Colossians 1:15 - 1:20

Colossians — Steve Gregg

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Colossians 1:15 - 1:20

ColossiansSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg delves into the book of Colossians, suggesting that Paul may be quoting an early creedal statement in verses 15-16 and the first part of verse 17. He discusses Jesus' relationship with creation, emphasizing his role as the firstborn and ruler, rather than being eternally begotten. Gregg explores the concept of the church as the body of Christ, highlighting the interconnectedness and shared life of its members. Additionally, he touches on the Greek word "plērōma" used in Colossians, which holds significance in the context of Gnostic sects.

Transcript

We're going to resume our study in the book of Colossians. At Colossians 1, verse 15, we actually included verse 15 in our last session, and that was the verse which began a section that is generally thought to be a quoting of an ancient Christian hymn. From time to time, you will find in the writings of Paul what appears to be the quoting of some kind of a poetic piece, probably a hymn of the early church, or maybe a doctrinal statement.

For some reason, the New King James, which usually sets such things off in a different kind of a paragraph to show that it is poetry, or to show that it is a different kind of literature, did not do so in this case. If you would like to see an example where the New King James has done that, turn your attention to 1 Timothy 3, verse 16. Most translations would do the same.

There we have a case where the translators have made a difference in the way they lay out the paragraph to show that you have a piece of poetry, a quotation of something from Paul, rather than something that he is coming up with here. In 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, he says, Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. Then there is a colon, and the rest of the verse is set off as in poetic verse.

God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up to glory. The reason that that is set as it is, is because scholars are of the opinion that Paul is here quoting an early creedal statement of the church of his time. Just like some churches today recite the Apostles' Creed, it is thought that since the Apostles' Creed did not exist in Paul's time, that this may have been one of the creeds the early church recited, and that Paul recites it as part of his discussion.

Likewise, verses 15-20 of Colossians, chapter 1, is thought perhaps to be a familiar hymn to the early Christians, though the New King James translators have not set it off in verse. Probably the reason is that it is not really written in verse. This perhaps challenges the assumption of many scholars that it is a song.

It is not written in stanzas. Well, there may be stanzas, that is debatable, but it is not written in lines such as you would recognize as poetry. Therefore, the suggestion that it is poetry, or that it is a hymn, perhaps can stand challenge.

But what you do find is two essential parts to this section. Whether it was sung by the early Christians, or whether it was something Paul was now coming up with originally, it is verses 15-20. The first section, which would be verses 15-16 and verse 17, would be the first part, and speaks generally of Jesus' relationship to the creation, or to the created order.

Then verse 18, and following to the end, verse 20, talks about Jesus' relationship to the church. So Jesus is seen to be the Lord of creation and the Lord of the church, we started last time looking at verse 15. Actually, we don't need to go into detail about it anymore, but I do want to start there again just to summarize.

It says that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. The New King James says firstborn over all creation. I mentioned last time that that preposition over, or of, or before, some translators put it, is obviously an ambiguous phrase.

Firstborn of all creation is how the New King James renders it. In going on beyond this, I need to remind you that last time we were talking about this expression, the firstborn of all creation, and how that some, those especially who challenge the deity of Christ, or who do not believe that Jesus is God, but believe he is a created being, perhaps the greatest and the highest and most exalted of all created beings, but a created being nonetheless, they make capital of this particular statement that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, suggesting that this is arguing that he is part of the creation, the first, the beginning of it, the first thing God created. And certainly the wording could be understood that way, that as God gave birth to the creation, Jesus was the first thing he gave birth to.

He is the firstborn of all creation. But as I said last time, there are other ways to understand it that are certainly more consistent with the context, and I'll tell you more about that context as we read a little further, but let me just remind you that there are two ways that Christians have generally taken this. One is the way that everyone except me takes it, and the other way is the way I take it.

So, I mean, if I'm in the minority, it should give you reason to be suspicious of the validity of anything I would have to say. But the fact of the matter is, sometimes I do disagree with all the commentators, and you have to evaluate for yourself whether they're right or I'm right. They may be, and I may be wrong.

But the way that most commentators take this, who are Christians, they say, no, firstborn is not used in the sense of chronological. It doesn't mean that he really was before the rest of creation, although he certainly was, but that's not the point of Paul using the term. That firstborn should just be taken as a synonym for the ruler, or the Lord of all creation, because the firstborn in any family was, in fact, in that role.

At least upon the death of the father, the firstborn son assumed the leadership of the Semitic family structure, and was the Lord and the inheritor of the double portion, and so forth. Therefore, since the firstborn in a family had this authority, then to speak of Jesus as the firstborn of God is simply to say that he is the ruler, or the Lord, over all creation. Now, you can see this particular belief in the way that the New King James translators opted to translate the preposition.

Instead of firstborn of all creation, they translated it firstborn over all creation. Those who hold this view, that firstborn simply is another way of saying ruler, would prefer to translate it this way, or as F. F. Bruce prefers to translate it, who also sees it as just another word for ruler, he translates it the firstborn before all creation. But still, although there's the chronological statement there, before, it is still not saying that Jesus is, has some kind of, or coming into existence, because the classical Orthodox teaching is that Jesus did not come into existence.

He has always existed, because he is God, and God did not begin. Therefore, Jesus did not begin. And I remember being in trouble once, discussing this with Jehovah's Witnesses in my own home many years ago, this would be twenty-something years ago now.

And we were debating the Trinity, we were debating the deity of Christ, which is the only thing I really feel is worth debating with them, and they brought up this verse, as they like to do, because to them it suggests, especially in the rendering firstborn of all creation, that Jesus is part of a created order. And I, at that time, following the more, I guess, Orthodox argument, argued that it does not mean that he was created, but rather that he was begotten. One of the famous creeds speaks of Jesus as being begotten, not made.

Begotten by God, but not made in eternity past. And my view was that this passage was essentially saying that Jesus was born of God in eternity past, before any creation came into being. And that's the way some Christians would understand it as well.

They said to me, and I had to admit, although not to them, but to myself, that they made sense of what they said. They said, well, okay, let's have it your way. Let's say he was begotten, not made.

Doesn't that mean he had a beginning? How does one become begotten if they existed before that time? Isn't begotten, doesn't that refer to being conceived and being brought to birth? Isn't that what it means when it says so and so begot so and so who begot so and so who begot so and so in the genealogies? Doesn't it mean that the beginning of someone was that you brought them into existence, you fathered them? If Jesus existed before the point of his being begotten, in what sense can we say he was begotten? What they were arguing is that if it is saying that Jesus was begotten in eternity past, then so be it. He was begotten. He had a beginning.

How does one become the son of another person but by coming out of that person? And isn't there some point in time in which that happens? Now, the Orthodox teaching is that no, there was no point in time in which that happened. Actually, that Jesus was eternally, not at some point in time, but in all eternity, forever and ever and ever and ever, he was begotten of the Father. One way that some Orthodox people have argued this is that God the Father is like the Son, and Jesus is like the rays of light that come from the Son.

Certainly the rays of light have perpetually come from the Son and have been there as long as the Son has existed. You could say that the rays of light that come from the Son have been around as long as the Son itself has been around, but they still have their origin in the Son. They still come from the Son.

They emanate from. And there is perhaps some scriptural support for this idea in Hebrews, where it says of Jesus in Hebrews 1.3 that he is the brightness of God's glory, of God's radiance. He is the brightness.

Perhaps that is an image that can be supported. But I will say that it made me very uncomfortable arguing that Jesus was eternally begotten in time past, because although that may be true, I would not wish to affirm it unless the Bible said it. And I went on a search of the Old Testament and the New to find out whether there was any place in the Bible that said that Jesus was eternally begotten.

That is to say that the beginning of Jesus was something that happened in eternity past, prior to the creation of the world. And I found nothing. I found nothing in the Bible to support it.

And as I looked in the Old Testament for some evidence that Jesus in Old Testament times was called the Son, you see in the New Testament he is called the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, according to John 1.1. I never have had any doubt that Jesus is God and eternal. The question is whether he bore a relationship to the Father which is called Father-Son prior to coming to earth.

That is what I was looking for. I found two Old Testament passages, and in the years following I asked many to find passages for me and they found the same two only. One was Psalm 2.7 where it says, and this is the Father speaking to Jesus in Psalm 2.7. It is quite plain that he is.

The Father says to Jesus, You are my Son, this day I have begotten you. Now, the fact that this statement occurs in the Old Testament before Jesus came to earth, and the fact that God says this day I have begotten you, is thought by some to prove that Jesus was begotten sometime before he came to earth as a mare. That he bore the relationship of a begotten son to God while they were still in heaven before he ever became a mare.

The only problem with this, well there are two problems with this, and that is that in that Psalm it does not say, You are my Son, in eternity I begotten you. It says, this day I have begotten you. It is a point in time that it speaks of.

I remember reading a commentator wrestling with this commentary on Psalms and when he saw the term this day he said, well this day means in the sense of the eternal day. I thought, well where else in scripture do you ever find support for the idea of an eternal day? I don't find one. I think that was an exegesis of desperation and necessity.

The fact of the matter is that if the Bible says this day something has happened, it usually is pointing to a point in time before which it had not happened. It happened on this day and not some previous or later day. So, it seems that Psalm 27 did not make a good support for the idea that Jesus was begotten in eternity past.

There is some particular day in which that beginning takes place. The other reason that that verse is not useful to prove that point is because it is quoted in the New Testament with a different meaning. That New Testament passage where it is so quoted is Acts 13 where Paul is preaching in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch and he quotes this verse and gives an interpretation of what it means.

Paul is an apostle inspired by God. I believe that he could not misunderstand and could not misrepresent what the Old Testament meant. It is in Acts 13.32 that Paul says, We declare to you, glad tidings, that the promise which was made to the fathers God has fulfilled this for us, their children, in that he has also raised up Jesus.

There is no question that he is talking about raised from the dead because in verse 30 he says that God raised him from the dead. Now he reaffirms it in verse 33. God fulfilled this because he raised up Jesus.

Then his next statement is, As it is also written in the second Psalm, You are my son, today I have begotten you. In what sense does that Psalm teach what Paul is saying? Paul says, God fulfilled his promise in raising up Jesus from the dead even as it was predicted in the Psalm. What Psalm? Psalm 27.

You are my son, today I have begotten you. What day is this that it is referring to? The day of resurrection. In what sense is he begotten? From the dead.

He is the first born from the dead. Paul says that in Colossians 1.18. Jesus himself says it about himself in Revelation 1.5. Jesus is the first born from the dead. Therefore, Psalm 27, according to Paul, is a reference not to Jesus being eternally begotten and eternally passed.

It is a reference to the day that Jesus rose from the dead. God says, You are my son, today I have begotten you. That is, from the dead.

If the inspired apostle understood Psalm 27 that way, and even the wording of Psalm 27, which says, This day, seems to militate against the teaching of an eternal begottenness, in my mind I cannot think of any reason to use that scripture to prove such a point. The only other Old Testament passage that was ever suggested to teach that Jesus, before his incarnation, was called the Son, or bore that relationship with the Father, is Isaiah 9.6 and 7, which says, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. It goes on to say that his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace, the Everlasting Father.

It is obvious that this is talking about Jesus. Yet it says of him, Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. It is thought to teach, therefore, that when Jesus was born, he was already a son before that, and God, in having the incarnation take place, caused his son to be given.

That Jesus, before being born, was already the Son. But that is not at all stated explicitly in the verse. A child is born certainly refers to the incarnation of Jesus, but what does it mean that the Son is given? It could as easily mean, it seems to me, that he was given on the cross.

Upon being born, he was now a son, and in being crucified, a son, the Son, was given as the propitiation for our sins, given by God as the sacrifice necessary for our salvation. Perhaps that wording in Isaiah could be understood differently, but the point is that we need a passage that cannot be understood differently. If we are going to suggest something as hard to fathom, as someone being begotten, forever and ever and ever begotten, as a son, let's say that the concept is difficult.

The Bible sometimes calls upon us to accept difficult concepts. I don't mind that. I believe in the Trinity, and the Trinity is a difficult concept.

The reason I believe in the Trinity is not because it is a difficult concept, and not also because it is the orthodox, traditional view. I believe in the Trinity because I believe it is taught in Scripture. If I am going to believe something like Jesus was eternally begotten, a concept that is very difficult to conceive of, I want to believe it because it is taught in Scripture, and not because it is traditional to teach it or believe it.

What I am saying to you is that I have been unable in the last twenty-something years, during which time I have taught through the whole Bible at least a dozen times, I have been unable to find any Scripture that teaches that Jesus was eternally begotten. That doesn't mean he wasn't, and I am not denying that he was. I am simply saying that if one wants to say that he was, they must find Scriptures to support it.

I cannot find those Scriptures, perhaps you can. But I will say this, the Bible certainly teaches that before Jesus came to earth he was God, he was the Word. Whenever the New Testament speaks of Jesus' pre-existence, before his birth, he is said to be the Word.

The Word was made flesh. He existed in the form of God, the Scripture says. So my understanding has been that it is not a very strong argument to say that he is the firstborn of all creation, meaning that he was begotten eternally in the past, since Paul would be nebulously, vaguely referring to a concept that is nowhere taught anywhere else in Scripture here.

That would certainly be calculated to confuse his audience, and it certainly would confuse us, and it has confused many. Such vagueness only gives ammunition to people like the Jehovah's Witnesses. My alternate understanding, and I gave this to you at the end of our last session, is that firstborn in verse 15 of Colossians 1 is used in the same sense that it is used in Colossians 1.18. Only twice in all of Paul's writings, unless we include Hebrews as Paul's writing, but only twice as far as we know in Paul's own language is ... now I need to modify that statement, there is another place where the term firstborn is used in Romans 8. Let me say this, rarely, very rarely is the term firstborn ever used of Jesus in Paul's writings.

But it occurs twice in the same chapter within the space of three verses. The first time without a modifying phrase, the second time there is a modifying phrase. To my mind it would be most likely that it means the same thing in both cases, and where there is not a modifying phrase in verse 15, it is appropriate and valid to bring in the modifying phrase that is found three verses later to firstborn.

Firstborn from the dead, in verse 18. Therefore, speaking not of Christ's beginning as the begotten and eternal path, it is not talking about being part of the creative order, and it is not even simply saying that he is the Lord of creation, though he is that. But it is implying that in terms of his relationship to the whole creation, he is the first to have been born from the dead.

He is the first to have taken on the form of the new creation, to be glorified, to be delivered from the bondage of the curse that was imposed by the first Adam. Christ is the first to escape that and to come into the new order of being in which the whole of creation will eventually sometime also be born into. I gave you last time Romans chapter 8 as Paul's own statements to this effect, that the whole of creation is groaning, looking forward to this time when the children of God will be glorified, when our bodies will be redeemed, because it says the whole creation will also be redeemed from the bondage of decay at the same time, said Paul.

We know that Jesus is said to be the first fruit of those who slept, meaning that he was raised from the dead and we, as the rest of us, will be raised from the dead. He is the firstborn of all humanity from the dead. He is the firstborn of many brethren, in Romans 8.29. I think what Paul is adding here is simply another aspect.

