Body Building

Tonight we are going to focus our attention on a second theme that pervades Ephesians: the body.

Paul introduced this theme in 1:22-23, where he says that God “put all things under [Christ's] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

So in chapter 1, Paul says that Christ is head over all things, and that Christ has been given to the church, and that the church is Christ's body.

What does it mean that the church is the body? And particularly in verse 23, what does it mean that the church (as the body) is the fullness of him who fills all in all?

The idea of fullness (pleroma) is rooted in Psalm 24:1 “The earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof” When it is used in the LXX, the Greek translation of the OT, it almost always refers to the created order – that which fills one or all of the three realms:
the seas, and that which fills it
or the heavens and the earth, and that which fills them.

But here the church, the body of Christ, is called the fullness of Christ. What does this mean?

Well, first we need to start with the literal, historical body of Jesus...