Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 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.
18 20. The thought continued. Greatness of the Redeemer as Head of the Church, Bearer of the Divine Plenitude, and Atoning Sacrifice
18. And he is ] The same words as just above, and a solemn echo of them. He, the same Person, is also, necessarily, all that is now to be stated. The Head of Nature is the Head of Grace; the Person one, the operations analogous though differing.
the head ] A word combining the thought of supremacy with that of the origination and conveyance of life and energy. The Son of God presides over His Church, but more He is to it the constant Cause and mighty Source of spiritual vitality. “Because He lives, it lives also.” Its organization is rooted in Him, grows from Him, and refers to Him. Cp. 1Co 11:3; Eph 1:22; Eph 4:15; Eph 5:23; and below, Col 2:10; Col 2:19. The idea, it will be seen, appears in this precise form (the Headship of the Body) only in Eph. and Col.; but cp. Rom 12:5; 1Co 10:17; 1Co 12:21.
the body ] Cp. Rom 12:5; 1Co 10:17; 1Co 12:27; Eph 1:23; Eph 2:16; Eph 4:4; Eph 4:12; Eph 4:16; Eph 5:23; Eph 5:30; below, Col 1:24, Col 2:19, Col 3:15. This side of the imagery is strictly correlative to that of “the Head.” It presents the believing Company as an Organism subject to the Lord, dependent vitally on Him for its being, cohesion, and energy, and forming an animated vehicle for the accomplishment of His will. And it indicates of course the mutual relations of “the members” (see on this esp. 1 Corinthians 12) in their widely differing functions of life and service.
“To know, to do, the Head’s commands,
For this the Body lives and grows:
All speed of feet, all skill of hands,
Is for Him spent, and from Him flows.”
the church ] The Greek admits the rendering, “ of the body of the Church; ” i.e., of the Church defined, or described, as a body; viewed as being a body. The difference between this rendering and that of A.V. and R.V. is however almost imperceptible; and Col 1:24 below, and Eph 1:23, incline the rendering in their direction.
The word “Church” here appears in its highest reference, denoting the society of human beings “called out” (as the word ecclsia implies) from the fallen world into vital union with the glorified Christ as Head. It occurs again Col 1:24, and nine times in Eph. (Eph 1:23, Eph 3:10; Eph 3:21, Eph 5:23-25; Eph 5:27; Eph 5:29; Eph 5:32), always with the same reference. See also Heb 12:23; and cp. Act 20:28 ; 1Co 15:9. As presented here, the idea rises above the level of “visibility;” it transcends human registration and external organization, and has to do supremely with direct spiritual relations between the Lord and the believing Company. It is in fact “the Bride, the Lamb’s Wife,” of Revelation 21, only not yet manifested in bridal splendour. It is the “called, justified, and glorified” of Romans 8; “the Church of the firstborn” of Hebrews 12; “the royal priesthood, the people of possession,” of 1 Peter. All other Christian meanings of the word Church are derived and modified from this, but this must not be modified by them. See Hooker, Eccl. Polity, iii. 1, quoted below, Appendix H.
who is ] Seeing He is (Ellicott).
the beginning ] The Origin, the Principle and Secret, of the life of the living Body. Cp. Rev 3:14, where the probable reference is not (as here) to the spiritual creation specially but to created existence generally. Perhaps also (as Wordsworth suggests) the word ( Arch) points also to the Son’s governing primacy, supreme above all possible angelic “Governments.” But this would be a secondary reference.
the firstborn from the dead ] Not merely “ of the dead,” but “ from them;” passing in a supreme and unique sense “from death unto life;” rising in “the power of an indissoluble life” (Heb 7:16), a life-originating life (cp. 1Jn 5:11-12). The word “ Firstborn ” here echoes Col 1:15, where the Son appears as (by right of nature, “First- born,”) antecedent and supreme with regard to the whole natural creation. Here He is such, by a similar right, as to the whole spiritual creation. But now comes in the great paradox that He is this, in the sphere of grace, through the process of death, not through Incarnation alone apart from death. As slain and risen He enters, by right and in fact, on His position as living Head of Grace for His Church; “declared to be the Son of God with power” (Rom 1:4), in order to our adoption and regeneration. Not as if He could be thus “born” a new Personality; but as being thus constituted actually the Second Adam of the new Race He is not only the “First-fruits” but the “First-Born” in His resurrection. For the term in this connexion cp. Rev 1:5.
in all things] Of grace as of nature, of new life as of old.
he ] Emphatic in the Greek; He, the same, and without partner or rival.
have the preeminence ] Lit., and better, might become ( the) First, might take the first place (so Ellicott). The thought here of “ becoming,” as distinguished from “ being,” must not be lost; what He “is” eternally to finite existence at large He “becomes” actually to His new Creation in His finished and victorious Sacrifice and risen Life. Nor must the echo from clause to clause (in the Greek) of the word “ first ” be lost.
“With this clause the predications respecting Christ seem to reach their acme” (Ellicott); an acme of calm but rapturous ascription and confession concerning the all-beloved Son of the Father, Secret of Creation, Life and Lord of His happy Church. No passage in the N.T. more fully, perhaps none so fully, witnesses to the Divine “Nature, Power, and Eternity” of the Saviour of mankind.
I. HOOKER ON THE CHURCH. (Col 1:18.)
“That Church of Christ which we properly term His body mystical, can be but one; neither can that one be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the parts thereof are some in heaven already with Christ, and the rest that are on earth (albeit their natural persons be visible) we do not discern under this property whereby they are truly and infallibly of that body. Only our minds by intellectual conceit are able to apprehend that such a real body there is, a body collective, because it containeth a huge multitude; a body mystical, because the mystery of their conjunction is removed altogether from sense. Whatsoever we read in Scripture concerning the endless love and the saving mercy which God sheweth towards His Church, the only proper subject thereof is this Church. Concerning this flock it is that our Lord and Saviour hath promised: ‘I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hands.’ They who are of this society have such marks and notes of distinction from all others as are not object unto our sense; only unto God, who seeth their hearts and understandeth all their secret thoughts and cogitations, unto Him they are clear and manifest. All men knew Nathanael to be an Israelite. But our Saviour, piercing deeper, giveth further testimony of him than men could have done with such certainty as He did, ‘Behold indeed an Israelite in whom there is no guile.’ If we profess, as Peter did, that we love the Lord, and profess it in the hearing of men charitable men are likely to think we do so, as long as they see no proof to the contrary. But that our love is sound and sincere who can pronounce, saving only the Searcher of all men’s hearts, who alone intuitively doth know in this kind who are His? And as those everlasting promises of love, mercy, and blessedness, belong to the mystical Church, even so on the other side when we read of any duty which the Church of God is bound unto, the Church whom this doth concern is a sensible known company. And this visible Church in like sort is but one. Which company being divided into two moieties, the one before, the other since the coming of Christ, that part which since the coming of Christ partly hath embraced and partly shall hereafter embrace the Christian religion, we term as by a more proper name the Church of Christ. The unity of which visible body and Church of Christ consisteth of that uniformity which all several persons thereunto belonging have, by reason of that one Lord, whose servants they all profess themselves; that one faith, which they all acknowledge; that one baptism, wherewith they are all initiated. Entered we are not into the visible before our admittance by the door of baptism. Christians by external profession they are all, whose mark of recognisance hath in it those things (one Lord, one faith, one baptism) which we have mentioned, yea, although they be impious idolaters, wicked heretics, persons excommunicable, yea and cast out for notorious improbity. Is it then possible that the selfsame men should belong both to the synagogue of Satan and to the Church of Jesus Christ? Unto that Church which is His mystical body, not possible; because that body consisteth of none but only true servants and saints of God. Howbeit of the visible body and Church of Jesus Christ, those may be, and oftentimes are, in respect of the main parts of their outward profession. For lack of diligent observing the difference, first between the Church of God mystical and visible, then between the visible sound and corrupted, sometimes more, sometimes less; the oversights are neither few nor light that have been committed.”
Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, iii. 1.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And he is the head of the body, the church – Notes Eph 1:22; Eph 5:23, note.
Who is the beginning – In all things – alike in the work of creation and in the church. He is the fountain of authority and power, and commences everything that is designed to uphold the order of the universe, and to save the world.
The first-born from the dead – At the head of those who rise from their graves. This does not mean literally that he was the first who rose from the dead for he himself raised up Lazarus and others, and the bodies of saints arose at his crucifixion; but it means that he had the pre-eminence among them all; he was the most illustrious of those who will be raised from the dead, and is the head over them all. Especially, he had this pre-eminence in the resurrection in this respect, that he was the first who rose from death to immortality. Others who were raised undoubtedly died again. Christ rose to die no more; see the notes at 1Co 15:20.
That in all things – Margin, among all. The Greek will bear either construction, and either will accord with the scope of the apostles remarks. If the former, it means that he is at the head of all things – the universe; if the latter, that he is chief among those who rose from the dead. Each of these is true, but the scope of the passage seems rather to require us to understand this of everything, and to mean that all the arrangements respecting him were such as to give him supremacy over the universe.
He might have the pre-eminence – Greek, might be first – proteuon. That is, might be first in rank, dignity, honor, power. He has the pre-eminence:
(1)As over the universe which he has formed – as its Creator and Proprietor;
(2)As chief among those who shall rise from the dead – since he first rose to die no more, and their resurrection depends on him;
(3)As head of the church – all synods, councils, and governments being subject to him, and he alone having a right to give law to his people; and,
(4)In the affections of his friends – being in their affections and confidence superior to all others.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Col 1:18
And He is the Head of the body, the Church.
Christ and His Church
I. The Church.
1. The English word is formed from –belonging to the Lord.
(1) Sometimes a distinction is draw between Church and congregation. Although Christ is Lord of all, yet He bears a peculiarly endearing relationship to the company within the congregation who constitute the Church proper. They are His peculiar possession, people, servants, and friends.
(2) Sometimes we call the edifice in which the disciples assemble a church, and properly, because it belongs to the Lord.
2. The word is a translation of , and is peculiarly applicable to the people as distinguished from the place. It was borrowed from those Greeks who had free municipal institutions. Slaves were not permitted to form part of the company, and were not eligible to municipal offices and honours, and had no voice or vote. A church, therefore, is a company of free men.
3. The two meanings in combination reach the idea that the Church of Christ is the company of free men whose privilege it is to belong to the Lord.
4. Christians are a body, an organized community, in which all the members, however humble, find a place and do a work, and not a mere heterogeneous mob. Each member can be helpful to the others.
II. The head. This implies–
1. That Christ belongs to the body, the Church. He is not outside and merely over it. He is within it as its principal member. He partakes of its moral nature, and then of the moral nature of all its members. He is free as they are, only more gloriously; it is His joy also to be useful, only His devotion is far more sublime.
2. The representation is incomplete. He is Heart too–both head and heart in one; even as He is corner-stone at every corner, and all round the Temple of God. As the Heart, He is the centre of all the vitalizing influences that build the whole body into the fulness of health and vigour; the fountain of the love which is the sweetest outcome of manhood.
3. As the Head, He thinks for the whole body, and plans and guides. The hands cannot think for themselves, though they are noble workers; the feet do not know where to go, but beautiful are they when running errands at the bidding of the love that is in the heart, or of the life that emanates from the head.
III. The beginning. Of what? Jesus was the beginning of the creation of God. Here He is at once–
1. The beginning of the resurrection life, being Himself the firstborn from among the dead, and thus–
2. The beginning of the Church of the living God; the Head of that body in which, even as it exists on earth, there is a spring-seed of that higher life that has been brought within the reach of all.
IV. Christ is consequently eminently qualified to have in all things the pre-eminence. It was the Fathers pleasure that he should have it. He has it now as His right, and will continue so to have it, until all opposition to its rule be swept away for ever. (J. Morison, D. D.)
Christ the Head of the Church
I. Christ is the head of the Church in each of His natures. For here He is called the Head of the Church, who had before been called the image of the invisible God. But that image was the eternal Son of God, the incarnate Word: therefore Christ, the God-man, is the Head of the Church. For the Church ought to possess such a head as might have a natural conformity with the rest of the members to be incorporated in it. Now this conformity suits Christ according to His human nature; whence Christ and the Church are called one flesh (Eph 5:31). But it was also necessary that the Church should have such a head as could infuse into it spiritual life. This is the province of God alone; whence God is plainly called the husband and the Head of the Church (Psa 45:10). Hence many observations arise:
1. Whereas the Head of the Church is God, we infer
(1) that the Church will abide for ever, neither shall the gates of hell prevail against it; for if God be with us, who shall be against us? A less than God would have been incompetent to the protection of the Church; for the devil, and almost the whole world, wage constant war against it.
(2) That the members of the Church ought to obey their Head in all things. For there is an infinite obligation which binds every creature to obey its God; but that obligation, if possible, surpasses infinite, whereby the Church, redeemed and sanctified, is bound to be subject to its, God, its mystical and life-giving Head.
(3) That the ascension of Christ into heaven has not deprived the Church of its Head: nay, He is present, and will be always present, with His whole Church, by the power of His Divinity, although He may not appear to our eyes by His bodily presence.
2. Inasmuch as our Head is a man, we infer two things:
(1) On account of His alliance of nature, He must of necessity intimately love us, and have such a keen sense of our miseries as to be most ready to succour us (Jdg 10:16; Heb 2:17-18).
(2) We have this comfort, that every ground of triumphing over us is taken from the devil. He overcame the first Adam, the head of the race; but the Second Adam, the Head of the Church, overcame him. Nay, in Christ, we who are His members conquer, just as in Adam we were conquered.
II. In what respects Christ is called the head.
1. The head differs from its members–
(1)In eminence or dignity. The head possesses more perfectly all the senses than the subordinate members; so Christ, the mystical Head, possesses all spiritual grace more abundantly than men and angels put together (Joh 3:34).
(2) In way of direction or government. The head regulates and directs; the members are ruled and directed. So Christ has the absolute government of the Church (Eph 5:22-23).
(3) In way of causality or influence. For the head communicates sense and motion to all its members. So Christ sends forth spiritual life and the motion of grace into His members which are otherwise insensible, dead, and destitute of all spiritual motion (Joh 15:5; Php 4:13).
2. Those things in which the agreement of the head and the members is perceived.
(1) The natural head hath a natural conformity with the rest of the members; for as Horace hath rightly said, it would be monstrous and ridiculous if a painter should form a design of uniting a horses neck to a human head. Thus monstrous would it be if the Head of the Church had not a natural conformity with the Church. But Christ hath this, as is shown (Heb 2:1-18.).
(2) The head and the members have a conformity in their destination to the same end, viz., the preservation and safety of the whole person: thus Christ, and His members, which are one person, are ordained to the attainment of eternal glory and happiness; and to the accomplishment of this end both head and members assiduously co-operate. This is the care of the Head, to lead its members to final blessedness (Joh 17:12). Hence He is called the Saviour of the body (Eph 5:23).
