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Book of Colossians 2:8-13 All the Fulness of the Godhead Bodily

[Study Aired September 15, 2026]

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses” (Colossians 2:8–13).

The Warning Finally Spoken

The last study left the error one verse away and unquoted. Paul had spent seven verses telling a church what it already held, and would not begin with what was being offered to it. Now he begins.

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

“Spoil” is sulagōgeō (G4812), and it is used nowhere else in Scripture. It is a word of plunder and of leading away, and what it carries off is not a church’s goods but its people. The danger Paul names is not that something will be taken from these men. It is that they will be taken.

“Philosophy” is philosophia (G5385), and it, too, is used nowhere else. Paul is not handing down a verdict on learning as such, and the verse will not let us make him do it. He names a thing and then says what is wrong with it, and what is wrong with it comes in three phrases built the same way: “after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” The word after is kata (G2596) in each, the word of a measure — what a thing is cut to fit. The error is identified not by its subject but by its pattern.

Two of those measures are plain enough. “The tradition of men” is a thing handed down, and the Lord used that word against men who kept what was handed to them at the cost of what was commanded them: “laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men” (Mark 7:8). “Not after Christ” is the test stated as a negative, and everything in the seven verses that follow is the same test stated as a positive.

The third is harder, and it should not be made easier than it is. “Rudiments” is stoicheia (G4747), and Scripture uses it more than one way. Hebrews has it of what is learned first and should have been outgrown, of men needing to be taught again “the first principles (G4747) of the oracles of God” (Hebrews 5:12). Peter has it of the physical order: “the elements (G4747) shall melt with fervent heat” (2 Peter 3:10). Paul has it twice in a passage whose sense is argued over, of men “in bondage under the elements (G4747) of the world” who turn back again to “the weak and beggarly elements” (Galatians 4:3, 9). What holds across them is that the thing named belongs to the world and is elementary to it — which is what Paul sets opposite Christ.

What he is doing here is naming a danger. Seven studies have watched him take his ground before speaking a warning; here the warning comes first, and what he does next is lay the ground underneath it.

All the Fulness of the Godhead Bodily

The ground begins with a reason. “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” All that God is dwells in Christ, and dwells there in a body. That is the answer to everything chapter two will offer, and everything the Colossians are told they possess in the verses that follow is drawn out of it.

“Fulness” is plērōma (G4138), the word the third study weighed at “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness (G4138) dwell” (Colossians 1:19). The letter has used it before and meant by it everything God is, with nothing kept back to be sought elsewhere. Paul now fastens two words to it.

The first of them is “Godhead,” theotēs (G2320), used nowhere else in the New Testament — and here the English needs watching. The KJV gives “Godhead” three times and translates a different Greek word each time: theotēs here; theiotēs (G2305) at “his eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20); theios (G2304) at “we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone” (Acts 17:29). A reader tracing the English word through a concordance will gather texts the Greek does not join, and the flattening is the translators’. The verse does not need that word traced. It says whose fullness dwells, and the letter has already said it: all the fulness, and it pleased the Father that it should dwell in the Son (Colossians 1:19). What that pleasure amounts to is taken up at the end.

The second is “bodily,” sōmatikōs (G4985), and it, too, is used nowhere else. Its adjective stands where Luke describes the Spirit descending upon Christ “in a bodily (G4984) shape like a dove” (Luke 3:22) and where Paul sets “bodily (G4984) exercise” against godliness (1 Timothy 4:8). Both mark a thing belonging to the body and not to the figure of one. So Paul is not speaking in a figure. All that God is dwells in the One who took flesh.

That is what the teachers could not answer. What they offered stood somewhere other than in Christ, and the next verse names Him head over every rank they could appeal to. Paul says the whole of God is in the Man, Jesus Christ.

Two bodies were set apart in this letter three verses from each other: the reconciling done “in the body of his flesh through death” (Colossians 1:22), and the sufferings borne “for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24). Now a third says that the fullness dwells bodily. The church is His body. What is said of the church comes in the next verse, and it runs the other way

A companion letter comes nearer to saying it than this one does. Paul tells the Ephesians that God gave Christ “to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness (G4138) of him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:22–23) — the same noun, and said of the church. The verse says the church is the fulness of Him, something belonging to the Head. What Colossians 2:9 says is that the Godhead dwells in Christ.

And Ye Are Complete in Him

“And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.”

“Complete” is plēroō (G4137), the verb of the noun in the verse before. The fullness dwells in Him; these people are filled full in Him. Same root, consecutive verses, and the second is said of men who were lately called dead. The verb stands in the tense of a thing done and holding — not a filling under way, and not one offered on terms.

The series has followed this verb before, at “to fulfil (G4137) the word of God” (Colossians 1:25), where the sixth study found the word filled full by being brought into the open. Here it is not a word that is filled but a people, and what fills them is named: not a knowledge, not an attainment, but Him, Jesus Christ.

