The Pleroma (17) - Charles H. Welch

No.17. The title Head, and 

its relation to the Fullness.

The highest title ascribed to Christ in any dispensation other than that of the Mystery is that of “A Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec”. This Priesthood is superior to that of Aaron. It functions at the right hand of God, its sphere is the true Tabernacle which God pitched and not man, namely “heaven itself”, and it combines the two offices of King and Priest. Just as water cannot rise above its own level, so no calling can rise above that set by Christ, and thus the calling that recognizes Him as King-Priest is itself ‘a kingdom of Priests’, “A holy nation and a royal priesthood”. It is significant that throughout the Prison Epistles Christ is never called either ‘King’ or “Priest’, even as it is equally true that the church of that calling is never called a kingdom although not outside the Kingdom of God or a priesthood, but is called the Body of Christ. Argument from the absence of terms, like arguing from a negative is in most cases suspect, but in this particular it cannot be said that a ‘kingdom’ is never mentioned in the Prison Epistles. We read in Eph. v. 5 of “The kingdom of Christ and of God”, in Col. i. 13 and iv. 11 of “The kingdom of His dear Son” and of “The kingdom of God”, and in II Tim. iv. 1 and 18, “His appearing and His kingdom”, and “His heavenly kingdom”. 

In the epistles of Paul other than the four great prison epistles, a “kingdom” is mentioned nine times, but the only passage where Christ can be said to have the title King is I Tim. vi. 15, where however the exhibition of the title is spoken of as a future event “Which in His times He shall show, Who is that blessed and only potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords”, yet even this passage can only be spoken of as of Christ by inference. The epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians contain passages that seem to demand the work of a Priest, such as ‘acceptance’, ‘access’, ‘made nigh’, ‘offer’, yet there is not a single reference outside of Hebrews to Christ as a Priest. In epistles before and after Acts xxviii., Christ is represented as ‘seated at the right hand of God’, yet never, outside of Hebrews is the office of priest mentioned. If a ‘dominion’ and a ‘coronation’ are indications of the presence of a king, then Adam was a king. The ‘dominion’ given to him is the translation of the Hebrew radah, a word translated elsewhere ‘reign’ and ‘rule’ and used of Christ “the King’s Son” in Psa. lxxii. 8. The word translated ‘crowned’ in Psa. viii. 5 is the Hebrew atar, which is the verb form of atarah “the king’s crown” (II Sam. xii. 30). Adam, however, is never once spoken of as a king. He was a figure of Him that was to come, and can be spoken of with propriety as HEAD of the human race, and as such he embraced all that kingship can mean, but much more. Noah not only had dominion in his degree (Gen. ix. 2) but he offered sacrifices with acceptance (Gen. viii. 20, 21). The word ‘sweet’ which is used of the savour of the sacrifice offered is employed throughout the O.T. to indicate the ‘savour’ or ‘odour’ of sacrifice. We should therefore not be surprised to find that Noah was called a priest. Yet he is never so called. He can be, however, designated as Adam was before him, head of the race of which those delivered from the flood were the progenitors. Abraham was the father of ‘kings’ (Gen. xvii. 6) and even of THE KING, the Lord Himself, Who was, according to the flesh, both son of Abraham and son of David, yet Abraham himself is never called a king. 

Abraham not only built an altar at the beginning of his pilgrimage upon which the only sacrifices permitted would have been those taken from the herd or the flock. He came nearer to the heart of all true sacrifice when he was called upon to offer his only begotten son Isaac, yet Abraham is never called a priest. Like Adam and Noah, Abraham is more than king, more than priest, he is the father of Israel, to which he stands without contradiction as head. Even when we leave the chosen people, and turn our attention to the first great king whose reign commenced the times of the Gentiles—Nebuchadnezzar, he too is spoken of by Daniel as “This head of gold” (Dan. ii. 38). Each one of the great outstanding figures that have foreshadowed the pleroma, or fullness, were ‘heads’ and in this they foreshadowed more than the office of King, Priest or Prophet alone, or together, could set forth. Even though Christ be never called either Prophet, Priest or King in the epistles of the Mystery, the church of the One Body loses nothing if Christ is its Head. He is more than King and Priest and Prophet to the church, for headship covers all. 

