The beginning of the Gospel of John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (1:1). Verse 14 goes on to say, "And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality." Verse 16 says, "For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace." The fullness of God is the expression of His riches. We may illustrate the fullness by pouring water into a cup. When the water partly fills the cup, we have the riches of the water, but when the water fills the cup to the brim, the overflowing of the water is the fullness, the expression, of the water. In his Epistles Paul speaks of the riches and the fullness. In Ephesians 3:8 he said, "To me, less than the least of all saints, was this grace given to announce to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel." In 1:23 he spoke of "the fullness of the One who fills all in all," and in 3:19 he said, "...that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God."
The riches of Christ are what Christ is. Christ is exceedingly rich. Christ is God (Rom. 9:5); He is man (1 Tim. 2:5); He is the Son (Matt. 16:16), the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), and also the Father (Isa. 9:6); and He is the body of all the shadows (Col. 2:16-17). The sun, the air, and water are all shadows. Even our eating and drinking and the feasts, new moons, and Sabbaths are shadows. Eating and drinking refer to our daily experience; the Sabbath refers to our weekly completion and rest; new moons refer to monthly new beginnings, with light in the darkness; and feasts refer to our yearly joy and enjoyment. Whatever we enjoy daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly is a shadow, but Christ is the body, the reality, of all the shadows. This Christ is our allotted portion (1:12). In the whole universe God has allotted Christ to us as our portion, in every way and in everything, as the real sunshine, air, water, food, feast, completion, new beginning, and rest. These are the riches of Christ. When we enjoy all the riches of Christ, we assimilate the riches into the fibers of our being. Then what we assimilate becomes our constitution, and we become the totality of what Christ is. The aggregate of this totality is the Body of Christ, and the Body of Christ is Christ's expression. Americans are the totality and expression of the riches of America that they have eaten and digested, including American beef, pork, and fish. In the same way the expression of the riches of Christ that have been eaten, digested, and assimilated by us is the fullness of Christ, which is the Body of Christ.