He is not only the firstborn of all people who will be raised from the dead, he is also the firstborn of the whole creation that will be raised from the dead. He is simply the first to be glorified. He is the forerunner of all created things and of all people who someday will experience such a renovation that is coming.

That is at least how I am inclined to understand it. If a person wishes to understand it differently, I certainly would not call them a heretic. There are many ways that people have tried to understand this, and I think some of them would at least have a claim to be invalid.

One way that will not work is to take it the way that Jehovah's Witnesses do. Paul cannot be construed as teaching that Jesus was the first created thing, and the immediate context proves this beyond question. In the next verse, he says in verse 16, For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, principalities or powers, all things were created through him and for him.

This is fairly emphatic. Everything in the created order was created by him. In case you are wondering about the categories, was there any category that was not included? No, all categories include things in heaven, things in earth, things visible and things invisible.

Which category does Jesus belong to? Is he visible or invisible? He seems to be invisible at the moment. Is he in heaven or on earth? He is in heaven. He has been on earth, he has been in heaven, he has been both places.

So whichever category you want to take, things in heaven or things in earth, he is in one of those categories. How can he be one of the created things if all things in all those categories he created? The Jehovah's Witness translators of their Bible apparently felt the force of this argument so that in verse 16 they added a word before all things. They put a word in between all and things.

They put all other things. There is no corresponding word in the Greek text for other. They made that up.

They put it there, which basically was their way of confessing that this scripture had them over a barrel on their docket about the deity of Christ. They don't believe in the deity of Christ, they believe it is a created thing, and yet this scripture says that all created things were created by him. And so in order to basically reduce the negative impact on their doctrine, they found it within themselves to create a word, other, which is not anywhere in the Greek text, so that they have it saying, For by him all other things were created.

What does that mean? All things other than himself. That he was created by God and then all other things were created by him. The problem is there is no support for that in the text.

And it is relatively emphatic. You have the word all things in verse 16 twice. Both times it says all things were created that are in heaven, all things were created through him and for him, and even in verse 17, before him he is before all things.

Now, all things, what does that mean? All created things, certainly. All things that are created were created by him. And if it is not clear enough here, we could turn to the Gospel of John chapter 1, where the Jehovah's Witness translators, I think, neglected to add the word other when they should have if they wanted to sustain their doctrine.

This is one where their translators just kind of overlooked an opportunity, because they shoot themselves in the foot by leaving the text the way it reads in the Greek. But in John 1, after it has been talking about Jesus being the word and being God, you know how they changed that, but in verse 2 it says he was in the beginning with God, all things were made through him. And in case you did not get the message, he says it again another way.

Without him, nothing was made that was made. Now, the question has got to be asked, John, as you say this, are you including Jesus among the things that are made, that is, among the realm of created things, or are you excluding Jesus from the realm of created things? That is really the only two possibilities. Jesus is either in one category or the other.

There are only things that are created, and there are things that are uncreated, never created. Now, the only thing that was never created was God. Everything else was created.

Now, does John and Paul, in these two passages, include Jesus among those things created or among the things uncreated? Well, read it again. John 1.3. All things, that is the same expression Paul uses in Colossians, all things, he created all things. Here it says, all things were made through him.

That means he had to come into existence for things to be made through him. He had to be in existence for things to come through him. You cannot pipe water into a house through pipes until you put the pipes in place.

Nothing can go through something that does not exist. So, if everything that was made was made through him, he must have been there before any of those things were made. Then he is emphatic.

Without him, nothing was made that was made. Now, that last clause, nothing that was made, means the whole created realm. Of the entire created realm, of the whole realm of things that were made, he is not one of them.

In fact, none of them came into existence without him already being there and them coming about through him. Here, as I say, the Jehovah's Witnesses would have done themselves better to add the word other. All other things.

It's not in the Greek here either, but they didn't have any Greek grounds for it in Colossians 1.16. They did it there, they might have done it here too to save themselves some headaches. But they'll get more headaches later for tampering with the word of God. But the thing is, both Paul and John have made it clear that Jesus is not regarded by the them as belonging to the realm of the created.

He is the uncreated, and the only thing that's in that category is God. Requiring that Jesus is God. Not one of the things God made.

Now, moving along here, back to Colossians 1.16. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities and powers. All things were created through him and for him. Now, the wording here may be calculated to address some of the claims of the Gnostic and heretical things that were being taught, or that are thought to have been taught in Colossians, because some of these cults emphasize the unseen realm and getting visions of that which is the invisible realm and being transported to the various levels of spirituality toward God through various aeons, as they called them, or points of progress, increments of progress up toward the divine essence.

And there were many invisible entities in their theology, principalities and powers, angelic things that they looked up to, as it were, and they looked to as assisting them through the various stages. And what Paul is saying is, listen, Jesus made all those things. I mean, Paul is not affirming that the aeons of the Gnostic theology exist.

He's just saying anything that's invisible, and that would include any aeons you want to speculate about, and anything visible, everything in heaven, it's all made by Jesus and it's all made for his benefit and for his glory. So why don't we exclude the middleman and just go directly to the top? No need to discuss or think about the angels or the aeons or the intermediaries. There's only one intermediary we need to be concerned about, and he's over all of them, and he made them all, and they're all made for him, and since he invites us to have a direct relationship with him, what's the point of dealing with these other imagined entities? Or real? Real or imagined, it doesn't matter.

Certainly angels are real. Certainly demons are real. Whether these so-called aeons of Gnosticism are to be identified with angels or whether they're some entirely speculative nonsense, we don't need to settle that question.

The point is, whether they're real or imagined, Jesus is above everything that is. So let's just go to him and not worry about them. Verse 17, and he is before all things, now it's at this point that he begins to talk about priority in chronology.

He's before all things, and by him all things consist. The word consist there can mean hold together. They hold together in him, and this may simply mean that all the elements of reality, all of the elements of history, are all of the factors that make the universe a consistent whole, or even that make history coherent.

All of them are, you know, somehow his sovereign rule infuses the whole thing and holds everything together in some kind of esoteric sense. But many Christians have felt, and they could well be right, that hold together may even talk about the actual elements, as we would use that term, the elements of the physical world. Now, they didn't know about what we call atoms in those days, but even the Greek philosophers did form, the word atom came out of ancient Greek philosophy.

Now, in modern times we have this concept of what an atom is constructed of and what they are and so forth, but atoms was an old Greek word used by the Greek philosophers for the basic smallest particles of stuff that everything's made of. And so when scientists actually discovered or came to the awareness of what we today call atoms, they simply adopted that word because the Greeks had used the word atom for, you know, the basic tiniest stuff, the particles of which stuff is made. Now, today we are aware of even subatomic particles.

The atoms are not the smallest thing known now. There are particles that atoms are made of, and these have various electrical charges. You've got, in the nucleus of the atom, you've got a cluster of neutrons and protons, which are, the neutrons have no electrical charge, the protons have a positive electrical charge.

And around this cluster, which we call the nucleus, there are orbiting particles, which are called electrons, which themselves have a negative charge. Now, you don't need to understand all that, but one thing that scientists have puzzled over for a long time is why does the atom hold itself together? You see, there is a known law of physics that like charges repel each other, and opposite charges attract. Anyone who's played with, you know, bar magnets has been able to prove to himself that if you try to hold the two positive ends or the two negative ends toward each other, there's a force resisting this.

But if you turn the negative end toward the one, toward the positive end of the other, they attract each other because that's simply the way electrical charges work. Negative attracts positive, positive attracts negative, negative repels negative, and positive repels positive. That is, like charges repel each other.

