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New American Standard Bible (en)

New American Standard Bible (en)

Colossians, Chapter 1, verses 18-20

¹³ The Incomparable Christ

¹⁸ He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹ For^aait was the Father’s good pleasure for all the^abfullness to dwell in Him, ²⁰ and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in^acheaven.

18

Eph 1:22 Eph 1:23 Col 1:24 Col 2:19 Rev 3:14 Act 26:23

19

Eph 1:5 Joh 1:16

20

Co2 5:18 Eph 2:16 Rom 5:1 Eph 2:14 Eph 2:13 Col 1:16

Read more:Colossians, Chapter 1

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1

1:18 And - From the whole he now descends to the most eminent part, the church. He is the head of the church - Universal; the supreme and only head both of influence and of government to the whole body of believers. Who is - The repetition of the expression {Col 1:15} points out the entrance on a new paragraph. The beginning - Absolutely, the Eternal. The first begotten from the dead - From whose resurrection flows all the life, spiritual and eternal, of all his brethren. That in all things - Whether of nature or grace. He might have the pre - eminence - Who can sound this depth?

1:19 For it pleased the Father that all fulness - All the fulness of God. Should dwell in him - Constantly, as in a temple; and always ready for our approach to him.

1:20 Through the blood of the cross - The blood shed thereon. Whether things on earth - Here the enmity began: therefore this is mentioned first. Or things in heaven - Those who are now in paradise; the saints who died before Christ came.

NOTES

Addressing the Colossians, Paul begins his letter with the main thing that forms the foundation of Christian life...

Paul speaks in such a way that one may think everything he says should already be known to the addressees of his letter, and that the apostle is only reminding them of what they already know.

Even in pre-Christian times people spoke of the Messiah as the One whom God had intended before the creation of the world, and Paul does not reject this tradition. But he goes still further: he connects the person of the Messiah with that mystery of God's own personhood which only in Christ can be revealed to a human being, at least in part. The point is the connection between the fullness of Christ's life and the fullness of God's life.

For the apostle this is one and the same fullness. He understands that in Christ there acts the same will that created the world, God's will, which conformed its action to the framework of the human nature into which God placed it. Here, of course, there are not yet any theological schemes connected with Trinitarian theology, nor any developed teaching on the incarnation of God, but Paul undoubtedly recognizes the spiritual reality that became the spiritual soil for all these schemes and concepts.

He himself, however, is not troubled or occupied by them. What matters to the apostle are the practical conclusions from what was revealed to him and what he was able to understand. And first of all, the fact that the One who brought the fullness of the Kingdom into the world also bears in Himself the fullness of God, differently from His heavenly Father, but the very same fullness; and the fullness of the life of the Kingdom opened to every Christian is connected precisely with it. Participation in the life of the Kingdom also turns out to be participation in God's life, which is opened to the Christian in the process and in the context of his relationship with Christ. And here there are no longer any barriers or boundaries: the Kingdom is one, and therefore the apostle speaks of Christ as the One through whom God reconciles the world to Himself.

Formerly the fallen world stood opposed to God; now it has been reconciled with Him insofar as it has been transformed into the Kingdom brought by the Savior. For a person, however, such reconciliation is always a matter of relationship with Jesus, a deeply personal relationship that opens to him the fullness of another relationship: that of the Father and the Son. And there the fullness of the Kingdom and the fullness of God's life, accessible to a human being, are revealed to the Christian, and a person receives as much of that life as he is able to receive. This is the life of which Paul reminds the Colossians, presuming that it should already be known to them.

Beginning his letter to the church in Colossae, Paul as it were repeats anew the fundamental truths without which...

Beginning his letter to the church in Colossae, Paul as it were repeats anew the fundamental truths without which there is and can be no Christianity in its original sense, connected with the experience of the life of the Kingdom. It is no surprise that the center of his witness is the image of the Messiah-Christ, without whom Christianity as the experience of the Kingdom is impossible in principle (vv. 9-17). And if, according to traditional rabbinic ideas, the Messiah was conceived by God even before the creation of the world, then for Paul the Messiah becomes the One without whom the world is unthinkable, the One on whom it rests and who constitutes its true foundation (vv. 15-17).

Such a transformation of traditional ideas is entirely logical: if the Messiah contains all the fullness of the Kingdom (v. 19), and the Kingdom is the only real, true reality through which and for the sake of which everything else exists, then the Messiah Himself quite naturally becomes the foundation on which the universe rests.

But for Christians, whose main task is participation in the life of the Kingdom and then rooting themselves in it, the most important thing is the possibility, opened by Christ's coming into the world, of complete cleansing from sin, without which one cannot enter the Kingdom (vv. 13-14). In former times God cleansed His people from sin through purifying sacrifices, but such cleansing was not complete: one could be cleansed in this way only from a sin committed involuntarily, through ignorance or under compulsion. The blood of sacrificial animals, sanctified by God's presence, was not enough for more than that. Now every seeker of the Kingdom has the possibility of being cleansed from any sin, beginning his spiritual life anew and dedicating it to the path into the Kingdom.

For the apostle the Kingdom is nothing other than the union of heaven and earth; for him the Church turns out in this respect not even to be a prefiguration, but the form of the Kingdom's existence in our world, which is being transformed but is not yet transformed (vv. 18-20). No less important for Paul is the overcoming by seekers of the Kingdom of their own sinfulness, without which one cannot enter the Kingdom (vv. 21-23). The task of the Church is twofold: on the one hand, it must become the space of the Kingdom in the world being transformed; on the other hand, it must be a community of those being saved, a community of people walking the path of the Kingdom but still far from reaching the goal. The unfolding of the fullness of the Kingdom in our transforming world is inseparable from the spiritual formation of its inhabitants, and this process will be completed only at the end of time with the return of Christ.

What did the coming of Christ bring into the world? Today's message speaks of a fundamental change on three levels: in a person's personal existence, in relationships between people, and in the relationship between a person and God. Christ accomplishes victory over death, and a person's life...

FAQ

What is the fullness of Christ and how does one enter into it?

The "fullness of Christ" is a concept that can be interpreted in several aspects...

The "fullness of Christ" is a concept that can be interpreted in several aspects.

1) The fullness of the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is, in fact, the reason why Christians gather in the Church, as the Lord Himself said about it: "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20). Furthermore, the Lord says about this: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him" (John 14:24). The Greek word can be translated as a) dwelling, b) rest, c) abiding. It is speaking of the presence of God in a person's life.

2) The Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians says: "till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). The last words can also be translated as "to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ." The Apostle is saying that the life of a Christian is directed towards being able, following the apostle himself, to say: "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). The apostle also says about this: "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:1).

The fullness of Christ, undoubtedly, cannot be adequately described in words; however, these two aspects allow us to identify the main point.

As for the question of how to enter into this fullness, the answer follows from what has been said above. The "gates" through which we can enter the fullness of Christ is the Church. In it, the possibility of prayerful communion with Christ and participation in the sacraments of the Church is revealed to us, where He Himself comes into our lives according to His promise. Also, a fundamental condition for entering into the fullness of Christ is living according to His commandments. But most importantly: since it would be naive to try to force Him into the fullness of communion with us, we must first of all ask this of Him Himself. Many Christians resort, in addition to this, to the prayers of other members of the Church, first and foremost the Most Pure Mother of God.

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