"For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him" (NASB).
"For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him" (NIV).
Paul literally says that "all the fullness" was "pleased" to dwell in Christ. But "fullness" is not a person and only a person has conscious and willful intent; only a person can be "pleased" to do something. So both the NASB and the NIV translate the verse to indicate that God the Father is the subject of the verb: it was his good pleasure that the fullness of the divine nature dwell in Christ.
Let me begin by urging you not to be misled by the word "dwell". Paul is not suggesting that there was a man named Jesus in whom deity or divinity resided. In other words, the fullness of deity didn't dwell in Jesus the way the Holy Spirit dwells in you and me. When God the Son became a human, the fullness of the divine nature "became flesh" (John 1:14), yet without ceasing to be divine. The divine and the human united in the one person of Jesus Christ.
The early church wrestled with how best to articulate this marvelous and mind-bending mystery and reached its conclusions at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 a.d. Here is that portion of the statement that attempts to explain what Paul is saying in Colossians and elsewhere in the New Testament. Jesus Christ is "to be acknowledged in two natures [one divine, one human], without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ . . ."
The authors of this statement had three primary goals in mind.
(1) Their point in saying the two natures were not confused or changed is to prevent us from concluding that the divine and human were so united that an altogether different third thing, neither truly divine nor truly human, was created. For example, if you have a glass of water and a glass of wine and mix them together in a pitcher, you end up with something different from what you started out with. The water is now somewhat alcoholic and the wine is now somewhat diluted, but the substance in the pitcher is different from what was in either of the two glasses.
Contrary to what some in the early church suggested, the divine nature did not "swallow up" the human (as the ocean would a drop of ink), nor did the human dilute the divine into something less than truly God.
(2) Their point in saying there was neither separation nor distinction is to prevent us from concluding that the divine and human natures in Christ were artificially bonded, almost like one would glue together two separate pieces of wood. There was more than an external "connection" between the divine and human: there was and is a true union of the two.
(3) Finally, they wanted to be certain that the union between the divine and human not be construed in such a way that we think of the incarnate Christ as if he were two separate persons. He is one person, wholly divine and wholly human, neither less divine because he has a human nature nor less human because he has a divine nature.
Yes, I know it's mind-boggling! But if our Lord Jesus Christ were anything less or other than the God-man, one person who is truly divine and truly human, we would still be in our sin.
Marveling in the Mystery,
Thank you so much Sam Storms!
