I. PRESCRIPT (1:1–2)
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through God’s will, and our brother Timothy,
2to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: grace and peace be yours from God our Father.1
1 As in the companion letter to Philemon, by contrast with that to the Ephesians, Paul associates Timothy with himself in saluting the Christians of Colossae. Timothy’s name is similarly linked with Paul’s in the prescripts of 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, and (together with that of Silvanus) 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Timothy may have served Paul as amanuensis in the writing of these letters, but that would not be a sufficient reason for naming him in the prescript. (Tertius finds no place in the prescript of the letter to the Romans.) It is plain from Col. 4:7–14 that Paul had several other associates with him when this letter was written: that Timothy alone is named along with him in the prescript is due to Timothy’s sharing his ministry on a permanent basis.
Timothy was a native of Lystra in Lycaonia (modern Zoldera, near Hatunsaray), the son of a Jewish mother and a Greek father. He became a Christian during Barnabas and Paul’s first visit to his hometown (Acts 14:8–20). When Paul passed that way again a year or two later he was impressed by Timothy’s spiritual development and enlisted him as a junior associate in his apostolic service, circumcising him first to regularize his anomalous religious status (Acts 16:1–3). Timothy willingly joined Paul and served him thereafter as his devoted adjutant (the quality of his devotion can be gathered from Paul’s appreciative tribute to him in Phil. 2:20–22).
The designation “apostle” is reserved for Paul; it is not shared with Timothy—nor yet with Epaphras, who (as appears from v. 7) first brought the gospel to Colossae. Paul alone was the Colossians’ apostle, even if he had never visited them in person. For, whereas he had been independently and directly commissioned by the risen Lord, Timothy and Epaphras and others, however much he loved and honored them as “fellow-servants,” were his lieutenants, called to aid him in the twofold task of preaching the gospel and planting churches. Where, as in 1 Thess. 2:6, others (such as Silvanus and Timothy) are linked with Paul as “apostles of Christ,” the term is used in a wider sense, in which apostleship, instead of being based on an immediate commissioning by Christ, is “grounded in the preaching of the genuine gospel, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whether in association with Paul or independently of Paul’s mission.”2
Paul identifies himself as Christ’s “apostle” in the prescripts of all his extant letters except those to Philemon, the Thessalonians, and the Philippians. The noun “apostle” is qualified by the phrase “through God’s will” in the prescripts of 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Timothy. The phrase applies not only to his commissioning on the Damascus road (cf. Gal. 1:15–16) but to the entire discharge of his commission.
2 The people to whom the letter is sent are described as “saints and faithful brothers in Christ.” The word “saints” marks them out as God’s holy people, chosen and set apart by him for himself.3 The phrase “faithful brothers” might be rendered “believing brothers,” but if the adjective meant “believing,” it would add nothing to the sense, whereas it clearly bears the fuller meaning “faithful” when qualifying “brother” or a similar noun in Col. 1:7; 4:7, 9.
The prescript of an ancient letter regularly consisted of three elements: the name of the sender or senders, the name of the addressee or addressees, and a message of greeting. The greeting used habitually by Jews was “Peace!” (Heb. shālôm) or, more fully, “Mercy and peace!” (cf. 2 Bar. 78:2). The form “grace and peace”4 is characteristically Pauline: both terms have their full Christian force. Grace is God’s unconditioned goodwill toward men and women which is decisively expressed in the saving work of Christ (cf. v. 6); peace is the state of life—peace with God (cf. v. 20) and peace with one another (cf. Eph. 2:14–18)—enjoyed by those who have effectively experienced the divine grace.
The Christian force of “grace and peace” is confirmed by the following words. Only in 1 Thess. 1:1 does the salutation “grace and peace be yours” stand alone, without any such amplification. The amplification usually takes the form: “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (perhaps the whole salutation, including these words, was first employed in Christian worship and then taken over from a liturgical context to serve as an epistolary greeting).5 It is difficult to say why the words “and the Lord Jesus Christ” are absent from the salutation in Colossians.6 In any case, all that these words could convey is set forth in detail in the celebration of the person and work of Christ later in the letter (cf. vv. 13–20).
II. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST (1:3–23)
1. THANKSGIVING FOR NEWS OF THE COLOSSIANS’ FAITH (1:3–8)
3We thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we pray for you at all times,
4because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints,
5on account of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven. You have already heard of this hope in the true message of the gospel
6which has come to you, as indeed it is bearing fruit and increasing in all the world, just as it has been doing among you ever since the day you heard it and came to know the grace of God in truth.
7This is how you learned it from our dear fellow-servant Epaphras, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your7 behalf;
8it was he indeed who informed us of your love in the Spirit.
3 In Greek letters an expression of thanks occasionally follows the prescript.8 Such an introductory thanksgiving is a special feature of Paul’s epistolary style (it is significantly absent from Galatians).9 The note of thanksgiving is particularly conspicuous in this letter. In the present passage the thanksgiving is interwoven (like other introductory thanksgivings in the Pauline letters) with an intercessory prayer-report.10
Even when someone else’s name is conjoined with Paul’s in the prescript of a letter, the thanksgiving which follows is normally expressed in the singular: “I thank God.” This implies that the other person’s name is conjoined with Paul’s by way of courtesy; Paul is the real author of the letter. But in this letter, as in the two to the Thessalonians, the thanksgiving is expressed in the plural. In 1 and 2 Thessalonians this is because Silvanus is joint-author; it is a reasonable inference from the wording here (“we thank God”) that Timothy to some extent shares the responsibility of authorship with Paul.
4 It is from Epaphras (as appears from v. 8) that the news of the Colossian Christians’ spiritual progress has been received.
As the reasons for thanksgiving are enumerated, we recognize the familiar triad of Christian graces—faith, love, hope—similarly grouped together elsewhere in the Pauline writings (cf. 1 Cor. 13:13; also Rom. 5:1–5; Gal. 5:5–6; 1 Thess. 1:3; 5:8) and in other parts of the NT (cf. Heb. 10:22–24; 1 Pet. 1:21–22).11 Here the three are not exactly coordinated: the Colossians’ faith in Christ and love to their fellow-believers are here based on the hope which is laid up for them in heaven. The phrase “faith in Christ Jesus” indicates not so much that Christ Jesus is the object of their faith as that he is the living environment within which their faith is exercised. That is to say, the faith referred to is the faith which they have as men and women who are “in Christ” (cf. v. 2) or “in Christ Jesus,” incorporated in him (cf. Col. 2:19).12
5 The emphasis on hope reminds us that the salvation which believers already enjoy in Christ has a future aspect. The hope is theirs here and now; its fulfilment lies ahead, in the resurrection age. Paul encourages his readers elsewhere to expect that fulfilment on the day of Christ’s parousia; in this sense he speaks of salvation as being “nearer to us now than when we first believed” (Rom. 13:11). A proper appreciation of “realized eschatology” should not be allowed to eclipse the prospect of that “revealing of the sons of God” for which “the creation waits with eager longing” (Rom. 8:19). This Christian hope formed part of the subject-matter of the gospel as it was originally proclaimed at Colossae: “laid up in heaven” as it is, it cannot well be anything other than Christ himself, who lives there at God’s right hand and at the same time indwells his people as their “hope of glory” (Col. 1:27; 3:1–4).13
The description of the Christian proclamation as “the true message of the gospel” (lit., “the word of the truth of the gospel”) is echoed and amplified in Eph. 1:13, “the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” In Christian idiom, indeed, “the truth” and “the gospel” are interchangeable terms: obeying the truth (Rom. 2:8; Gal. 5:7) and obeying the gospel (Rom. 10:16) are identical. (Compare also “the truth of the gospel” in Gal. 2:5, 14.)
6 When the gospel is described as “bearing fruit and increasing,” there may be an echo of our Lord’s parable of the sower (Mark 4:8 par.)—not that any of the canonical Gospels was available when this letter was composed, but outlines of the teaching of Jesus were in circulation, orally if not in some written form. It is unnecessary to suppose that the language about fruit-bearing presupposes a gnosticizing interpretation of the parable in the teaching which was being offered to the Colossians.14 It has been pointed out that the same verb is found at the end of the thirteenth tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum, where there is a reference to “reaping the good fruits of truth, an immortal harvest”; but if there is any borrowing here (which is doubtful), it is on the Hermetic side.15 (Paul’s choice of words does not support those interpretations which exclude the thought of development from the parable and kindred parables.)
The message of the gospel, which was producing the vigorous and ever multiplying fruit of Christian life and testimony at Colossae, was doing the same, it is said, throughout the world. The letter was written (probably) in Rome, but in addition to Paul’s own propagation of the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum, and now in the imperial city itself, the same gospel was being blazed abroad by other heralds too. “The whole gospel for the whole world” might well have been Paul’s motto, and if at times the language which he uses to express this idea seems to outstrip what had actually been accomplished, it was with the eye of a prophet that he descried the all-pervading course of the message of life rivaling that of the heavenly bodies of which the psalmist spoke: “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18, quoting Ps. 19:4).16
When the Colossians are reminded how they “came to know the grace of God in truth,” the meaning may be that they came to know it truly; but it is more probable that “in truth” is equivalent to “with truth”: the divine grace which they experienced was accompanied by truth.17 In attaining the personal knowledge of Christ, they came to know the grace and truth which, as the prologue to the Fourth Gospel affirms, “came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).18
7 What was true of the progress of the gospel elsewhere was true at Colossae as well: the Christians of that city had continued to grow in spiritual character and in actual numbers since the day they first heard and believed the gospel. The gospel told them of the grace of God, brought near to them in Christ, and when they yielded their allegiance to Christ as Lord and Savior they came to know in personal and united experience the reality of that grace. The preacher from whom they first heard the saving message bore the name Epaphras. Paul refers to him in terms of affection and commendation, as a dear colleague in the service of God,19 who had gone to Colossae and the neighboring cities as his own representative and as a trusty minister of Christ.
Epaphras is mentioned again in Col. 4:12 and in Philem. 23. The name is a shortened form of Epaphroditus. Elsewhere in the Pauline corpus we meet a Philippian Christian named Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25; 4:18), but there is no reason to identify the two.20 In Philem. 23 Epaphras is described as Paul’s fellow-captive,21 but we know nothing of the circumstances in which he earned this description. Probably he shared one of Paul’s more abundant imprisonments, possibly in Ephesus. At any rate he had discharged his responsibility well as the evangelist of the Lycus valley, for there were flourishing churches in that area—in Hierapolis and Laodicea as well as in Colossae—to testify to the enduring quality of his work.
8 More recently Epaphras had visited Paul and Timothy and told them how these churches were faring. Much of his news was good and encouraging, but some aspects of church life at Colossae were disquieting, and it was this that stimulated Paul and Timothy to write particularly to the Christians of that city. First of all, however, they dwell on the good report which Epaphras had brought: he “informed us,” they say, “of your love in the Spirit.” This is “God’s love” which, according to Rom. 5:5, “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”; it is the mutual love implanted and fostered within them by the indwelling Spirit and uniting them in a living bond.
This is the only explicit reference to the Spirit of God in the letter. The absence of reference to him elsewhere is the more striking since there are several points at which his activity might have been naturally introduced. Where other letters of Paul speak of the Spirit’s presence with believers as the guarantee of their resurrection and eternal inheritance (Rom. 8:11, 15–17; Eph. 1:13–14), this letter speaks of the indwelling Christ as their hope of glory (v. 27). But the presence and ministry of the Spirit are implied here and there in Colossians—for example, in opposition to the “flesh” as the source of true knowledge.22
2. PRAYER FOR THE COLOSSIANS’ SPIRITUAL WELFARE (1:9–14)
9Therefore, since the day we heard this news, we for our part offer up unceasing prayers and requests on your behalf, that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will together with all wisdom and spiritual understanding.23
10We pray that you may conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please him in everything. May you bear fruit in every good work and increase in the knowledge of God;
11may you be empowered with all power in accordance with his glorious might, and so attain all patience and perseverance.
12May you give thanks with joy24 to the Father, who has qualified you25 for your share in the inheritance of the saints in the realm of light.
13It is he who has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son whom he loves,
14the Son in whom we have our redemption,26 the forgiveness of our sins.
9 Paul and Timothy repeat the assurance of their constant prayers on the Colossian Christians’ behalf—prayers which have been redoubled since Epaphras came with news of their progress. The brief prayer-report of v. 3 is now amplified.
Their prayer for the Colossians, then, is that they may gain the full knowledge of God’s will27 through the insight that his Spirit imparts, and thus be able to please him in everything and live in a way that befits his children. Although there is only one explicit mention of the Holy Spirit in this letter (v. 8), there is an allusion to his operation here in the phrase “spiritual understanding.” The wisdom and understanding which Paul and Timothy desire to see in the Colossian Christians are inseparable from the knowledge of God and of his will—a knowledge which, as the prophets of Israel insisted, is of the essence of true heart-religion.28 Both this letter and the companion letter to the Ephesians have much to say about this knowledge as a means of promoting spiritual life.29 This knowledge is no merely intellectual exercise, no theosophical gnosis such as was affected by the teachers who threatened to lead the Colossian church astray. The Colossians must be impressed with the nature and importance of true knowledge before being warned against that “knowledge falsely so called” which was being pressed upon them.30 True knowledge is founded in practical religion; it is that knowledge which, as the OT wisdom writers affirmed, starts with a proper attitude toward God: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7).31 Right knowledge leads to right behavior:32 it was because the pagan world, according to Paul, “did not see fit to retain God in their knowledge” that they were abandoned “to a base mind and to improper conduct” (Rom. 1:28).
10 If the Colossian Christians are filled with this right knowledge, they will live and act in a manner worthy of the holiness of him whom they confess as their Lord.33 The phrase “in a manner worthy of the Lord” or “worthy of God” (cf. 1 Thess. 2:12; 3 John 6; also Matt. 10:37; Wisdom 3:5) is a formula of a type appearing on inscriptions in the province of Asia; according to Deissmann, it seems to have been popular at Pergamum.34 If pagans appreciated the importance of rendering worship which was worthy of the deities whose votaries they were, much more should Christians render the spiritual service of obedient lives to the living and true God and to his Son Jesus Christ.35 Thus the fair fruit of good works would spring in greater abundance from the divine seed which had been sown in their hearts,36 and at the same time they would make ever increasing progress in the knowledge of God. For obedience to the knowledge of God which has already been received is a necessary and certain condition for the reception of further knowledge.
11 The writers go on to pray that the Colossians may be endowed not only with knowledge but also with power, according to the measure of God’s “glorious might” (lit., “the might of his glory”).37 The power which they long to see manifested in their readers’ lives is the power of God himself—nothing less. In Ephesians this idea is made even more explicit: there Paul describes the “immeasurable greatness” of God’s power which he imparts to believers in terms of the power which he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the place of universal supremacy at his right hand (Eph. 1:20). Never was the divine power more signally manifested: with its present description as the “might of God’s glory” we may compare Paul’s statement elsewhere that “Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom. 6:4).
Such an endowment with divine power will enable them to stand firm in the face of trial and opposition and everything else that may come to test the quality of their faith. Patient endurance belongs to the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22).38 It was a quality highly esteemed by the Stoics, but in the NT it is associated with another quality not so characteristic of Stoicism—joyfulness.39 Paul himself had long since learned to combine joyfulness with patient endurance. A Stoic in the stocks would have borne the discomfort calmly and uncomplainingly, but would he at the same time have been heard “singing hymns to God,” as Paul and Silas did in the Philippian town jail (Acts 16:25)? Epictetus, indeed, commends the example of Socrates, who composed a paean in prison;40 but such an example was more admired than followed. Early Christianity and Stoicism show a resemblance with respect to several ethical features, but the power which Christians received from God gave them something over and above what Stoicism could impart. The Stoic virtue of self-sufficiency41 falls short of that habit of mind to which Paul gives expression when he says that he has learned to be content in all the circumstances of life, for Paul’s contentment was attended by a joyful exuberance which overflowed to others.
12 In our translation above we have followed the punctuation which attaches the phrase “with joy” to the verb “give thanks”; it would be equally permissible, however, to attach it to the words which precede, regarding “joy” as a third quality listed along with “patience and perseverance.”
Patience, perseverance, and joy should continually be accompanied by a thankful spirit. In Christianity, it has been well said, theology is grace, and ethics is gratitude.42 If God’s action and attitude toward his people have been characterized by grace, their response to him, in life and conduct as well as in thought and word, should be characterized by gratitude.43 Nothing less is fitting, considering how he has qualified them to share the inheritance of his holy people.44
Who are these “holy people” of God whose inheritance the Colossian believers now share? The older view is that they are human beings—either the people of God in the OT era, who are now being joined by their brethren and sisters of the Christian age, apart from whom “they should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11:40), or the first (Jewish) followers of Christ, who are now joined by Gentile Christians, like those to whom the letter is sent (cf. Eph. 1:12–13, “we who first hoped in Christ … you also …”). But an alternative view is that they are angels, God’s “holy ones” in the realm of light.45 There may be parallels to this use of the term elsewhere in the Pauline writings—for example, in the reference to “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (1 Thess. 3:13), where it is difficult to miss the echo of Zech. 14:5, “the LORD your God will come, and all the holy ones with him.”46
This alternative view has received an impetus from the Qumran texts. In the “Hymn of the Initiants” which concludes the Rule of the Community it is said that to God’s chosen people “he has given a portion in the lot of the holy ones and has united their assembly with the sons of heaven” (where the “holy ones” and “sons of heaven” are manifestly angels).47 This boon appears to have been granted to them already; it is not simply something to which they can look forward after death, like the righteous man in the book of Wisdom, whose persecutors are forced to ask in dismay, “Why has he been numbered among the sons of God? And why is his lot among the holy ones?” (Wisdom 5:5).48
These two alternatives have an exegetical parallel in Dan. 7:18, 22, where the “saints of the Most High” who are to receive the eternal kingdom after the collapse of pagan world-empires are usually (and rightly) taken to be the Jewish people, or the faithful remnant of the Jewish people, but have been identified with angelic beings by some more recent interpreters (Dan. 7:27 being rendered “the host of the holy ones …”).49
Here, however, the sense in which “saints” or “holy ones” is used elsewhere in the letter (cf. v. 2 above) should probably decide its present meaning.50 There is also the consideration that, where a similar expression occurs in two Pauline speeches in Acts, the reference is plainly to human beings who “have been sanctified” (Acts 20:32; 26:18, “sanctified by faith in me”).51
For his holy people, the people of his choice, God in earlier days provided an earthly inheritance, a land which they might enter and possess. But the inheritance in view here belongs to a higher plane and a more enduring order than any terrestrial Canaan.52 Like the recipients of the letter to the Ephesians, these Colossian Christians are no longer “strangers and sojourners,” although they were Gentiles by birth; they have been reborn into the family of God, thanks to their all-enabling Father (cf. Eph. 2:19).
13 This inheritance is established in the realm of light;53 it is irradiated by the brightness of the Sun of righteousness, shining in his people’s hearts. It is contrasted with the realm to which they formerly belonged, the “dominion of darkness.” There is no need to see here a reflection of Zoroastrian dualism.54 Nor should we think in terms of Qumran influence, although parallels to this kind of language abound in the Qumran texts.55 The statement of an ethical antithesis in terms of light and darkness (light being the correlate of goodness and truth, darkness of evil and falsehood) is too widespread for us to assume in such a reference as this the influence of any one system of thought in which these terms played a prominent part. It may indeed be that the teaching to which the Colossian Christians were being exposed made play with “light” and “darkness” as it apparently did with “wisdom” and “knowledge”; but there is good biblical precedent for their use, going back to the separation of light and darkness in the creation story of Gen. 1:4. Other Pauline instances are 2 Cor. 6:14; 1 Thess. 5:5; Eph. 5:8–14.
The phrase “the dominion of darkness,” which is used here, appears in Luke’s account of our Lord’s arrest in Gethsemane, where he says to the men who have come to apprehend him, “When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the dominion of darkness”56 (Luke 22:53). These words refer to the sinister forces marshalled against him for a decisive combat in the spiritual realm.57 The dark power did indeed have its brief hour of opportunity against the Son of Man, but it was only a brief hour, and it ended in the defeat of the dark power. By virtue of his conquest then, Christ vindicated his authority to raid the domain of darkness and rescue those who had hitherto been fast bound under the control of its guardians.58 Those guardians, “the world rulers of this darkness,” as they are called in Eph. 6:10, are probably the principalities and powers to which the Christians of Colossae were tempted to pay some meed of homage. But why should they do any such thing? They had already been rescued from the sphere dominated by those principalities, and translated into the domain of the victorious Son of God. No longer was there any need for them to live in fear of those forces which were believed to control the destinies of men and women: their transference to the realm of light had been accomplished once for all.
In the affirmation that believers have already been brought into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son59 we have an example of truly realized eschatology. That which in its fullness lies ahead of them has already become effective in them. “Those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). The fact that God has begun a good work in them is the guarantee that it will be brought to fruition on the day of Jesus Christ (cf. Phil. 1:6). By an anticipation which is a genuine experience and not a legal fiction they have received here and now a foretaste of the glory that is yet to be revealed. The “inheritance of the saints in light” has not yet been received in its coming fullness, but the divine act by which believers have been fitted for it has already taken place. The divine kingdom has this twofold aspect throughout the NT. It has already broken into the world through the work of Christ (cf. Matt. 12:28 par. Luke 11:20); it will break in on a coming day in the plenitude of glory which invests Christ’s parousia. Those who look forward to an abundant entrance in resurrection into that heavenly order which the present mortal body of flesh and blood cannot inherit60 are assured at the same time that this order is already theirs. This assurance they derive (as Paul says elsewhere) from the indwelling Spirit or (as it is said in v. 27 below) from the indwelling Christ.
It appears that Paul tends to distinguish those two aspects of the heavenly kingdom by reserving the commoner expression “the kingdom of God” for its future consummation,61 while designating its present phase by some such term as “the kingdom of Christ.” Thus, in 1 Cor. 15:24 Christ, after reigning until all things are put under his feet, delivers up the kingdom to God the Father; his mediatorial sovereignty is then merged in the eternal dominion of God.62
14 Those who have been introduced into this new realm enjoy forthwith the principal benefits won for them by its ruler. In him they receive their redemption, with the forgiveness of their sins—in him, because it is only as those who share the risen life of Christ that they have made effective in them what he has done for them.63
The “redemption” which is theirs in Christ is something that he has secured for them; it implies that their former existence was one of bondage from which they required to be ransomed.64 The ransom-price is not explicitly mentioned here; what it was is evident not only from the parallel passage in Eph. 1:7 (“in him we have our redemption, through his blood”) but from other Pauline texts where the same thought is expressed, notably in Rom. 3:24–25, where believers are said to be justified freely by the grace of God “through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an agent of atonement by his blood, to be received by faith.”65 It is made clear that the emancipation which the people of Christ enjoy in him was purchased for them at the price of his life, freely offered up by him on the cross.
Adolf Deissmann asks whether this “manumission” is “merely a single summary act performed once for all in the past” or also (as he thinks probable) “an act of liberation experienced anew, in each single case of conversion, by every person newly incorporated in Christ.”66 The answer is that it is both: the redemption was procured by Christ for his people once for all, but it is appropriated by them individually as they become united with him by faith.
The companion blessing, “the forgiveness of sins,” though frequent in the NT, is less characteristic of Paul: it appears in the Pauline corpus only here and in Eph. 1:7.67 Normally Paul prefers to speak in terms of justification, which embraces all that is meant by forgiveness or remission of sins but includes much besides. It is probable that here and in Eph. 1:7 we have the reproduction of what had already become standard Christian language for acknowledging the blessings bestowed in Christ, possibly in the form of a primitive confession of faith.68
3. HYMN IN HONOR OF CHRIST (1:15–20)
(1) Christ the Agent in Creation (1:15–16)
15He is the image of the invisible God,
firstborn before all creation,
16because in him all things were created—
things in heaven and things on earth,
things visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions,
whether principalities or powers—
they have all been created through him and for him.
(2) Lord of the Universe and Head of the Church (1:17–18a)
17He indeed is before all things,
and they all cohere in him;
18He is also the head of the body, the church.
(3) Christ the Agent in Reconciliation (1:18b–20)
He is the beginning,69
firstborn from the dead,70
that he might be preeminent in all things,
19because in him it was decreed that all the fullness should take up residence
20and that through him [God] should reconcile all things to himself,71
having made peace through the blood of his cross—
[through him],72 whether those on earth or those in heaven.
The prayer for the Colossians’ spiritual well-being passes into one of the great christological passages of the NT, the transition being marked by the reminder in vv. 13 and 14 of their redemption, forgiveness, and translation into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. This mention of the Son of God leads on to a statement of his role in creation and reconciliation. This statement, we may be sure, was not introduced merely for rhetorical effect. It occupies this position because an intelligent appreciation of the doctrine of Christ is the best safeguard against most forms of heretical teaching, and certainly against that which was currently threatening the peace of the Colossian Christians.
These six verses are cast in a form of rhythmical prose which is found in much early Christian hymnody.73 The repetition of key words or phrases indicates the strophic arrangement. There appear to be two main strophes, (1) vv. 15–16, and (3) vv. 18b–20, with the transition between them supplied by (2) vv. 17–18a.74 Each strophe begins with “He is” (lit., “who is”)75 and exhibits the key words “firstborn,”76 “because in him,”77 “through him,”78 and “all things.”79 The transitional lines begin and end with “He indeed is” or “He is also” (identical in Greek),80 the former summing up the preceding strophe, the latter introducing the following strophe.
The first strophe celebrates the role of Christ in creation, most probably in his character as the Wisdom of God. This early Christian theme, which exercised a major influence on the church’s christological thought, was not restricted to the Pauline circle, and probably did not originate there. It comes to expression in the poem of Hebrews (Heb. 1:2b–3a), in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1–5), and even in the Apocalypse (Rev. 3:14). The second strophe celebrates the role of Christ in the new creation, especially as regards his work of reconciliation. In respect of the old and the new creation alike he enjoys the status of the “firstborn” (vv. 15, 18). If the first strophe, celebrating his role as the creative Wisdom, circulated independently before it was incorporated in this letter, it may be that it provided the model on which the second strophe was constructed.81 Whether either strophe existed or not as an independent composition can, in the nature of the case, be only a matter of speculation. If one or both of them did have an earlier existence, then one or both may have been expanded to suit the argument of the letter.82 The presence and identity of such expansions must be even more speculative. Our concern, in any case, is with the text as it lies before us, in the only context in which it has come down to us.83
Here, then, Christ is presented as the agent of God in the whole range of his gracious purpose toward the human race, from the primeval work of creation, through the redemption accomplished at history’s midpoint, on to the new creation in which the divine purpose will be consummated.
(1) First Main Strophe (1:15–16)
15 Christ, then, is said to be “the image of the invisible God.” Paul has already said that he is “the image of God” in 2 Cor. 4:4,84 in a context which appears to reflect Paul’s conversion experience. Paul recognized the one who was revealed to him on the Damascus road as Jesus Christ, the Son of God; what if, in that same moment, he recognized him also as the image of God?85 When Ezekiel, at an earlier date, received his vision of God, he saw enthroned at the heart of the rainbow-like brightness “a likeness as it were of a human form” (Ezek. 1:26). Paul had a similar experience when he recognized “the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). If so, he is not simply echoing someone else’s form of words here; he is expressing what his own experience confirmed to be the truth.
To say that Christ is the image of God is to say that in him the nature and being of God have been perfectly revealed—that in him the invisible has become visible. “No one has ever seen God,” says the Fourth Evangelist; “the only-begotten one, himself God, who has his being in the Father’s bosom, it is he who has declared him” (John 1:18). Later, the same evangelist reports Christ himself as saying, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In another letter Paul affirms that, since the creation of the world, the everlasting power and divinity of the unseen Creator may be “clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). But now an all-surpassing manifestation of his everlasting power and divinity has been granted: “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” has shone into his people’s hearts through the same creative word as in the beginning called light to shine forth out of darkness (2 Cor. 4:4–6). The writer to the Hebrews expresses the same truth when he describes Christ, the Son of God, as the “effulgence86 of his glory and the very impress of his being” (Heb. 1:3).
No reader of the OT scriptures, on reading the words now before us, could fail to be reminded of the statement in Gen. 1:26–27 that God created man, as male and female, “in his own image.” Defaced as the divine image in humanity may be by reason of sin, yet in the order of creation it remains true that humanity is “the image and glory of God” (1 Cor. 11:7).87 This image of God in humanity, moreover, is a copy or reflection of the archetypal image—that is to say, of God’s beloved Son.88 And so, as we are told later, when the havoc of sin is removed and the new man appears, the latter is renewed after the image of his Creator (Col. 3:10).
It may be observed in passing that there is a close association between the doctrine of man’s creation in the divine image and the doctrine of our Lord’s incarnation. It is because man in the creative order bears the image of his Creator that the Son of God could become incarnate as man and in his humanity display the glory of the invisible God.
Christ, in addition to being the image of God, is the “firstborn of all creation”—or, as it is rendered above, “firstborn before all creation.”89 The latter rendering is designed to clarify the force of the genitive phrase, “of all creation.” This cannot be construed as though he himself were the first of all beings to be created. On the contrary, it is emphasized immediately that he is the one by whom the whole creation came into being.90 What is meant is that the Son of God, existing as he did “before all things” (v. 17), exercises the privilege of primogeniture as Lord of creation, the divinely appointed “heir of all things” (Heb. 1:2). He was there when creation’s work began, and it was for him as well as through him that it was completed.91
The title “firstborn” echoes the wording of Ps. 89:27, where God says of the Davidic king, “I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.”92 But it belongs to Christ not only as the Son of David, but also as the Wisdom of God.93 Whereas, in the wisdom literature of the OT, wisdom is at best the personification of a divine attribute or of the holy law,94 the NT writers know that, when they speak of Wisdom in personal terms, they are referring to one who is truly alive, one whose ministry as a man resident in the Holy Land was still remembered by many. To all those writers, as to Paul, Christ was the personal (not personified) and incarnate Wisdom of God.95
As with all the other direct or indirect OT adumbrations of our Lord (including the messianic concept itself), this one is interpreted by the NT writers in terms of the historic and personal fact of Christ, and not vice versa. Thus, the well-known passage in Prov. 8:22–31, where personified Wisdom speaks of her presence at the creation of the world, is not regarded by the NT writers as a prophecy whose details may be pressed to yield christological conclusions, however much they may draw on its phraseology in depicting Christ as the Wisdom of God. Later Christian writers involved themselves in unnecessary embarrassment by trying to extract a christological exegesis from the passage.96 What Paul and his contemporaries imply is not so much that the personified Wisdom of the OT books is really Christ, as that Christ—the Christ who lived on earth as man, who died and rose again, “whom God made our wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:30)—is the one who was before all creation, the preexistent, cosmic Christ.97
The idea of preexistence is not unknown in Jewish thought.98 We meet it, for example, in later discussions about the Messiah99 and in the preexistent Son of Man of the Enoch literature.100 But such preexistent beings were, to the minds of those who discussed them, largely ideal; here preexistence is predicated of a man who had lived and died in Palestine within the preceding half-century.101 This is not the only place in the Pauline letters where the preexistence of Christ is asserted or implied.102 Nor is Paul the only NT writer to teach such a thing. The same teaching is found in Hebrews (Heb. 1:2; 10:5–9) and in the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1–2; 8:58), while in the Apocalypse Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, David’s root as well as David’s offspring (Rev. 1:17; 2:8; 22:13, 16).
But Paul speaks not only of a preexistent Christ, but of a cosmic Christ: that is to say, he finds in Christ “the key to creation, declaring that it is all there with Christ in view.”103 Whatever figures in Jewish literature, canonical or otherwise, may have preexistence predicated of them, to none of them are such cosmic activity and significance ascribed as are here ascribed to the preexistent Christ.104 Nor is this the only place where Paul makes this ascription: he has already stated in 1 Cor. 8:6 that Christians have “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him,” while in Rom. 8:19–21 he shows how the redemption secured by Christ works not only to the advantage of its immediate beneficiaries, “the sons of God,” but through them to the whole creation.105
16 Christ, then, is prior to all creation and, as the Father’s firstborn, he is heir to it all. But more: it was “in him” that all things were created. If it be asked why the preposition “in” is used here instead of the more usual “through,” the answer seems to be that Christ is the beginning “in” which, according to Gen. 1:1, “God created the heaven and the earth.” This is not mere surmise: he is expressly called “the beginning” in v. 18. The phrase “in him” seems to mark Christ out as the “sphere” within which the work of creation takes place; one might compare Eph. 1:4, where the people of God are said to have been chosen “in him” before time began. God’s creation, like his election, takes place “in Christ” and not apart from him.106
When creation is said to have taken place “through him,” as it is at the end of v. 16, he is denoted as the agent by whom God brought the universe into being.107 This is corroborated by the writer to the Hebrews, who affirms that it was through the Son that God made the worlds (Heb. 1:2), and by the Fourth Evangelist, who declares in his own uncompromising way, “All things came into being through him, and apart from him none of the things that exist came into being” (John 1:3).108
This is not the same thing as Philo’s doctrine of the function of the logos in creation. Philo’s logos is practically identified with the “intelligible world” conceived in the mind of God as a blueprint for the material world;109 its designation as God’s first-begotten son is purely metaphorical.110 And while it is easy to see affinities between Paul’s language here and Stoic terminology, Paul’s thought is derived not from Stoicism but from Genesis111 and the OT wisdom literature, where Wisdom is personified as the Creator’s assessor and “master workman”112 (although, for Paul, “master workman” is no longer a figure of speech, but a description of the actual role of the personal, preexistent Christ).
