Fulness

Fulness (Greek pleroma) is a theologically significant term in the New Testament, used in several distinct but related senses. The "fulness of time" (Galatians 4:4; Ephesians 1:10) refers to God's appointed moment — the precise juncture in history, prepared through centuries of covenant history, law, prophecy, and providential circumstance, at which God sent his Son to be born of a woman under the law. The phrase conveys that the incarnation was not improvised but was the culmination of a long divine plan.

"Fulness" is also applied to Christ himself: Colossians 1:19 states that "it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell," and Colossians 2:9 declares that "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" — affirmations of Christ's complete divine nature against any reduction of him to a lesser being or intermediary. John 1:16 speaks of the "fulness" from which believers receive grace upon grace. Ephesians 3:19 prays that believers may be "filled unto all the fulness of God," and Ephesians 1:23 describes the church as "the fulness of him that filleth all in all" — participation in Christ's completeness is both the source and the goal of Christian existence.