And *he* is the head of the body, the assembly; who is [the] beginning, firstborn from among the dead, that *he* might have the first place in all things
Paul has just called Christ the Creator of all things. Now the focus narrows to one small circle — a body, a church — where the same Person is first, leaving no sphere where He comes second.
The verse gives Christ a second "firstborn" title, and the two are not the same.
It is interesting to see two very distinct firstborns. He is firstborn of all creation, because He is the Creator. And He is firstborn from the dead — a new, plain and weighty fact. So Christ is not only the Head of creation as man, but He is firstborn from the dead as risen. It is in connection with this that He is Head of the Church. He was not in this relationship on earth. He was not Head simply by becoming man. Becoming man is a completely different truth from His headship of the Church, which brings in the further truth of union. Many confuse union with His becoming man. Union is not His taking flesh and blood here below. It is our being made members of His body, now that He is risen and glorified. There could have been no union with Him until death and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit was given to unite us with Him in that risen condition. Then, and not before, we have the body, the Church.
The word "beginning" here is not a date but a starting point for a whole order of things. Commentators tie it to what the cross did to the old order.
It is God's new start, after the failure of the first man and his end under judgment in the cross of Christ. When He was on earth, Christ was the Second Man from heaven. But in God's purpose He was not in the condition of the Second Man until after He was risen and glorified. So it is as the Firstborn from among the dead that He is the beginning of the new order of things. God is working to that pattern now, and He will bring all His redeemed into it, made fully like Him who is glorified at God's right hand.
The new creation has its source in a Person.
He is "the firstborn from the dead," and so He is "the beginning." Everything that forms part of that new creation finds its origin in Him and takes its character from Him.
Being Creator cost Him nothing; being Head cost Him His life. One writer notes the difference between the glories listed before this verse and the glories listed after it.
As the apostle comes to speak of Christ as the Head it becomes clear that death was needed in order for Him to become the Head. This was not the case with the first series of glories: He did not need to die in order to be the Creator, but He could only be the Head of the body if there was a body, and this could only be formed when the Holy Spirit came to dwell on the earth which, in turn, could only happen after Christ had died.
The word "head" is not honorary. It carries the plain sense the word has in everyday life.
Christ is the head of the church (Ephesians 5:23; Colossians 1:18), and He is head over all things to the church (Ephesians 1:22; Colossians 2:10). As head of the church, Christ completely removes every other controlling or guiding authority. As the head of a man guides and controls his body, so Christ has complete control over His church.
The last clause gives the purpose behind every title in the verse.
If the Creator Himself steps into His own creation, He must take the first place. This is one of the glories of His supremacy. Then the apostle brings us into the new circle of the Church, and reminds us that He has the first place there too. He who is the head of His body, the Church, is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead. So wherever Christ is, in the first creation or the new, He is first. He holds absolute pre-eminence in His personal and acquired glories.
In the church, that first place can be stolen.
Is it not striking that the only other reference in Scripture to this word "pre-eminence" is in 3 John 9? Diotrephes sought the place for himself, and wanted to cast his brothers "out of the church."
The Colossians show what is at stake when this truth is held only on paper.
The young believers at Colosse were led astray because they were "not holding the Head." That left them open to false teaching: the worship of angels, ritualism, and philosophy or rationalism. To hold the teaching of the Headship of Christ is one thing. To hold the Head Himself, in the faith and affection of our hearts, and so be in communion with Him, is another.
- First by creation. Christ steps into the creation He made, so first place there is His by right.
- First out of death. "Firstborn from the dead" is a second, separate title. He gained it by dying and rising. It is a new fact, not an extension of His becoming man.
- First as Head. A head needs a body. The body came only after His death, when the Spirit was given. So His headship rests on resurrection, not on His life on earth.
- First in control. Head means what it says. Your head governs your body, and Christ removes every other controlling authority in the church.
- First in the heart. Colosse drifted because it did not hold the Head. Holding the teaching is not the same as holding Him in faith and affection.
for in him all the fulness [of the Godhead] was pleased to dwell,
This verse gives the reason behind everything Paul has just said about Christ's supremacy. The whole fulness chose Him as its home. Two questions follow: who was "pleased," and what does "all the fullness" cover?
Older English Bibles supply the word "Father" in this verse, which the Greek does not have. One writer explains why they may have done it, and what the passage itself shows:
The passage has an unusual wording. It may have led the English translators to put in "Father" in verse 19. If that guess is right, the reason was not this verse so much as the next one, verse 20 — "to reconcile … to himself." They could not see how it could be to Him unless it were the Father. But I think the context is framed on purpose to show us that all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Christ. No one Person of that divine fulness acts to the exclusion of the rest. They all had one counsel — not merely similar counsels, as so many creatures might have, but one and the same.
Commentators differ on how to read "the fulness" here. Some follow the pronouns through verses 19 and 20. They take the Fulness itself as a personal reference to the Son:
"Dwelling" and "reconciling" are both personal acts. The verse states plainly that all the fullness is pleased to dwell in Him, and also to reconcile all things by Him to Himself. Notice how the run of pronouns in verses 19 and 20 keeps pointing to the same Person: "in Him"; "His cross"; "by Him"; "to Himself"; "by Him."
Paul does not define the term here. Chapter 2:9 fills it out as the fullness of deity. One writer traces how far the phrase reaches:
It sums up first all the varied glory of verses 15-18. But the words "All the fulness" go beyond even that expression of His glory. So we can think of nothing in the Godhead as revealed that did not find its revelation in Christ Himself. For instance, Christ revealed the Father so fully that He could say, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." … Again, besides creatorship and redemption glories, the Father dwelt in Him, John 14:10, and He was in the Father, verse 11.
Verse 19 and chapter 2:9 sound alike. But they speak of two different times:
There is a strong likeness between Colossians 1:19 and chapter 2:9. Only 1:19 refers to what was true of Him in the days He lived on earth, while 2:9 states it as true of Him today. It is hard to imagine a stronger statement of His deity. Yet the word "bodily" plainly implies that He is still Man.
Paul's sentence runs on into verse 20. The dwelling had an aim: reconciliation. Only a Person of this greatness could carry it out:
The question is no longer how to create a world, or how to form a sphere for the display of glory. It is how to reconcile, where sin has entered and defiled. The creation must be cleared of the defilement of sin, so that God can have rest in His own creation. And man must be brought back to God, in keeping with the righteousness as well as the holy love of His own blessed nature. None could do this but that One in whom the Godhead fulness was pleased to dwell. There lay the value of that work of expiation, and the blood of His cross was its witness.
Because the whole Godhead is behind the plan, the outcome is not in doubt:
Verse 19 tells us that all the fulness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in the Son when He came to do His mighty work… And we may safely add that what the Godhead aims at, the Godhead always accomplishes.
This is not only a truth about Christ. It also settles what His people already have:
Here then is the grand antidote! The fullness of the Infinite One dwells in Him, and in Him we are complete. He came down beneath all for our salvation. He is now above all in exaltation. He is the glorified Man who glorified God on earth and is now crowned on high. In Him the Godhead fullness dwells bodily, and we too are filled full in Him.
- Pleasure — The verse starts with God's own good pleasure. The fulness chose Christ as its home.
- Person — The wording holds every Person of the Godhead in one counsel, with none acting apart from the rest. Commentators differ on whether "the Fulness" points to the Son Himself.
- Fulness — Chapter 2:9 fills out the phrase. Nothing of God as revealed lies outside Christ, and "bodily" shows He is still Man.
- Purpose — The dwelling looked ahead to reconciliation. Only One of this greatness could clear a defiled creation and bring man back to God.
- Provision — What dwells in Him now fills His people. They are complete in Him, and need nothing added.
and by him to reconcile all things to itself, having made peace by the blood of his cross -- by him, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And you, who once were alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works, yet now has it reconciled
The letter has just spoken of God reconciling all things. Now it turns to the readers themselves and tells them what they used to be. Two questions follow. Where did the trouble lie — in God, or in us? And why does the verse say "once"?
The verse's phrases mark different parts of the problem. One writer asks where we stood, and then what we were doing there:
Alienation would be connected with our position as being removed from God. But what were we doing there? We were enemies in our minds by wicked works.
Another writer puts them in order. Alienation of heart comes after the wrongdoing, not before it:
We do not only have a wicked nature in us ("children of wrath"). More than this, we have done wrong, thought wrong, spoken wrong. And besides that, our hearts are alienated — the sure consequence of sin. Did you ever see a servant or a child do wrong, and be glad to meet his master or parent afterwards? Does not the sense of having done wrong keep them away from those they have sinned against? Yes. There is alienation of heart, because we do not want God to come and say to us, as He said to Adam, "Where are you?" First comes desire, then the act of sin, then the mind turned away and at enmity.
The verse puts the hostility in us: we were "hostile in mind." So who needed to be reconciled?
The testimony of Scripture is as distinct as possible. It never speaks of God being reconciled to us. "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10). It does not say that God was reconciled to us. The death of Christ was essential to the reconciliation. But man was the enemy of God, and man was the one who needed to be reconciled.
That does not mean God was indifferent to how we lived. It means the estrangement never ran both ways:
On our side the alienation was not only in life but in heart also. On God's side, He felt the alienation in life far more sharply than we ever could, but there was no alienation in His heart. In other words, while we as sinners hated God, He never hated us. Had He hated us He could have simply damned us and left it at that. Instead He has Himself made the reconciliation available to us. It came at so great a cost as "the death of His Son."
Reconciliation is not the same as forgiveness. A hostile mind is not a debt God can simply cancel:
Reconciliation brings us out of the condition of enmity and distance that marks everyone by nature. In other words, reconciliation has not so much to do with what we have done, as with what we are. It follows that reconciliation is not a matter of forgiveness. There can be no forgiveness for a condition of enmity towards God. The only way God could take it up was by death. Through the Lord's death, He has taken us out of the place of enmity and brought us into the place of nearness and acceptance before God.
The next words say Christ reconciled us "in His body of flesh by His death." Was His coming to live among us not enough?
While He lived, this work was not yet done at all. The incarnation, blessed and precious as it is, never reconciled man to God. It showed us the Person of the One who was to reconcile. In itself it was an important step towards the reconciliation. But in fact there was no reconciliation yet for a single soul. The cross of Christ accomplished it all.
The reconciling of all things in heaven and earth is still ahead. So where does that leave believers, living in a world that is not yet reconciled?
All things are going to be reconciled in earth and in heaven. But we are already reconciled, in the middle of an unreconciled creation. God does not leave us as part of this unreconciled creation. It groans, and we groan too, but we are reconciled to God. So now we see why there is the patience and long-suffering, and the joyfulness too. These two things may seem very unsuited to each other, though the place we are in is very suited to glorify God. Reconciled is a strong, full word. It means everything is brought into God's presence as God would have it. And we are reconciled.
- Distance. "Alienated" names where we stood — removed from God. "Hostile in mind, doing evil deeds" names what we were doing there.
- Direction. The hostility ran one way. We hated God; He never hated us, and Scripture never says He was reconciled to us.
- Depth. Reconciliation deals with what we are, not only what we have done. A hostile mind cannot be forgiven, so God dealt with it by death.
- Death. Not His life among us, but "His body of flesh by His death." Christ's life showed us the Reconciler; the cross did the reconciling.
- Today. Believers are already reconciled, inside a creation that is still waiting. That is why patience and joy can sit together.
in the body of his flesh through death; to present you holy and unblamable and irreproachable before it,
Paul has just written about a reconciliation that reaches all things in heaven and on earth. Now he turns to the readers themselves, and answers two questions. What did it take to bring them back to God? How does God see them now?
Reconciliation here covers everything, but not everything at once. What is still future for creation is already settled for believers.
All things are going to be reconciled in earth and heaven — created things; but the saints are reconciled. We are a reconciled people in the midst of an unreconciled creation. God has not left you part of this unreconciled creation. It groans yet, and we groan too; but we are reconciled to God... "Reconciled" is a strong full word — everything brought into God's presence, as God would have it; and we are reconciled.
The phrase points to Christ's real human body. But the verse does not stop there. It adds "by his death."
Notice again the words "the body of His flesh." His becoming Man was not enough on its own, and could not be; no, nor was all the fullness of the Godhead living in Him in bodily form. For guilty man it had to be "through death." It was not through Christ's birth or His living power, but "through death" — not by what He did, blessed of God as it all was, but by what He suffered... At any rate, "in the body of His flesh through death" contradicts the idea that His becoming Man was the means of reconciliation.
That death dealt with more than a list of offences. It dealt with what we were.
We are cleared from everything that once belonged to us as the fallen children of Adam. In "the body of His flesh through death" God carried out the judgment of all that we were. That same death provides the basis for the coming reconciliation of all things in heaven and on earth.
"Holy and blameless and above reproach" is not repetition for emphasis. Each one carries its own weight.
We have three words to show the perfect character of this reconciliation. The first is "holy" — a word that says in the strongest way possible that the believer is perfectly fit for the holy presence of God. Then we have "blameless." In Hebrews we read that Christ "offered Himself without blemish to God" (Heb. 9:14), and that is the same word. So we gather that the believer, in his standing, is before God what Christ was when He offered up Himself: without blemish. Last comes "above reproach" — more exactly, "without charge" or "accusation": one against whom no charge can be brought.
Most readers feel a gap between this description and their daily life. The verse says how God sees the believer. That view should shape our experience; our experience does not measure it.
Long before the reconciliation of all things, believers are already presented "holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight" (v.22). This is the way God sees them in Christ, and not according to their personal daily experience. Only by grasping the perfection of our blessing and position "in Christ" will our experience come to match it in any measure.
The next verse adds an "if." What does that condition actually touch?
Here an "if" comes in. It does not cast doubt on the reconciliation — there is no flaw there, for God has carried it all out according to the fullness of the Godhead. What is in question now is our presentation in glory, and none of us have reached that moment yet. So with some it may have been profession only.
Two things stand behind the whole verse: God's purpose and Christ's death.
God's purpose is the source of our blessing. Christ's death is the means of our blessing. How full, how secure, how perfect must it all be — according to God's own thoughts and for His eternal glory.
- Means — Christ becoming Man was not enough on its own; only His death could reconcile guilty people to God.
- Done — creation still waits. Believers are already reconciled — a reconciled people inside an unreconciled world.
- Cleared — the death judged not only our sins but everything that belonged to us as fallen children of Adam.
- Presented — holy means fit for God's presence. Blameless means without blemish, like Christ's own offering. Above reproach means no charge can stick.
- Held — this is how God sees us in Christ, not a report on our daily feelings. Grasping it is what pulls our experience into line.
if indeed ye abide in the faith founded and firm, and not moved away from the hope of the glad tidings, which ye have heard, which have been proclaimed in the whole creation which [is] under heaven, of which *I* Paul became minister.
Paul has just said that God reconciled the Colossians to present them holy and blameless before Him. Then he adds a condition. That little word "if" troubles many readers. Does Christ's finished work hang on our staying power? And what is "the faith" Paul tells us to continue in?
The condition does not reopen the question of whether Christ's work holds. It shows what a person would throw away by leaving Christianity. It leaves God's keeping untouched.
If we abandoned Christianity, we would lose our advantage. We would be rejecting the grace that presented us to God. This does not touch election or the perseverance of the saints at all. You find this kind of language all through the letters. It only proves that God keeps us personally, and keeps us morally. His faithfulness guaranteed that He would carry out His purpose.