So then, the one through whom the divine work of redemption has been accomplished is the one through whom the divine act of creation took place in the beginning. His mediatorial relation to the created universe provides a setting to the gospel of salvation which helps his people to appreciate that gospel the more.113 For those who have been redeemed by Christ, the universe has no ultimate terrors; they know that their Redeemer is also creator, ruler, and goal of all.
Probably with special reference to the “Colossian heresy” it is now emphasized that, if all things were created by Christ, then those spiritual powers which received such prominence in that heresy must have been created by him. The denizens of the upper realms as well as the inhabitants of earth owe their being to his creative power—the invisible forces of the spirit world as well as the visible and material order.114 Whether invisible or visible, all had Christ as their original creator, and all have him as their final disposer.
The early Christians had their Lord’s authority for believing in angels good and bad. It is stressed here that, whether good or bad, all are alike subject to Christ. Perhaps, in view of the situation at Colossae, it is hostile rather than friendly powers that Paul has primarily in mind; but the first argument by which he tries to reduce them to their proper dimensions in the eyes of Christians is the fact that they owe their very existence to the Christians’ Savior.115
In all, five classes of angel-princes seem to be distinguished in the NT—thrones, principalities, authorities, powers, and dominions.116 These probably represent the highest orders of the angelic realm, but the variety of ways in which the terms are combined in the NT warns us against any attempt to reconstruct a fixed hierarchy from them.117 Here the point is that the highest angel-princes, like the rest of creation, are subject to Christ as the one in whom, through whom, and for whom they were created.118 They were created in him, because all the Father’s counsels and activities (including those of creation) are centered in the Son; they were created through him, because he is the divine agent in creation; they were created for him, because he is the goal to which they all tend.119
The conception of Christ as the goal of creation plays an essential part in Pauline christology and, indeed, soteriology. This is the more impressive when it is borne in mind that the person thus presented as creation’s goal was Jesus of Nazareth, but lately crucified in Jerusalem, whose appearance as the risen Lord to Paul on the Damascus road called forth that overmastering faith and love which completely reoriented his thought and action and remained thereafter the all-dominating motive of his life. Any attempt to understand the christology of this letter without taking into consideration this personal commitment of Paul to Christ would be the kind of understanding that Paul himself dismisses as being “according to the elemental forces of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8).120
This distinguishes Paul’s teaching about Christ as the goal of creation from all the Jewish parallels which have been adduced to it.121 Whatever was previously revealed about God has now received fresh illumination from the fact of Christ and from faith in Christ—not only with regard to God’s saving activity but also with regard to his role as Creator of the universe and Lord of history. That God overrules the course of history for the accomplishment of his purpose is a major emphasis throughout the OT, but here it is shown how vitally the accomplishment of his purpose is bound up with the person and work of Christ. So, too, in Eph. 1:10 it is stated that God’s purpose, conceived by him in Christ before time began, to be put into effect when the appointed epoch had fully come, is that all things, in heaven and on earth, should be summed up in Christ. Or, as Paul had put it at an earlier date, it is by means of the mediatorial world-rule of Christ that God’s eternal kingdom is finally to be established (1 Cor. 15:24–28).122
(2) Transitional Link (1:17–18a)
17 The teaching of vv. 15 and 16 is now recapitulated in a twofold reaffirmation of the preexistence and cosmic significance of Christ: “he is indeed before all things, and they all cohere in him.” “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” says Genesis; but in that beginning, says John, which was the beginning of all created things, the divine Word already existed (John 1:1). No matter how far back our imagination may press, we can never reach a point of which we may say, with Arius, “there was once when he was not.”123 For he is “before all things”124—a phrase which not only declares his temporal priority to the universe but also suggests his superiority over it (as the title “firstborn” has already implied).
As for the statement that all things cohere or hold together125 in him, this adds something to what has been said about his agency in creation. What has been brought into being through him is maintained in being by him. Similarly, in Heb. 1:2–3 the Son of God is not only the one through whom the worlds were made but also the one who upholds them by his almighty and enabling word. The Greek verb translated “cohere” is found as a Platonic and Stoic term: according to Philo, the material of the human body “coheres and is quickened as into flame by the providence of God.”126 Ben Sira affirms that by the word of God “all things hold together” (Sir. 43:26).127 But for Paul the living Christ, who died to redeem his people, is the sustainer of the universe and the unifying principle of its life.
18 Thus far Paul has set forth the doctrine of Christ in terms which he shares with other NT writers—terms which, in fact, may have belonged to a widespread Christian catechesis or confession, even if he stamps them with the imprint of his own experience and mind. But now he goes on to make a contribution to apostolic christology which is distinctively his own. This Christ, he says, “is also the head of the body, the church.”
Those who recognize vv. 15–20 as a pre-Pauline hymn incorporated into the argument of this letter believe, for the most part, that “the church” is a gloss added by the writer of the letter to make plain the sense in which “the body” is to be understood (which may be so), and many think that in the original form of the hymn the body was the kosmos.128 This letter certainly presents Christ as head of the kosmos in the sense that he is its creator and ruler—head, in particular, “of every principality and power” (Col. 2:10). But when head and body are used as correlative terms, the physiological relation is in the foreground, and it is not established that the kosmos was ever envisaged as the body of Christ in this sense.
The use of the body as a figure for the common life and interdependence of a political or social group was not unknown in antiquity. It finds classical expression in the fable of Menenius Agrippa, who persuaded the seceding plebeians of Rome to return and live among the patricians on the ground that, if the other parts of the body conspired to starve the belly because it did no work, they would soon find themselves suffering in consequence.129 Again, Stoicism viewed the divine power as the world-soul, informing the material universe as the individual soul informs the body130—a view succinctly summed up in Alexander Pope’s couplet:
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.131
But we should look elsewhere for the source of Paul’s presentation of the church as not merely a body corporate but as the body of Christ—“one in Christ” (Rom. 12:5).
The first place (in chronological order) where Paul speaks of the church in this way is 1 Cor. 12:12–27.132 This section opens with the words: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all watered with one Spirit.” And it is summed up at the end (in v. 27) by the statement: “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it.” In these words Paul is concerned to impress on the Corinthian Christians the fact that, as fellow-members of the body of Christ, they have mutual duties and common interests which must not be neglected.
A year or two later, in Rom. 12:4–5, he declares that “as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” Paul is here thinking of the variety of services rendered by the diverse members of the church, in accordance with their respective abilities, all together helping to build up the community to which they all belong.
In those earlier letters, where the terminology of the body and its constituent parts is used to express the mutual relations and obligations of church members,133 Christ is not said to be head of the body: the head is mentioned incidentally as one among many members of the body (1 Cor. 12:21). But in this letter (and also in Ephesians)134 Christ as head bears a unique relation to the church as his body.
The word “head” is used in a variety of figurative senses. Where it is used in relation to “body,” one naturally thinks of the organic connection of head and body, but even here it is relevant to bear in mind special senses given to “head” in Paul’s writings. Outstanding among these special senses is that found in 1 Cor. 11:3, where Paul teaches that “the head of every man is Christ, woman’s head is man, and Christ’s head is God.” In these three clauses “head” is best understood as “source” or “origin” (the statement that “woman’s head is man” being a reference to the formation of Eve from Adam’s side in Gen. 2:21–22).135 In our present text, where Christ is said to be “the head of the body, the church,” there is, over and above the obvious organic relationship of body and head, the thought that Christ is the source of the church’s life, and probably also (in accordance with another figurative sense of “head”) the thought that he is the church’s lord.
So far as the organic relationship is concerned, Christ and his people are viewed together as a living entity: Christ is the head, supplying life and exercising control and direction; his people are his body, individually his limbs and organs, under his control, obeying his direction, performing his work. And the life which animates the whole is his risen life, which he shares with his people.
