Colossians 1:17 - Exposition

And he is before all things ( Colossians 1:15 ; John 1:1 ; John 8:58 ; John 17:5 ; Revelation 3:14 ; Proverbs 8:22-31 ). This emphatic "he" ( αὐτός ) meets us in every clause and in every possible grammatical form, as though in the very grammar of the sentence Christ must be "all in all." "He" is kept ringing in the cars of those who were in danger of forgetting him in the charm of other sounds ( Colossians 2:4 , Colossians 2:19 : comp. Colossians 2:9-15 ; Ephesians 2:14-18 , for the same rhetorical feature; also Ephesians 4:11 ; 1 John 2:2 ; Romans 19:15, Greek). We now pass from the origination ( Colossians 1:16 a), through the continuance ( Colossians 1:16 b, present perfect ἔκτισται ), to the present constitution ( Colossians 1:17 b) of the universe as Jesting upon this antecedent and perpetual He Is, which affords the underlying basis uniting in one the redemptional and the creative offices of Christ ( Colossians 1:17 , Colossians 1:18 ). In the mouth of a Hebraist like St. Paul, the coincidence of the doubly emphatic "He Is" with the etymological sense of Jehovah (Yahweh; ὁ ὤν , LXX ), as interpreted in Exodus 3:6 ., can scarcely be accidental (see Lightfoot). And Greek readers of the LXX might be reminded of such declarations as those of Isaiah 41:4 ; Isaiah 44:6 ; Isaiah 48:12 (comp. John 1:1 , John 1:2 ; John 8:24 , John 8:28 , John 8:58 ; John 13:19 ; Romans 1:8 , Romans 1:17 ; 21:6). In St. Paul's Christ, as in Isaiah's Jehovah, sovereignty of redeeming, rests upon sovereignty of creative power, and both alike upon that perpetuity of being which "the Son of God's love" shares with the Father. Socinian exegetes give to "before" an ethical sense ("at the head of," "superior to"), in harmony with their reference of verses 15-18 to the relation of Christ to the Church. But πρὸ never has this sense in St. Paul: comp. also the "Firstborn" of verse 15, and again "Beginning," "Firstborn" (verse 18). If verse 15 left us in any doubt as to the writer's intention to assert Christ's pro-mundane existence, this expression ought to remove it. Language can hardly be more explicit. And all things in him consist; i.e. have their common standing, are constituted a whole. The apostle speaks here the language of philosophy. In Plato and Aristotle, the term consist ( consistence ) is found expressing the essentially philosophical conception of the inherent unity, in virtue of which the universe is such and forms a single, correlated whole. The Alexandrine Judaists had already found this unifying principle in the Loges: "He is the Image of God, to whom alone fulness belongs. For other things of themselves are loose; and if they happen to be consolidated anywhere, it is the Divine Word by which they are tied fast. For it is the cement and the bond of things, that has filled all things with its essence. And having chained and woven together everything, it is itself absolutely full of itself" (Philo, 'Who is Heir of Divine Things?' § 38). St. Paul's declaration meets the questionings indicated by language of this kind (see the more extended references of Meyer and Lightfoot).