The problem here is you've got all these things in the cluster of the nucleus of the atom, which are called protons, and they all have a positive charge. They're just little particles that all have a positive magnetic charge. Now, the question that has perplexed physicists is why do not these particles repel each other? Why, they all have the same charge.

What keeps them from repelling each other, which nature and laws of science would suggest they would do? There's nothing, as far as we know, smaller than them holding them together, like, you know, twine or something, wrapping them all together so they can't get away from each other, they seem to naturally hold together. And they cohere together as a bundle of positive-charged subatomic particles. It seems as if they ought to just disappear, they ought to just repel each other into space, but they don't, and everything solid, we are told, is made of such atoms that have this feature in the nucleus.

Now, some scientists, when they try to explain why these particles hold together in the nucleus, they just, they speculate that there must be some kind of atomic glue that holds them together. But atomic glue is really just a term that means something we don't know about that makes it happen. There's not really some stuff known to be atomic glue.

What would it be made of? Glue is made of atoms. We're talking about subatomic particles. What would atomic glue be made out of? And has anyone ever discovered this? No, it is only speculation.

There must be something, there's some force that holds them together against nature in order that physical matter can exist. And if that so-called atomic glue did not hold these together, there would be no material world. Now, Paul says that in Christ, or by him, all things are held together, all things consist.

And it is very possible that what Paul is saying is this atomic glue, which of course they didn't use that term in Paul's day, in fact I don't know if they even thought about the problem in Paul's day, but what people are speculating as atomic glue that holds atoms together is really not glue at all. It is nothing else but Jesus. He's the one who holds it all together.

Now, how is this done? Look over at 2 Peter 3. Beginning at verse 3, Peter says, knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For this they willingly forget, that by the word of God," that means by God's speaking, by God's command, by God's authoritative decree, by the word of God, the heavens were of old, that is, he created them by his word, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. That is a reference to the flood of Noah.

Then it says, in verse 7, but the heavens and earth which now exist, that is, you know, there was an older order that was flooded by water, but since that time there hasn't been another flood, and ever since that time there is the present condition of the heavens and earth. That condition, the heavens and the earth which now exist, are kept in store by the same word, reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. Now, the time will come, and he brings this up later in verse 10, when both the earth and the works of the Lord will be burned up, and the elements will melt with a fervent heat.

He says that in verse 10. Same thing in verse 12. He talks about the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat.

Now, there are some who see in these words the concept of nuclear fission. That, you know, if the atoms would simply dissolve, or would simply, you know, split, and all those particles go in separate directions, that would be like, that would be nuclear fission. That would be like the effect of a nuclear explosion.

The elements would dissolve, and it would all go up in a fervent heat, to say the least. Now, I'm not applying this to nuclear war, as some people might, and the end of the world would be with a nuclear war. I don't believe the Bible teaches that.

But what I'm saying is that when God does bring an end to this heavens and this earth, and replace it with a new heaven and new earth, the end of this heaven and earth seems to be with simply a dissolution of the elements. And it says in that context, Peter says in verse 7, that the heavens and earth that are existing now are kept in store, that they're preserved by that same word that created them. He says in verse 5 that the heavens and earth that were of old, they came by the word of God.

But now, he says in verse 7, and they are kept in store by the same word, that is, by God's decree. By God's word, they're held together, and when he decides to stop holding them together, then just all the elements will dissolve, and the universe will disappear and be replaced by a new heaven and new earth. Now, I may be misunderstanding him, but that's the way the words sound to me.

Now, who is the word of God? Well, Jesus is the word of God, and by the word of God, everything was created. That's affirmed about Jesus throughout Scripture, and by the same word, they're held together, or they're kept in store until the day that they will be dissolved. So, Colossians may be saying the same thing, Paul may be saying the same thing that Peter appears to be saying, and that is that Jesus himself holds the universe materially together until such a time as it will have outlived its usefulness, in which case he'll just stop doing it, and then it will burn up, and they'll have to start over again.

But he will do it, his coming. That's at least how I understand it. There could be better ways to understand it, but I'm not aware of them.

Colossians 1.18, and he is the head of the body of the church. Now we've moved from the discussion of Jesus' relationship to the creation. He was the creator of the creation, he's above it, it was made for him and through him, and he holds it together.

Now, next subject. What is he in relationship to you and me? The church. Well, he is, it says, the head of the body of the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, and in all things he may have the preeminence, or that in all things he may have the preeminence. Now, preeminence means that he's the superior of everything. He's above it all.

In all things, his authority, his glory, his concerns are predominant. He has the preeminence of all things. Now, in saying he's the head of the body of the church, remember I said to you that this book essentially is about Jesus, the head of the church.

Well, in Ephesians, it's about the church, the body of Christ. The idea that the church is a body is very familiar to us because we were raised, probably even from your earliest Christian life, with the idea that the church is the body of Christ. That's fine.

It's true. What we need to realize, though, is that that idea came from somewhere. Where did Paul get that idea? We do not find Jesus teaching that, which doesn't mean it's not true because after Jesus left, or when he was leaving, he said, I have many things to say to you, to the disciples.

You can't bear them now, but when the Holy Spirit comes, he will lead you into all truth. So we find that even after Jesus left, things he had never taught appear in the teachings of the apostles because the Holy Spirit leads them into greater truth than even what Jesus had taught them in his presence. And this, apparently, is one of those truths.

The early Christians, when Jesus was on earth, understood that they were followers of Jesus, but did they understand that they were one organic unity? I mean, it's one thing to have a club of people who say, we're all members of the same club, but they retain all their own essential individuality. It's another thing to say that we have all been merged, we've all been melted down into a common soup. Now, the idea of the body of Christ doesn't quite affirm either of those two things.

The body of Christ is the middle ground between those ideas because while all the parts of a body are part of the same organic whole, they all share the same life. The blood of your body flows through every organ, and the same blood that goes through one heart nurtures and nourishes every cell in your whole body. So there's an organic oneness about all the members, and yet, as Paul makes very clear, especially in 1 Corinthians 12, each member is different.

There is individuality, too. Your hand has a different function than your foot, and your eye has a different function than your nose, and so forth. Every organ has its own thing for which it was designed, and therefore, the body of Christ combines the idea of organic oneness, like a human body is all one person.

You're all one person. But individuality, too, because there are separate gifts, separate functions that God gives each one. And this is a great mystery, really.

It's a wonderful mystery, and it's one that is worth contemplating a great deal. Paul mentioned it for the first time, as far as chronologically in his writing career, he first mentioned it in 1 Corinthians 12, and discussed it in chapter 12 through 14 of 1 Corinthians. He also mentioned it briefly in Romans 12.

But it's in Ephesians and Colossians that the idea is perhaps expanded on more. The idea is that we are a body, and here's the important thing. We are not a body of a servant, and Jesus is another body, another person over here, and he is the master.

We are part of him. He is the head, and we are the members of his body. This is why Paul speaks so frequently, especially in his later writings, when this concept was crystallized, I think, in his thinking, he speaks much of being in Christ.

What does it mean to be in Christ? Well, what does it mean that when I say my lungs are in me? They're part of me. They're organically one part of me. And when you see me coming down the road, although my body may have its distinctive features, it's not by my body that you recognize that that's me.

It's by my head. A body is recognized by the features of its head. The head really gives identity to the body.

Any number of people might have similar bodies. If they all have paper bags over their heads, you might not be able to tell the difference between them. But you put paper bags over their bodies and keep their heads exposed, and you can spot the difference right away.

You know who's who, because the head identifies the person. Now, we are part of an organic, corporate identity called the body of Christ, of which he is the organic head. And all the life of Christ is available to all the members of the body.

