Ephesians 1:23

23. His body So that he and the Church are one conceptual person. He unifies, vivifies, inspires that body with which, as its head, he is identical and one. All in all, is expressly limited in the parallel passage. 1 Corinthians 15:28. (see note,) to God the Father, or the whole Trinity. That the passages are parallel is clear from the same quotation from the Psalm being used in both. Him, therefore, refers not, we think, to Christ, but to God. Paul’s words regarding Christ in Ephesians 4:10, “fill all things,” are by no means equivalent, as Alford quotes them, to this repeated all in all of God. Besides, through this whole chapter and the next, the eternal origination of the Church is ascribed to God. Filleth, in the Greek, is passive in form, and most properly signifies is filled; or, (as the same word is rendered in Colossians 4:12; John 3:29, and elsewhere,) filled in the sense of complete, perfected, filled-out. Hence we understand that while the Church is Christ’s body, it is also the fulness of God, who is the full-orbed all in all. It is a question whether Paul intends fulness as imparted to Christ, or fulness as ever dwelling in God. By a comparison of the word as occurring in Ephesians 3:19, and Colossians 1:19, it seems to include both God’s fulness as indwelling, and as overflowing, by impartation, unto Christ. It is by that fulness, from God imparted, that the Church becomes Christ’s body. And so throughout both these chapters Christ is presented in his glorious subordination to God.