fragments which `filled' several baskets after the miraculous feeding of the multitudes

(Mark 6: 43). In Romans it is used both of the Jew and the Gentile (11: 12, 25). For the

Jew, restoration after their `diminishing' in judgment for their unbelief, and for the

Gentile, the completion of the Gentile period covering Israel's lo-ammi condition.

In Ephesians, the church is the fullness of Christ (Eph. 1: 23) and each member is

"filled full (complete) in Him" (Col. 2: 10 R.V.) and in the verses we are studying, the

Lord Jesus Himself contains all God's fullness. Pleroma is obviously a word of great

doctrinal import, sometimes with the thought of a rent or gap in the background, or it

concerns the completion or totality of what the context treats. Here in Colossians, Paul is

asserting that in Christ the completion of Deity dwells. He is not merely a being endued

with great power, but is rather the dwelling place of the very essence of God.

From this follows His great reconciling work based on the offering of Himself on

Calvary's cross which touches heaven and earth, ta panta, all things that are contained in

the mighty, redemptive purpose and will of God. We have no real basis for universalism

here, for we must remember that the same cross that is the Divine basis for the

reconciliation of "the all things" (literally) is also the means whereby principalities and

powers who were the enemies of God have been defeated and brought into subjection.

The wide sweep of reconciliation here has in mind the creation which became subject to

vanity because of man's sin (Rom. 8: 20) and looks forward to the final new creation of

a heaven and earth wherein dwells righteousness and from which all rebels and sinners,

whether angelic or man, are excluded.

In Col. 1: 20 this reconciliation was a decisive act (note the aorist tense of the verb,

not future) pointing to us the basis wrought once for all on the cross by the Lord Jesus,

and upon this alone this mighty reconciliation rests and comes down to individual

believers who once were `alienated and enemies in their minds' to God. The verb for

`reconcile' is apokatallasso, found also in Eph. 2: 16 and nowhere else in the N.T. The

shorter word katallasso occurs in Rom. 5: 10 (twice), II Cor. 5: 18, 19, 20 and the

cognate noun katallage is found in Rom. 5: 11; 11: 15; II Cor. 5: 18, 19. Apokatallasso

appears to be an intensified form of the verb `to reconcile' and is kept by the Holy Spirit

to the prison letters of Paul where reconciliation is seen in its highest and widest sense.

All this has been accomplished by one Person and one act, that is the Lord Jesus Christ

and the sacrificial offering of Himself on the cross, paying the penalty of sin, which is

death. No angelic mediator could have accomplished this and all the while we must bear

in mind the object here of Paul's writing, to show up the falsity of the heresy that was

undermining the faith of believers at Colossae.

The reconciliation of Eph. 2: deals with the creation of a `new man' from the Jew

who was nigh and the Gentile who was alienated and at a distance, and the removal of all

barriers between them in this newly created company. Here in Colossians after the

mighty sweep of all creation, Paul shows how this full reconciliation touches each

individual believer in the Body of Christ: