IT HAD BEEN a long day for the disciples. They were probably glad to hear Jesus say they were getting in a boat to sail to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. It was time to leave the crowd behind for a while.

But their relief was short-lived. As happened from time to time, strong winds swept over the hills and down upon the lake, creating a sudden and furious storm. Waves began to swamp the boat as it pitched and tossed. Despite the presence of experienced fishermen among them, the disciples were afraid for their lives.

Meanwhile, Jesus was in the back of the boat… taking a nap.

Mark’s account includes a nice little detail: Jesus was “sleeping on a cushion” (Mark 4:38, NIV). If it’s true that Mark got his eyewitness stories from Peter as many have suggested, then I imagine Peter telling Mark how he stared at Jesus in disbelief: “Are you kidding me? You’re sleeping? On a cozy little cushion?” Desperate, the disciples woke Jesus. “Teacher,” they cried out, “A little help? We’re gonna drown!”

I imagine Jesus rubbing the sleep out of his eyes before telling the wind and waves to be still. And just like that, everything became completely calm. Jesus turned to the men and asked them why they were afraid, why they had so little faith. Apparently, they had no answer.

And despite Jesus’ question, now they were really afraid. “Who is this?” they whispered to each other. “Even the winds and the waves obey him” (Mark 4:41).

Remember, this isn’t the first time they’ve seen Jesus do a miracle. At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has already driven out evil spirits and performed multiple healings, including men with leprosy, paralysis, and a shriveled hand. But for him to show that he had authority over the elements themselves, that he could calm a storm with nothing more than a few words of command…? That was an unprecedented display of power, made even more remarkable by its lack of fanfare, as if Jesus did something of this magnitude every morning before breakfast.

What the disciples experienced is what the Bible calls “the fear of the Lord.” They knew they were in the presence of something — someone — much greater than they had realized. They looked at each other and wondered, “Just who do we have in the boat with us?”

IN WRITING TO the Colossians, as we’ve seen, Paul uses the most exalted of language to describe Jesus’ divine nature, and wastes no time doing so. As soon as his opening words are finished, he declares right off the bat that Jesus made the character of the invisible God visible. He was the firstborn over all creation. In, through, and for him all things were made; in him the universe holds together. And he was the firstborn from among the dead, giving the hope of resurrection to the church, to the generations of brothers and sisters who would come after. Through the cross, God began the cosmic project of reconciling a fractured universe to himself.

But you may have noticed that I skipped over what may be Paul’s most exalted phrase of all:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him… (Col 1:19)

That’s the New International Version. The Common English Bible reads a little differently: “all the fullness of God was pleased to live in him.” Did you notice the difference? In the NIV, “God” is the subject of the verb “was pleased.” But in the CEB, “the fullness of God” is the subject — and even then, the words “of God” aren’t in Paul’s Greek. A literal translation of verse 19 would read, “Because in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.”

What is this “fullness”? Again, it’s possible that the word had a technical philosophical sense that was part of the heresy the Colossians were flirting with. If so, Paul may to some extent be using it polemically. But we must still understand what Paul is saying on his own terms.

The word is used in various ways throughout the New Testament. Mark, for example, uses it in a concrete sense to describe the twelve baskets that were full of leftovers after the feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:43). More abstractly, Paul can use it to describe how love is the fulfillment of God’s law (Rom 13:10). And more abstractly still, John can speak of the fullness of Jesus, the eternal Word who became a flesh-and-blood human, but was nevertheless full of God’s grace and truth, revealing God’s character (John 1:14-18).

John’s usage is the closest to what Paul is saying in Colossians 1. An even better clue comes from Colossians 2, where Paul uses both the noun and the verb form of the word in a single sentence:

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. (Col 2:9-10)

This suggests that in both chapters, Paul is referring to the fullness of God living in the man Jesus. And though the NIV reads that God’s fullness “dwells” in Jesus in chapter 1 and “lives” in Jesus in chapter 2, the verb is same; it pictures someone settling down and taking up permanent residence. Paul wants the Colossians to know that all the abundance of who God is was in Jesus.

And more: Paul tells them that “in Christ you have been brought to fullness” — you have been filled, you have been made complete. He’s not saying, of course, that the Colossians have become divine. But as he tells the Ephesians, the church itself, as the body of Christ, is also “the fullness of him” (Eph 1:23).

This is an example of the “already and not yet” of Paul’s way of seeing believers and the church. The fullness of God dwells in Christ, and Christ in turn dwells in and among believers. At the same time, however, Paul prays that Christ would “dwell in [our] hearts through faith” so that we might “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:16-19). The end goal is that the body of Christ would grow in unity until it reaches “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13).

As with creation, there’s no way to completely explain in concrete terms what all of this means. Who can comprehend the fullness of God? But Paul wants the Colossians to be so impressed with the divinity and supremacy of Christ that they would no longer be impressed by anything lesser. They — and we! — should be as astonished as the disciples who watched the wind and waves obey the command of Jesus.

And if we could bring some of that astonishment to our understanding of who we are called to be as the church, as those in whom Christ dwells, so much the better.