NOTES for Col 1:18-20

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.