Let me show you what the implications of this are in Paul before we go on. In 1 Corinthians 12, and verse 12, this is the first place in all Paul's writings chronologically. He wrote Corinthians earlier than these other books that we mentioned.

Chronologically, it's the first time that Paul as a writer introduces the idea of the body of Christ, the church, the body of Christ. And here's how he introduces it. In 1 Corinthians 12, 12, it's the very first time he mentions this concept.

And he says it this way. For as the body, meaning the human body, he's using an analogy of a human body. For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members are one body, so also is, and you expect to say the church or the body of Christ.

But what's he saying? So also is Christ. Christ? What is Christ? A body with many members. Just like your human body, which includes the head and the other parts too, you, your body, is one body, has many members, but the many members have their individuality also shared in unity with each other in one life, together.

So also is Christ. And it's clear that in the picture of what he's calling Christ, he's including the whole body with its many members. And if you'll turn to Ephesians chapter 1, we see Paul obviously expressing the same idea.

Speaking of the honor that the Father has bestowed upon Christ, among other things, he says this in Ephesians 1, 22 and 23. And he, the Father, put all things under Christ's feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body. Now look at the next thing the church is.

The church is his body. It is also the fullness of him who fills all in all. The church is his body.

It is the filling out of who he is. And where did Paul get this idea first of all? Well, there was some suggestion of this in the teaching of Jesus, though not with the image of a body, but the image of a plant. You might remember it.

In the 15th chapter of John, Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches. And then he introduced this idea of being in him. As Paul talks so much about Jesus, abide in me as a branch abides in the vine.

What does it mean to be in the vine? If there is a vine out here, I don't know if I see anything I call a vine, but let's take a tree. There are trees out here, there are branches in the tree. Now, what does it mean to be a branch in the tree? It means that the branch is organically connected and shares in the life.

It is part of the organism that we call a tree. You don't have a tree and then in addition to the tree, you have the branches as something else. The branches are part of the total organism that's called the tree.

Likewise, the branches on a vine, a grape vine has branches, but the vine is not something else than the branches. The branches are just an organic part of the vine. A vine without any branches isn't much of a vine.

The branches fill out. They're the fullness of the vine. And Jesus introduced this idea with that image of a vine, Paul extended it to the idea of a body.

And perhaps the reason he did so is because when he was called Saul of Tarsus and he was on his way to Damascus to persecute the church, he met Jesus in a glorious, radiant vision that temporarily blinded him and left him converted. And Jesus spoke to him and said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Saul never laid eyes on him. What do you mean I'm not persecuting you? What are you talking about? Who are you that I'm persecuting you? Well, of course, he came to understand he was persecuting the church and the church was the body of Jesus.

He didn't fully understand that concept at that moment, but no doubt he had a lot of time to reflect on that. What do you mean I'm persecuting these people and Jesus, I'm persecuting him. Remember when Jesus said in Matthew 25 about the parable of the sheep and the goats, that those who had treated him well and those who had not treated him well, they said, when? I don't recall that.

When did I ever see you and treat you well or see you and not treat you well? Do you remember what his answer was? In as much as you've done it to the least of these, my brethren, you have done it to me. Why? Because they are my hands, they're my feet. You step on my toe, you stepped on my toe.

That's me. My head says, ouch, because it's connected to the toe. It has the same concerns, the same life, the same identity.

The head gives identity to the body, but the body is part of the head organically and shares in the life and the destiny of the head. Therefore, when Paul says we are in Christ, he's got the concept of the body of Christ. Just like when Jesus said, abide in me, he had the idea of the branch and the vine, the branch that abides in the vine.

Abide in Christ means as a part of him. This is why the Bible can say we died in Christ, we rose in Christ, we have ascended in Christ, we are seated in Christ in heavenly places. As far as God is concerned, we are in him because we are part of the organic unity that is Christ.

We are part of the fullness of him. Now, don't mix this up with the whole New Age concept that everybody is Jesus, everybody is Christ. We just need to realize that the Bible doesn't teach that everybody is Christ.

It certainly doesn't teach that everybody is Jesus. In fact, I'm not even Jesus. Jesus was the man who is now called the head of the body and the body is Christ.

When he was on earth as an individual man, he was the whole body of Christ. He was head, body, and feet and everything. There was only one body and it was him.

When he ascended into heaven, the body of Christ took on another form. The embodiment of his spirit, which was only in that one man when he was on the earth, now is given to all people who believed in him so that they become organically joined by the spiritual reality that the embodiment of the spirit of Christ is now in many members. That man Jesus, who used to be the whole thing, he is now the head.

He is now exalted at the right hand of God and he is the head who gives orders and gives guidance and gives life and identity to every other part of the body, which happens to be here on earth. He still has his feet on earth, you see. The body of Christ is the way in which Christ, the mode in which Christ exists today.

He is the head, we the body. When I walked in here today, no one thought, well, here comes Steve and his body. And no one said, here comes Steve and his head.

It never occurred to you to make that distinction because my body is clearly part of me. If my head had no body, I wouldn't be Steve. I'd be history.

If my body had no head, it wouldn't be Steve. If Christ had no body, he wouldn't be Christ. And if the body of Christ had no head, it would not be Christ either.

But as the body is one, having many members, and the many members being one are still one body, Paul says, so also is Christ. This concept of the body of Christ is so far reaching in understanding the whole essence of what it means to be in Christ, to be a Christian. That it's really transforming of all of life to understand it and that's what Paul emphasized in his later writings, including here.

Now, he says that Jesus is the head of the body of the church. I need to address this issue briefly that you've heard me talk about before. What does the word head mean? It's the word kephali.

We talked about that in some earlier sessions when we were not talking about Colossians. Kephali is the ordinary Greek word for head, like the head of a human body, the head of an animal's body, an ordinary head. But as in English, so in Greek, the word head is used metaphorically sometimes.

But the question is, what is the metaphor meaning? Now, historically, Christians have taught that being the head of the body means he's the ruler, the director of the body. The body does his bidding because that's what a body does. It does the bidding of the head.

Your head sends its orders to the rest of the body and the body, if it's not paralyzed and unable to do it, the body does what your head tells it to do. Your body never rebels against your head. Although in the case of a human body, there might be times that you're incapable.

Your head may say, OK, I'm going to do a triple backflip across the lawn here and land on my feet. But your body might not perform simply because it's not trained to do that. But I mean, the body in this analogy, you can't always do everything the head wants, although the body of Christ can, because Christ never commands his body to do anything without giving it also the supernatural ability to perform what is commanded.

God never gives unreasonable orders to his people. But here's the point. Historically, Greek scholars and Christians have always believed that the word head, when used metaphorically, means chief or ruler or the one who runs the show, the authority.

The modern evangelical feminist movement suggests that the word Catholic actually has a different meaning, and that is source. And that when it says Jesus is the head of the body, it just means he's the source of the body. When it says that the husband is the head of the wife, it means that he's just the source of the wife, which isn't exactly true.

I'm not the source of my wife. Her father is her source. I'm not.

She came into existence entirely apart from me. But when the Bible says that the man or the husband is the head of the wife, in 1 Corinthians 11.3, feminists say this means source. Well, I don't need to go into all that, but let's just suffice it to say that's a new idea that doesn't have any firm basis in study of the usage of the Greek word kephali.

It is, again, an exegesis of desperation, just as desperate as when the Jehovah's Witnesses stick in all other things in order to fit their theology. The feminists have stuck in a new definition of kephali because the old definition, which is the correct one, is so damaging to the premises from which they wish to argue. Anyway, Jesus is the head, that is, he's the ruler of all things.