With this preparation, let us turn to the Epistles of the Fullness, the prison epistles of Paul, and observe the way in which this title is employed. The Greek word kephale is used here seven times, and the verb anakephalaioomai once. Let us look at the usage of this verb, which means ‘to head up’. It occurs in Eph. i. 10 where it is translated ‘to gather together in one’ in the A.V., ‘to sum up’ in the R.V., and in Weymouth’s translation “of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ”, and by J. N. Darby, ‘to head up all things in Christ’. It is in connection with the pleroma of the seasons that the figure of ‘heading up’ is used, no other term being so appropriate or so complete. When that ‘fullness’ arrives, Christ will be infinitely more than King or Priest, He will be “Head”. The references to Christ as ‘Head’ in the prison epistles are limited to Ephesians and Colossians (Eph. i. 22; iv. 15; v. 23; Col. i. 18; ii. 10; ii. 19). 

These six references to kephale, expand the promise of Eph. i. 10, the church of the present dispensation being the most complete foreshadowing of the goal of the ages that the Scriptures contain. To turn back to the types and shadows employed in earlier Scriptures is to turn by comparison from substance to shadow, although the substance here must necessarily be but in its turn a shadow of the reality yet to come. The first passage brings us back from the day when all things in heaven and earth shall be headed up in Christ, to the present period when in a day of rejection, confusion and darkness, an elect company acknowledge that Christ is to them, what He will be universally in the future. 

“And gave Him to be Head over all things TO THE CHURCH” (Eph. i. 22). Christ is not yet recognized as ‘Head over all things’. The day is future when ‘every knee shall bow and every tongue confess’, but what will be true then in its widest sense is true now ‘to the church which is His Body’. In the glorious future God will be all in all (I Cor. xv. 28), but that day has not yet come. Today “Christ is all and in all” (Col. iii. 11). In the glorious future ‘all things’ are put under His feet (I Cor. xv. 27) but as in Hebrews, even though we say today “we see not yet all things put under Him” (Heb. ii. 8), we can recognize that His ascension ‘far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come’, and the fact that He is already Head over all things to the church, is a most glorious anticipation of this universal subjection of all to Him. This Eph. i. 22 demonstrates by joining together the two themes: 

(1) “And hath put all things under His feet.” 

(2) “And gave Him to be the Head over all things to His church.” 

This church is in a unique position. It anticipates as no other calling and company has or can, the goal of the ages. It is meet therefore that this should be set forth, and the Apostle follows the passage already quoted by revealing that the Body of Christ is something more; it is ‘the fullness’ of Him, Who in His turn is the One that ‘filleth all in all’ (Eph. i. 23). All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, the church which is His Body and in Whom He dwells (Eph. ii. 22’ iii. 17) is His fullness. What Christ is to the invisible God, this church is to Christ. What Christ is to the whole purpose of the ages, the church of the One Body is in the heavenly realm. Eph. i. 10 is here illustrated, foreshadowed and anticipated, and this of itself is a glorious position to occupy, quite apart from all the other wonders of grace and glory that are associated with this high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 

Rotherham translates Eph. i. 23: 

“Which indeed is His body, the fullness of Him Who the all things in all is for Himself filling up.” 

Moffatt reads: 

“Filled by Him Who fills the universe entirely.” 


Possibly the rendering given by Cunnington is nearest the truth. 

“The fullness of Him Who all in all is receiving His fullness.” 

The fullness of Him that filleth all in all is the most blessed anticipation of the day when God shall be all in all (I Cor. xv. 28). 

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(From The Berean Expositor vol. 43, page 154).

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The Father’s Motive. In Love.

by Charles H. Welch

Some believers, who hold the Calvinistic doctrine of the decrees, are so antagonistic to the suggestion which we have earlier put forward, namely that the Divine foreknowledge which could see beforehand whether a free moral agent would or would not believe the gospel, that one of them, after reading the article entitled The epistle to the Romans in The Berean Expositor Volume 27, page 33, stooped to attack us by means of ‘an open letter’, but if we will but read to the conclusion of Ephesians 1:4 we shall discover that the initial cause of our election and salvation, is neither the sovereign decree of the Most High, nor the foreseen faith of the poor human recipient, but simply and solely the promptings of divine Love, which is the root and cause of the whole purpose of redeeming grace.

‘In love’.— This we shall find is true of other callings than that of Ephesians:

‘Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were ... but because the Lord loved you’ (Deut. 7:6-8).

Blessed ‘arguing in a circle’ ! The Lord loved you ... because He loved you. Here we meet with ‘choice’, a ‘special people’, ‘above all’, in connection with this earthly calling, which reflects the high glories of the super-heavenly calling. Yet, however diverse these callings may be, whatever dispensational differences are apparent, however great the contrast between law and gospel, one thing remains constant, the prime cause of all causes is Love.

