110. FULLNESS OF THE GENTILES.
By Editor
A converted Jew told me last night that he is of the opinion that there is a larger percentage of his own people coming to Christ than from any other class of people. In view of this would like to ask, What is your understanding of "the coming in of the fullness of the Gentiles"? Shall we then look for many Jews to accept Christ? The above opinion may be true, though we doubt it. "The fullness of the Gentiles" does not mean any number of Gentiles, for fullness must necessarily include everyone; and we know that every Gentile will not be saved. Not but what everyone could be saved if he would, but God has told us that many would choose the way of death. The fullness must mean that in which the Gentiles may find their fullness, which will make them complete. But this is in Christ, "for it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell" (Col. 1:19); "for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (2:9), and the apostle continues, addressing a Gentile church, "And ye are complete in Him" (verse 10). It therefore follows that as all fullness 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 fullness to the Gentiles was when the Jews were cast off as a people, and the door of salvation opened alike to all. Not but what 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 fullness. Of the Jews John said: "Of His [Christ's] fullness 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 fullness of both Jew and Gentile is the Head. See 1 Cor. 12:12, 13; Eph. 1:22, 23.