Colossians 2:6-15 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Second Sunday After Epiphany Sunday, January 18, 2026 “Find Fullness in Christ”
Have you had times, like I have, when you are certain there must be more to the story? Maybe one of your children comes to you and says about a brother, “He hit me!” And you can just tell that the appropriate question is, “Well, what did you do?” I’m not excusing the hitting, but I want to know what really happened. Just about any political argument that is presented comes from one specific perspective and leaves out the possible unintended consequences or other possible issues, so it’s pretty important to think about it carefully and to consider those things. I actually saw just the other day how a news organization had posted a headline that said, “human DNA detected on a meteorite.” Unsurprisingly, the article revealed that the headline did not match up with the actual story. Scientists did find some things that are at times components in DNA, but nothing like DNA. If you just read the headline, you would be far from the truth. Our Second Reading today comes from the book of Colossians. The Apostle Paul wrote that book to Christians in the city of Colosse. One of the reasons for writing the book was that false teachers in that city were insisting that there was more to Christianity than what the Colossians had learned. They were saying that there were deeper truths or hidden insights that gave the real story about what it means to be a Christian and how to be saved. Now, we would agree that there are always more insights to be gained about God’s grace to us, there is always more to learn about how Christianity affects our lives. The issue is these new insights and depths of understanding don’t change the perspective the way the false teachings were trying to. So Paul wrote to those Christians to encourage them not to change their perspective or approach, but to hold on to the amazing truth that they had learned and appreciate it even more. We can understand how it might be tempting to try to look for deeper meanings or hidden truths. Just look at today’s Gospel. It may not sound like John is saying a whole lot when he calls Jesus the “Lamb of God.” But he is. When he told his disciples, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” he was summarizing the most important points of all of Scripture. That phrase gives us a special name or title for Jesus. It provides a theme for our service today. It captures an amazing truth. In fact, our theme centers on the Lamb of God even though the Gospel is the only one of our readings that even uses the phrase. We might think that there has to be a lot more to the story. We might wonder if we’re missing something. Paul invites us to listen in on his letter to the Colossians and to see that we’re not missing anything. He may not use the phrase, “Lamb of God,” but he beautifully describes who the Lamb of God is and why that is so important. He wants to assure us that if we have Jesus, we have everything we need. So no matter who tries to convince us that we need something more or something different, we can stand firm knowing that we have the Lamb of God. We have Jesus. We have everything we need. So today we are invited to find fullness in Christ. We find fullness in Christ because of who he is. Here is how Paul describes him: For all the fullness of God’s being dwells bodily in Christ. The Colossians were being falsely taught that there was a disconnect between the spiritual and the physical. While we can certainly understand that the physical and the spiritual are different things, they are not so totally separate. The false teachers said that bodies, since they were physical, were not important. Perhaps they were even evil. But Paul says, no. Jesus had a true body, a physical body. Not only did he have a physical human body, he still has a physical human body. That’s maybe the easy part to understand. What Paul discusses here is beyond our comprehension. In that human body lives everything that is God, lives the fullness of God’s being.