This phrase (‘In love’) occurs six times in the epistle, namely in 1:4; 3:17; 4:2,15,16 and 5:2. The first occurrence deals with pure doctrine, speaking of the choice of the Father before the foundation of the world; the second occurrence reveals this love to be the root and the ground from which all Christian graces spring; the remaining occurrences have to do with Christian walk and practice, ‘forbearing in love’, ‘speaking the truth in love’, ‘edifying in love’ and ‘walking in love’.

Those who have had the responsibility of translating the Scriptures into the tongue of a people who have hitherto entertained very depraved conceptions of God, or of moral virtue, will appreciate the problem that was before the writers of the New Testament when the time came for the Gospel of God’s love to be written. Paul was about to declare of that trinity ‘faith, hope and love’, that the greatest of these is ‘love’. John was to write that golden verse ‘John 3:16’, and in his epistle was to reveal that ‘God is Love’. While the Greek language contained three words all translatable by the one word ‘love’, two of them, by reason of human frailty could not justly bear the new burden imposed by the true conception of the love of God manifested in the gift of His Only Begotten Son.

The three Greek words which are translated by the word ‘love’ are agapao, phileo, and erao. Of these, erao, and its derivatives eros and erastes were rendered impossible by reason of the sensual associations which clung to the word. A statue to Eros the god of love may be a thing of beauty as viewed from the standpoint of art, but when translated into terms of the moral and spiritual, anything tainted by eroticism must for ever be forbidden.

Phileo, and its derivatives, while free from the corrupting taint that spoiled the first word, was unsuitable owing to its confessed limitations. Phileo is used of affection generally, and when joined with the words to stomati, meant ‘to kiss’, even as philema means ‘a kiss’. So in the New Testament philanthropia, which is once translated as ‘love of God towards man’ (Titus 3:4), is rather benevolence, and ‘philanthropy’ has become a fully accepted English word. Philos occurs twenty-nine times and each occurrence is translated ‘friend’. There remained therefore agapao and its derivatives. Agape, which is the word selected by the inspired writers, is unknown in classic Greek literature. The conception of love that the highest human culture had reached before Christ was exhausted in the terms erao and phileo. It must surely be an evidence of Divine Inspiration, that without the possibility of consultation and collaboration, every writer in the New Testament was constrained (1) to avoid altogether the word erao; (2) to use phileo in its broad human sense of benevolence and friendship, and (3) to seize upon the obscure and practically unknown agape, to bear the new image and superscription of the God of love.

The following is the way in which the occurrences of the phrase ‘in love’ group themselves in Ephesians:‘in love’ in Ephesians

A 1:4. The Father’s motive.

   B 3:17. Rooted and grounded (figures of growth and building).

      C 4:2. Forbearing one another in love.

      C 4:15. Being true in love.

   B 4:16. Increase and edification (figures of growth and building).

A 5:2. The children’s walk (‘be ye imitators of God’ 5:1).

The Father’s motive must be the children’s example. How can we ever hope to attain such selfless love in this life? Even with the aid of the Spirit and all abounding grace, such love seems beyond us. But the very recognition of this will but separate and exalt the great primary cause of all causes, the Father’s love.

Chapter 5:1,2 makes it clear that the Father’s love, which was before all time, and the love of Christ, which manifested itself in its fulness when He gave Himself for us, are associated together as purpose and means are associated. Again, when once the apostle was assured of the love of the saints one to another, he could pray for their further enlightening. The benediction with which the epistle closes, is ‘love with faith’; the rich mercy of God towards us flows from His great love (Eph. 2:4), and the climax prayer (Eph. 3:14-21) reaches out to ‘the love of Christ which passeth knowledge’.

One of the most precious titles of the Saviour in the epistles is ‘The Beloved’ (Eph. 1:6), in Whom we are accepted. The only other occurrences of agapao in Ephesians are found in 5:25-33.

Whatever our business and whatever the circumstance, let us remember ‘His great love’, reminding ourselves that we can only love Him, because He first loved us. Our acceptance, even as our calling, originates in love, and a loveless walk can only belie our calling. The Father’s all-comprehensive motive should in measure be the motive of His children, it should be in love.

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(From 'The Threefold Charter of the Church' (IN HEAVENLY PLACES, page 71).

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