Colossians 1:19-20
Well, turn to Colossians 1 in your Bibles, and we are studying the doctrine of Christ from Colossians 1:15-20 as Paul is portraying Christ in his unparalleled and universal supremacy. And as we are going to be looking today at the final two verses of this high and magnificent Christology, we need to stop at this point and ask why is Paul saying all of this about Christ? What’s the point?
Paul has a point, an important point to make, to safeguard the faith of the Colossians in this church, to protect them, to stabilize them, to minister to their need, to care for them, to pastor them. But their situation is not exactly our situation. And so what’s the point for us?
In any age and at all times, your view of Christ is the difference between peace and anxiety. Your view of Christ is the difference between hope and despair. It depends on your view of Christ whether you will have confidence or live in insecurity, whether you will have boldness or timidity.
Your view of Christ matters, what you think about Christ, how thinking about him shapes your every day, whether the knowledge of the truth of Christ is in your heart at every moment, or if it is not, makes all the difference in the world.
Now to be clear, Christ is who he is, and who he is remains fixed and unchanged. He, who he is, is totally unaffected by your view of him, about him, whether you call him to mind or not. He is who he is. Nevertheless, what you know and believe about Christ allows you to appropriate the truth about Christ, and as you know him, that you would benefit from knowing him as you love and serve him.
If you’re thinking from day to day, if your heart from day to day is being shaped and influenced and distracted and overcome by forces that seem to you to be beyond all control, fill in the blank on what that is: unreasonable bosses at work; hard relationships at home; persecuting, petulant coworkers; offenses and hurts that have piled up from your past; the uncertainties of any foreboding future; financial uncertainty; relational difficulty; whatever it is, if your emotion can be led around by whoever calls the tune, well, then you really share more in common with these Colossians than you might think.
You need Christ far more than you know. This Christ is Christ for you. He’s the Christ whom God appointed for you, anointed to be your Christ, to be your savior. He’s a gift of God to you, for you, that he would matter in your day-to-day life and for your good.
Now as we’ve worked our way through Paul’s Christology in Colossians 1:15-20, we’ve seen, as we’ve mentioned the past couple weeks, we’ve seen this passage really divides into three sections, the first of which is in verses 15 to 16. Look at them, there. Paul says, “who is the image of the invisible God.” That who, that relative pronoun, is referring back to the “kingdom of the Son of his love” in verse 13.
So it’s “the Son of his love” who is the image of the invisible God. He’s the firstborn of all creation or preeminent over all creation. “For in Him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible.”
And then he adds this line particular to the Colossians’ situation, “whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.” They have these invisible, malevolent forces that they fear, that they feel they must line up under, or the good forces, powers of thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities that could benefit them if they only pay them due homage. All these things, visible and invisible, have been created through him and for him.
Paul begins with Christ as the perfect ECType to the Father’s archetype. He is the eternally begotten son of the unbegotten father, and Christ is the sphere in which all creation lives and moves and has its being. He is the agent of all creation and the goal of the universe. And so all these forces, whatever they may be, were created in him and by him and for him. They are subservient to him. Take that out of the fear column in your life.
The second section starts in verse 17 and goes into the first part of verse 18. There’s the second section of three. It’s in the central position, the mediating position, and it’s fitting because he’s talking about mediating things.
Paul portrays Christ, here, not only as firstborn and preeminent creation, but he’s firstborn from the dead and preeminent in a second creation. “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together, and He is the head of the body, the church, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.”
Nothing is before him, nothing is under him, beneath him, above him, beyond him. He has first place. This agent of the universe’s existence is also the perpetual cause of the universe’s continuance. Christ is why the forces of the universe cohere and hold together rather than tearing themselves apart.
And this concept of him holding all things together brings this idea to our minds that the forces need that. They need to be held together. Why would the forces of the universe need him who created them to hold them together? Why are they prone to tear apart? What is the reason for this entropy we see in the physical universe, this change and move toward disintegration? Why the tendency toward chaos rather than things to remain in the cosmos in the order that Christ designed?
We notice amid all these glorious words of power and glory; there’s a rather stark word in the second half of verse 18. It’s the word dead, ho nekros, first negative word that comes into this beautiful section.
And even though Paul is here affirming Christ’s victory over death, this nekros, this death, encapsulates the reality in which we live. It is a world of death, and we all feel it the older we get. I know, young people, this is a very foreign concept to you. But as you get older, like me, I awake every day with aches and pains, and I don’t wonder, anymore, why. That’s when you’ve succumbed. That’s when you know the grave is the next thing around the door. Get used to it.
But it is a world of death, isn’t it? Weeds grow here easily, not fruit. Things fall apart, don’t they? And you have to make them hold together. You have to work to weed the garden. You have to work to make fruit produce. You have to work to keep your body from falling apart. You have to work at everything. It’s all hard. Death is the principle of a fallen world, isn’t it?
