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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Colossians 1:15 - 1:15
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The image (eikōn). In predicate and no article. On eikōn, see 2Co 4:4; 2Co 3:18; Rom 8:29; Col 3:10. Jesus is the very stamp of God the Father as he was before the Incarnation (Joh 17:5) and is now (Phi 2:5-11; Heb 1:3).
Of the invisible God (tou theou tou aoratou). But the one who sees Jesus has seen God (Joh 14:9). See this verbal adjective (a privative and horaō) in Rom 1:20.
The first born (prōtotokos). Predicate adjective again and anarthrous. This passage is parallel to the Logos passage in John 1:1-18 and to Heb 1:1-4 as well as Phi 2:5-11 in which these three writers (John, author of Hebrews, Paul) give the high conception of the Person of Christ (both Son of God and Son of Man) found also in the Synoptic Gospels and even in Q (the Father, the Son). This word (lxx and N.T.) can no longer be considered purely “Biblical” (Thayer), since it is found In inscriptions (Deissmann, Light, etc., p. 91) and in the papyri (Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary, etc.). See it already in Luk 2:7 and Aleph for Mat 1:25; Rom 8:29. The use of this word does not show what Arius argued that Paul regarded Christ as a creature like “all creation” (pāsēs ktiseōs, by metonomy the act regarded as result). It is rather the comparative (superlative) force of prōtos that is used (first-born of all creation) as in Col 1:18; Rom 8:29; Heb 1:6; Heb 12:23; Rev 1:5. Paul is here refuting the Gnostics who pictured Christ as one of the aeons by placing him before “all creation” (angels and men). Like eikōn we find prōtotokos in the Alexandrian vocabulary of the Logos teaching (Philo) as well as in the lxx. Paul takes both words to help express the deity of Jesus Christ in his relation to the Father as eikōn (Image) and to the universe as prōtotokos (First-born).