NOTES for Col 1:1-23
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.