Now, noticing we had the same statement in Ephesians chapter one. However, there it said he is the head over all things to the church, again, suggesting clearly an authoritative role that Christ has. That is Ephesians 1.22. He put all things under his feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church.

Now, notice the difference in Ephesians 1.22, which says that Jesus is the head over all things to the church, and Colossians 1.18, which says he is the head of the body of the church. The same concept, but the difference is this. In Ephesians, the next verse goes on to discuss the church.

Ephesians 1.23 says, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all things. Now, in other words, Ephesians says the same thing Colossians does. Jesus is the head of the church, but Ephesians goes on to address the church.

He's the head of the church, which is the body. The church is the body. The church is the fullness of him.

In Colossians, he says Christ is the head of the church, and then he doesn't go on to talk about the church, but about the head. He says he is the head of the church who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence. And this illustrates the distinction I made between Colossians and Ephesians.

They're very, very close in thought, but Ephesians goes off in the direction of talking about the church as the body. Colossians goes off in the direction and talks about Jesus as the head. Let's go along.

Verse 19, for it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell. This statement is difficult. It's perhaps clarified a little bit by appeal to chapter two in verse nine of Colossians.

We'll look at that in a moment, but one of the difficulties in verse 19 is the grammar in the Greek. There is no subject. You'll see that the words the father.

Are in italics when you see words in italics in your Bible, it means they're not in the Greek that the translators have supplied them. Honest translators will always do this. When when you find in the Jones, it's probably that they had words they don't put in italics.

They don't want you to know that it's not in the Greek, but honest translators when they add words that are not in the Greek, they put them in italics. They add the words because they think something has to be put in there because there's a gap there of some kind in the Greek, and they need to add something. But they want you to know that they added it so that you don't.

You have the right to dispute their inclusion of it if you want to. By the way, this is this is true of all modern translations, with the exception of one that I know of, and that's the NIV. The NIV doesn't have any words in italics.

The simple reason is there are too many words in each verse that have no parallel in the Greek that they'd be italicizing almost the whole the whole book. So they they made an editorial choice not to use italics in the NIV. But you'll find that the King James, the New King James, the New American Standard, and the RSV, and virtually all the respectable versions, they do use italics because, as I say, honest translators want to let you know when they are adding something.

OK, you can draw the parallel statement from that. OK, now, what does it mean? It please blank. In him all the foolish should dwell.

Translators here supplied the words the father. You could have supplied the word God. Or what if you supplied nothing? What if you just left it as it says in the Greek? What do you do then? Then you go in search of a subject for the statement.

Who did it please? What did it please? Some translators, like the RSV, decided that the word the fullness, being essentially the only noun there, should be the subject. So that it means essentially it pleased the fullness that in him all what all should dwell. Actually, the way the RSV renders it is something like this, that it was pleasing.

No, I forget how the RSV renders it, but it tries to make the fullness the subject. One of the problems with that is that whatever is the subject of verse 19 is also the subject of verse 20, which says, and by him to reconcile all things to himself. Now, who is himself? God.

Through Jesus, God reconciled all things to himself, to God. Therefore, it would appear that the subject of verse 20 must be God, the father. And that is no doubt why both the King James and the New King translators have supplied it in verse 19, which must have the same subject as verse 20, just in the structure of the sentence.

Both verses must have the same subject. So we will not contest the use of the father here. That is a good addition, because it seems we called for by the way the sentence continues into verse 20.

So it pleased the father that in Jesus all the fullness should dwell. What is meant by fullness? This is that Greek word pleroma, which is an ordinary word for fullness found frequently in the New Testament, but many scholars feel that in the context of Colossians, the choice of this word by Paul was strategic because the Gnostic sects use the word pleroma. It has sort of a technical sense, not so much known to be so impulsive, but a century later in the mid second century, it is known that the Valentinian Gnostics use the word pleroma to speak of the totality of all the aeons that are between man and God.

You see, the Gnostics felt that since man is material and the material world is evil and God is pure spirit and not evil at all, that God is actually too pure to have direct dealings with the world. The Gnostics did not believe that God made the world. What the Gnostics taught was that the world is too evil because it is material for a pure being like God who is all spirit to have any direct contact with.

So they taught that God the spirit emanated from himself a series of aeons. These aeons were spiritual beings of some sort, like we might make them roughly analogous to what we call angels. It would be like when you throw a rock into a pool and these circles appear from the center outward and get further and further away from the circle, that these aeons emanated from God like that, and each one a little further from God himself.

And at some point after many aeons, there was one aeon that was so remote from God that it was not only remote but hostile to God. And it was that aeon that created the universe so that God did not have any direct defilement in involvement with the physical universe at all, but one of the aeons that was far removed from him, that emanated from him, became evil and created the universe. That is what they believed.

And the belief of the Gnostics was that if you want to approach God as pure spirit, you need to make a spiritual journey, as it were, through the disciplines and mysteries and so forth of their religion, through various stages of these aeons, going beyond the aeons to God and eventually becoming, upon death, pure spirit. Kind of a strange idea. But it is known that in the mid-second century, the Valentinian Gnostics, who followed Valentinius, a Gnostic leader, they taught, they used the word pleroma, which is here translated fullness, the Greek word pleroma, to be the totality of all the aeons between man and God.

So there was God at one end of the continuum and there was the material world and man at the other, and in between all these aeons, and if you took all these aeons together, you called that the fullness, called that the pleroma. And it is not known, but it is suggested as possible by some scholars, that in Paul's day, the incipient Gnosticism that was not yet really formed into the complete system as it was in the second century, but certainly the ideas were floating around and the apostles were trying to deal with them, that they may also have been using this word pleroma, as the later Gnostics did, to mean these aeons. Now, this is speculation.

It may not be true at all. Paul may not have any of this in mind, but many scholars feel that since the Gnostics later used the word this way, maybe they did in Paul's day, and he might be addressing this here. If Gnosticism was making incursions into the church's thinking, that perhaps Paul is saying that all of the categories between man and God are subsumed and contained in Christ.

The entire pleroma dwells in him, which means you go directly to him. Any gap between God and man is filled by one person, Jesus, not by a whole bunch of different entities. And if any such entities are speculated to exist, they are all contained in him.

He is the totality, the fullness of everything that separates man from God. And it is through him that we come to God. You may recall that when Jesus met Nathanael in John chapter 1, in the closing verse of that chapter, Jesus said to Nathanael, I saw you before Philip called you into the fig tree.

Nathanael was amazed, fell down before Jesus and said, you are the king of Israel, you're the Messiah, you're the son of God. And Jesus said, do you believe me because I said I saw you in the fig tree? You'll see greater things than these. And here's what he said in the closing words of John 1, he said, you will see the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.

Now, I don't know if you're aware of this, but the expression he used, the angels of God ascending and descending is found in the Old Testament only once. He was quoting a line from the Old Testament. It's found in the story of Jacob having the dream where he saw a ladder with its foot on the ground and its top in heaven.

God was at the top and Jacob was at the bottom. And it says he saw the angels of God ascending and descending on this ladder. And Jesus, speaking to Nathanael, takes this expression, which occurs in Genesis about Jacob's ladder, and says, you will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.

What's he saying? By appeal back to that phrase, he's saying, as Jacob saw a link between God and man, the link through which all blessing came from heaven through the angelic messengers and all prayers were carried up to God, and so forth, and ascension to heaven was done, it was all done on this ladder. Well, I'm the ladder. All interaction between heaven and earth, even all the angelic interaction is through me.