But he is the beginning, and the firstborn from the dead. He’s come out of it. He’s escaped it. And being the firstborn is the promise of more. He himself comes to have first place in everything. If there’s a first place, you know what? There’s a second place and a third place and a fourth, all the way down to us.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus, and it’s by faith in this Jesus Christ that we come to know anything of Christ, and we return to the father in reconciliation because of Christ’s victory over sin, over death, and now being reconciled to God and now knowing the truth, we come to this passage and get the full story.
We learn how death entered a good and perfect world. We understand why order now tends toward disorder. We understand now why the cosmos would disintegrate into chaos if not for the power and the care of the one who holds it all together. We now get the big picture.
And what we’re going to cover today in verses 19 to 20 completes that big picture. It shows us that from start to finish, top to bottom, left and right, everything is under his sovereign control, and everything is working from the beginning to the end in him, and it’s working out to him and for him and for his glory and for our good as well.
The death of Jesus signals the end of the disorder and the end of the chaos and all death. God has great plans in store for the universe though you wouldn’t know it to look around and see the wars and the rumors of wars and the difficulty and the pain and the suffering and the sin.
Don’t let that beguile you. Read the Word and see what he has in store, what he’s designed through the agency of the son, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything. And when Paul says everything, let it have its universal meaning, here. That’s what we’re going to see.
Look at verses 19 and 20, “For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross, through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”
Two brief observations I want to make before we tackle our outline. And here’s the first. As I read this, and if we went back and read from 15 to 20, you’d see, but definitely 19 to 20, there are a lot of modifying phrases here. It’s easy sometimes in Paul’s writing to get kind of lost in the language, but if you boil it down, really the argument is quite simple.
There is in these verses, verses 19 to 20, there’s only one subject and only one main verb that governs both verses. The subject is, all the fullness. The verb is eudokeo, he was pleased is the verb. So the subject, all the fullness; the verb, he was pleased.
So in verse 19, it’s “all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him.” That’s how it simply reads in the Greek. In verse 20, it’s “all the fullness was pleased to reconcile all things to himself.” The two points of our outline are going to reflect that very simple construction.
Second observation to make, just realize that since these verses follow verse 18, which is about the son being the firstborn from the dead, this is about the incarnate son in verses 19 and 20. It’s about his incarnational work.
So if we make a comparison, everything in verses 15 to 17 is about Christ’s pre-temporal identity and then his creation work, okay? But in verses 18 to 20 and the verses that immediately follow in verses 21 and 22, all this is about his temporal identity as the incarnate son, his incarnational work which started at his incarnation, yes, but continues on to his final glorification, which we see in verse 22.
So in the course of these several verses, going from verse 15 through verse 22, Paul has spanned our entire human history, from the Genesis all the way to the Revelation. He’s framed it all in the son’s eternal nature and in the overarching purpose of God’s eternal will.
So the scope, here, is massive. As Paul is setting the framework of total truth, he’s giving us a complete Christian worldview. This is talking about where we come from, where we’re going, what happened to disrupt the original perfection of creation, what God has done to remedy it, and in the end, how he reconciles all things to himself.
Magnificent scope, setting our minds within a framework of understanding. And if we will live in that framework of understanding day after day with Christ at the center and Christ at the fore and Christ behind us and Christ under us and Christ over us, I’m telling you, beloved, nothing can touch you, no fear, no anxiety, no worry, no trouble. Nothing can disrupt your peace. Nothing can steal your joy. Nothing can diminish your gratitude. All those things elevated to the exponential degree.
So here’s our two-point outline, number one, the true divinity in his person and number two, the full universality of his work. The true divinity in his person, and the full universality of his work.
Number one: the true divinity in his person. In the Legacy Standard Bible, which is the translation I’m using, verse 19 reads, “For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” There are two of those words, “of God,” that are not in the original. They’re provided, though, from the context, and legitimately so, but they’re provided from the context to clarify whose fullness Paul means. But in the original, verse 19 says, “For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.”
What is the fullness of God? What is this fullness he’s writing about, the word pleroma, and that had a specific meaning among the false teachers in Colossae. They distorted, perverted the meaning. They ripped it from its Christian understanding and context and injected it with all its, you know, false kind of proto-Gnostic ideas and ancient Near East ideas.
But in Christian doctrine, pleroma refers to the plenitude of divinity. That sounds really big, plenitude of divinity. It’s J. B. Lightfoot who says, “This is a,” “pleroma is a recognized technical term in theology denoting the totality of the divine powers and attributes.”
So the fullness of God means all that God is in his essence, all that he is in his perfections, also known as attributes.” Travis Allen
So it’s just simply talking about everything that’s God is encapsulated by this word fullness. So the fullness of God means all that God is in his essence, all that he is in his perfections, also known as attributes.
So oftentimes in theology we like to divide up the attributes, though they’re not divided in God, they’re all one in God, but we divide them up for our understanding so that we can teach them, so we can appropriate them and kind of get our arms around them and try to apprehend them.