When attention is paid to the way in which Paul develops the concept of the church as the body of Christ, it is improbable that he was indebted for the concept to Stoic thought,136 and still more improbable that he was influenced by gnostic ideas.137 He would have been acquainted with rabbinical speculation which pictured all humanity as members of Adam,138 and we know how he points the antithesis between being “in Adam” and being “in Christ.”139 But we need not think that his portrayal of all believers as members of one body, and that the body of Christ, was formed on the analogy of this kind of speculation. Rather, the rabbinical speculation and Paul’s portrayal are both rooted in the older Hebrew way of thinking which has commonly been called “corporate personality.”140 Men and women, by natural birth, share the life of Adam (whose name means “mankind”) and thus may be described as “in Adam”; heirs of the new creation, by spiritual rebirth, share the risen life of Christ (the “second man”) and so are “in Christ.” It is this existence “in Christ” that is given vivid expression in Paul’s presentation of the church as the body of Christ.141 The germ of this conception in Paul’s mind may indeed be found in the words of Christ which he heard on the Damascus road—words in which the risen Christ identified himself with his followers: “why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:14).142
The source of the conception, however, is less important than Paul’s intention in using it. He uses it when he wishes to bring out certain aspects of the relation between church members, or between the church and Christ; when he wishes to bring out certain other aspects, he uses other terminology. From other points of view, for example, the church is thought of as the bride of Christ,143 or as the building of which he is either the foundation or the chief cornerstone,144 and so on. Some theologians, indeed, treat the conception of the church as the body of Christ differently from those other conceptions, admitting that they are metaphorical while insisting that the term “body of Christ” is to be taken “ontologically and realistically.”145
But if they were right, one could go on to make assertions about the church’s relation to Christ, on the analogy of the relation which the human body, with its parts and their functions, bears to the head, beyond what Paul has to say. It is better to recognize that Paul speaks of the church as the body of Christ for certain well-defined purposes, and to follow his example in using such language for these same purposes. It can be appreciated that those presentations which bring out the vital relation between Christ and the church are more adequate than others (there is no organic relation between a building and its foundation-stone or coping stone); for this reason the head/body and husband/wife analogies have an especially firm grasp on reality.146
Thus, in speaking of the church as the body of Christ, one thinks of it as vitalized by his abiding presence with it and his risen life in it; one thinks of it as energized by his power; one may even (without transgressing legitimate bounds) think of it as the instrument through which he carries on his work on earth.147 But to think of it as an extension of his incarnation is to exceed the limits which the Pauline exposition of the body permits. There is substance in the argument that his incarnation cannot be dissociated from his atoning sacrifice, and that the sacrifice offered once for all can have no “extension” in the life of the church. Moreover, the view of the church as the extension of his incarnation takes insufficient account of the contrast between his sinlessness and the church’s sinfulness.148
The conception of the church as the body of Christ helps us to understand how Paul can not only speak of believers as being “in Christ” but also of Christ as being in them. They are “in Christ” as members of his body, “baptized into Christ” (Gal. 3:27; cf. Rom. 6:3); he is in them because it is his risen life that animates them. Similarly, in the organic analogy of John 15:1–8, the branches are in the vine and the vine at the same time is in the branches.149
(3) Second Main Strophe (1:18b–20)
It is the risen Christ who is head of the body which is the church. In resurrection as well as in creation he receives the titles “the beginning”150 and “the firstborn.”151 His resurrection marked his triumph over all the forces that held men and women in bondage.152 That first Easter morning saw the dawn of a new hope for humanity.153 Now Christ is “the firstborn among many brethren”;154 he is “the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep”;155 his own resurrection is the harbinger of the great resurrection-harvest of his people. But the coming resurrection is anticipated here and now by those who know him as the resurrection and the life and enjoy eternal life through their participation in him.156 He who has been “designated Son of God in power … by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4) exercises primacy in the new creation as well as in the old; the divine purpose is thus fulfilled “that he might be preeminent157 in all things.”158
19 The statement that God decreed the preeminence of Christ over every order of being is now repeated in different terms—terms which may have been calculated to appeal with peculiar force to the Colossian Christians in their present situation. “In him it was decreed that all the fullness should take up residence.” The impersonal “it was decreed” has been adopted as a provisional rendering. But the Greek verb is not impersonal: it means “decreed,” “was well pleased” and implies a subject. Then who or what was well pleased? When the good pleasure or will is God’s, there is precedent for the omission of the explicit name of God: “he was well pleased” would mean “God was well pleased” (cf. KJV: “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell”). On the other hand, the clause as it stands offers an explicit subject for the verb: “the fullness was well pleased to take up residence in him” (cf. RSV: “in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell”).159 One cannot decide certainly whether “God” or “the fullness” is the more probable subject: P. Benoit, for example, prefers to take “God” as the subject;160 E. Käsemann declares this construction “not permissible” (on exegetical and theological, not on grammatical, grounds).161 Before it can even be considered which of the two constructions is the more probable, the meaning of “fullness” in this clause must be considered. So far as the letter-writer’s intention is concerned, its meaning is not in doubt: the sense is repeated more fully in Col. 2:9: “it is in him [i.e., in Christ] that all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.” If then Col. 1:19 is construed to mean that “in him all the fullness of deity was well pleased to take up residence” (that is, presumably, at his exaltation), this is tantamount to saying that God himself (RSV “all the fulness of God”) was pleased to dwell in him. There is then no substantial difference in meaning between the two constructions.
The Greek word translated “fullness” (plērōma) is one that Paul and other NT writers use in a variety of senses.162 The peculiar force of its use here has been thought to lie in its probable employment in a technical sense by the heretical teachers at Colossae. In the mid-second century the word was used by Gnostics of the Valentinian school to denote the totality of aeons (divine entities or emanations),163 and it is conceivable that it bore some such meaning in incipient forms of gnosticism in the mid-first century. We must constantly remind ourselves that we have no knowledge of the Colossian heresy apart from inferences drawn as cautiously as possible from the argument and wording of this letter, but it would make sense in the present context if the heresy envisaged powers intermediate between the supreme God and the world of humanity, so that any communication between God and the world, in either direction, had to pass through the spheres in which those powers exercised control. Those who thought in this way would be careful to treat those powers with becoming respect. But the whole of this theosophical apparatus is undermined here in one simple, direct affirmation: the totality of divine essence and power is resident in Christ. He is the one, all-sufficient intermediary between God and the world of humanity, and all the attributes of God—his spirit, word, wisdom, and glory—are disclosed in him.
20 It was God’s good pleasure, moreover, to reconcile164 all things to himself165 through Christ. The fullness of the divine energy is manifested in Christ in the work of reconciliation as well as in that of creation. In the words that follow (vv. 21–22) this reconciling activity is applied particularly to redeemed humanity, but here its universal reference comes first into view. In reconciliation as in creation the work of Christ has a cosmic significance:166 it is God’s eternal purpose (as it is put in Eph. 1:10) that all things should be summed up in him.167
If “all things,” in heaven and on earth, were created through him (v. 16), and yet “all things”—“whether the things on earth or those in heaven”—have to be reconciled to God through him, it follows that all things have been estranged from their Creator. In Rom. 8:19–23 Paul speaks of the creation as involuntarily “subjected to futility” but as destined to “be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Since the liberty of the children of God is procured by the redemptive work of Christ, the release of creation from its bondage to decay is assured by that same redemptive work. That earlier argument is akin to the present one, but here it is not simply subjection to futility but positive hostility that is implied on the part of the created universe. The universe has been involved in conflict with its Creator, and needs to be reconciled to him: the conflict must be replaced by peace. This peace has been made through Christ, by the shedding of his life-blood on the cross.168
This note of universal reconciliation has been taken to imply the ultimate reconciliation to God not only of all mankind but of hostile spiritual powers as well—to imply, in fact, that Paul anticipated Origen in the view that fallen angels benefit from the redemption which Christ accomplished.169 If the present argument is accepted as Paul’s, however, it has to be understood in relation to his general teaching on the subject, and it is very difficult to press his language to yield anything like universal reconciliation in the sense in which the phrase is commonly used nowadays. It is contrary to the analogy of Scripture to apply the idea of reconciliation in the ordinary sense to fallen angels; and as for Paul, he thinks rather of hostile spiritual powers as emptied of all vitality by the work of Christ and the faith of his people.170 And even with regard to the human race, to deduce from such words as these that every last man or woman, irrespective of moral record or attitude to God, will at last enjoy eternal bliss would be (to say no more) putting on them a burden of meaning heavier than they can bear.171
The peace effected by the death of Christ may be freely accepted, or it may be imposed willy-nilly. This reconciliation of the universe includes what would otherwise be distinguished as pacification. The principalities and powers whose conquest is described in Col. 2:15 are certainly not depicted as gladly surrendering to divine grace but as being compelled to submit to a power which they are unable to resist. Everything in the universe has been subjected to Christ even as everything was created for him. By his reconciling work “the host of the high ones on high”172 and sinful human beings on earth have been decisively subdued to the will of God and ultimately they can but subserve his purpose, whether they please or not. It is the Father’s good pleasure that all “in heaven and on earth and under the earth” shall unite to bow the knee at Jesus’ name and to acknowledge him as Lord (Phil. 2:10–11).
4. SINNERS RECONCILED TO GOD (1:21–23)
21You also, who formerly were estranged and hostile in mind, as was shown by173 your wicked works,
22he has now nevertheless reconciled174 in the body of his flesh, through death, to present you holy, blameless, and irreproachable in his presence
23—provided you remain firmly founded and stable in your faith and are not shifted from the hope of the gospel which you heard. This gospel has been preached in all creation under heaven; of this gospel I, Paul, have been made a minister.
21 The central purpose of Christ’s peacemaking work,175 however, is seen most clearly in those men and women who have heard the message of reconciliation and willingly rendered their submission, gratefully accepting the amnesty which the message holds out.176 This indeed is the prior aspect of reconciliation in Paul’s thinking. The introduction of the Christ-hymn before this point means that here personal reconciliation must be mentioned after cosmic reconciliation, which is celebrated in the final strophe of the hymn; but it is more likely that, for Paul, cosmic reconciliation was a corollary of personal reconciliation. In Rom. 5:1–11 it is those who have been justified by faith that have peace with God, having with justification received also reconciliation.
Paul has been criticized for analyzing the divine forgiveness into justification and reconciliation,177 especially by those who deprecate the expression of this forgiveness in judicial categories at all. Paul had little choice in the matter: not only had he inherited the conception of God as Judge of all the earth, but in his own experience he had consciously entered through Christ into a right relationship with God and a state of peace with him which had eluded him in the days of his zeal for the law. Nor is this conception absent from the teaching of Jesus: he speaks of the day of judgment and tells his hearers what will secure their acquittal on that day and what will procure their condemnation. The distinction between justification and reconciliation, in which logical priority is given to justification, is rooted in the insight that peace, to be worthy of the name, must be founded on righteousness. If human beings are to be reconciled to God, to enjoy peace with him, they must have the assurance that he who will by no means clear the guilty has nevertheless accepted them, sinful as they are. Those who were offenders have been set right with him through the merit of another; those who were hostile have become his friends; his love, revealed in Christ, is poured out and wells up in their hearts.
It is people in whose lives this had come to pass that are addressed in these words. Once they had been estranged178 from God, in rebellion against him. Sin is not only disobedience to the will of God; it effectually severs men and women’s fellowship with him and forces them to live “without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). Those who are estranged from the one in whom alone true peace is to be found are estranged also from one another, and lead lonely lives in a universe which is felt to be unfriendly. The barrier which sin sets up between them and God is also a barrier set up between them and their fellows. If this letter declares that their alienation from God has been abolished by the redemptive work of Christ, the companion letter to the Ephesians declares that their alienation from one another is similarly abolished by that redemptive work.179
22 But now the great change has been effected: those who were once far away from God have been brought close to him; those who used to be at war with him are at peace with him. For Christ has reconciled them to God “in the body of his flesh, through his death.”180 The historic act accomplished on their behalf once for all by the death of Christ is brought into close relation with what takes place in their own experience when they enter into peace with God, when the work done for them is made effective in them. If in v. 20 reconciliation is said to have been won by the blood of Christ, here it is said to have been procured for men and women “in the body of his flesh.” Both expressions denote his self-oblation in death (as they do together in the Eucharist); but here the emphasis is on the fact that Christ endured death in his physical body181 (“the body of his flesh” being evidently a Hebraism with that meaning).182 It is highly probable that some such insistence on the real incarnation of Christ was a necessary corrective to a tendency in the Colossian heresy; more particularly, these words emphasize that there is a necessary bond between his incarnation and his atoning death. So, in Rom. 8:3, Paul tells how God achieved “what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do” when, “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering, he condemned sin in the flesh.” The incarnation of the Son of God was real and necessary for the demonstration of God’s righteousness in the bestowal of his peace on sinners. Those who have received his peace have direct access to him already183 and will have it in fullness when at length they are introduced184 into his presence holy, blameless, and free from every charge against them. “In Christ this accused person becomes unaccused; he is awarded not condemnation but liberty.”185 The pronouncement of justification made in the believer’s favor here and now anticipates the pronouncement of the judgment day: the holiness of life which is progressively wrought by the Spirit here and now is to issue in perfection of glory at Christ’s parousia.
23 This, then, is the prospect which lies before the Colossian Christians, provided they remain firmly on the one foundation for faith.186 If the gospel teaches the final perseverance of the saints, it teaches at the same time that the saints are those who finally persevere—in Christ. Continuance is the test of reality. The language used may suggest that the readers’ first enthusiasm was being dimmed, that they were in danger of shifting from the fixed ground of Christian hope. Indeed, to hold fast to hope is throughout the NT an indispensable condition for attaining the goal of full salvation to be revealed at the parousia of Christ.187 It is difficult to distinguish between hope as an inward attitude and the object of hope: now the one idea, now the other, is uppermost.188 The one implies the other. Hope in both senses forms an essential element of the gospel189—that gospel which (as has been emphasized already) is spreading and bearing fruit in all the world, having been proclaimed (as it is stated here in what may be a prophetic prolepsis) “in all creation under heaven.”190 The catholicity of the gospel is a token of its divine origin and power.191 That Paul, the former persecutor, should have been appointed a minister of this gospel was in his eyes a miracle of heavenly grace.192 In a letter of joint authorship the locution “I Paul” indicates that at this point the apostle himself takes direct responsibility for what is said.193 Paul sees his personal ministry as closely bound up with God’s saving plan for the world.194
III. PAUL’S MINISTRY (1:24–2:7)
1. PAUL’S STEWARDSHIP OF THE DIVINE MYSTERY (1:24–29)
24Now I rejoice in my sufferings195 for you, and fill up in my flesh whatever is lacking of the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church.
25I have become a minister of the church according to the stewardship of God given to me with you in view, to make the word of God fully known.
26This is the mystery which has been concealed for ages and generations,196 but has now been manifested to his saints.
27To them God chose to make known the glorious wealth of this mystery197 among the Gentiles—it198 is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
28It is he whom we preach, as we instruct everyone and teach everyone199 in all wisdom, so as to present everyone perfect in Christ.200
29This indeed is the end for which I labor, contending according to his power which operates mightily within me.
24 Paul’s introductory thanksgiving now passes into an account of his own pastoral care for the people whom he addresses.201
The hardships which he endures in the course of his apostolic service are endured for their sake. He can even rejoice in these hardships202 because of the advantage that accrued through them to his converts—whether their conversion was due to his direct witness or, as with the Colossians, to the witness of one of his colleagues. For he realized that, by bearing hardships on behalf of the people of Christ, he was entering into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings—a fellowship which, as he told his friends at Philippi, he desired to know more fully (Phil. 3:10). “For,” as he said to the Christians at Corinth, “as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor. 1:5). The sufferings which he endured in his ministry enabled him to sympathize with his fellow-believers when they suffered, and he was able also to share with them the comfort which he himself constantly experienced at the hand of God. From his Damascus-road encounter he learned not only that Christ suffered in his people but also that he himself, who had made others suffer for Christ’s sake, would henceforth have much to suffer for the name of Christ (Acts 9:16).
Here, however, he seems to go further. “In my own person,”203 he says, “I am filling up204 those afflictions of Christ which have yet to be endured—filling them up for the sake of his body, the Church.”205
This remarkable statement can best be understood if we bear in mind the oscillation in Hebrew thought between individual and corporate personality.206 The portrayal of the Isaianic Servant of Yahweh presents a relevant instance. In one place at least the Servant is a corporate entity, the Israel of God (Isa. 49:3):
“You are my servant, Israel,
in whom I will be glorified.”
But Israel as a whole proved to be a disobedient servant, and the prophecy of the Servant’s triumph through suffering was destined to find its fulfilment in one person, in whom the ideally obedient Israel is realized. In the NT this person is identified with Jesus,207 who by his obedience, passion, and victory over death fulfilled what was written regarding the Servant, and is henceforth proclaimed as a light to the nations, as the agent of God’s delivering grace throughout the world. But the Servant’s identity, which narrowed in scope until it was concentrated in our Lord alone, has since his exaltation broadened out again and become corporate in his people. So, to take the most notable NT example, Paul and Barnabas at Pisidian Antioch announce to the members of the Jewish synagogue there that, in view of their opposition to the gospel, they will from now on turn to the Gentiles. And they find their authority for this course of action in the Servant Song just quoted (Isa. 49:6): “For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,
‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth’ ” (Acts 13:47).
