Question:
What is your understanding of the coming in of “the fulness of the Gentiles”?
Answer:
“The fulness of the Gentiles” does not mean any number of Gentiles, for fulness must necessarily include every one, and we know that every Gentile will not be saved. Not but that every one could be saved if he would, but God has told us that many would choose the way of death. The fulness must mean that in which the Gentiles may find their fulness, which will make them complete. But this is in Christ; “for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell” (Col. 1:19); “for in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (2:9); and the apostle continues, addressing a Gentile church, “And ye are complete [“made full,” literally] in Him” (verse 10).
It therefore follows that as all fulness is in Christ, it is nowhere else, and if Gentiles are complete in Him, they can be complete in nothing else. The coming in of this fulness to the Gentiles was when the Jews were cast off as a nation, and the door of salvation opened alike to all. Not but that the Gentiles could always come through the Jews; but when the Jews were cast off, or cut themselves off as a nation, Christ was manifested to the whole world as He had before been to the Jews, as their fulness. Of the Jews, John said, “Of His [Christ’s] fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” John 1:16. But when Jews and Gentiles all become baptized by the one Spirit into the one body, Christ, the fulness of both Jew and Gentile, is the Head. See 1 Cor. 12:12, 13; Eph. 1:22, 23.