We talk about incommunicable attributes, those attributes of God that will not be passed on to us because we’re mere creatures and he is the creator. And then there are communicable attributes, things about God that are communicated to us and that we do live out. So incommunicable attributes like simplicity, that God is non-composite. We, on the other hand, are composite; we’re made of at least two parts, a material and an immaterial part. God, one part: spirit. He is all spirit.
Aseity, meaning he depends on nothing but himself. He’s not dependent, he’s independent, he is of himself. Eternity, that means no ending. Infinity, he is not limited. Immutability, never changing. Limitless in his omniscience, all-knowing; omnipotence, all powerful. He’s limitless in his immensity. That’s the doctrine of omnipresence, that God is everywhere, fills all things.
None of those attributes are anything that we’re going to possess. We can’t, by definition, we’re creatures. But there are some other attributes of his that we do, possessing measure by the Spirit who’s been put into us. And as the Spirit conforms us to the Lord Jesus Christ, these attributes of God’s that are in Christ in full measure are replicated and produced in us. So things like goodness, love, justice, mercy, righteousness, holiness.
Now since God is all his attributes, this expression, all the fullness, simply another way to refer to God. That is, instead of saying, instead of Paul writing, “In him God was pleased to dwell,” Paul’s instead chosen to say, “In him all the fullness was pleased to dwell.”
And he’s expressed himself this way to make his meaning plain, clear, and unmistakable, especially in the Colossian context. If Paul had said, “In him God was pleased to dwell,” that could be mistaken and made merchandise of by the false teachers in Colossae, to refer to the kind of adoptionism that later characterized Valentinian Gnosticism, that there was this, Christ messenger, who came upon the man Jesus at his baptism and tarried throughout his life, and then immediately left him prior to the crucifixion. They could say that.
More generally, “in him God was pleased to dwell,” that could be mistaken to mean just the indwelling of God by the Spirit like happened with the prophets of old or even believers today. Paul makes it very clear, plain, unmistakable that, in him, in Christ, yes, God, but “all the fullness was pleased to dwell.” Nothing of the divine essence is absent, but everything of the divine essence Christ possesses. All that is in God is God, and all that is God is in him in Christ. That’s the point.
Another reason Paul uses this expression, all the fullness, to speak of God; all the fullness is the subject of the verb. So it’s “all the fullness was pleased.” This verb eudokeo, that’s was pleased, but it expresses God’s sovereign will, his decreedal will.
Douglas Moos says, “The verb is sometimes close to the idea of ‘choose’ or ‘elect,’” and Jesus used the verb this way. So did Paul in other places. Jesus said in Luke 12:32, “‘Your Father is well-pleased to give you the kingdom,’” by which he means the father chose to give you the kingdom. We had the eudokeo idea, just to say he chose it and he’s happy about it.
Paul elsewhere says, 1 Corinthians 1:21, “God was well-pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe,” meaning he chose to save sinners through preaching. That’s boiling it down to its simplest form. Galatians 1:15, “God was pleased to reveal his Son in me.” That means simply, “God chose to reveal his Son in me.” Choosing, election, well-pleasing, all one in the same in the mind and the will of God.
Douglas Moo, again, he suggests this as a paraphrase, “God in all his fullness has chosen to dwell in Christ,” or just as we put it, for in him all the fullness chose to dwell.
Interesting to speak of, all the fullness, which seems like a thing apart from God, but in Christian theology it is not a thing apart from God. All the fullness is God, and so all the fullness makes choices. All the fullness has good pleasure. All the fullness decrees, because all the fullness is God.
Now coming into Colossians 2, we see that Paul repeats the expression in Colossians 1:19. If you turn to that next chapter, you can see in Colossians 2 verse 9, it says, “For in him all the fullness of deity,” and he adds, of deity, there, “dwells in bodily form.” Same expression, two verses, Colossians 1:19, Colossians 2:9.
And these two verses share several common traits. Both speak of the divine essence as, all the fullness. Both of those verses locate the fullness as being in him, that is, in Christ. And both verses make it very clear that this is about the incarnation, that all the fullness is dwelling in him.
Is dwelling, that’s the verb katoikeo. So kata and then the word oikos. The word oikos means house or home. That’s at the root of the verb. And then the prefix kata is, according to. So literally, it means, according to a home, or simply saying, to inhabit, to dwell, to reside in, to indwell, to live in, to reside in, to be a resident.
Now let’s back out of the weeds, here, a little bit, grammar and word meanings and let’s consider Paul’s language from a broader perspective. The letter to the Colossians, as you know, along with Philemon and then Philippians as well, which was written later; but Colossians, Philemon, written together, and then Ephesians was also written about the same time and sent, those three letters sent at the same time, Philippians written later, sent at a different time. But the letter to the Colossians along with Ephesians, these are both, prison epistles, so-called because Paul penned these two letters during his first Roman imprisonment.
While Paul was in prison, it’s apparent to me that he’d been reading, and he’d been reading and meditating and reflecting on Psalm 68, which is one of the great messianic psalms of David. And we can see evidence of his meditation on Psalm 68 in these two epistles.
And just thinking about what we read earlier, what a comfort that must have been for Paul as he’s under guard in Rome, as he’s imprisoned, as he’s shackled, as he’s under house arrest. He’s waiting to stand before the emperor, and the emperor at that time was Nero.
It’s so unfitting that a preacher of this high heavenly gospel, about this King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that this ambassador for that one would be shackled in a Roman prison. How unfitting, how inappropriate. The gall of Rome to do such a thing.
And so as Paul reads through Psalm 68, he knows the tables are going to be one day turned. Caesar is going to have to appear before the Messiah. Caesar is going to be called out of his prison cell one day and stand before Christ and give an account to him. I imagine that was a tremendous comfort.
So as Paul is doing his morning devotions, got his little cup of coffee or whatever they serve in prison, he’s reading his Bible. He’s meditating on Psalm 68. He’s approached with the concerns about the Colossian church. He’s thinking, meditating, and he’s writing.
And you could see it coming out in his writing, comes out in Ephesians and in Colossians. In Ephesians, Ephesians 4:8, Paul’s teaching about the purpose of the church, he cites Psalm 68:18. “You ascended on high, you led captive your captives.” And in Psalm 68:18, it says, “You received gifts from among men,” and that became in Ephesians 4:8, “You gave gifts to men,” as he’s pointing them to appreciate the gifted leaders that Christ has given to them as gifts to his churches. That’s Ephesians.
Two verses earlier, though, in Psalm 68:16, we find the same language that Paul used in Colossians 1:19 and Colossians 2:9. In Psalm 68:16, David speaks of Mount Zion, the mountain where God has chosen to live, where he will surely dwell forever.
And in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, two Greek verbs stand out, eudokeo and katoikeo. Eudekeo, he is pleased, and katoikeo, to dwell in. Yahweh is pleased to dwell there forever.
Shows up here. As Paul’s meditating on Psalm 68, he’s illuminated by the Spirit of Christ. He’s taught by this prophetic insight, and he sees that it is in Christ that God has chosen to live in Zion, that it is in Christ that all the fullness dwells forever with his people. It’s in Christ that God tabernacles with them, dwells in them and among them in the church, which is the new temple of God.
John put it this way in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The word dwelt, there, is not katoikeo. He doesn’t use the verb katoikeo as Paul did. But John wanted to make this biblical, theological connection even clearer, so he used a more descriptive verb, skenoo, skenoo, which means, to dwell in a tent. It’s even more specific than katoikeo. Skenoo is to dwell in a tent or maybe you’ve heard it said this way, “He came to tabernacle with us.”
Same theme shows up in Ephesians 2:21, that Christ is the cornerstone of the new temple of God. We are becoming that temple, according to what Paul writes, there. “In him the whole building is being fitted together and it’s growing into a holy temple in the Lord.” Interesting language. A building, by construction terms; growing, organic terms. It’s a living building, a living tabernacle, living temple, “in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
It’s by the Spirit that Christ comes to fill his people, just as God, who filled his temple with that ineffable glory. It’s the same Christ, the son. He is the one in whom all the fullness was pleased to dwell. And as we’re about to see, by Christ’s work on the cross, God then and there set in motion this cosmic reconciliation, one that started with the redemption of you and of me.
So in this opening chapter, amazing, in such an economy of words, how Paul has totally obliterated the false teaching that infested the Colossian church, just decimated it. I mean, they’re dead. The teaching is dead before the body even hits the ground. They don’t even know it.
And as he gets into chapter 2, and as he works out the implications for the Colossians, we just need to acknowledge that from this point, the war is already over. The battle is lost for these false teachers. The false teachers, they’re trying to offer the experience of a greater fullness, a better philosophy, closer communion with the divine in ritual observance, dietary practices, all these things that seem on the surface, and watching them, to be so high and holy and amazing and oh, so, so holy.
Paul’s not even going to dignify their false teaching by giving any undue attention to it. He just preaches the supremacy of the cosmic Christ, in whom all the fullness is pleased to dwell, and before whom all false doctrine is exposed and then withers, dead, blows away like chaff.
How can any other gospel, how can any counterfeit Christ, get any traction and turn our hearts away from the true Christ? How can we follow any other way? How can we be subservient to any other voice, any other pressure? How can we listen to any who would manipulate our consciences? When we get this Christ, we’re set free from all of that to rise above it, to transcend, and to live our lives to the fullest.
The next verse, verse 20, shows how low and empty these false doctrines truly are. We come to a second point, which is, number two: the full universality of his work, the full universality of his work. “In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell,” and then this, verse 20, “and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross, through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”
Again, we need to bring the single subject and the single main verb from verse 19 into verse 20. So the subject is still, all the fullness and the verb is still, He was pleased. And so verse 20, it’s “all the fullness was pleased to reconcile all things to Himself.” You see that? So all the fullness that is God, he was pleased, or as we said earlier, God chose, God chose through him, through the son to reconcile all things to himself.
