The Epistle to the Colossians

The Epistle to the Colossians answers a deceptive teaching that was seducing this Church: a mixture of ascetic rules, angel worship, and speculations that lowered Christ to the rank of one intermediary among others. Paul answers by exalting the absolute primacy of Christ.

The primacy of Christ

Against those who set heavenly powers between God and men, Paul affirms that Christ holds the first rank over all creation, because he is God himself made visible: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Colossians 1:15 Firstborn does not mean created first, but sovereign over all: it is in him that all was made, and by him that all subsists. And “all” reaches even to the powers set between God and men: “for in him all things were created… the visible and the invisible: Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers. All things were created through him and for him.” Colossians 1:16 The angels themselves are his creatures; to venerate them as mediators is to put them in the Creator’s place. “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17 He is also the head of the body that is the Church, and the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may hold the primacy. And the hymn ends on reconciliation: this primacy does not weigh down, it saves, for God willed through him to reconcile all things, making peace by the blood of the Cross. “to reconcile all things to himself, on earth and in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” Colossians 1:20

All fullness in him

This primacy has a foundation that Paul states plainly: it is not a part of God that dwells in Christ, but his whole fullness, and in his very flesh. “in him dwells bodily all the fullness of the divinity.” Colossians 2:9 Henceforth, the believer united to Christ possesses everything: he needs no mediating angel nor any added observance to draw near to God, for he has Christ, in whom God gives himself wholly.

Against false wisdoms

Paul then warns against what turns from Christ under cover of wisdom or perfection: “See to it that no one makes you his prey through philosophy, that empty deceit based on human tradition, on the elements of the world, and not on Christ.” Colossians 2:8 The elements of the world are the powers and principles thought to govern the universe, with their observances and angelic mediations. To these observances Paul opposes the true circumcision, no longer in the flesh but of the heart, worked in baptism: “In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made by human hands… the circumcision of Christ. Buried with him in baptism, in it you were also raised with him.” Colossians 2:11-12 What circumcision marked in the flesh, baptism fulfils in the whole man. Christ first wiped out what condemned us: “He wiped out the record that stood against us, with its decrees that accused us; he removed it by nailing it to the cross.” Colossians 2:14 The list of our debts, nailed to the wood, vanishes; it is from that same cross that Christ then drags the conquered powers. Yet these very powers are creatures of Christ, and he has conquered them: “He stripped the Principalities and the Powers, made a public spectacle of them, dragging them in his triumphal procession by the cross.” Colossians 2:15 To venerate an angel as mediator becomes henceforth absurd. The food prohibitions, the scrupulously kept feasts, the worship of angels promised an access to God that Christ alone gives. To add to Christ is in truth to turn away from him.

The things that are above

From this union with the risen Christ, Paul draws the rule of the whole life. By baptism, the believer has already, in a certain manner, died and risen with Christ, dead to his old life of sin and living a new life; his true life is now turned toward the heaven where Christ dwells: “If, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” Colossians 3:1 To seek the things above is not to flee the earth, but to live on it according to what one has become in Christ.