(3) They agree in the circumstance of their having a continuous union with each other, and all of them deriving their motion and intellectuality from the same soul. So this mystical Head, and all the members of it, have a certain mutual continuity, and have their spiritual intellectuality and vivifying principle from the same source. For there is between Christ and His members an uninterrupted union by means of the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:16).
III. Who and what are they out of whom the body of Christ is composed?
1. The term Church is derived from a word signifying to call out; it is therefore an assembly of those called out. And this calling is effected by the ministry of the gospel, and other means which God has appointed.
2. This external vocation and profession constitutes the visible Church. But there is also another more effectual vocation joined to this in some persons, namely, by grace implanted through the power of the Spirit in the hearts of the called.
3. Then it follows–
(1) That those who stand related to the Church as evil humours to the human body are not true members of the Church; for each sound body desires the preservation of its members; but it does not preserve evil humours, but expels them.
(2) That those who stand related to the Church as dead men to humanity are not true members of the Church; such as wicked men and infidels.
(3) That those whom the Church itself would not acknowledge as members or its parts, if it knew what they are, Christ, who knows all things, does not acknowledge.
(4) That the Church, which is the body of Christ, hath no member which doth not receive a vital influx from the Head: for the same Spirit is diffused from the Head to all the members (Rom 8:9). But infidels and the wicked have not this vitality of grace flowing from the Head.
(5) That the same man is not at the same time a member of Christ and of the devil; but the wicked men are numbered amongst the servants and the children of the devil (Joh 8:38; Joh 8:44), therefore they are not to be reckoned among the members of Christ.
4. We conclude, therefore, that this body of the Church, of which Christ Himself is the Head, does not consist of any unfaithful and wicked members, but of the pious and holy alone; whom God delivers from the power of darkness, and translates into the kingdom of His dear Son.
5. Hence we may learn–
(1) It is not sufficient for salvation to be a member of any visible Church by an outward profession of faith, unless you are a member of the Catholic Church by a true faith and the Spirit dwelling in the heart.
(2) It is not befitting Christians to envy those who are endowed with the more excellent girls; because they are members of the same body: what, therefore, is conferred on one, that should be esteemed as given to all.
(3) Since godly members are of the same body, it behoves them to be ready to assist each other; and they ought to feel equally affected with the good or evil which fall to others as with their own (1Co 12:26). (Bp. Davenant.)
The Head of the Church
I. What is meant by our Lords headship?
1. His representation of the Church as a body. At the first creation God dealt with the race as represented in Adam–hence original sin. In order to salvation, which was only possible, perhaps, because we did not fall singly, God instituted a second federation, of which Christ is the Head, the second Adam. Christians are chosen, accepted, and preserved in Him.
2. Our Lord is Head in a mystical sense (Col 2:19).
(1) The head is indispensable to life; so Jesus is the vitalizing Head of all His people. He is our life. Separation from Him is spiritual death.
(2) The head is the throne of supreme government. It is from the brain that the mandate issues which uplifts the hand, etc. Thus in the Church Christ is the great directing Head; from Him the only binding commands go forth; to Him the spiritual yield a cheerful homage.
(3) The head is the glory of the body. There the chief beauty of manhood dwells. Christ is fairer than the children of men, and in Him the beauty of the Church is summed up.
3. Christs Headship is conjugal. He is the Bridegroom, the Church is His Bride. As the husband exercises headship in the house, not at all tyrannical or magisterial, but founded upon the rule of nature and endorsed by the consent of love, so Christ rules in His Church, not as a despot compelling His subject bride against her will, but as a husband well beloved, obtaining obedience from the heart.
4. Christ is Head as King in Zion. One is your Master, etc. To no other do we render spiritual obeisance. Martyrs have bled for this truth. Some Churches have not learned it.
II. What it implies. Since Christ is Head of the Church-
1. He alone can determine doctrines for her. It is nothing that a doctrine comes down with gray antiquity to make it venerable. All the fathers, divines, and confessors put together cannot add a word to the faith once delivered to the saints. Nothing is doctrine to the Church but what is contained in the Scriptures.
2. He only can legislate for the Church. In a state, if a knot of persons should profess to make laws for the kingdom they would be laughed at; if they should attempt to enforce them they would be amenable to punishment. So the Church has no power to make laws for herself since she is not her own head; and no one has any right to make laws for her but Christ.
3. He is the living administrator in the Church; but as monarchs often administer through lieutenants, so Christ ad ministers through His Spirit who dwells in the hearts of His people. When we search the Law Book He is their guide.
4. This sole authority must be maintained rigorously.
(1) Some would have us guided by results. It has been discussed whether missions should continue since there are so few converts. But how can the question be raised when He has said, Go ye into all she world, etc.
(2) We are not to be guided by the times. Our King and laws are the same, and let the times be scientific or barbaric, our duty is the same.
III. On what does it rest?
1. On the natural supremacy of Christs nature. He is perfect man and God over all blessed for ever.
2. On His redemption.
3. On His conquest.
4. On the Divine decree (Psa 2:1-12.).
IV. What does it teach?
1. Does it not make each inquire, If the entire Church is to yield this obedience, am I yielding it?
2. Am I in the habit of judging according to my wishes or according to the Statute Book of the King? ( C. H. Spurgeon.)
The body and its Head
What striking figures are employed to describe the union between Christ and His Church!
1. They are the flock, He is the Shepherd (Joh 10:11-14). They are the bride, He is the Bridegroom (Rev 21:2-6).
3. They are the branches, He is the Stem.
4. Here, and elsewhere, they are the body, He the Head.
I. How close the connection between the head and the body. Yet as close is that between Christ and His Church. Not only is it near and dear to Him, it is identified with Him (Eph 1:23). His human body was not less necessary to His completeness as a man than His Church is to the completeness of His glory. It was much for Christ to notice, more to pity, more still to die for sinners, but to draw so near to them as this–well may Paul call it a great mystery.
II. What a fellow feeling there is between the body and the head! Is a mans body in pain, and does not the head know and feel, and the tongue complain? So when the Church suffers the Saviour feels.(Heb 4:15; Mat 25:40).
III. What a beautiful conformity; how exactly is the head proportioned to the body, and how precisely is it suited in its make to the bodys wants! Suppose the head of a brute were affixed, not only would the sight be monstrous, but that which the bodys fashion renders necessary could never be supplied. And is not the Head of this Church exactly what it wants? Christians need Almighty succour and support, such as could be given by no merely human head.
IV. What an eminent station does the head occupy, when by its various senses and faculties it is capable of regulating and directing all our movements! So Jesus is made Head over all things to His Church, that He may preside over all its concerns, and order the whole course of its events. He sees, hears, speaks, and thinks for it. It is guided by His eye, directed by His wisdom, recommended by His intercession.
V. The human head may be separated from the body. Hence the body in that case dies. But the Church cannot die because no separation can take place between it and its Head (Rom 8:35-39). Conclusion–
1. Is the Head gone up into heaven? Then the members will follow.
2. Are we members of this body? not members of the visible Church, nor professors of Christianity.
3. This union is effected by faith, cemented by love, and exhibited in obedience. (A. Roberts, M. A.)
The Head
The importance of a military position may be always estimated by the determination with which it is on the one hand assailed, and on the other defended. According to this rule we should conclude that the Church has regarded the Headship of her Lord as the very key of the position. For Christs crown, and His sole right to rule His own house without Caesars interference, her costliest and most powerful sacrifices have been made. Peter and John were the first to publicly maintain this doctrine (Act 4:19; Act 5:29).
