Of his fulness we have all received, and grace for grace.
John 1:16.
Excess or abundance of material possessions is bound up with risk and danger. They could make us negligent and irresponsible in the way we use them and ungrateful towards God. But there is another kind of abundance. Today’s verse, together with others, reminds us of it. The Lord Jesus once said that “good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over” would be granted to those who were generous towards others (Luke 6:38). David said of God’s blessing: “My cup runs over” (Psalm 23:5). Such an abundance is the expression of God’s riches; it does not come from us, but is bestowed only on those who are well aware that all their springs are in God (cf. Psalm 87:7).
In the Lord Jesus “dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), and “grace for grace” from His fulness is a never-ending consequence. Ezekiel once beheld the image of a river that became deeper and deeper from its source until it was “water in which one must swim” (Ezekiel 47:5).
As believers we have an abundance of joy that proceeds from our wonderful relationship to God as our Father (cf. John 16:23.24), and when the Lord Jesus speaks of “life more abundantly”, He means the new life that we have received through and from Him (John 10:10). Do we merely take note of this, or is it our desire to draw more and more from this abundance, these divine riches? God wants us to strive towards being “filled with all the fulness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).
Image: By Quentin Metsys the Younger – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16085450