That is to say, the Servant’s mission of enlightenment to the nations is to be carried on by the representatives of Christ.
The present context rules out any suggestion that the reconciliation effected by the death of Christ needs to be supplemented. Paul and his fellow-preachers, having themselves received the peace which was made “through the blood of his cross,” now fulfil their ministry by presenting that peace for acceptance by others. But in the fulfilment of that ministry they are exposed to sufferings for Christ’s sake, and these sufferings are their share in the afflictions of Christ.208 There may be a hint in Paul’s words that he is eager to receive more than his due share of those afflictions in order that there may be the less for his converts and other fellow-Christians to bear. So conscious was he of the special significance of his vocation to service and suffering.
At the back of Paul’s mind there may be the rabbinical concept of the messianic birth pangs which were to be endured in the last days—from Paul’s new Christian perspective, in the period leading up to the parousia.209 Jesus, the Messiah, had suffered on the cross; now his people, the members of his body, had their quota of affliction to bear, and Paul was eager to absorb as much as possible of this in his own “flesh.”210 The suffering of affliction now was, for the followers of Christ, the prelude to glory at his advent, and such was the incomparable and “eternal weight of glory” to which they could look forward that the hardships of the present were described, in relation to it, as “this slight momentary affliction” (2 Cor. 4:17).
25 This, at any rate, was Paul’s estimate. He knew that he had been called to be a servant of the church for the discharge of a unique stewardship.211 This stewardship, entrusted to him by Christ, was (as he puts it) the “fulfilment” of the word or message of God. The word of God is fulfilled in this sense when it is freely proclaimed in the world and accepted in faith; thus it achieves its purpose.212 If was Paul’s responsibility to discharge this stewardship by exercising his special apostleship to the Gentiles, among whom the Colossians were included. In the words of the parallel passage in Ephesians, “to me … this grace has been given, to bring to the Gentiles the good news of God’s unfathomable wealth” (Eph. 3:8); and the Colossians were among the beneficiaries of Paul’s apostolic commission, even if he had never visited them in person.
26 He now enlarges on the message with which he has been entrusted. It is a “mystery”—that is to say, something hitherto concealed but now revealed,213 and especially (in biblical usage) some aspect of the divine purpose. Throughout ages and generations past this particular mystery remained unknown, but it has now been disclosed to the people of God, not least through Paul himself. This need not imply that no reference at all was made to it in the OT scriptures. The word “mystery”, as used by Paul and other NT writers, has an OT background in the Aramaic part of the book of Daniel.214 There the divine purpose is communicated in two stages: first as a mystery (as when Nebuchadnezzar sees the great image in his dream, described in Dan. 2:31–35) and then by way of interpretation (as when Daniel in Dan. 2:37–45 gives the king the explanation of the dream—an explanation which he himself has received by direct revelation from God). This mystery-interpretation pattern gives its character to the exegetical principle found in the biblical commentaries of the Qumran community. According to this principle, God made known his purpose to the prophets of old, but withheld from the prophets one vital piece of information (without which the prophetic word remained a “mystery”)—namely, the time when his purpose would be fulfilled (together with the identity of the persons who would be involved, on the one side or the other, in its fulfilment). What was withheld from the prophets, the Qumran community believed, was disclosed to the Teacher of Righteousness, who imparted it to his disciples: they therefore knew, and were humbly grateful for knowing, things that had been hidden from the wise and understanding.
27 For Paul the moment of revelation came on the Damascus road. He did not instantly grasp the full significance of what was revealed to him then: it had to be worked out and appreciated in the course of his apostolic experience. It was Christ in person that was revealed to him with special reference to his role in Paul’s Gentile mission. “God,” as he says, “was pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles” (Gal. 1:15–16).
The saving purpose of God was a major theme of the OT prophets, and that Gentiles as well as Israelites were embraced within its scope was also foreseen.215 But the manner in which that purpose would come to fruition—by the incorporation of Gentile and Jewish believers alike in the common life of the body of Christ—was not made known. That remained a secret, a mystery, until the time of fulfilment, and now Paul, as steward of this mystery, unfolds its wonder to his readers, that the glory of God’s rich grace thus lavishly dispensed may move them to grateful adoration. Had this grace been shown to believing Jews alone, it might not have excited such wonder; they, after all, were the messianic people. But non-Jews are included as well, and included on an equal footing with Jews; and it is Paul’s supreme joy, as it is his divinely imposed obligation, to “make known the glorious wealth of this mystery among the Gentiles.”216
Christ is himself “the mystery of God” (Col. 2:2); in him the deus absconditus has become the deus revelatus. But Paul’s special stewardship of this mystery involves its disclosure to Gentiles. “Christ is in you,” he assures his Colossian readers, “Christ is in you (even in you Gentiles) as your hope of glory.” The phrase “in you” might mean “in your midst” (as a community) or “within you” (as individuals). Neither sense should be excluded, but the thought of Christ as indwelling individual believers is completely in line with Pauline thought. The indwelling Christ and the indwelling Spirit are practically interchangeable thoughts for Paul (cf. Rom. 8:10–11), although elsewhere it is the indwelling Spirit that he presents as the hope or guarantee of coming glory. In this letter, however, he expresses himself in christological terms, and the readers are assured of the hope which is bound up with the indwelling Christ. The fact that here and now, as members of his body, they have his risen life within them, affords them a stable basis for confidence that they will share in the fullness of glory yet to be displayed, on the day of “the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19).217
28 This Christ, whose life flows in all his people, is the one whom the apostle and his associates proclaim. He is the sum and substance of their message, whether in the saving news which they announce in the world to bring men and women to faith, or in the teaching which they impart to those who have believed. They have not learned all there is to know when once they have come to Christ; that is only the beginning. He is indeed the embodiment of divine wisdom, but the exploration of the wisdom that resides in him is the task of a lifetime, and even so the most enlightened of mortals can only “know in part” (1 Cor. 13:9). It is necessary, then, not only to preach the gospel but also, when people have believed the gospel, to “instruct everyone and teach everyone in all wisdom.”
The repetition of “everyone” is emphatic. There is no part of Christian teaching that is to be reserved for a spiritual elite. All the truth of God is for all the people of God. A later NT writer, taking issue with a cult which professed a special grade of knowledge for a favored few, by contrast with the rank and file for whom elementary half-truths were good enough, assures even the “little children” among his Christian readers that, because they have been anointed by the Holy One, they all have access to the true knowledge.218 And it may well be that at this earlier date a similar situation had developed in the Lycus valley, where certain teachers professed a form of “wisdom” higher than anything taught by Paul and his colleagues, a form of wisdom which not everyone could appreciate, and which therefore marked off those who accepted it and affected its jargon as intellectually superior to others. On the contrary, say Paul and Timothy, in the proclamation of Christ we bring all wisdom within the reach of all, and our purpose is to present each believer before the face of God in a state of complete spiritual maturity. There should be no exceptions; there are no heights in Christian attainment which are not within the reach of all, by the power of heavenly grace.219
The presentation of everyone “perfect” or fully grown in Christ is probably envisaged as taking place at his parousia.220 The Christians of Thessalonica are assured that they are the hope and joy and crown of their fathers in the faith “before our Lord Jesus at his parousia.” (1 Thess. 2:19–20), and prayer is offered that they may be entirely sanctified and kept sound and blameless, in spirit and soul and body, “at the parousia of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23).221 It is then that the work of grace in the believer’s life is completed; it is then that perfect conformity to the likeness of Christ is attained. When “that which is perfect”222 comes, the people of Christ will see “face to face” instead of obscurely, as in a metal mirror; they will know fully, as they themselves are known, instead of knowing in part as they do at present (1 Cor. 13:12). But this prospect of glory, which is the perfection of holiness, is held out to all his people.
29 For this blessed consummation, so devoutly to be wished, Paul himself expended all his strength.223 His apostolic work did not rest with the conversion of his hearers. That was a beginning; the end would not be reached until the day of Christ, and the quality of his ministry would then be tested by the quality and maturity of those whom he could present as his spiritual children. What joy would be his if they were genuine and worthy believers; what shame if they were not! No wonder that he toiled and agonized for their growth in grace with this day of review and reward before him. But here he gladly acknowledges that the strength requisite for such unremitting labor is not his own; it is the strength powerfully wrought within him by his enabling Lord.224