I. Christs body is the Church. While all other bodies shall die, this is deathless. Because I live, etc. This body, paradox as it sounds, is ever changing and yet unchangeable; one undying whole formed of dying parts. Yet not more strange than things in nature. You are not the same person you were a year ago. Look at a river. The exile returns to the haunt of his early years, and there the river flows as it did when he was young; yet the liquidations have undergone perpetual change. And so the stream of time bears on to eternity, and the stream of grace on to glory, successive generations, while the Church herself, like a river fed by perennial fountains, remains unchangeable in Christs immutability, in His immortality immortal.
II. Christs body, which is not identical with any one church, is formed of all truly-believers, to whatever denomination they may belong. Mothers are prone to think their own daughters loveliest, and nothing is more natural than to say of our own denomination, Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. But to foster a spirit of sectarianism is an offence as great as to sin against His truth. In some respects bigotry is worse than heresy; and most hateful of all in Gods sight is the haughty Churchism which says, Stand by, I am holier than thou.
III. Christs body, in a sense, embraces all those churches which hold the essential truths of the gospel. There is a broad line between the essentials and the circumstantials of the faith. Yet what unnatural attempts at uniformity have men made, as if uniformity were a law of God! On no such model has God constructed our world. God, while He preserves unity, delights in variety. Why then insist on all men observing a uniform style of worship, or thinking alike on matters non-essential to salvation? You might as well insist on all men wearing the same expression, or speaking in the same tone. How tolerant was Paul of differences! His Church has not followed her Lords example. Christ drove thieves from the temple, but His followers have cast out their brethren. Divisions are bad things. I have no sympathy with those who, confounding charity with indifference, regard matters of religion as not worth disputing about. Such a state of death is worse than war. Yet divisions are bad things. Therefore we ought to aim to heal them, and where we cannot do that to soften their asperities. Blessed are the peacemakers. Let us recognize a common brotherhood, and love one another as Christ has loved us. Branches of a tree which is still one in root, stem, sap, flower, and fruit; members of the same family, travellers to the same home, see that ye fall not out by the way.
IV. As head of the church Christ is the life of the members.
1. By means of the connection which grace establishes between Him and the believer, He maintains our spiritual life. Without Me ye can do nothing. All our wishes, words, and works, however expressed in looks, sounds, and movements, are born in the brain, and there is not a good wish, word, or work but Christ was its fountain-head.
2. He is the source of our spiritual life. We must not confound the means of life with its first cause. The life which Christ gave you was His own. If any heavenly fire burns in you Christ kindled it. The spirit life is not hereditary, not of blood or of the will of the flesh. By His life He now maintains us.
V. As head of the church Christ rules its members. It is not pain that makes the insect go spinning round and round to the entertainment of the thoughtless boy who has beheaded it. It has lost in the head that which preserves harmony among the members, and prevents such anarchy as there was in the body politic when there was no king in Israel, and every man did what was right to his own eyes. Seated as becomes a king, in the highest place, the head gives law to all beneath it. Its subjects never mutiny. Patterns of the obedience we should yield to Christ, the members hesitate not to obey the head even to their own loss and suffering. How happy we should be were our hearts, minds, bodies, as obedient to Christ as the hand and tongue to the head that rules them I What else but this is needed to preserve the purity and peace of our souls, and restore the same to distracted churches? There is no essential difference between the evangelical denominations, and what should hinder them from being as ready to love and help one the other as my foot is ready to run in the service of my hand?
VI. As head of the Church christ sympathizes with his members. All the rivers run into the sea; all the nerves run into the brain, and through them mind corresponds with matter, looking through the eyes, etc. Let the foot but touch a thorn, and it is instantly withdrawn. How? Pain thrilling along the nerves flashes the danger upward to the head, which, by another set of nerves, flashes back an immediate order, so that before the thorn is buried in the flesh the foot is withdrawn. Such is the sympathy between Christ and His people. He is in closest communication with them, and by means of lines which pass from earth to heaven the meanest cottage is joined to the throne of God. No accident breaks that telegraph. The lines of Providence radiate out, and the lines of prayer radiate in. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
One with Christ
The moment I make of myself and Christ two, I am all wrong. But when I see that we are one, all is rest and peace. (Luther.)
The Holy Catholic Church
I. Its nature and characteristics. A congregation of faithful men, etc. (Act 19:1-41.).
1. The members of which it is composed.
(1) Their privileges. They are believers–faithful men, chosen, redeemed, regenerated, sanctified.
(2) You must view them as brought together in the bonds of a common profession; for they are faithful men assembled. Solitary individuals, however eminent for piety, cannot form a church (Mat 18:15).
(3) They must be brought together for religious purposes. A company of believers brought together for secular ends would not be a church. They must assemble to worship God, hear His Word, communicate, etc.
(4) These thus congregated are distinguished by the general consistency of their outward behaviour. Hypocrites and evil persons may be found in the Church, but they are not of it.
2. Its characteristics.
(1) Unity. The Church is one in
(a) The foundation on which it rests. Other foundation can no man lay.
(b) Its worship. Through Him we all have access.
(c) Its sympathy and spirit, which is much to be preferred to uniformity of opinion.
(2) Sanctity. This does not refer to external and ritual holiness, but to real and internal. Be ye holy.
(3) Catholicity, diffusiveness, generality. We may each of us have our denominational preferences, but we must not unchurch one another. The Church is catholic in the following particulars:
(a) It is the true Church wherever it may be, as to country or clime.
(b) It is found equally among all denominations who are in connection with the Head.
II. The relation in which Christ stands to it.
1. He is the teaching Head. From Him as the great Prophet of the Church flows all the light by which it is illumined and cheered. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom, etc.
2. He is the Head of influence.
3. The Head of government–both legislative and executive.
4. The only Head.
(1) Appointed as such.
(2) Necessarily so. There can be but one head of the body.
(3) All-sufficient.
III. The duties we owe to this hallowed confederacy.
1. To try the spirits, whether they be of God–the pretensions of those who offer themselves to our notice as assumed members of the Church.
2. To admire the goodness of Christ in undertaking this government.
3. To inquire whether we belong to the Holy Catholic Church.
4. To exult in its prospective triumphs.
5. To look forward to the glorious consummation when this one Church shall be presented in its full numbers before the throne. (G. Clayton, M. A.)
Church authority
It is indispensable to every society to have a central person or idea round which it may revolve; a supreme government to which it must refer and submit, The will of the person, the essence of the idea, is the reason and law of its existence. Such in the Church is Christ. Accordingly He combines in Himself all the elements of which the Church is to consist. The idea of Christian life is that the qualities of spiritual and visible worlds should be brought together. It recognizes, therefore, as its appropriate Head the God-man who combines the Divine nature to be communicated, and the human capacity for its communication, and who embodied in His incarnate life the model of what human nature should be. Around the Mediator, then, all believing men are gathered. He is the central figure around whom the Church is grouped, the essential bond and reason of its existence. As Head of the Church Christ is–
I. The source of the peculiar truths whereby it is founded. That which constitutes a society is not the truth it has in common with others, but that which is peculiar to itself. A literary society may have a morality common to themselves and hundreds about them; but it is their peculiar element of literature which constitutes them a literary society. So the Church may have a great deal of the morality common to them and unregenerate men, and so with theological ideas. Hence the name Christian cannot be accorded to those who deny the Deity and atonement of Christ, and the personality and regenerating influence of the Holy Ghost, because these are the characteristic revelations of the New Testament. Of these truths Christ is the source, and all His work concerns itself with them. As the great Prophet of the Church He announces them, as its Priest He realizes them, as its King He reigns to enforce them.
II. The source of the spiritual life wherein it consists. The idea o! a society is the reception by its members, and their practical embodiment of its peculiar truths. The Church is, therefore, more than an association of theoretic believers in the atonement and regeneration; it lives under their power and for their promulgation. Common theories only bring men into juxtaposition; common experiences knit them together. The truth which Christ has given the Church becomes a quickening thing.
1. This supposes that previously men were dead. Moral death is the most lamentable of all deaths.
2. In this condition Christ finds him. You hath He quickened. Restoration to moral life is effected–
(1) By His atonement, by which He rescues men from legal death, and procures a reversal of the sentence of condemnation.
(2) By His Spirit the soul is quickened, and men having the Spirit of Christ are born again.
(3) This moral life is a right state of the heart towards God, and is sustained by these truths. They constrain to holy obedience.
III. The source of all the authority or law wherewith it is regulated. He determines the precise, direction and shape which spiritual feeling should assume, but such direction need not interfere with the spontaneousness of the feeling. And so the Christian precept prompts the desire for duty and directs it, but is nowhere arbitrary. Thus is it also in the associated life of the Church. Whatever law Christ has given He has given in accordance with the spontaneous prompting of Church life; the prompting might be vague, the precept enlightens it. At the same time, when institutions are needed Christ alone has authority to enjoin them as laws. This we see e.g., in the sacraments. Christ is the sole legislator, and for any individual to interpose an authority between Christ and the Church is open rebellion.
IV. Christ administers the providences which constitute its experience. This is part of His mediatorial right in pursuance of His purpose of world restoration.
1. Within the Church He orders the succession and distinctions of its ministry, the accession or removal of its members, their spiritual birth or translation, their trials and privileges.
2. Without the Church He determines or permits the experiences that shall visit it; the waves that shall beat upon the ark; the assaults upon the fortress.
Lessons–
1. If Christ be the source of all spiritual truth and life, our constant temper should be practical gratitude for our participation of it.
2. If Christ be the source of all authority, our constant habit should be holy obedience.
3. If Christ provides, then we may safely leave all things in His hands.
4. Let us assure ourselves of its final and glorious triumph. (H. Allon, D. D.)
Who is the beginning.
Names and titles among men are generally insignificant, and not characteristic of the persons who wear them; but Christs are both descriptive and recommendatory. He is the beginning.
I. As to his Divine nature. It implies His eternity and self-existence. He is not God by derivation and commission. He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. He is therefore the beginning and fountain of created existence. He who received life from none communicates life to all. Not only our being but our intellectual and moral excellencies are from Him. By His power we are what we are as men; by His grace we are what we are as Christians.
II. As mediator.
1. He is the origin of the Church of God. It is He that has raised it out of the ruins of the fall. Is it a temple? He builds it. Is it a garden? He plants it.
2. He is the beginning to individual saints. Our life is from His death, and all the streams of blessedness flow from His fulness. More particularly
(1) He is the source of reconciliation and the beginning of our peace with God. Our prayers and tears have no influence; neither our own work nor that of the Holy Spirit. There is no admission to Divine favour without satisfaction to Divine justice; and Christ alone has made that by the Cross.
(2) He is the beginning in reference to the change wrought in us by regeneration. This change is wrought by the Holy Spirit, but as the Spirit of Christ He shall receive of Mine. Christ within us is the hope of glory. He is our Life.
3. With respect to the resurrection. His own was the pattern and pledge of that of His saints. The same Spirit who quickened Him shall also quicken us.
Learn–
1. The honour that is due to Christ.
2. As Christ is the beginning of all spiritual blessings, so those blessings can belong to none but those who are in Him.
3. He who is the beginning is also the end; and this secures the happiness of all the saints. He who has begun will also finish (Heb 12:2).
Christ the beginning
The same place and dignity that Christ has in the order of nature He has in the order of grace; He is the beginning of the new as He was also of the old creation.
I. In the way of order as first and chief of the renewed state.
1. AS Founder and Builder of the Church (Mat 16:18; Heb 3:3-5). One of the noblest of Gods works is His Church of the firstborn; none could constitute it but the God-man. For the materials are sinful and guilty men. Neither men nor angels could raise them into a holy temple to God.
2. As the Lord of the Church (Heb 2:7).
II. In the way of causality.
1. As a moral, meritorious cause (1Jn 4:9-10).
2. As an efficient cause by His Spirit who works in the members of His mystical body (2Co 5:17; Eph 2:10). The influence we have from our Head is–
(1) Life (Gal 2:20; Joh 6:57).
(2) Likeness (Gal 4:19; 2Co 3:18). It is for the honour of Christ that His image should be upon His members, to distinguish them from others. As to life, He is the root (Joh 15:1-2); as to likeness, He is the pattern (Rom 8:29).
III. The reason of this.
1. It is for the honour of the Son to be the Head of the new world. In the kingdom of Christ all thing are new; a new covenant, paradise, ministry, ordinances, members, and so a new Head or Second Adam (1Co 15:45). It is suited to our lost estate. (T. Manton, D. D.)
The beginning
I. This term expresses Christs divine nature. He must be Divine who is almighty, and who is, and was, and is to come; and since the beginning is a title applied in the same passage (Rev 1:8), Paul pronounces Him Divine.
II. It expresses Christs relation to his church.
1. The beginning of a tree is the seed it springs from. The giant oak had its origin in the acorn. Now as a seed Christ was apparently of little promise, a root out of a dry ground, yet out of Him has grown that Church which shall bear the blessings of salvation to the ends of the earth.
2. A house, again, begins at the foundation. The first stone laid is the foundation-stone. Christ is this, a tried stone, a firm and immovable basis for the believer.
4. The Author of our faith, the Founder of the Church, began it, ere sun or stars shone in heaven. He provided for the fall before it happened. He had the lifeboat on the beach before the bark was stranded, or launched, or even built. He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
III. He is the beginning of salvation to every individual believer.
1. Whatever was the instrument employed it was His grace that began what had a beginning. The preacher was a man but drawing a bow at a venture, It was Christs eye that aimed the shaft, and His strength that bent the bow. When our sins were carrying us out to burial He stopped the bier and imparted life.
2. As Christ is the beginner, so is He the finisher of our faith. He does no half work, half saving, or half sanctifying a man. Trust Him that when He has begun a good work He will carry it on to the end. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
The firstborn from the dead.–
I. Open the terms. Firstborn. If the grave was as a womb to Christ, and His resurrection as a birth, then Christ was in a manner born when He rose. Only He hath the precedency; surely others will follow Him (Act 26:23; 1Co 15:20). As in the consecration of the firstfruits the whole harvest was consecrated, so Christ by rising raises all.
II. Vindicate the notion. Two objections lie against it.
1. Many were raised before Him or by Him (1Ki 17:1-24.; 2Ki 4:1-44; 2Ki 13:21; Luk 7:15; Luk 8:55; Joh 11:44; Mat 27:52).
(1) We must distinguish between a proper and improper resurrection. He arose by a proper, which is to rise to a life immortal; they only to a mortal estate, and so the great disease was rather removed than cured (Act 13:34).
(2) Others were raised by the power and virtue of His resurrection, but He by His own power (Joh 8:18). Thus Christ is said not only to be raised again, but to rise (Rom 4:25).
(3) All those who rose before, rose only by special dispensation to lay down their bodies again when God should see fit, and rose only as private persons. But Christ rose as a public Person, and once for all.
2. Concerning the raising of the wicked. Christ cannot be the firstborn to them who belong not to His mystical body. The firstborn implies a relation to the rest of the family. The offering of the firstfruits did not sanctify the tares and weeds.
(1) Certainly the wicked shall rise again (Act 24:15; Joh 5:28-29); but
(2) they will be raised by Christ as a Judge, not as a Redeemer. The one sort are raised by the power[of His vindictive justice, the other by the Holy Ghost by virtue of His covenant (Rom 8:11); the one by Christs power from without as Judge of dead and living, the other by an inward quickening influence flowing from Him as their proper Head.
(3) The wicked are forced to appear to receive their sentence, the other go joyfully to meet the Bridegroom and enter into eternal life.
III. How is this an evidence and assurance to all Christians of their happy and glorious resurrection 9
1. There shall be a resurrection. It is necessary to prove that–
(1) Because it is the foundation of all godliness (2Co 15:32).
(2) Because it is not easy of belief. The great and public evidence thereof is Christs which makes ours–
(a) Possible. That is the least we can gather from it (1Co 15:13).
(b) Easy. By rising Christ has conquered death (1Co 15:57; Heb 2:14).
(c) Certain and necessary from–First, our relation to Christ as Head. He cannot live gloriously in heaven and leave His members under the power of death (Eph 1:23; Eph 4:13), otherwise He would be a maimed Christ. Second, the charge and office of Christ (Joh 6:39). Third, the mercy of God through the merits of Christ to the faithful who have hazarded their lives for His sake (1Th 4:14; 2Co 4:14).
2. The resurrection to the faithful will be happy and glorious.
(1) Because Christs is not only a cause, but pattern. The members were appointed to be conformed to their Head (Rom 8:19; 1Pe 1:21).
(2) By the grant of God. They have a right and title to it. Being admitted to His family they may expect to be admitted into His presence; and they have the Holy Spirit as an earnest till it be accomplished (Eph 1:14; Eph 4:30; Rom 8:28).
IV. The use is to persuade you to the relief of these two grand articles of faith.
1. The resurrection of Christ. That is the great foundation of faith (1Co 15:14). All the apostles preaching was built on this supposition.
(1) Partly because this is the great evidence of the truth of Christianity (Act 23:31; Act 13:33).
(2) Partly to show that He is in a capacity to convey spiritual and eternal life to others; which, if He had continued in the state of death, He could not be (Joh 14:19; 1Pe 1:3; Eph 1:20-21).
2. Your own resurrection.
(1) Consider it as a work of omnipotency. To an infinite power there can be no difficulty (Php 3:21; Zec 8:6).
(2) We have relief from the justice of God. He is the rewarder of good and bad, but He does not dispense His rewards in this life (1Co 15:29).
(3) Gods unchangeable love, which inclines Him to seek the dust of His confederates; therefore Christ proves the resurrection from Gods covenant title (Mat 22:31). (T. Manton, D. D.)
The firstborn
Christ is the firstborn from the dead.
I. In the dignity of His person. He is the greatest who ever entered or shall ever leave the gates of death. Isaiah in one of his boldest flights of fancy sets forth the destruction of the Babylonian monarchy. He sees a mighty king descending into the grave, breaking its awful silence and entering alone the dark domain of a monarch mightier than himself. On his ear fall the voices of kings long buried, muttering, Art thou become as we? When we die we sink into the grave as snowflakes on the water, but Christ being the Lord of glory, the fountain of life, His descent into the tomb was an event which may well be set forth by the prophets imagery. I can fancy all the dead astonished at His coming. Fancy some great, good monarch thrust into the common jail; and were such a reverse of fortune borne out of love to His subjects, how would it move their love and admiration as well as their wonder and pity! Yet what were such an event compared with what, unnoticed by the world, took place in the garden? Christs descent into the tomb awoke death from its deepest apathy. That awoke those who are heedless of the shock of earthquakes. The graves were opened. Waiting for Him to lead the way, many dead saints left the tomb.
II. Because He rose by His own power. There is no sensibility, passion, or power in the dead. They can do nothing to help themselves. In all cases but Christs, life was given, not taken back.
III. Because He is the only one who never rise to die again. The others twice drank the bitter cup.
IV. Because He has taken precedence of his people. It is better for me, if I am a poor man standing in need of royal favours, to have a friend at court than in my own humble cottage; and it is better for us that Christ is with the Father in heaven than with us on earth. But apart from that, precedence was His right. ]: he King precedes His train; the Head was first out of the grave, afterwards the body and its members. It is as the prelude to our own resurrection that Christs is to us the object of the greatest satisfaction and joy. Henceforth the grave holds but a lease of the saints. Because He rose we shall rise. If we are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ what reconciling views of death does this open to us! (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
The Divine harbinger
Sweeter to our ear than the full chorus of bright skies and green wood are the first notes of the warbler that pipes away the winter, and breaks in on its long, drear silence! And more welcome to our eye than the flush of summers gayest flowers is the simple snowdrop that hangs its pure white bell above the dead, bare ground. And why? These are the firstborn of the year, the forerunners of a crowd to follow. In that group of silver bells that ring in the spring with its joys and loves and singing birds, my fancys eye sees the naked earth clothed with beauty, the streams, like children let loose, dancing and laughing, and rejoicing in their freedom, bleak winter gone, and natures annual resurrection. And in that solitary simple note my fancy hears the carol of larks, wide moor, hillside, and woodlands full of song and ringing with all music. And in Christ, the Firstborn, I see the grave giving up its dead: from the depths of the sea, from lonely wilderness and crowded churchyard they come, like the dew of the grass, an innumerable multitude. Risen Lord! we rejoice in Thy resurrection. We hail it as the harbinger and blessed pledge of our own. The first to come forth, Thou art the Elder Brother of a family whose countless numbers the patriarch saw in the dust of the desert, whose holy beauty he saw shining in the bright stars of heaven. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
That in all things He might have the pre-eminence.–
The Pre-eminent One
It is the ordination of providence that in every society or profession there should be a head–some one who should have the pre-eminence. The father ought to be the chief of his house. Israel was governed by God, yet He chose Moses as His vice-gerent, and when the nation was afterwards divided into tens, hundreds, etc., still Moses retained the preeminence. No society could hang together without this. The same ordination holds good in the Church. From its members some are made eminent pastors, etc., yet there is but one to whom the pre-eminence belongs. And we are told the reason of it. Among men we see eminence variously displayed: one is eminent for wisdom, another for power, and so on; but Christ is pre-eminent in all things. Therefore Christ is reserved for this honour; and that not simply as God, but as Mediator. Christ has pre-eminence.
I. In the estimation of deity.
1. On whom does the Father concentrate His love and delight? Jehovah calls Him His own Son, His dear Son, His beloved Son. Christ is the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father, and He speaks of the glory He had before the world was. Thrice did the Father glorify Him–at His baptism, transfiguration, and lust before His passion. At His incarnation the Father said, Let all the angels of God worship Him, and after His burial sent angels to roll away the stone.
2. The same pre-eminence is given by the Holy Spirit. He anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows–descended on Him at His baptism, glorifies Him, and receives of His.
II. In the testimony of the scriptures. They wrote of Me. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Every metaphor that the glowing glories of earth or heaven have offered is selected to put honour on His brow.