Now very important interpretive question. What does the word reconciliation mean? Very important question because we tend to think of the word reconciliation, as Christians, as we should, nothing wrong with this, but we tend to think of this word reconciliation only in salvific terms, which is the primary sense in Scripture.
That’s what gives our hearts delight, to know that we’re reconciled to God. We, mere sinners worthy of condemnation, worthy of death, to be cast into the flames of Hell forever and ever, to live in torment because he is so holy and our sins against him are so rotten.
And yet, what has he done? He’s shown mercy. He’s been gracious. He’s been kind. He’s forgiven us in Christ. And now it’s not just that we’re, like, living in the basement of Heaven. We have a seat on the throne with him, because he’s our father, we can crawl up into his lap. Full reconciliation.
So why wouldn’t we think of reconciliation in salvific terms? 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them.” Amen. Yes, and amen. So grateful for that.
The verb Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 5:19 is katallasso, which refers to making a friend out of an enemy, changing the relationship from one of hostility to one of amicability. This llasso set of verbs, there’s a number of them, all with kind of different prefixes on front of them.
But this katallasso, making a friend out of an enemy, changing from hostility to amicability, and that’s exactly what Paul is describing to be the case for the Colossians and all believers in verses 21 to 22, the change of a relationship with God from alienation and enmity to one of friendship with God.
But the word that Paul uses in Colossians 1:20 and then again in 1:22 adds another preposition to the verb katallasso, which already has the kata preposition prefixed to it. So it’s the verb llasso plus a preposition kata plus another preposition apo. So all together it’s apo plus kata plus llasso.
In its strictest sense, apokatallasso means to transfer from one state to another quite different state. You see how going from enmity to friendship is broadened out with apokatallasso, to transfer from one state into quite a different state.
Often there is a mending of personal relationships in view. So the words restore, reconcile, both are good translations, but as we see in Colossians 1:20, which obviously has a universal sense, the word does not always refer to spiritual, salvific reconciliation. Sometimes it does just mean to transfer from one state into quite a different state.
We’ll come back to that in a moment, but with that concept of reconciliation, the verb in mind, let’s move through this verse kind of systematically and break down what Paul covers in verse 20. I’ll give you five facts on the universality of reconciliation, five facts, so these are five sub-points: the agency, the means, the subject-object, that’s one, that’s the third point, scope, and priority. Agency, means, subject-object, scope, and priority. I’ll go through them one at a time.
First, the agent of reconciliation. You know this already: through him. Through him, sounds like it’s referring to the son as the means of God’s reconciliation, but we can’t do that because that’s our second point. So what’s the point here? We learn by looking at the grammar of verse 16 that “all things have been created through Him.” That’s the same construction, here. It’s the preposition dia with the genitive case. So dia auto shows agency, personal agency.
So John hit the ball with the bat. The bat is the means of hitting the ball. John is the agent. He’s the one knocking it out of the park. Ball, the poor ball, that’s the direct object. The direct object always receives the action, and sometimes that action is being hit by a bat.
Here, personal agency is creation, verse 16, and personal agency is the reconciliation and the objects of that. The son is the agent of divine creation. And so he is also the agent of divine reconciliation. So instead of, through him, a better translation, as we’ve said, “all the fullness was pleased by Him,” meaning by the son’s agency to reconcile all things to himself. The son is the personal agent of creation and of reconciliation, okay?
This is made more apparent when we see, second, the means of reconciliation, the means of reconciliation. “Having made peace,” here’s the bat, “through the blood of his cross,” that’s the means. So it’s by the personal agency of the son that reconciliation happens. As to how it happens, the means of reconciliation, that comes about by his peacemaking work, by dying on the cross.
This is such a power-packed, theologically rich clause. “Having made peace” signifies the goal; “Through the blood” signifies the cost; of his cross, signifies the shame or the lowest point in the time of the son’s humiliation. We’re not going to unpack all that, but we could spend an entire sermon just on those points.
But the Son of God took on flesh to represent his people as their federal head. He came to identify with sinners, becoming their fit, appropriate substitute. He died in our place, giving himself for us, substituting his perfect life for our rotten lives. The Son of God then received the just wrath of God, which is the due penalty for our sins, in his own body on the cross. And he died, and he died actually, and he died physically, and he was physically, his body, buried in a tomb.
Why did he die? Because of the next point. Third, the subject and object of reconciliation, which is one in the same person. The subject and the object of reconciliation is God the Father. He’s both the subject of reconciliation, the one doing the reconciling and taking the initiative, doing what no man can do. He’s also the offended party. So he’s the object that needs to be appeased, the one who needs to be reconciled with, the one to whom all must be reconciled.
As we made plain earlier, we can say, all the fullness was pleased to reconcile all things to himself, or we can simply say, God chose through him, by him, to reconcile all things to himself; God is both subject and object.
Now here’s where things get a bit tricky, coming into a fourth point, because this is less familiar territory to us and it’ll take a little bit of time. Fourth, the scope of reconciliation.
