Colossians 1:15

With this verse the great Christological passage of the Epistle begins. Its aim is to refute the false doctrine, according to which angelic mediators usurped the place and functions of the Son in nature and grace. He, and He alone, is the Creator, Redeemer and Sovereign of all beings in the universe, including these angelic powers. The passage does not deal with the eternal relations of the Son to the Father, but with the Son's relations to the universe and the Church. It is not of the pre-existent Son that Paul begins to speak, but of the Son who now possesses the kingdom, and in whom we have our deliverance (ὅς refers back to τ. υἱοῦ ἐν ᾧ ἔχομεν τ. ἀπολύτρωσιν). The work of the Son in His pre-existent state is referred to, that the true position of the exalted Christ may be rightly understood. As in other great theological passages in the Pauline Epistles, the metaphysical element is introduced for the sake of the practical. But it would be absurd to infer from this that it had little importance for the Apostle himself. He assumes the pre-existence of the Son as common ground, and is thus applying a fundamental Christian truth, which would form part of the elementary instruction in his Churches, to a new form of false teaching. ὅς ἐστιν. It is the exalted Christ of whom Paul is speaking, as is suggested, though not necessarily implied by the present, but more forcibly by the previous relative clause. We could not feel confident in arguing back from the function of the exalted Son to be εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ to that of the pre-incarnate Son, but what would be a plausible inference from this passage is asserted in Philippians 2:5. εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου.As image of God the Son possesses such likeness to God as fits Him to be the manifestation of God to us. God is invisible, which does not merely mean that He cannot be seen by our bodily eye, but that He is unknowable. In the exalted Christ the unknowable God becomes known. We behold “with unveiled face the glory of the Lord,” and so “are changed into the same image” (2 Corinthians 3:18), God has “shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (Colossians 4:6), and it is the unbelieving on whom “the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” does not shine (Colossians 4:4). These passages illustrate Paul's language here, and show that it is not, as Oltramare argues, of physical visibility or invisibility that he is speaking. Christ is the image of God for Christians. This, it is true, is only part of His wider functions. The Son is the Mediator between God and the universe. His work in grace has its basis in His place and work in nature. But it is the aspect of His work of which Paul is here speaking. The view of some of the Fathers that the Son, as image of the invisible God, must be Himself invisible is precisely the opposite of that intended by Paul. πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως. πρωτότοκος in its primary sense expresses temporal priority, and then, on account of the privileges of the firstborn, it gains the further sense of dominion. Many commentators think both ideas are present here. Soden and Abbott, on the other hand, deny that the word expresses anything more than priority to and distinction from all creation, while Haupt again thinks that all the stress is on the idea of dominion, the Son is ruler of all creation (similarly Ol. and Weiss, who says that no temporal prius lies in the expression). It is undeniable that the word in the O.T. had in some cases lost its temporal significance, e.g., Exodus 4:22; Psalms 89:28. Schoettgen instances the fact that R. Bechai spoke of God as “the firstborn of the world,” though, probably, as Bleek says in his note on Hebrews 1:6, this is to be regarded “nur als eine Singularität”. The course of the argument seems to require that the stress should lie on the lordship of the Son rather than on His priority to creation. For what Paul is concerned to prove is the superiority of Christ to the angels, and for this the idea of priority is not relevant, but that of dominion is. Whether the word retains anything of its original meaning here is doubtful. If so, it might seem most natural to argue with the Arians that the Son is regarded as a creature. Grammatically it is possible to make πάσης κτίσεως a partitive genitive. But this is excluded by the context, which sharply distinguishes between the Son and τά πάντα, and for this idea Paul would probably have used πρωτόκτιστος. The genitive is therefore commonly explained as a genitive of comparison. Oltramare says that such a genitive after a substantive is a pure invention, but it is explained to be after the προ or πρωτο in πρωτότοκος (cf. John 1:15, ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν). This, as Lightfoot says, “unduly strains the grammar,” and on this account it seems best to exclude the temporal element altogether. The pre-existence is sufficiently asserted in what follows. There seems to be no real affinity with Philo's doctrine of the Logos as πρωτόγονος. πάσης κτίσεως may be taken either as a collective, “all creation” (Lightf., R.V.), or distributively, “every creature” (Mey., Ell., Haupt, Abb.). Lightfoot urges in favour of the former that πρωτότ. “seems to require either a collective noun or a plural”. But if πρωτότ. be taken in the sense of ruler, this is not so; and Haupt points out that πᾶσα κτίσις elsewhere is used of every created thing, and that Paul uses κτίσις without the article in the sense of creature. It is accordingly best to take it so here, “firstborn of every creature”. A further question is raised as to what the term includes. Haupt thinks its sense is limited to spiritual beings, since (1) Paul is proving the superiority of Christ to the angels, (2) he defines by τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἑπὶ τῆς γῆς not including heaven and earth themselves, (3) εἰς αὐτὸν shows that animate creatures must be referred to. At the same time he is careful to point out that, according to Jewish ideas, shared, no doubt, by the false teachers, the heavenly bodies were regarded as possessed of souls and as standing in the closest relation to the spirit world. This, combined with the fact that all material things were supposed similarly to have guardian spirits, rather tells against his limitation. For Paul really was concerned to show not only that Christ was superior to the angels, but that He and not the angels was Lord of the material creation. The phrase should therefore be taken in its full sense, though probably it is the spiritual side of the universe that he has chiefly in mind. The interpretation of creation as the new creation, adopted by many Fathers to meet the Arian inference that the Son was a creature, scarcely needs refutation. It would have no point against the false teaching at Colossæ, nor can it be carried through the passage, Colossians 1:16 being decisive against it. Paul would probably have said firstborn of the Church or of the new creation if he had meant this.