So the verse works as a test. Continuing does not make a person reconciled; it shows that he is. (Older translations render the ESV's "stable and steadfast" as "grounded and settled.")
It is the test for everyone who claims to be a Christian. If he continues, it proves that he is reconciled, and in God's sight holy, blameless and above reproach. Certainly, if one is born again, he will continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast... If one does not continue, this proves he had never been reconciled. This sad condition answers to the seed sown on rocky ground. Appearances were good at first, but it soon withered away (Matthew 13:5-6, 20-21). True faith becomes grounded and settled, and it keeps a person from being moved away. In fact, faith makes the hope of the gospel more and more precious as time goes by.
Paul does not write "continue believing." The small word "the" changes what he is asking for.
It is not simply "continue in faith." The expression is "the faith" — the full range of things presented here, with the believer grounded and settled in them... So everything Paul was made a minister of, shown in this letter, is "the faith." It is the whole circle of revelations given to him from first to last — some shared with the other apostles, some given to him alone.
The Colossians had good order and steady faith. A warning still followed.
What it really proves is this: no amount of blessed order or steadfastness can safeguard a soul that lets in wrong thoughts and corrupt principles. Such principles cloud, weaken, or lower the glory of Christ... No soul, whatever its blessing past or present, can afford to trifle with anything that upsets the Person or glory of Christ.
"Hope" here is not vague optimism. It has a location and a Person.
What is "the hope of the gospel"? It is in a heavenly Christ who died for us, giving us the assurance of being with Himself there. The hope of Israel was the earth; this "hope of the gospel" is above. Without knowing it, the Colossians were truly losing sight of their heavenly hope. This was happening because the thought of adding philosophy or religious rules to Christ tends to strip a person of Christ.
The danger was not open unbelief. It was religion that ties people back to earth.
Some people were trying to lure these saints away from their heavenly hopes. They pressed them to take up strict self-denial, feast days, and religious rules, which tied them to earth. Such teaching did not match the gospel they had heard, and of which Paul had been made a minister.
Did every person on earth hear it? The phrase is about how far the message was sent, not a count of people already reached.
The words "in all creation that is under heaven" mean that its witness went out over the whole world as people knew it then... The word "creation" is not the one used for each single creature. It means creation in a general sense, and the missing "the" in Colossians 1:23 confirms this... Yet it had truly been proclaimed then, because Christ's servants had gone out and preached everywhere in the world as it was known at that time.
Paul then names himself a minister of that gospel — the first of two services he describes in this chapter.
Notice these two ministries: the preaching of the gospel in all the creation under heaven, and Paul's service as minister of the church. These two ministries are distinct, but we see them combined in the person of Paul.
- Reconciled — verse 22 presents you "holy and blameless" on the ground of Christ's death. The "if" that follows does not touch God's keeping.
- Tested — continuing does not make you real; it shows that you are. The one who walks away shows he was rocky ground all along.
- Grounded — hold "the faith": the whole circle of truth given through Paul, not just a believing frame of mind.
- Unmoved — the hope of the gospel is a heavenly Christ. Adding philosophy or religious rules to Him ties the heart back to earth.
- Proclaimed — the same gospel that steadies you went out into all creation under heaven, and Paul put his own name to serving it.
Now, I rejoice in sufferings for you, and I fill up that which is behind of the tribulations of Christ in my flesh, for his body, which is the assembly;
Paul writes from prison, and he is glad to suffer. Then comes one of the hardest lines in his letters: something is still lacking in Christ's afflictions, and Paul makes it up in his own body.
Commentators are united that this verse does not touch atonement. The distinction they draw is between suffering that only Christ could bear and suffering He deliberately left open to others.
The meaning seems to my mind clear. Christ suffered in love and holiness from the evil around Him, as well as in atonement; in the latter He was alone, in the former not exclusively so. Paul was filling up part of those afflictions, in his flesh, for His body which is the church. It is not that Christ did not suffer as well as walk perfectly as none ever did; but He left us to follow in the same path of suffering love here below, and specially for His body's sake.