The scope is to reconcile all things. Ta panta is the Greek expression, and ta panta is an expression, a word that Paul uses four times in these few verses and with its full universal meaning. No qualification, that it’s all of a distinct category or all kinds of things or kinds of people. No, here it’s universal, to reconcile all things to himself.
Now don’t misunderstand me here, because there are some today, and have always been, who try to twist Colossians 1:20 into teaching universal salvation. To say “reconciling all things to himself” means that in the end, everybody’s going to heaven, nobody’s going to Hell. Hell’s kind of like an Old Testament God thing when they believed in that kind of stuff, and there’s like spirits in the fire, spirits in the wind. Pre-modern man, in all their ignorance, they needed some of those fear tactics to kind of drive them away from the idols and drive them toward the God who burns on Sinai.
Oh, very scary God. But we’re sophisticated now. Yeah, we don’t need all that. And this whole concept of Hell? God’s big enough and merciful enough to be able to absorb all things, even sins, so that sins are no more, and he just embraces all creatures that he created.” That’s what many are saying. There’s even a popular resurgence among people that is really disappointing, even people like Kirk Cameron, who have just benefited from a lot, and love the way he teaches evangelism and so excited and all that. He’s got some really good things to say, but he’s gone wobbly on the doctrine of Hell, no longer willing to call it what the Bible calls it: eternal conscious torment by God of those who offend God and never embrace Christ. He doesn’t want to say that anymore. It makes God look too mean, makes him look petty to him.
And what I’ll just say, that, just very quickly, is to say that that view, while it purports to magnify the mercy of God and show him to be more merciful than I guess he’s portrayed to be by us Bible-believers, what it actually does is it diminishes significantly, severely beyond repair, the justice of God. Now, without understanding how offensive our sin is to God, you lose not only justice, you lose mercy, too. All of it is forfeited.
This is not teaching universal salvation. This is not teaching that everybody gets there in the end. That’s not only erroneous, it’s heretical, and it totally fails to interpret the text in its context. We’re going to come back to that.
But lest we have any doubt about Paul’s meaning and the kind of universality in this reconciliation, Paul adds at the end of the verse, “whether things on earth or things in heaven.”
Where have you heard that before? That language? It’s a call back to verse 16. It’s a call back to that same statement, that summary statement, but it uses that same merism that Paul used there, down here and up there, all things, and it’s significant.
Just pause and make a pastoral or devotional point. Our God in all these amazing, astounding, high, magnificent doctrines, don’t forget that he’s not only the God of up there; he’s the God of down here.
And he created all things, high and low and everything in between, and he created everything, knitting you together in the womb of your mother. He knows you intimately, personally, and all, all your weaknesses, all your failures, all your triumphs, all your joys, all your sins, all your failures. And he wants to minister all of his truth to all of you, individually and all of us collectively.
These doctrines are not for us just to bat around in our minds academically, but for us to live in and to live out and to understand and embrace and love. This is meant to show us the love of God for us, to evoke the love of God toward him.
So things down here and up there, all things call back to verse 16 where it says, “In Him all things are created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him.”
Now, ever since the Fall, and indeed because of the Fall, the all things God created to be good and orderly have tended toward disorder and toward chaos. That’s what Paul’s writing about in Romans 8:19, in which he tells us how the anxious longing of the creation “eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.”
He’s personifying creation itself, animate and inanimate, soul-less and souled, fruits, vegetables, rocks, mountains, seas, and all the animals and the birds and the fish of the sea that fill them.
By faith they’re counted righteous in Christ. And God graciously imputes their sins to his son and his son’s righteousness to them.” Travis Allen
The anxious longing of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. All eyes are on the church, folks, “for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it.” God did this. God planned this. God subjected all creation. God has planned this whole tendency toward disorder that we’re experiencing, even decreed death to enter the world in order that his son would die for the sins of his people.
“Creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Amazing.
“But when sin entered the world” in Romans 5:12, “death entered.” Sin entered the world, death entered, and all creation suffered because of it. The law of entropy, biological decay, things dying, rotting, tending toward putrefication, tending toward disintegration, not remaining integrated, not remaining whole, harmonious, fixed.
That’s why the son, verse 17, is continually holding all things together. And this matters, and it matters every single moment of our lives, whether you know it or not. It’s like your autonomous nervous system. You don’t even think about trying to make your blood flow or nerves go or your breathing. It just happens to you. You know what else happens to you? Christ holding you together by the Word of his power. You don’t even think about it.
But this call back to verse 16 also brings other unreconciled realities to mind, but it’s not only the inanimate universe of creation or even the animate creatures of the earth, the little rabbits and the cows and the, the birds that the son reconciles as members of the, all things class.
What else falls into the, all things class? Thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, so visible ones like earthly kings, governors, presidents, or things invisible in the angelic realm, whether it’s the holy angels on the one hand, or the unholy angels, hostile, malevolent powers of darkness, demons, starting with the archdemon himself, the devil. Evil powers, too, are members of the class of all things that are caught up in this universal design of reconciliation.