And therefore, it is conceivable that Paul has something like this in mind when he says, in Christ, the entire pleroma, the whole fullness dwelt. Now, that might be what he had in mind. Alternatively, though, if you would look at Colossians 2.9, you find Paul using the word pleroma again with reference to Jesus.

Colossians 2.9, Paul said, for in him dwells all the pleroma, the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Godhead is a strange word, and I don't much prefer it. It kind of seems weird, but it's a good word.

I mean, it's a legitimate word. It basically means deity or divinity. God's essential Godhood is what Godhead means there.

And so what he says is that the fullness of God, the fullness of the divinity, the fullness of deity, of the divine nature, dwelt bodily, that is, in a bodily form, in Jesus. And that word fullness is there. Now, both verses, Colossians 1.19 and Colossians 2.9, both of them say that the fullness dwelt in Jesus.

Chapter 2.9 is a little fuller. It modifies both dwelt by the expression in bodily form, and it modifies the word fullness by the expression of deity, the fullness of Godhead. But since it has the basic structure and the basic wording of Colossians 1.19, perhaps we are to understand that Colossians 1.19 is saying the same thing that Colossians 2.9 is.

Just as I said earlier when we talked about firstborn, you know, in verse 15 it just says firstborn. In verse 18 it says firstborn from the dead. I assumed, legitimately or not, will have to be determined by everyone's own judgment, but I assumed that the phrase from the dead, which modifies firstborn in verse 18, can be implied in verse 15.

And as we have modifying phrases in Colossians 2.9, the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in him bodily, that the shorter version of the same statement, in him all the fullness should dwell, could mean the same thing. And therefore, Paul may be saying, and I think commentators often would suggest this too, I don't know what all commentators would say, but my thought is the fullness here in chapter 1.19 probably could be equated with the fullness in Colossians 2.9, that is the fullness of Godness, of divinity, of deity. So that it pleased God that all of God's own fullness would dwell in a human form in the person of Jesus.

This would be even making a more exalted statement of Jesus than to say he was all the pleroma that the Gnostics spoke of. He included all the categories, all the aeons between God and man in himself. This would be saying more.

He is God. And his contact with us is contact direct between God and man. And certainly Paul believed this, as chapter 2.9 teaches, so perhaps that's what he is saying in this verse.

Obviously it is ambiguous enough that we can't be sure. Verse 20, And by him, this is the end of the so-called hymn, and by him it pleased God to reconcile all things to himself by him whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross. Now this ends the basic statement and he turns another direction in verse 21, but what is meant here in verse 20? It says that God was pleased by Christ to reconcile all things back to himself, back to God.

The purpose of Jesus' coming was to reconcile man to God. And what does reconcile mean? Well, you know the word conciliatory, and you know the prefix re- means again. To reconcile means to make people friends again, to make them friendly.

If someone speaks in a conciliatory manner, it means he is speaking in a friendly way. To reconcile means to make friends again, suggesting that there has been an alienation between the parties. When there are a married couple that become alienated from each other and they go to a marriage counselor, of course the object is to reconcile them, to bring back again the positive relationship that they once had.

That's what reconcile means. Now it was through Jesus that God sought to reconcile all things to himself. All things is a rather interesting use of terms because he's been using the term all things in verse 16 twice, in verse 17 once, and in verse 18 once.

He uses the term all things, and in there it seems to refer to everything, not just people, but everything in the created realm. But now it talks about reconciling all things to himself. What does this mean? Now there are people who are universalists.

One of the early church fathers, actually of the fourth century origin, was a universalist. He believed all people will someday be saved. He took a verse like this and a similar one that's found in Ephesians chapter one, and he used it to prove his universalist ideas.

In Ephesians chapter one, verse 10, it says that God's purpose in sending Christ, among other things, was, Ephesians 110, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, in him. Now you've got the same basic idea. All things in heaven, all things on earth, being brought together in one in Christ.

Now you've got this sweeping statement. All things are God's purposes in the proper time to bring everything together in Christ. Or in this place it says to reconcile all things himself.

Origin believed that eventually all things that God created would be in harmony with him, including all the lost people and including the devil himself and the demons. There are still universalists today who hold a view like this, and their view is something, their argument goes something like this. Although there will no doubt be people who burn, they will only burn for a while because they only sinned for a while.

Their punishment should be only for a while. That's exactly how long a while only God can say. But God will punish sinners as long as they ought to be punished, but no longer.

These people would be among those who do not believe in an eternal hell. There are other ways to not believe in eternal hell besides this, but this is one group of people who don't believe that hell is eternal. Hell is proportionate.

People suffer in hell proportionate to their guilt, and once they've done so, all offense between them and God is settled. Just like if a man, a criminal goes to jail, he serves his time, he's reconciled to society. If he doesn't repeat the crime, society holds nothing against him.

He's done his time, he's paid his debt to society. So once God has punished the wicked in hell, however long it takes for each one, they, his gripe against them, his complaint against them will be basically atoned. And that's why we needed Jesus to die for us so that we don't have to atone for our own sins by our own suffering.

We are atoned for by his suffering, but those who reject his suffering must atone for their own sins by their own suffering. And then once they've done that, they can be restored to God because all the offense between them and God has been settled by this. And they would even include the devil in this thing.

And they say this is why. Because if God wants all men to be saved, and yet the vast majority of people end up burning forever in hell, then God didn't get what he wanted. Now, who would like all people to be lost? Obviously the devil would.

Now there's some kind of a conflict between God and the devil in this universe. We've deduced that from scripture. The devil's working against God, although he has to work within a framework that God permits.

But if it be said that although Jesus has saved an element, the elect, out of the world, out of history, but the majority of persons burn forever and are never reconciled to God, then who won the cosmic battle ultimately? Who comes out with the more chips in his hand? The devil. We can talk all we want about Jesus being the great victor over the enemy and so forth and so on. But if in the final analysis, the vast majority of people burn in hell, which is what the devil wanted for them, and only a small minority actually end up in heaven, even if it's millions, it's still a minority of those who've ever lived.

Who won this battle? The devil or God? This is the way Universalist talks. I'm not a Universalist, but you can see that there are some challenges here to us. And many feel that these verses would help support the idea of Universalism, that because of what Jesus did, ultimately all things will be reconciled to God.

And Origen even included the devil in that. Now, one of the most serious problems with that suggestion is that the book of Revelation in particular depicts the devil being thrown into the lake of fire and being there forever. And also those who worship the beast in his image are said to be thrown in the lake of fire and they're left there forever.

However this be understood, we'll have to be taken up some other time. But the point here is there is a suggestion here, it means something. What it means is not clear, but it means something that God intended to reconcile all things to himself in Christ, in heaven and in earth.

Now another view is that the reconciliation that Paul's talking about in heaven and earth is that the angels in heaven have been offended by man's sin against God. And by what Jesus has done, there's been a reconciliation between the things in heaven, that is the offended angels, and the things on earth, the offending men. This to me doesn't seem a very likely suggestion, but there's been many ways that Christians have tried to wrestle with this issue of what does it mean that he reconciled all things to himself or came to do that.

One thing we can understand is that all things, especially in the earlier verses, refers to the created order in general. And while we could say with reference to creation, all things is absolutely all things, every last thing, yet some could take all things in the sense of his reconciliation in a more or less a representative sense. That is, when man fell, it didn't just alienate man from God, it alienated the universe from God, or at least the created order that man has to do with.

Because now there's thorns and thistles. There weren't before. There is decay and rot and death and things in the world, in the created order, the animal world, the plant world, things that they're not really the ideal that God had in mind.