1. Consider His titles–Foundation, Door, Captain, Advocate, Judge, etc.
2. His offices–Prophet, Priest, King, Shepherd, etc.
III. As exhibited in the glory of His works.
1. Creation. Angels have done wonders, and men; but whoever saw anything equal to the works of Christ?
2. Providence. The government is on His shoulders.
3. Redemption.
IV. In the opinion of relievers. There are many who are very dear to us on earth and in heaven; but who has the pre-eminence? Unto you that believe He is precious. He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.
V. In the happiness of heaven. TO be with Christ, apart from the consideration of its other glories, that is heaven. Conclusion. Give Christ the pre-eminence.
1. In your hearts.
2. In your houses.
3. Labour that He may have it in the whole world. (J. Sherman.)
Christ pre-eminent
I. He is the first.
1. He is pre-eminent in age (verse 15). Before Abraham was I am.
2. In the work of redemption, firstborn from the dead.
II. He is the mightiest.
1. As Creator (verse 16).
2. As Preserver (verse 17).
3. As Destroyer. We cannot destroy the tiniest piece of matter. He can desolate a world.
III. He is the richest. He owns–
1. All the treasures of creation (verse 10).
2. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 2:3).
3. All the treasures of grace (verse 19).
IV. He is the highest.
1. He now occupies the throne of mercy.
2. He will leave this for the throne of judgment.
3. He will finally sit on the throne of glory and reign for ever and ever.
V. He is the lovliest. The altogether lovely.
1. As the brightness of His Fathers glory.
2. As the fairest of the children of men.
VI. He is the last as He is the First. He only hath immortality; ours is derived from Him. (H. G. Guinness.)
Christ pre-eminent in all things
Some are eminent for one thing, some for another. Some are distinguished for vast wealth, some are ennobled by intellectual resources, some obtain a name for personal bravery, but none has pre-eminence in all things. But in whatever light we look at Christ He is pre-eminent.
I. In His Divine and mysterious nature. God manifest in the flesh, mighty God, etc.
II. In the unrivalled glory of His perfections. He has every attribute of Deity, and Whatever things the Father doeth, these doeth the Son likewise.
III. In the stupendous character of His works.
1. All creation is His handiwork.
2. In the work of Providence governing and sustaining the universe.
IV. In the illustrious dignity of His offices. Shepherd and Bishop of souls; His throne is for ever and ever; He is the Mediator of a better covenant; in Him, as Prophet, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
V. In the consistent testimony of scripture. Take any doctrine you choose, it must have some connection with Christ. Promises send us to Christ to fulfil them; precepts send us to Christ, by whose strength alone we can perform them; threatenings send us to Christ, by whose atonement and intercession alone they can be averted. Take Christ from the Bible and you its life; its promises have no reality, its prophecies are empty words, its laws lose their power, and its hopes their animation and realization.
VI. In the stupendous work of human redemption. For this He alone was competent. Salvation begins and ends with Him.
VII. In Christian experience. The Christians faith is faith in Christ; his joy, joy in Christ; his strength, strength in Christ; his life, life in Christ. Think of what is necessary to a perfect Christian and you will find it all in Christ. All worship is to be offered in His name, and all obedience rendered Him.
VIII. In Christian preaching and testimony. To bear witness to Christ and to secure Him homage is the end of our creation.
IX. Christ will yet have pre-eminence in the world. (W. P. Appelbe, LL. D.)
Christ in all things the pre-eminent
Nature and the Bible are alike in this respect–that you find in each two kinds of objects: the one simple, quiet, beautiful; the other grand, majestic, overpowering. In this chapter we get amongst the Highlands of Revelation.
I. The supremacy of Christ.
1. As extending over two spheres, the realms of nature and grace, the universe and the Church.
(1) He is the firstborn of every creature. We cannot suppose Him to be a creature, because He is before all things, dec. In Rabbinical literature Jehovah is styled the firstborn of creation, by which is meant that He is supreme over the universe; for the birthright carried with it supremacy. In like manner the phrase must be taken in reference to Christ. His dominion extends to all things in heaven: sun, moon, stars, dec., and angels who never fell; to things on earth: the globe and its inhabitants, all mineral, vegetable, animal, and human existence.
(2) He is Head of the Church. Lord of the Churchs mind–in their religious thinking believers are to think under Him. Lord of the Churchs heart–in their affections believers are to be guided by Him. Lord of the Churchs life–for His Word is law.
2. This supremacy has been obtained in two different ways.
(1) Christs birthright of authority and power over the universe is by creation.
(2) In His redemptive work He is the firstborn of the dead. He is the firstborn in both, but creation is by life; redemption is through death.
3. There is a distinction between the relations in which the created universe and the redeemed Church stands to Him. He made the one; He is the Head of the other. The universe is a grand collection of things made by His power and for His use. Thus we are led to separate between the universe and Christ. He is no part of it. But in relation to the Church the distinction is dropped, and an idea of most intimate union introduced–it is His body, which is nowhere attributed of nature.
4. This pre-eminence issues in the union of the two realms. Verse 20 should be read in connection with this. The reconciliation goes further than persons and laws and governments. Thus much appears.
(1) That Christ, in His mediatorial reign, through His death, becomes the Lord and Guardian of the entire universe of holy beings, redeemed and unfallen; that He gathers all in one unto God, and is equally King of earth and heaven.
(2) That the sin of man has disturbed the relation between Him and angels; that man getting out of place, throws into disorder the whole sphere of existence to which he belongs, as a wandering star would the solar system, and that Christ, by putting men right, reconciles them to angels and angels to them.
(3) That without an atonement it was an unbefitting thing that heaven should receive depraved mortals; but that with an atonement it is quite befitting that men redeemed and sanctified should enter the ranks of the glorified; and that in the end such will be the number of the saved, and the relation in which they stand to the rest of the universe, that in some sense a reconciliation of all things will be accomplished.
5. Let me ask whether in correspondence with these views of Christs supremacy He has pre eminence in our hearts and lives?
II. The plenitude (verse 19).
1. The fulness of the Father exists in Christ as it nowhere else does. In nature there are streams of the Divine glory, yet the ocean fulness is not there. In the reason of man there are Divine sparks; in the history of the world Divine footprints; in the souls of believers and the united virtues of the Church there is much Divine light and goodness; but the fulness nowhere, not even in the Bible, only in Christ. And wherever else in any measure it is, it is from Him. He is the Creator and Upholder of the world; Light and Lord of human reason; Sovereign of the ages; Giver of gracious power; Inspirer and Subject of the Book of books.
2. This plenitude must be taken in connection with the supremacy of Christ.
(1) In creation He has the pre-eminence, because in Him all fulness dwells of infinite power, wisdom, goodness.
(2) How could He be Head over all things to His Church if He were a man? A created Saviour could not supply all our need; but in the Divine Christ there is all fulness of pardoning mercy, renewing power, supporting love, strength for a day of trouble, a dying hour.
3. The pre-eminence and fulness of Christ constitute the leading object of our blessed faith. Agencies are needed to bring men to Him, but nothing can add to the completeness of those who are in Him. (J. Stoughton, D. D.)
Christ is pre-eminent
I. As to His personality. He stands unique. All the elements in His make up to which the term human can be applied show Him to be pre-eminently human. He came into the world by the gateway of the Hebrew nation, but He is not a Jew. He belonged to 1800 years ago, and yet He is of no age. He spent His days and nights under the Eastern skies, but He is of no clime. He gathers up into Himself all the best elements in Jewish, Greek, and Roman life. He was pre-eminently moral and devotional; He was in sympathy with everything beautiful; He glorified the moral law, was loyal to the national, and had worldwide ambitions, only, unlike those of Rome, they were benevolent.
