FULLNESS — that which fills, or the state of being full, or the full measure/complement (a ship's full crew is its plērōma). ⚠ Ephesians 1:23 puts it in one of the hardest phrases in Paul: the congregation is Christ's body, 'the plērōma of the one who fills all things in all' — which can mean that he fills IT, or, far more startlingly, that it COMPLETES him, as a body completes a head; and the participle can be read middle ('who fills') or passive ('who is being filled'). Chrysostom took the bold reading, most moderns the milder. The word was later seized on by the Gnostics for the divine realm of emanations, which is a much later development and no part of Paul's usage. → first discussed at Ephesians 1:23