Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Colossians 3:10 - 3:10
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Col_3:10. The positive aspect of the transformation (regeneration) wrought by God through conversion to Christ; and since ye have put on, etc.
τὸν νέον ] The collective new Christian-ethical condition, conceived as personified and set forth objectively, so that it appears as becoming individually appropriated by the putting on. It might, with equal propriety, be designated from the point of view of time as the homo recens in contrast to the decayed and worn-out nature of the pre-Christian moral condition (comp. the νέον φύραμα in 1Co_5:7), as from the point of view of the new, altogether different, and previously non-existent quality as the homo novus. It is the former here,[149] the latter in Eph_4:23 (comp. also Col_2:15), where καινὸς ἄνθρ . is used. See regarding the difference between the two words, Tittmann, Synon. p. 59 ff. The specification of quality is then further added by τὸν ἀνακαινούμ . κ . τ . λ . The notion of not growing old (Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Erasmus) is not implied in νέον .
τὸν ἀνακαινούμενον ] The homo recens, so far, namely, as the converted person has appropriated it as his moral individuality, is not something ready-made and finished, but (comp. 2Co_4:16) in a state of development (through the Holy Spirit, Rom_7:6; Rom_8:2; Tit_3:5), by means of which there is produced in him a new character and quality specifically different from that of the old man. Comp. Rom_12:2. Hence the present participle, which is neither to be taken as imperfect (B.-Crusius), nor as renewing itself (Bleek); and ἀνα does not refer to the relation of re-establishment,[150] namely, of the justitia originalis (since τοῦ κτίσαντος does not directly mean the first creation), but only to the old constitution, the transformation and new-moulding (renewal) of which forms the process of development of the νέος ἄνθρωπος . Comp. Winer, de verb. c. praepos. compos. p. 10 f. The καινότης of the νέος ἄνθρ . is relative. In Greek authors ἀνακαινόω is not found, but ἀνακαινίζω is (Isocr. Areop. 3, App. 2, p. 13; Plut. Marcell. 6), Heb_6:6; also in the LXX.
εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν ] is to be taken along with the following κατʼ εἰκ . τ . κτίσ . αὐτόν , and with this expresses the end aimed at by the ἀνακαινοῦσθαι . Through the latter there is to be produced a knowledge, which accords with the image of God. Comp. Beza. God, as respects His absolute knowledge, i.e. a knowledge absolutely adequate to its objects, is the model, with which the relative knowledge of the regenerate to be attained in the course of their being renewed, i.e. their increasing penetration into divine truth, is to be accordant. And the more it is so—the more fully it has developed itself in accordance with the divine ideal—the more is it also the determining power and the living practical agent of the whole conduct, so that all those vices enumerated in Col_3:8 are excluded by it, and even become morally impossible. Hofmann rightly takes κατʼ εἰκ . τοῦ κτίσ . αὐτόν as the more precise description of ἐπίγνωσιν , though defining the sense to this effect, that the new man “everywhere looks to, and estimates everything by the consideration, whether he finds the stamp of this image.” But, in that case, an object ( πάντων ) would necessarily stand with ἐπίγνωσιν , and the idea of ἀνακρίνειν or δοκιμάζειν would be substituted for that of ἐπίγνωσις . The κατʼ εἰκόνα κ . τ . λ . is usually connected with ἀνακαινούμ . and εἰς ἐπίγν . taken by itself, in connection with which Steiger, Huther, de Wette, and Bleek (comp. also Ewald) arbitrarily adopt the view, that the prominent mention of the knowledge was occasioned by a polemic opposition to the false teachers and their tendencies to false gnosis. But how abrupt, isolated, and indefinite would the εἰς ἐπίγν . thus stand! No; the subsequent κατʼ εἰκόνα κ . τ . λ . just serves as a more precise characteristic definition for the—in theory and practice so extremely important—point of Christian knowledge. The expression of this definition in this particular way comes very naturally to Paul, because he is speaking of the homo recens creatus, in connection with which, after the analogy of the creation of Adam, the idea of the image of God naturally floated before his mind,—the image which that first-created man had, and which the recens creatus is to attain and present by way of copy in that towards which he is being developed, in the ἐπίγνωσις . This development is only completed in the αἰὼν μέλλων , 1Co_13:12; for its aim before the Parousia, see Eph_4:13 f.
τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν ] A description of God, harmonizing with the conception of the νέος ἄνθρωπος , who is God’s creature. Comp. on Eph_4:24. It is erroneous, with Chrysostom, Theophylact, Ewald, and others, to understand Christ[151] as referred to; for creating is invariably represented in Scripture as the work of God (even in Col_1:16), and especially here where a parallel is instituted with the creation of Adam after God’s image. Comp. Eph_2:10; Eph_4:24. Olshausen, indeed, understands τοῦ κτίσ . αὐτ . to mean God, but would have the image of God, in accordance with Col_1:15, taken of Christ, who is the archetype of man. There is no ground for this view in the context, which, on the contrary, reminds us simply of Gen_1:27; comp. κατὰ Θεόν , in Eph_4:24, a simpler expression, which has found here a significant more precise definition out of the riches of the apostle’s store of ideas (not a fanciful variation, as Holtzmann thinks) in vivid reproduction.
αὐτόν ] must refer to the νέος ἄνθρωπος , whom God has created by regeneration, not to τ . ἄνθρωπον alone (“which is the substance, on which the old and new qualities appear as accidents,” de Wette), as the orthodox explanation is forced to assume contrary to the text; see e.g. Calovius: “Per imaginem ejus, qui creavit ipsum, imago Dei, quae in prima creatione nobis concessa vel concreata est, intelligitur, ad quam nos renovamur, quaeque in nobis reparatur per Spiritum sanctum, quae ratione intellectus consistebat in cognitione Dei, ut ratione voluntatis in justitia et sanctitate, Eph_4:24. Per verbum itaque τοῦ κτίσαντος non nova creatio, sed vetus illa et primaeva intelligitur, quia in Adamo conditi omnes sumus ad imaginem Dei in cognitione Dei.” Rather, the divine creation of the new man had that primaevam creationem for its sacred-historical type, and is the work of salvation antitypically corresponding with it, which the Creator has done in Christ; hence also Paul has not written κτίζοντος (as Philippi, l.c. p. 376, thinks might have been expected), but κτίσαντος , comp. Col_1:24, Col_2:10; 2Co_5:17; also Jam_1:18.
[149] In the ethical sense Christians are, as it were, the νεολαία (Blomfield, Gloss. Pers. 674) of humanity.
[150] “Renovatus autem dicitur novus ille homo, quia novus quondam fuit in prima creatione,” Calovius. Comp. Steiger, Huther, de Wette, Philippi, Dogm. II. p. 375 ff., ed. 2, and many others. Thus we should have for the νέος ἄνθρωπος , not the conception of a nova creatura ( καινὴ κτίσις , 2Co_5:17; Gal_6:15), but that of a redintegrata creatura. But it is to a new life that the believer is regenerated, raised up, etc. by God. This new creation is not the redintegratio of the first, though it is its antitype, as Christ Himself, so far as in Him the new creation is founded and begun (how, see Rom_5:15; Rom_5:17-19; Rom_6:1 ff.), is the antitype of Adam (Rom_5:14; 1Co_15:45). Consequently this passage is only indirectly probative for the doctrine of the image of God as innate.
[151] So also Julius Müller, v. d. Sünde, II. p. 496, ed. 5; see, on the other hand, Ernesti, Urspr. der Sünde, II. p. 133 ff.