So again, what does reconciliation mean? Because we got to understand, is the devil going to be saved one day? No. What does reconciliation mean with those that keep fomenting cosmic rebellion against God? What does reconciliation mean with unbelieving men and women, hardened and stubborn in their rebellion, who go to the grave that way? What does it mean for the wickedness of the demons?
And to explain this, some have appealed to a very helpful term, and it’s the term pacification. And pacification, in military terms, refers to forcibly suppressing hostilities among the opposition force. So it’s by superior firepower, by superior force of arms that defeated rebels are left with no other option but to lay down their arms and throw up the white flag and wave it and say, I submit.
Greg Beale puts it this way, “Christ has begun to restore the disorder, harmony and lack of peace of the first creation. And this will be consummated in the future.” We don’t see it that way, yet. The writer to the Hebrews says that in chapter 2, Hebrews 2. But this full, final reconciliation is going to be consummated in the future. And I want to show you this by having you turn to a couple of biblical passages. First, turn to Psalm 2, Psalm 2.
And you Bible readers, as we read through our Bibles every year together as a church and many of you on other Bible-in-a-year type of programs, but you’ll be familiar with this Psalm. It’s striking in its scope. But Psalm 2 shows both sides of the reconciliation that Paul writes about. “Why do the nation’s rage and the peoples meditate on a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand. The rulers take counsel together against Yahweh and against His anointed.”
Who’s that? That’s the son, that’s Christ. Christ means the Anointed One, the Messiah. So “taking their stand against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us tear their fetters apart and castaway their cords from us.’
“He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord mocks them, then He speaks to them in his anger and terrifies them in His fury, saying, ‘But as for me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain.’ I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh. He said to me,” this is the son speaking, “‘You are my Son. Today I’ve begotten you. Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.
“‘You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like a potter’s vessel.’ So now, O kings, show insight; take warning, O judges of the earth. Serve Yahweh with fear, rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He become angry and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. But how blessed are all who take refuge in Him.”
Those who are wise, who show discernment, who receive the warning, those who lay down their arms, throw up the white flag, who repent of their rebellion, and they do it now instead of showing hostility, they come instead now to worship Yahweh with fear, rejoice with trembling. They receive blessing. They’re the beneficiaries of a salvific reconciliation. By God’s saving grace, those who repent and believe, put their faith in the son, they do homage to the son, they do it willingly, cheerfully, gladly; and by faith they’re counted righteous in Christ.
And God graciously imputes their sins to his son and his son’s righteousness to them. And God justifies them, declaring them righteous in Christ. He reconciles them to himself, and he does it judicially, legally, savingly, and relationally. Full reconciliation. Nothing held back.
Those, however, who refuse to bow, those who refuse to kiss the son, they’ll be made to bow. Their future rebellion will come to an end when the Lord Christ shatters them with his rod of iron, when he subdues them with his power, and he forces them to bow.
That scepter, that glorious, beautiful scepter of his righteousness becomes to them, what’s beautiful to us and a symbol of his grace and his mercy, is to them a rod of iron. They’ll be forced to bow. They will be subject, and they will be reconciled in that sense, but not savingly and not relationally. But it will be legal and it will be judicial. It will be just.
So it will be that Philippians 2:10-11, “In the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” That merism sound familiar? Universal language again, isn’t it? “Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” Not all will confess savingly, but all will be made to confess. Not all will be reconciled relationally, but all will one day be reconciled judicially, legally, permanently.
Another text to show you, go back to the New Testament, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15, 1 Corinthians 15 verse 24. Paul has been outlining, this is the great resurrection chapter of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 15, and Paul’s been outlining in this little section the verses before 1 Corinthians 15:24, 20-23.
He’s outlining the order of the resurrection. He starts with Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ at his second coming, and then this amazing prediction in verse 24, in verse 25, “Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has abolished all rule and all authority and all power.”
You know where those terms are also found? Colossians 1:16, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” That’s Psalm 2 stuff, isn’t it? He forcibly pacifies any and every hostile force, and he uses death as the rod of his submission.
Look at verse 26, “The last enemy to be abolished is death.” That is, once he’s done with that tool, he casts it away forever. No more need for it. “The last enemy to be abolished is death, for He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says all things are put in subjection, it’s evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him.”
He’s talking about the father. “So when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.” That is universal reconciliation right there.
Now back to Colossians 1:20. Paul has just shown us what he means by the reconciliation of all things to include all stubborn, hostile enemies, human and angelic, visible and invisible, whether things on earth or things in heaven, and whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things are going to be put into subjection beneath his feet.
It’s about the restoration of cosmic peace, universal in its scope, touching everything, leaving nothing to its own rebel cause. So it’s the salvific reconciliation of all who believe, that’s us; the non-salvific pacification of all those who refuse to believe. It’s to the effect of Ephesians 1:10 of the summing up of all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth.
