"And from his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace." - John 1:16

As the Lord teaches me how and disciplines me to read His Word, I start to realize all the simple statements that I just pass over. You know, I just read over them thinking that I know what it means and fully understand the height and depth that these verses touch. Since I have been studying my way through this gospel (John), many of these short, but loaded verses have come across my path. I start writing about them and before I know it I have filled up pages on what started out to be a simple comment. The above reference to John is one of those verses. As I came across it about a month and a half ago, I had to stop and think about it for a long time before any ink could go on the page. And then, as the Lord granted me a little bit of understanding about it, I wondered how many Christians are doing this same thing during Bible study; that is, missing out on the profundity of even the shortest and simplest verses.

The implications of this verse are huge for how I understand Jesus and the way he acts toward me. It gives light to my questions of why he does anything at all in connection with humans. What I mean by this, is that there are many times when I struggle to understand why God does anything for us. I struggle to understand why he even created the world. I hear in church that his love is unending and I read in Romans that nothing can separate me from it (8:38-39). And those are great reassurances...but the looming question in my mind is "Why?". Perhaps when it comes down to it, we are not supposed to know the fulness of why until we get to heaven. But for now, a lot of my "why's" are answered in that verse (John 1:16): "from his fulness." It's quite simple actually. He's just full. He is so full of his own qualities, so full of himself, that he seeks ways to let it out. And when he exudes those qualities, their level of abundance inside of him never diminishes nor decreases. They just continue to overflow throughout history.

So what do I mean by God's being "full of himself"? That statement almost sounded like blasphemy when I first heard it. As humans, we are taught (and rightly so) that this is a negative quality to have. No human is deserving, nor capable, of being full of himself; that is, their well-spring of qualities is insufficient for them to remain filled with them, and their depravity/"finiteness" prevents them from even being credited with anything good. But we can not attribute human insufficiencies to God when we think about him. He is wholly different than us. He alone is a being in which all his qualities are perfect and infinite, and therefore their supply is unending. He is definer of what is good and perfect and is thus justified in counting himself as the greatest treasure in and beyond the universe. But we should want God to be an exalter of himself. We should want God to seek his glory and his fame in everything. And we should want this precisely because if he is the greatest treasure to behold, then we want him to be supreme in all things...including his own thoughts. If God has mankind as his first love, then God is an idolater. Idolatry should probably be defined as "choosing anything less valuable when something of supreme value is available." Since God knows he is perfect, he must choose himself over everything else. We see this in the cross of Jesus Christ as well, in that God - through great cost to himself in the death of his Son - made us able to enjoy making much of him forever. It is for his own glory that he displayed his Son as a sacrifice, because as we enjoy him, he is made much of. God's glory and our joy are not separate issues.

This is what should come to mind when reading the aforementioned verse. "From his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace." It is from God being full of himself, full of his God-qualities, full of love for his own Son, full of the Holy Spirit, full of the perfect love that is between the Trinity, that we can be loved by him. This is life-giving comfort to Christians; that is, knowing that God's love will not decrease toward us simply because God's love for his own glory will never be lessened.