“All principality (G746) and power (G1849)” is archē (G746) and exousia (G1849), and both were named at the beginning of the letter among the things Christ made: “whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities (G746), or powers (G1849)” (Colossians 1:16). The third study established what that ruled out — a created thing does not stand above its maker. The same two ranks return at the end of this passage, and between the two sayings everything in the passage happens.

So the answer to a teacher offering a supplement is not an argument about it. It is a Person in whom all the fullness dwells, and a people already filled in Him. There is no deficiency for an addition to attach to.

Circumcised, Buried, Risen, Quickened

Paul now says how these people came to be where they are, and every verb he uses is one they did not perform.

“In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.”

“Made without hands” is acheiropoiētos (G886), a word that stands three times and each time marks off what God does from what men build. It stands in the false witness borne against Him, of a temple “made without hands (G886)” (Mark 14:58), and of the house waiting for us, “not made with hands (G886), eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). A circumcision was the plainest possible instance of a thing done by hands. Paul names one that is not.

Scripture had named such a circumcision long before, and named who performs it: “the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God” (Deuteronomy 30:6) — a work done to a man, with the love of God as its result and not its price. Paul says the same in his own words: “circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (Romans 2:29). What stands here is that promise.

“Putting off” is apekdusis (G555), a noun used nowhere else. Its verb stands twice, both times in this letter — at the end of this passage of the principalities and powers, and later of the readers themselves: “ye have put off (G554) the old man with his deeds” (Colossians 3:9). The word will matter at verse 15, and it enters here.

“Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.” We do not take up how the baptism named here was administered. What Paul is doing with it is joining these people to two events that were not theirs.

“Buried with him” is sunthaptō (G4916), and it stands twice in Scripture. The other is Romans: “therefore we are buried with him (G4916) by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Both join a burial to a rising and name the power in it as God’s, and in neither is the burying a thing the men perform.

“Risen with him” is sunegeirō (G4891), and it stands three times, all in Paul’s writings, all of men raised together with Christ: here, at “if ye then be risen (G4891) with Christ” (Colossians 3:1), and at “hath raised us up together (G4891), and made us sit together in heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6). The second study used that last verse to show God speaking of a finished thing before it is seen — a seat plainly future in experience, stated as done. The same is true here.

The power in it is named: “the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.” “Operation” is energeia (G1753), and the sixth study handled that noun at the end of the last chapter, where Paul strives “according to his working (G1753), which worketh (G1754) in me mightily” (Colossians 1:29). The working that spent an apostle to exhaustion is the working that raised Christ out of the grave and raised these people with Him. It is one power, named twice, and neither time is it the man’s own. What “the faith of the operation of God” means precisely — a faith that lays hold of that working, or a faith that is itself produced by it — the words as they stand will bear either.

“And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.”

The fourth study took “dead in your sins” in advance, to show the alienation of Colossians 1:21 was a standing condition. Here what surrounds it comes to men in no position to ask for it. “Quickened together with him” is sunzōopoieō (G4806), which Paul uses here and at “even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together (G4806) with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5). Both times the men are dead before the verb reaches them.

“Having forgiven you all trespasses” is charizomai (G5483), a verb built on grace. The forgiving is a giving. Which raises the question of what stood in the way of it, and Paul answers that next in verses 14 and 15.

What These Verses Establish

Read together, these six verses name a danger and then bury it under the Person.

A man may be carried off, and what would carry him off is identified not by its subject but by its measure: cut to the pattern of what men hand down and of what the world begins with, and not to the pattern of Christ. Against that stands one sentence — all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him, bodily — and out of that sentence everything else here is drawn.

These people are filled full in Him, and He is head over the very ranks a teacher would send them climbing toward. They were cut by a sword no hand held, buried, raised, and made alive by a working that raised Christ from the dead and is the same working that exhausts the apostle who tells them so.

Every verb of it is a verb done to them. Verse 8 tells them to watch; the five verses under it give them nothing to do. The order of standing before doing holds again, and what is new is the position: the warning came first this time, and the ground was laid underneath it rather than before it.

Threads Held for Later

One debt is paid here. The rest wait for the two verses that close the passage.

The body is paid. The body of His flesh at 1:22 and His body the church at 1:24 are joined here by a third saying, that the fulness dwells bodily.

The closeness of God, the Father, and Christ at 2:2, which the last study left to this one, is answered by 2:9 as far as this letter answers it. All that God is dwells in the Son. That the letter states. What the Father’s pleasure in that dwelling amounts to — whether what dwells in the Son is His intrinsically or by grant — is taken up when the passage is finished.

The stripping enters at verse 11. The noun stands there, of a putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh; its verb waits at verse 15, where it is said of the principalities and powers. The two halves of that word meet in the next study.

Next study: (Colossians 2:14–15)

“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”