christological weight than perhaps any other in the New Testament. Paul says it more sharply than he did in Colossians 1: the whole fullness, of deity (not merely “God” but the divine essence itself), dwells (present tense, ongoing) — bodily. The Greek is sōmatikōs — “in bodily form.” Not in some abstract spiritual mode. In the body. In the body of the man who walked through Galilee. The body now risen and reigning. The body Christians will receive at the rail next Sunday.

“For the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:23, ESV)

The first of the derived uses. Christ has a plērōma — Himself in His fullness — and the church is being drawn into that fullness. The church is not the plērōma in the way Christ is, but the church participates in Christ’s plērōma. The fullness in Christ overflows into His body.

“That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:19, ESV)

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian church. He prays that they may be filled with the plērōma of God — meaning the fullness that dwells in Christ. Not a separate fullness available apart from Christ. The same fullness, reaching Christians through Him.

“And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:16, ESV)

John says it differently but says the same thing. The fullness Christians receive comes from the plērōma of Christ. There is no other source. The Father’s gifts to His people flow through the Son, who contains the fullness.

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law…” (Galatians 4:4, ESV)

The temporal sense. The plērōma of time — the appointed moment when the ages had reached their ripeness — is when God sent His Son. The word does different work here, but the underlying meaning of completeness still governs. When the time was full, He came.