Colossians 1:13

Paul now explains how God has qualified them for their share in the heavenly inheritance. On this passage Acts 26:18 should be compared; the parallels extend to Colossians 1:12; Colossians 1:14 also. ἐρύσατο. The aorist refers to the time of conversion. The metaphor implies the miserable state of those delivered and the struggle necessary to deliver them. ἐξουσίας : “ubi τῇ βασιλείᾳ opponitur, est tyrannis” (Wetstein, so also Chrys., Lightf., Kl [6]). This would heighten the contrast between the power of darkness and the “kingdom of the son of His love”. But Abbott argues forcibly against this view, especially with relation to the N.T. usage. He quotes Revelation 12:10, ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ ἐξουσία τοῦ Χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ, where the contrast obviously cannot be maintained. Grimm takes the term as a collective expression for the demoniacal powers; and Klöpper says that in Paul ἐξ. is not a mere abstract term, but signifies the possessors of power. Here, however, he rightly sees that the contrast to βας. makes this meaning inappropriate, and that for it ἐρύς. ἀπό would have been expected rather than ἐρύς. ἐκ. Accordingly he interprets it as the dominion possessed by the (personified) darkness. τοῦ σκότους : taken by Hofmann as a genitive of apposition, but the obvious interpretation is to take it as a subjective genitive, the dominion which darkness exercises. We should have expected simply “out of darkness” to correspond to “in light,” but Paul changes the form, partly to insist that the darkness is not a mere state but exercises an active authority, partly to secure a parallel with the kingdom of God's Son. But we are not justified (with Mey., Kl [7]) in personifying σκότος, for the primary contrast is with φωτί not υἱοῦ. μετέστησεν. Wetstein quotes Jos., Ant., ix., 11, 1 (Tiglath-Pileser's deportation of N.E. Israel), and Lightfoot thinks that this use of the word suggested the choice of it here, and this is made more probable by the addition of εἰς τ. βας. Meyer, however, quotes a striking parallel from Plato, where no such reference is present: ἔκ τε φωτὸς εἰς σκότος μεθισταμένων καὶ ἐκ σκότους εἰς φῶς (Rep., p. 518 A). βασιλείαν. Meyer insists that this is the Messianic kingdom, and as the realisation of this lay in the future to Paul the clause must have a proleptic reference, citizenship in the kingdom being guaranteed by their conversion. But the argument rests on a false premiss, for in 1 Corinthians 4:20; Romans 14:17, the sense is not eschatological. Nor, indeed, can it be so here, for the translation into the kingdom must have taken place at the same time as the deliverance. υἱοῦ τῆς ἀγάπης αὐτοῦ. Augustine, followed by Olshausen and Lightfoot, takes ἀγάπης as a genitive of origin, and interprets, the Son begotten of the essence of the Father, which is love. This has no parallel in the N.T., and rests, as Meyer points out, on a confusion of the metaphysical with the ethical essence of God. The phrase is practically equivalent to His beloved Son, but is chosen for the sake of emphasis to indicate His greatness and the excellence of His kingdom. There is, perhaps, the further thought that the love which rests on the Son must rest also on those who are one with Him.

[6] Klöpper.

[7] Klöpper.