Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Colossians 3:14 - 3:14
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Col_3:14. In addition to all this, however, put on love, by which Christian perfection is knit. In making τ . ἀγάπην dependent on ἐνδύσασθε , Paul abides by his figure: becoming added (Kühner, II. 1, p. 433) to all those virtues (regarded as garments), love is to be put on like an upper garment embracing all, because love brings it about, that the moral perfection is established in its organic unity as an integral whole. Thus love is the bond of Christian perfection, its συνδετικὸν ὄργανον ; without love, all the individual virtues, which belong in themselves to that perfection, would not unite together into that necessary harmonious entirety, in which perfection consists. Not as if the latter were already existent without love (as Schenkel objects to this view), but love is the σύνδεσμος constituting its perfection; apart from, love there is no τελειότης , which has its conditio sine qua non only in the inclusion of its other factors in love; how love accomplishes this, no one has better shown than Paul himself in 1 Corinthians 13.[154] Nor is it as if the genitive would necessarily be a plurality (as Hofmann objects); on the contrary, the τελειότης according to its nature and to the context is a collective idea, with which the conception of a σύνδεσμος well corresponds. It might, moreover, occasion surprise, that love, which is withal the principle and presupposition of the virtues enumerated, is mentioned last, and described as being added; but this was rendered necessary by the figurative representation, because love, from its nature, in so far as it includes in principle the collective virtues and comprehends them in itself, necessarily had assigned to it in the figure of putting on garments the place of the upper garment, so that Paul rightly proceeds in his description from the under garments to the upper one which holds all the others together, and with whose function love corresponds. Accordingly the absolute ἡ ἀγάπη is not to be taken in any other sense than the general and habitual one of Christian brotherly love (Col_1:8, Col_2:2; 1 Corinthians 13; Php_1:9); nor yet in any sort of reference limiting it to special qualities, e.g. as by de Wette: “as active, beneficent, perfecting love.”
ὅ (see the critical remarks), which, namely love, conceived of as neuter, as in our “that is.” Comp. on ἐξ οὗ , Col_2:19.
σύνδεσμος τῆς τελειότ .] bond of perfection, i.e. what binds together the Christian moral perfection into the totality of its nature, συνδεσμεύει , Polyb. iii. 42. 8; ξυνδεῖ καὶ ξυμπλέκει , Plat. Polit. p. 309 B. Chrysostom (though mingling with it the foreign figure of the root) aptly says: συγκράτησις τῶν τὴν τελειότητα ποιούντων . Comp. Theophylact: πάντα ἐκεῖνά , φησιν , αὕτη συσφίγγει παροῦσα · ἀπούσης δὲ διαλύονται καὶ ἐλέγχονται ὑπόκρισις ὄντα καὶ οὐδέν . The genitive, which is that of the object, denotes (it is otherwise in Eph_4:3; comp. Act_8:23; LXX. Isa_58:6) that which, is held together by the bond. Comp. Plat. Rep. p. 616 C: εἶναι γὰρ τοῦτο τὸ φῶς ξύνδεσμον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ … πᾶσαν ξυνέχον τὴν περιφοράν , also p. 520 A: τὸν ξύνδεσμον τῆς πόλεως , Polit. p. 310 A: τὸν ξύνδεσμον ἀρετῆς μερῶν φύσεως ἀνομοίων . Taken as the genitive of quality, it would yield the adjective sense: the perfect bond, “animos sc. conjungens,” Grotius. So also Erasmus, Vatablus, Calovius, Estius, Wolf, Michaelis, Rosenmüller, Flatt, and others. But how arbitrary this would be in itself, and especially in view of the fact that, in the event of τ . τελειότ . being disposed of as an adjective, the more precise definition of σύνδεσμος would have to be gratuitously introduced! Taken as the genitivus causae (Schenkel), it would not correspond with the figure, though it is in substance correct that that, which as a bond envelopes perfection, only thereby brings about its existence (comp. above). According to Huther, the sense is: “by man’s putting on love he is girt with perfection; whosoever lives in love is perfect.” Thus the genitive would have to be conceived as genitive of apposition, which would yield an incongruous analysis of the figure, induced by the opinion that ὅ does not refer to the ἀγάπη itself, but to the ἐνδύσασθαι τὴν ἀγάπην .[155] According to Hofmann (comp. Ellicott), the genitive is meant to be that of the subject, and the τελειότης is to indicate the completeness of the Christian state, of which love is the bond, inasmuch as it binds Christians together among themselves, wherever that completeness exists (Joh_13:35). This is erroneous; for if in some curious fashion the abstract ἡ τελειότης (consequently an aggregate of attributes) were to be the acting subject, which makes use of love as a bond (consequently for the purpose of binding), yet the Christians among themselves could not be conceived as the object of that binding, but only the πάντα ταῦτα in accordance with the immediate context ( ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τούτοις ). The apostle would have been able to express the tenor of thought forced upon him by Hofmann simply and clearly by some such phrase as ὅ (or ὅς , or ἥτις ) ἐστι σύνδεσμος τῶν ἐν Χριστῷ τελείων (comp. Col_1:28). Others take it as the sum of perfection. So Bengel, Zachariae, Usteri, Böhmer, Steiger, de Wette, Olshausen (“inasmuch as it comprehends in itself—bears, as it were, bound up in itself—all the individual aspects of the perfect life, all virtues”). Comp. on the subject-matter, Rom_13:10. This explanation cannot be justified linguistically (not even by Simplic. Epictet. p. 208, according to which the Pythagoreans termed friendship: σύνδεσμον πασῶν τῶν ἀρετῶν , i.e. the bond which knits all the virtues together), unless we take σύνδεσμος in the sense of a bundle, as Herodian uses it, iv. 12. 11 ( πάντα τὸν σύνδεσμον τῶν ἐπιστολῶν ), which, however, even apart from the singular form of the conception in itself, would be unsuitable to the context, since love is to be added to all the previously enumerated elements of perfection, and may therefore well be termed the bond that holds them together, but not their bundle, not the sum of them. The word σύνδεσμος itself, which except in our two parallel epistles does not occur in Paul’s writings, is too hastily assigned by Holtzmann “to the range of language of the Auctor ad Ephesios.” As if we had the whole linguistic range of the copious apostle in the few epistles which bear his name! Indeed, even ἐπὶ πᾶσι δὲ τούτοις (comp. Eph_6:16) is alleged to betray the auctor in question.
In opposition to the Catholic use of our passage to support the justificatio operum, it is enough to observe that the entire exhortation has justification as its presupposition (Col_3:12), and concerns the moral life of those who are already justified. Irrelevantly, however, it is urged in the Apol. Conf. Aug. 3, p. 104 f. (comp. Calovius and others), in opposition to the Catholics, that τελειότης is the integritas ecclesiae, and that through love the church is kept in harmony, as Erasmus, Melanchthon, and others also explained it.
[154] Comp. Clem. Cor. I. 49 f.
[155] σύνδεσμος , namely, would apply to the girdle, as Clericus, Ewald, and Schenkel make it do. But to that view the ἐνδύσασθε to be supplied would be contextually less suitable (comp. Eph_6:14); while after what has gone before the reader would most naturally think of love simply as a garment, and not as the girdle, “which holds together all individual efforts towards perfection” (Ewald). Besides, it would not at all be easy to see why Paul should not have used the definite word ζώνη instead of σύνδεσμος .