From The Valley of Vision. Excerpted from the prayer “Fullness in Christ.”

Thou hast taught me that Christ has all fullness and so all plenitude of the Spirit, that all fullness I lack in myself is in him…
that it is my duty, out of a sense of emptiness, to go to Christ, possess, enjoy his fullness as mine, as if I had it in myself, because it is for me in him.

I’m captivated by this language of Christ as “fullness.” It calls to mind several places in Paul’s epistles:

• Jesus comes at just the right moment, in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:10). I’ve always understood this to mean that the Incarnation occurred at the sovereignly pre-ordained moment at which salvation could be maximized for the most people.
• The fullness of God dwells bodily in Christ (Col. 1:19; 2:9). If we want to know God, we look to Jesus. He is our clearest indication of the heart and purposes of God, the full expression of divine self-giving love.
• Therefore, to be in Christ is to participate in the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19; 4:13). As we mature in Christ, we participate in the fullness of abundant life, everlasting life in the here and now.

To state this less theologically and more practically, for Jesus to be “fullness” in the complete sense is for Him to have everything I need. But even as I write this, something is off. That’s actually not the most precise way to say it. For Christ to be fullness means that He IS everything I need. We are not saying that He possesses everything I need as if these were material goods He might bestow if only I say the magic word. No, He is fullness in His very self. All I need is Jesus, nothing more.

This Puritan prayer says it beautifully: “all fullness I lack in myself is in him.” Most of us live with a deep sense of deficiency. We are insecure about a host of things and these insecurities worm their way into all the nooks and crannies of our lives. They push us toward bitterness, fear, resentment, anger, covetousness, and spite. Think about how often you are animated by the gnawing feeling that you’re not enough, that you don’t have enough, that you could never be enough. Economists speak of a scarcity mindset but this way of thinking extends far beyond finances.

But in Jesus, I have all that I need. In fact, the prayer exhorts me to “enjoy” Christ’s fullness as my own. We would do well to revive within our spiritual lives the language of enjoyment. Too many of us only think in terms of fear and judgment. What does it do for your faith to know that Christ’s fullness is extended for your enjoyment? What breathtakingly GOOD news!

This is something worth considering more fully. (Pun intended.)

Jesus is the fullness.

What more do I need?