Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Colossians 1:14 - 1:14
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Col_1:14. Not a preliminary condition of the υἱοθεσία (de Wette), nor the benefit of which Christians become partakers in the kingdom of the Son of God (Huther; against which it may be urged that the βασιλεία does not denote the kingdom of the church); nor yet a mark of the deliverance from darkness having taken place (Ritschl in the Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol. 1863, p. 513), since this deliverance necessarily coincides with the translation into the kingdom; but it is the abiding ( ἔχομεν , habemus, not accepimus) relation, in which that transference into the kingdom of God has its causal basis. The ransoming (from the punishment of sin, see the explanatory τὴν ἄφεσιν τῶν ἁμαρτ .) we have in Christ, inasmuch as He, by the shedding of His blood as the purchase-price (see on 1Co_6:20; Gal_3:13; Gal_4:5), has given Himself as a λύτρον (Mat_20:28; Mar_10:45; 1Ti_2:6); and this redemption, effected by His ἱλαστήριον (Rom_3:21 ff.), remains continually in subsistence and efficacy. Hence: ἐν ᾧ , which specifies wherein the subjective ἔχομεν is objectively based, as its causa meritoria (Rom_3:24). Comp., moreover, on Eph_1:7, whence διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ has found its way hither as a correct gloss. But the deleting of this addition by no means implies that we should make τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν also belong to τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν (Hofmann), as in Heb_9:15, especially as Paul elsewhere only uses ἀπολύτρωσις either absolutely (Rom_3:24; 1Co_1:30; Eph_1:7; Eph_4:30) or with the genitive of the subject (Rom_8:23; Eph_1:14). The expression ἄφεσις τ . ἁμαρτ . is not used by him elsewhere in the epistles (comp., however, Rom_4:7), but at Act_13:38; Act_26:28. Holtzmann too hastily infers that the writer had read the Synoptics.