That in a sense, because man fell and the whole creation with him, all things that God created have been alienated from his original design. And that through what Christ has done, he has achieved the reconciliation of all things to himself, which means the created order, too, through what Christ has done, will be restored, as we've suggested earlier. Now, that still doesn't tell us exactly what to make of the lost, because they still are part of all things.

And let me suggest to you something for your consideration. This is not very standard, but it's something to consider. It does not leave us as universalists, but it does let Paul be all inclusive when he says all things.

He certainly is all inclusive in the earlier verses where he says all things. Consider this, that when Jesus died as a second Adam, let's see, in Christ, all humanity, excuse me, in Adam, all humanity fell, did they not? Paul says in Romans chapter five, just as in Adam all sinned, so in Christ all, apparently the same all, are made righteous. Look at this in Romans five if you're interested in it.

Verse 18, it says, therefore, Romans 5, 18, therefore, as through one man's offense, that's Adam's, judgment came to all men. Is that a universal? All men? Of course it is. Judgment came to all of us because of Adam's sin.

What then? What's the other side of this? Resulting in condemnation, even so, which apparently means precisely the same way, through one man's, that's Christ's, righteous act, the free gift came to who? To all men, resulting in justification of life. Now, are we going to make all men in respect to Adam mean literally all men, but all men in respect to Christ isn't? Did Adam have more of an impact on the human race than Christ had? What do we do with this? It certainly seems to indicate that as Adam involved the whole world in all men in condemnation, Christ, through his righteous act, involved the whole world of humanity in reconciliation, in righteousness, in the free gift of eternal life. Well then, is everyone going to heaven? No.

Do you know why? Because Christ's act was done 2,000 years ago, just as Adam's act infused the whole race of men from birth, I believe, with the sinful tendency. So Christ's act infused all men from birth with reconciliation. Christ redeemed the world.

He's the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. But the problem is, as some people grow up, they reject him. And Jesus said, this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world.

And men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. And this involves the doctrine that we sometimes call the doctrine of the age of accountability, a term that is not found in Scripture, but which concept, I believe, is found. I don't have time to give all the reasons for saying so.

We're going to run out of time here too quickly. But let me just say this. Let me suggest this to you as an option.

You don't have to believe it. You can search the Scriptures and see if these things are so. And if you reach a different conclusion, more power to you.

It's fine with me. Let me suggest to you that the Bible teaches that when Jesus died, the sins of all human beings were reconciled or were paid for, were atoned for. Another Scripture that says that, and there are many, is 2 Corinthians 5. Where in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 19, Paul says, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

In Christ, God was reconciling who? The world to himself, not imputing their sins to them. That is, God took the sins of the world and put them on Christ, imputed them to Christ, and he died reconciling the world to himself. The problem is, after he's done so, it's possible for the world to choose sin rather than reconciliation.

And there's never been a person born yet, as far as I know, who didn't make that choice. Because light came to the world, but men loved darkness. That God forgives, but man rejects forgiveness and chooses another way.

That forgiveness is found in Christ, and many do not choose to be in Christ. Many do not choose to make him their Lord. Many do not choose to obey the light, and because of that, they are lost again.

Now, this may sound like there's too much flip-flopping. Born saved, lost, saved again later when they accept Jesus. Well, the reaction to this suggestion should not be based on our gut feelings about how much flip-flopping there is going on here.

The question is, what does the scripture say? And maybe I'm not reading it rightly, but it seems to me the Bible says that when Jesus died, he reconciled the world. He said, the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world. That as Adam brought condemnation on the world, Jesus brought on all men, the same all men, the gift of eternal life.

And in my understanding, when a baby is born, that baby is born under the grace of that gift, because God, through Jesus, redeemed the whole world. The problem is that baby grows up. When that baby grows up, it has the opportunity to make choices, and inevitably, every baby so far has made the choice to sin against conscience, against light.

And when the gospel is known, even against the gospel in many cases, although some receive the gospel the first time they actually hear it, they have already earlier rejected, in many cases, light in some other form than it came to them. And the rejection of light is what Jesus said is what condemns in John 3. This is the condemnation that light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light. Reconciliation came to the world, but then when people get old enough, many times they don't like the light.

It says in Romans 1 18 that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. God's not angry necessarily at people who never hear the truth, like a baby. His anger is against those who suppress truth.

That is the same thing as those who see the light and say, no way, I don't want the light. I want darkness. Now, this obviously is the view that I'm essentially taking a stand for, though I don't want you to take a stand for it just as I do.

It's an unusual view, I suppose. And you should search the scriptures and see if these things are so. But it does something for us.

It lets us take Paul at his word. It lets us take Jesus at his word instead of having to come up with all kinds of funny theological constructions. In my recent debate with the Calvinist, he brought up the passage in 2 Corinthians 5 19 where it says that God within Christ reconciled the world to himself.

He said that proves that the word world means the elect. Because he said, obviously, just didn't reconcile the whole world to himself. He only reconciled the elect to himself, because that's his Calvinist belief that only the elect are really reconciled.

And what that makes him do is take the word world, which never, as far as we know, means just the elect. In fact, the word world is by nature a sweeping categorization, especially in a place like 1 John 2 where it says he died not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world. I mean, it's not just us, but the whole world.

You see, if you have a theological position to defend that's against scripture, you have to twist scripture to fit it. And many, many times, the Bible says Jesus took the sin of the world. He reconciled the world.

He reconciled all things to himself. The free gift came on all men. But the problem here is that we look at it, but it was not saved.

So this can't mean all men, can it? Unless it does mean all men, which it could mean, since it says it. It seems always possible that the writer of scripture might have said what they meant. And there weren't any theologians around to help them explain what they didn't mean.

But the thing here is, if it says he reconciled all men, is it not possible that he did do that? That the whole human race was reconciled, but every individual makes a choice once he reaches an age capable of making such a choice to say, I will walk in this light or I will love darkness rather than light. And those who choose darkness and so far, there's been everyone so far up to a point are lost. Now, I shouldn't say that everyone so far, because we all sin, but not all sin against light.

Some children accept Jesus from a very early age. But even after even after that, even Christians, sadly, have been known to on occasion not walk in all the light that they have. So every man has the problem of sin to deal with.

But and Jesus is the one that we go to. He is the propitiation for our sins. And if we sin, it says in 1 John 2, 1, these things right into that you don't sin.

But if any man does sin, we have an advocate with the father. So you can sort that out for yourself or if it's too hard to sort out, you don't have to sort it out. Just don't think about it.

But the thing is, it is a possible way of dealing with the statements of Scripture that Jesus or God reconciled all things to himself through Christ. And and yet some of those things rebel. Afterwards, every man gets a choice, every woman gets a choice to rebel or to embrace the light.

At least that's my very non-Calvinistic way of looking at things. I don't even know if it's a good standard Arminian way of looking at things either. It's just my way of trying to handle the scriptures consistently as best I can.

If it's not the right way, then you find a better way and you might just be able to do that. We're about out of time here. It looks like what should I do in the next two minutes? Let's see, we've come to the end of verse 20.

And almost the end of our opportunity here. In our next session, we will finish Chapter one and we will go into Chapter two, hopefully complete it. Do I say impossible? Well, you may be right, but I will remind you that many of the key verses that require comment in Chapter two already received comment in our introduction, because I looked at those verses to try to identify what the Colossian heresy might be.

So most of what I would say about many of those verses in Chapter two essentially has been said. So we can brief that a little faster in Chapter one. And once we get to chapters three and four, it's pretty smooth sailing.

It's the same kind of stuff Paul writes in Ephesians and Peter writes in First Peter and so forth. Anyway, we will continue next class. Maybe we need 12 sessions for Colossians, not four, but we'll just see how we go.