All Of Him

“And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” (Joh 1:16 AV)

This verse is so deep, I struggle to write about it.  However, the truth of this verse needs to permeate the mind and heart as much as our limitations would allow.  Most commentators go back to verse fourteen in reference to this fulness.  That being, Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth.  I think the meaning here is more practical and deeper than our forefathers realized.  An application I pray truly and radically changes every aspect of how the saints live.  When John shares with us the fullness of Jesus we have received, he is telling us there is no more of God that we can receive.  This is kind of puzzling and hard to put into words, but I get it.  Paul tells us to be filled with the Spirit.  So, how can we have already received the fulness of God, yet need to be filled with the Spirit?  If we do not confess and forsake our sin, John tells us our relationship with God is strained.  So, how can we have received the fullness of God?  These things and others are the LORD’s working out in our lives His ministry to us and working through us His perfect will.  The LORD is not with us in degrees.  He is not more with us one day and less with us another.  He is always here.  We have His fulness.  There is no more God to get.  How we experience the LORD or what attribute we may be experiencing can change and is by degree.  But not His fulness.  He is all there!

During my teen years, I was into photography.  Black and white in particular.  My father had a darkroom in the basement, and I often found myself developing film or making prints.  One technique I learned was double exposer.  That is when the artist exposed on negative on the paper covering or obscuring a portion of the paper and then exposing a different negative on the same paper obscuring what was just exposed.  That way, the photographer can print two or more overlapping photos on the same piece of paper.  The work which gave me the most pleasure was a double exposer of my baby sister.  I had a picture of her giggling or laughing.  A had another picture of her sleeping with a smile.  So, I exposed her sleeping as the larger picture and exposed the pic of her laughing in the top corner.  It was meant to imply she was dreaming about her laughing and that, in turn, caused her smile while sleeping.  The thing is, my sister did not have a clue as to the reality of her world.  There I was, taking snapshots of her emotional life and she was pretty much oblivious to it all.  I was one hundred percent in her room and aware of her world, but she was not aware of me.  There could not be any more of me while she was sleeping.  There could not be any more of me while she laughed in her rocker.  It was all and totally me even though she could not appreciate what that meant at the time.  All I was to her was a silly face that was making her laugh.

The point John is making is there is no more God to be had.  We have His fulness.  We have Him all.  How we experience Him is dependent on many factors.  Our sin life plays a part.  Our study habits play a part.  Our prayer life plays a part.  Our needs play a part.  Our service to Him plays a part.  But there is no more God to be had because God has given us His fulness and this fulness is infinite.  His fulness is eternal.  We can experience a deeper and deeper walk with Him, but He cannot increase His being.  He does not grow and increase the more of Him we experience.  We have His fulness.  We simply haven’t experienced it all.  That is what the second half of the verse means.  Grace for grace means unending and limitless grace.  Grace upon grace.  More and more.  If we are not experiencing the LORD as deeply as we desire, it is not His fault.  He can’t make Himself more than an eternal being is.  If our relationship has become stale, that is on us.  We have His fulness.  We merely have to partake of that fulness in order to experience it.