Christ in Us and the Prefrontal Cortex

Fullness in a Fractured World: The Radical Invitation of Colossians
By Rev. Jane Herring

In a world where we’re constantly told we are not enough—not productive enough, attractive enough, spiritual enough—the letter to the Colossians offers a startling counterclaim: you are already full. Not partially full. Not hopefully one day full. But already, now, full.

“For in Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” Paul writes, “and you have come to fullness in him” (Colossians 2:9–10). It’s one of the most radical lines in Scripture, and one of the most easily overlooked.

Paul isn’t offering a future prize for good behavior. He’s revealing a present reality: God’s fullness didn’t hover above humanity—it entered it, honored it, and, through Christ, now indwells us. Our bodies—these flawed, beloved, mysterious bodies—have become vessels of divine life.

And yet most of us don’t live that way.

We live in survival mode. The old grooves run deep—formed in childhood or through trauma, through performance-based religion or a culture obsessed with achievement. These grooves shape how we respond: the need to win arguments, to be right, to be seen, to avoid pain at all costs. Our ancient brains—the ones that scan for threats, crave certainty, and lash out or collapse—can dominate our lives without us realizing it.

Paul calls this the “flesh,” not as a condemnation of the physical body, but as a shorthand for life cut off from spiritual consciousness—life lived from fear, ego, or performance. But in Christ, Paul says, that part of us has been “circumcised”—cut away. Delicately put, yes. But profoundly freeing.

To say we are “buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him through faith” is not just poetic theology—it’s an invitation to a new way of being. A new kind of spiritual embodiment. A life where our minds are no longer ruled by fear but are integrated—reason and imagination, logic and love, working together under the guidance of grace.

Neuroscience might call this engaging the prefrontal cortex. Theologically, we might say: the mind of Christ. Either way, it’s about choosing to live not from our lowest instincts, but from our Spirit-filled selves. Not someday. Now.

Of course, that can feel terrifying. Who are we if we’re not hustling for belonging, not fighting to be seen, not playing out old pain on repeat? Who are we without our enemies? Without our scripts?

And yet, what if letting go of those old patterns isn’t a loss but a return—to the divine fullness we’ve had access to all along?

In Christ, we’re not left to fight our way into worthiness. We begin from belovedness. We walk in him, Paul says. We live in him. That means we have permission to pause when we feel hijacked by fear, to breathe when shame rises, to remember: I am already full in Christ. I don’t need to prove it. I just need to live it.

The Christian life, then, is not about earning our place, but remembering where we already stand. It’s about learning, day by day, to inhabit the body we’ve been given—the spiritual body, where love is the driving force, where grace is the operating system, where even our beautifully complex brains are brought into harmony with divine intention.

We’re not perfect. But we are willing. We are learning. And we are—mysteriously, mercifully—held together in Christ.