Colossians 1:18

And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

Here begins the second phase of this grand statement of the preeminence of Christ, the first pertaining to all creation, and this pertaining to the new spiritual creation, that is, the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is ... Note the same imperative use of this expression as in Colossians 1:15,17.

Head of the body, the church ... Some expositors like to take the view that Paul's idea of the corporate Christ, the spiritual body of believers with Christ as its head, was a late blooming idea with the apostle; but such is totally incorrect. As Hendriksen said:

It cannot be truthfully maintained that the proposition, "Christ is the head of the church," was absolutely foreign to Paul's thinking prior to the time of the Prison Epistles.[43]

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that there is "one body" (1 Corinthians 12:20), and is not a body supposed to have a head? Furthermore, when Paul wrote that the head of "every man" is Christ (1 Corinthians 11:3), is this not absolutely equivalent to saying that Christ is the head of the church? As a matter of fact, the expression "in Christ" used so extensively in Paul's writings is the embodiment of that entire corpus of truth which surfaces in this verse regarding "the body of Christ." We dare to offer the challenge that in every one of the 169 times where Paul used "in Christ" or the equivalent "in him," "in whom," etc., it is proper to read it "in the spiritual body of Christ," that being the only way that any man on earth was ever in Christ at all. Thus the conceit of the spiritual body with Christ as its head being in any sense a late or "developed idea" for Paul is totally refuted by the magnificent Pauline expression "in Christ."

The beginning ... Christ as the "beginning" actually begins. He brings into being a new creation, the church, his body. "His body, the church, begins in him, dating and deriving from him its all in all."[44]

Firstborn from the dead ... "The word firstborn brings over with it into the verse the glory which surrounds it in Colossians 1:15," as Findlay said, "The divine Firstborn, who is before and over all things, wins his title a second time for his earthly brethren's sake (Hebrews 2:10-15)."[45]

[43] William Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 76.

[44] G. G. Findlay, op. cit., p. 11.

[45] Ibid.