The vocabulary itself settles the matter. The particular word Paul chooses here is one he never uses of Calvary.
The word "afflictions" ("afflictions of Christ") is never found anywhere else in connection with our blessed Lord. But it is used again and again of the saints. It shows the trials, persecutions and tribulations that come on them from outside, because they confess Christ and stay faithful to Him in an evil world. This proves that these afflictions of Christ are entirely apart from His sufferings on the cross, when making atonement. Instead, they are the sufferings He endured all through His path of doing the will of God, and here the point is that they came on Him through His love for the Church.
Paul's own share of them had a reason.
The word of God was not "completed" until the truth of the Church was made known. So Paul, as its minister, suffered in a special way for the sake of His body, the Church.
The hatred Christ met on earth did not die with Him. It changed target.
Whatever has been introduced into this world concerning Christ, Satan has opposed. He opposed Christ when Christ was in this world. Now Christ is in glory, forming this body which will exist joined to Himself, and Satan is going to persecute it. That is why he attacks the apostle who brings out this truth of the church so fiercely. He can no longer persecute Christ, who is in the glory, so he persecutes the vessel that brings out this ministry.
Timing matters too. The church did not yet exist while Jesus walked on earth:
Our Lord could not share in the sufferings that had to be borne while the church of God was formed and carried on through this world. When the church was first formed our Lord was in glory, past all earthly suffering. So it was left to the Apostle Paul to have the high honour of suffering for the church... The Greek word for "fill up" occurs only in this passage. It means to put in as a complement, or to fill up instead of.
Paul says where the suffering landed. That detail cuts against a teaching already circulating at Colossae.
They were real outward sufferings from enemies, as he says, "in my flesh." He does not make it only a question of his spirit. Yet if his spirit had not gone along with the trials, the suffering would have had no value. And it was no light thing for his body either. Some at Colossae, we know from the end of Colossians 2, were pressing for hard treatment of the body. The Apostle lets them know that this fits very well with a thoroughly puffed-up flesh.
How far does this reach past Paul himself? One answer: the commission was his alone, and yet a share is left for us. The quote keeps the older wording "that which is behind" for what the ESV calls "what is lacking".
"Filling up that which is behind" signifies that there was more to be done. The Head had done His part, of course: Paul's was not atonement. I think this was confined to the apostle Paul. Peter and the rest never suffered for the church, though they suffered for Christ's sake... We may have our share in the privilege, as some great banker takes up a large loan and other people take up parts of it.
Paul suffered for the sake of Christ's body — and that body reaches far past the first century.
In his imprisonment the Apostle was filling up the cup of his afflictions, and he did it for the church in the widest sense. Not only for the church as it existed on earth in his day, but for the church through the ages to the end of its history here, including ourselves. He suffered so that the truth about the church might be made completely plain and settled. Out of his sufferings came these immortal letters, which instruct us today.
The verse opens with gladness. That gladness came from what the work was worth to him.
Does it not show how precious this ministry was to the heart of the apostle, that he could rejoice in these sufferings? Here is a man given the most remarkable ministry, and it involved the most intense suffering. Yet the ministry was so precious in his sight, and so essential for the practical salvation of the saints, that he would rejoice in all the sufferings it involved.
- Finished — atonement is Christ's alone, and nothing is lacking there. What stays open is the suffering He met on His path of doing God's will, through His love for the church.
- Transferred — Satan cannot reach Christ in glory. So he attacks His body, and hardest of all the man sent to make that body known.
- Bodily — "in my flesh" means real blows from real enemies. That is the opposite of the self-punishment some at Colossae wanted.
- Shared — the commission was Paul's own. Others take up parts of it, the way small lenders take shares in one great loan.
- Fruitful — he suffered for the whole church in every age. The letters that teach us today came out of that suffering, and that is why he could call it joy.