NOTES for Col 1:16
It is interesting: in what sense does Paul say that everything created was created for Christ? Of course, in his words one can see a reflection of the traditional Jewish messianic ideas that speak of the Messiah as the One whom God had conceived before the creation of the world.
If one considers that traditional Judaism looks the same way at the people of God, who too were conceived by God before the creation of the world, it is not hard to conclude that the world was created and exists for the sake of the people of God and the Messiah. But the apostle brings into these traditional ideas, undoubtedly familiar to him, something new. He says of Christ that everything created was created not only for Him, but also by Him.
Of course, the question of the Messiah's origin is not resolved unambiguously in the prophetic tradition either; some names of the Messiah found, for example, in Isaiah of Jerusalem, make one think of special relations between the Messiah and God, relations not only, in philosophical language, existential, but also ontological. Yet none of the prophets speaks of the Messiah's divinity, and Judaism knows no such ideas. Paul, directly saying that the world was created by Christ, evidently means precisely this. Christ creates the world together with the Father; therefore it is created for Him, just as for the Father Himself.
But then the Messiah becomes not only God's messenger on earth, fulfilling His will. He Himself becomes a theophany, bringing into the world the same fullness of God that belongs to the Father. Figuratively speaking, after Christ's coming there is as much of God on earth as there has always been in heaven. That is why Christians need no mediators between themselves and God, between themselves and Christ: all imaginable and unimaginable hierarchies, all "thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers" mentioned by Paul cannot give the world more than Christ has already given it.
It is not surprising that the Kingdom too entered the world with Christ and through Christ, for it is unthinkable apart from that fullness of God which makes it what the witnesses speak about. Then it becomes clear that the world really was created for the sake of Christ and the Kingdom. For the only alternative to such a development of events is the triumph of sin and death. And this God does not want to allow.