Nielsen’s Nook

Lawrence Farley writes regarding Colossians 2:8-9:

Christ is not just one link in the Fullness of the Godhead’s series of emanations. All the Divine Fullness dwells in Him. And not only that, but the Divine Fullness dwells in Him bodily. It is not, as the Gnostics asserted, that the true Divine Nature would not deign to soil Itself with contact with the bodily; corruptible world. On the contrary, the Fullness of God has actually assumed a body, sharing our physical nature.

Meditating on this passage from Colossians and from Farley’s reflections, there are two things that confront me. First, is of course the importance of my human body. God himself was pleased to take on a body like ours and in that there is great impetus to care for my own body. This point of impetus is related to the second confrontation I experienced. Elsewhere Paul will write about offering our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom 12:1-2) and we find Jesus concerned in the Gospels not only with what our body does but also with what our minds (in connection with our bodies) think.

Insofar as we participate in Christ, we participate in one who has a body that is perfect. That is, he has a body that fulfills the purpose for which human bodies were created and the destination that human bodies in Christ are headed. In other words, Christ’s body then provides for us a cosmic goal and direction. And so when I sin in body or mind, in things done or in things left undone, I do with my body that which is immature, that which is in a direction other than the cosmic final direction that Christ has laid down for us and then raised for us on the other side of death.

Lord, in your mercy, forgive us the use of our bodies for those things that are unlike Jesus, so that we might abide in the fullness of the One person in whom the fullness of the Divine indeed dwells. Amen.

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¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 171-2. Commenting on Colossians 2:8-9.