So we’ve seen the agent of reconciliation, Christ. We’ve seen the means of reconciliation, the cross of Christ; the subject and object of reconciliation, which is the father; and then the scope of it, it’s universal. Nothing in all creation is left untouched, all things reconciled to him.
And then finally, most gloriously, wonder of wonders, we’re going to see finally, fifth, the priority of reconciliation, which is you and me, beloved. The priority is all of God’s elect because he made peace through the blood of his cross. It starts with us, us believers. We are the starting point of this reconciliation work.
God started with us because he came to signal his good and gracious purpose. He sent Christ in his first advent, leading out with the offer of salvific reconciliation, not the threat of pacification, but the offer of salvific reconciliation. He’ll send him back again a second time, now to enforce the pacifying, reconciliation, forcibly subduing all of his enemies.
But this priority of reconciliation, of salvific, relational reconciliation between enemies of his, now made friends, sinners now made saints, the unrighteous now made righteous in Christ, this is what comes next in verses 21 to 22.
We’ll address this next time, but take a look now. “Although you were formerly alienated and enemies and mind and in evil deeds, now He’s reconciled you in His body, the body of His flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
In the great plan of redemptive history, divine reconciliation started with God reconciling sinners to himself, but there’s a bigger scope to it. But it does start with us. And for all those who are reconciled to him, they show forth their spiritual connection to the reconciling God by pursuing sincere, humble reconciliation with each other.
So, beloved, are you a reconciler, or do you begrudgingly hold on to offenses done to you? Man, this confronts us, doesn’t it? Because sometimes sinners can hurt us deeply, and sometimes we, we want to hold on to that, stew in our anger, stew in our hurt, stew in the offenses, the injustices. You know what that’s doing? Putting us in prison.
We’ve been set free. You know what we’ve been set free to do? Forgive, love, show kindness when offenses are returned. This is what demonstrates more than any other thing, I think, the trueness of our salvation, the validity of our salvation, is that we forgive when we’re wronged. We let go.
In Christ, God reconciles men to himself, but also he reconciles men to men, women to women, parents to children, children to parents based on the pattern of his own reconciling work.
That’s a theology that informs Ephesians 2:14-16, “He himself is our peace, who made both groups,” Jew and Gentile, at total odds against each other, now he’s “made both groups into one, broken down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing and in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.”
In Christ, God reconciles sinners to himself. He reconciles forgiven sinners with forgiven sinners. All the redeemed are united in Christ. And as forgiveness in Christ is the basis for reconciliation with God, so also forgiveness between one another is the basis, starting point of reconciliation with each other.
To confess sin to each other, to seek forgiveness from one another, those we’ve offended, that’s the starting point, the foundation of reconciling and then rebuilding trust and friendship over time.
This glorious pattern, which is so beautiful, so fitting, is practiced in Christ among his people, his people, which is, we are the new temple. It’s where God dwells. It’s where sinners will see, where they’ll observe, where they’ll learn what reconciliation looks like, how it happens, how beautiful, how powerful it is.
So, beloved, friends, how’s that going in your home? Are sinners seeing your home as a pattern of reconciliation, gracious forgiveness, quick confessing of sins, taking personal ownership of wrongs, forsaking sins, pursuing repentance?
Because this is what Christianity is. It’s from the church, God’s temple in the middle of his second creation, that God is expanding his reconciliation program. He expands it until all creation, whether things on earth or things in heaven, until universal reconciliation has been completed.
We, beloved, we’re the down payment of God’s reconciling work in Christ, which is why Romans 5:11 says, “We exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” This reconciliation, a salvific one, relational, saving, it’s granted as a gift. The other one, universal pacification, that’s forced upon people. We have been recipients of a gracious gift.
As we said from the beginning, in any age, at all times, your view of Christ makes a difference between peace and anxiety, living in hope and living in despair, living in confidence, living in insecurity, living in boldness, or living in timidity.
So it’s my prayer for you, beloved. And for you who may not yet know God in Christ, it’s my prayer for you that God will deepen your confidence in Christ as you fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, as you learn to know him from the Word of God, as you learn to love him and to practice him and his ways, to worship him in Spirit in the truth and serve him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. That’s our prayer for you. I know it’s your prayer for us. It’s our prayer for one another. Let’s take these things to the Lord.
Our Father, we are so grateful for what you reveal in your Word, this powerful, powerful gospel of divine reconciliation. And we do pray that in this time of messianic favor that you would save still more, that you’d bring more into the fold until the complete number of your elect has been achieved, all to the glory of your grace and your mercy, your kindness in Christ.
We know that there is a day coming when every knee will be forced to bow. We thank you that you have made us of such a nature and a kind that we bow willingly, cheerfully, humbly, receive this gracious gift of reconciliation that makes all the difference.
We pray that you, our Father in Heaven, will be pleased to have your will be done on earth, and may it be done in us, your people, the church, among Christians. Let us demonstrate to a watching world what this reconciliation looks like in real time, on the ground. In all the different trials and difficulties of life, let us be the first to show it. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for your glory, Father. Amen.