Colossians 1:13

Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.

Out of the power of darkness ... This is the power of Satan, the kingdom of evil, or the realm of the lost. Throughout the New Testament, the unsaved portion of humanity are represented as subjects of an evil ruler, a heartless tyrant who keeps them captive; and the idea of release from captivity is inherent in the words Paul chose here. "The word `translated' is a word properly applied to the transplanting of races.[24] "Josephus uses it of the deportation of the Israelites by the Assyrian king."[25] By the use of the same word here, Paul declared the defeat of the evil kingdom, the vanquishing of its ruler Satan, the release of his captives and the transplanting of them into a wholly new and marvelously better environment. "Out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of his love!"

Note the past tense of the verb "translated." This affirms the existence of God's kingdom at the time Paul wrote; indeed, the Colossians had already been translated into it. Throughout the New Testament, after the day of Pentecost, references to the kingdom of God are consistently in the past tense; whereas, before Pentecost, they are consistently in the future tense, thus indicating Pentecost as the occasion of the establishment of God's kingdom upon the earth. For excursus on this, see my Commentary on Hebrews, Hebrews 12 under "The Church and the Kingdom Began at the Same Time."

[24] Alfred Barry, op. cit., p. 99.

[25] G. G. Findlay, Colossians in The Pulpit Commentary, Vol. 19 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950), p. 6.