Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Colossians 1:15 - 1:15
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
15–23. The nature, office, and work of Him into whose sovereignty they have been removed (Col 1:15-20), together with a further statement of the meaning and aim of their emancipation (Col 1:21-23)
St Paul wishes the Colossians to appreciate Christ as He now is, the risen and ascended Lord in glory, and to give Him His due. Attempts were being made to lead them astray, and to persuade them to find in created beings more help than Christ could give. St Paul, therefore, draws out at length His complete supremacy and power.
He does this by telling them His present relation to God (Col 1:15 a), and to all creation (Col 1:15 b–17), and to the Church (Col 1:18 a), laying stress on the position gained for Him by His resurrection (Col 1:18 b), and on the universal extent of the effect of His death (Col 1:19-20). St Paul then passes on to remind them once more of what Christ has already done for them (Col 1:21-22 a), and His desire to present them faultless if they will but stand firm (Col 1:22 b, 23).
(Col 1:15) He is the complete and visible expression of the invisible God, prior to all that has come into being from God; (Col 1:16) Because in Him was the creative centre of all things, namely in the various heavens and on earth, both those visible to our natural eyes and those invisible, including super-terrestrial beings of every grade; of the creation of them all He was the instrument and He is the final aim. (Col 1:17) He (and no other) is (eternally) before all things (in time), and in Him (who ever remains the same) they all have their permanence. (Col 1:18) And it is He who is “the centre of the unity and the seat of the life” of the Church, for He is the Chief and Beginning of it, who was once among the dead, but was the first to rise from them, in order that He should take the first place among all things; (Col 1:19) For this was God’s good pleasure (to use the Gospel phrase); namely that in Him from all eternity the complete sum of the Father’s attributes should permanently dwell, (Col 1:20) and therefore that He (the Son) should be the means by which the Father should reconcile all things unto Him (the Son), making peace by His death on the Cross—by Him and no other, whether the things be on earth or in the heavens, (Col 1:21) This reconciliation includes you—you who once were in a state of alienation and enmity in your thought, showing itself in your worthless deeds; yet, as facts really are, He reconciled you (Col 1:22) in the incarnate Saviour by His death, that He might present you before Him at the judgment-day completely holy and without any blemish and unimpeachable, (Col 1:23) if only you stay on in your faith (cf. Col 1:4), set on the sure Foundation, and firm in character, and resisting all attempts to move you from the hope brought by the Gospel which you yourselves heard, the same which was proclaimed in every district, and of the power of which I myself am a living witness.