II. As to His ideas of God and man. The test of pre-eminence of nature is largeness of idea on these themes.
1. The idea Christ gave us of God was pre-eminent. No one ever approached it. There had been many attempts to put the nature of God into a word, but all had failed till He said Father.
2. So with His idea of the nature of man. The noblest man among the Jews was the chief of the Pharisees or Sadducees; among the Greeks the most physically beautiful; among the Romans the strong man able to trample every one who was in His path into the dust. Under the influence of Jesus the noblest man is the gentlest, humanest, chastest, and most charitable. This is a new idea.
3. Other ideas help us to see how pre-eminently Jesus was the worlds greatest thinker, such as the brotherhood of man; the idea that love of God is best expressed in the service of man, the idea that the worst man may be saved.
III. As to His mission in the world. NO other man ever carried on such a mission or was capable of entertaining the idea of it. It was to bring a revolted world back into such an allegiance as is worthy of God to accept and man to give; not forced, but based on love. The accomplishment of such a mission seems to us impossible, but in individuals it has been accomplished, and will yet be in the whole world.
IV. As to unbiassed human opinion of Him. Only one conspicuous man in the world of literature has been blind to His excellency–Voltaire; but Rousseau, another great sceptic, wrote, If the life and death of Socrates be those of a saint, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Napoleon I., the old Roman, back again in the Christian centuries, said, I know men, Jesus was not a man. (R. Thomas, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 18. He is the head of the body] What the apostle has said in the two preceding verses refers to the Divine nature of Jesus Christ; he now proceeds to speak of his human nature, and to show how highly that is exalted beyond all created things, and how, in that, he is head of the Church-the author and dispenser of light, life, and salvation, to the Christian world; or, in other words, that from him, as the man in whom the fulness of the Godhead bodily dwelt, all the mercy and salvation of the Gospel system is to be received.
The beginning, the first-born from the dead] In 1Co 15:20, Christ is called the first-fruits of them that slept; and here, the chief and first-born from the dead; he being the first that ever resumed the natural life, with the employment of all its functions, never more to enter the empire of death, after having died a natural death, and in such circumstances as precluded the possibility of deception. The , chief, head, or first, answers in this verse to the , or first-fruits, 1Co 15:20. Jesus Christ is not only the first who rose from the dead to die no more, but he is the first-fruits of human beings; for as surely as the first-fruits were an indication and pledge of the harvest, so surely was the resurrection of Christ the proof that all mankind should have a resurrection from the dead.
That in all – he might have the pre-eminence] That he might be considered, in consequence of his mediatorial office, as possessing the first place in and being chief over all the creation of God; for is it to be wondered at that the human nature, with which the great Creator condescended to unite himself, should be set over all the works of his hands?
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And he is the head of the body, the church: having spoken of Christ in reference to the creatures in general, or old creation, showing how he is the Creator, Preserver, and Governor thereof, the apostle doth here speak of him with a special reference to his church, or the new creation, whereof he shows here, (as elsewhere: See Poole on “Eph 1:22,23“, with Eph 4:15, and Eph 5:23), that he is the Head and Governor, his chosen and called being the proper subjects of his special kingdom, the choice body, unto which he doth more peculiarly relate, Col 1:24, for the guiding and governing of it, he being that to it which the head is to the natural body, and more especially in the two former respects:
1. Of their union to God, which was chiefly designed and expressed in those words, who is the beginning, i.e. the first foundation or principle of their union to God, whereupon the first corner-stone of the churchs happiness is laid, he being the beginning of the second creation, as of the first, Rev 3:14. And:
2. Of their restoration from sin and death, being brought into that first-designed happiness, which is the great intention of that union, as appears from the following expression, the firstborn from the dead, in a special distinction from the dead, here too of the creature, Col 1:15.
The apostle doth not tautologize, but what he spoke of Christ there with respect to the creature, he doth here speak of him with respect to his church, as 1Co 15:20,23; Re 1:5. By the particle from is implied not only that he was before the dead, but that he was numbered amongst the dead in respect of that nature wherein he was once dead; from which he was demonstrated to be first-born; his resurrection with a glorious body {Phi 3:21} being a kind of new birth, whereby upon the reunion of his holy soul and body he was born from the womb of the grave, the Head in regard of the members: resurrection is called a regeneration, Mat 19:28; and as there is a gracious resurrection of the soul upon effectual calling in conversion, so there is a glorious regeneration of the body in the resurrection, Luk 20:36, in contradistinction to Luk 20:34. Christ is the first-born of these, in reference to God, Act 26:23; 1Co 15:20,23; as the first-fruits, or first ear of this blessed harvest, that was carried up into the sanctuary, and offered in due season to the eternal Father, until the rest do become ripe: and in reference to the dead, i.e. in the Lord, 1Co 15:18; 1Th 4:14; Rev 14:13; from whom he first rose in regard of time fully and perfectly; and of whom, in regard of dignity and dominion, Psa 89:27; Gal 4:1, he is chief, and Lord, (hath the pre-eminence, as it follows), and is first in regard of causality of those dead in him, standing in relation to him their Head, Rom 11:15, with 1Co 15:20, who shall be perfectly raised by virtue of his resurrection. And however it be said, both in the Old and New Testament, some were before raised; yet he was the cause of his own resurrection, as none others were, or can be. He properly rose, and that by his own power, Psa 110:7; Joh 10:17,18; others were and will be raised by his. In regard of the sort and kind of resurrection, he it was first which was not imperfect, as others, or Lazarus, who was raised but to return to his former state of mortality; but perfect, Christ rose to die no more, Rom 6:9; Heb 9:28. He was the first that rose as a public person, Head of his Church, the Second Adam, representing all his members, 1Co 15:21,22, who are raised together with him spiritually, virtually, and representatively, Eph 2:6 1Pe 3:21; those actually raised before in another sort were like singular ears of corn, by occasion more timely gathered for a special instance of Divine power, but Christ was the first that ever rose in the nature and quality of the first-fruits duly gathered, to sanctify and consecrate the whole harvest of the dead in him, who shall one day be raised to a conformity unto him, Phi 3:21. The Socinians, from this metaphorical expression of Christs being the first-born from the dead, and fetching in that passage where it is said: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee, Act 13:33, do oppose Christs natural and eternal Sonship, but very inconsequently and absurdly; for:
1. Christ was properly the Son of God before his resurrection from the dead, he did not then receive that relation by it, as other texts clearly prove, Psa 2:7; Pro 30:4; Mic 5:2; Joh 1:1; 17:5.
2. If his resurrection had been a begetting of him, then would he have begotten himself, so been Father and Son to himself, because he raised himself.
As to that other text they allege, things are sometimes said to be done then, when only manifested and doclared to be done: then was Christ the first of all the dead that was born, and raised again in incorruption, declared to be the Son of God with power, Rom 1:4, according to the prophecy: q.d. This day I have manifested thee by raising of thyself to be my natural Son, whom I begat from everlasting. Be sure he hath the primacy and pre-eminence, as it follows. That in all things he might have the pre-eminence; which some expound as the end and intention of Christ the agent, that he might obtain the primacy, Rom 14:9; 2Co 5:15, or hold the first place in all things; whether more generally, according with the common scope of the apostle in the precedent verses, compared with Col 2:10; Joh 5:25,29; Eph 1:22; or more specially, amongst his brethren and all the members of his mystical body, Rom 8:29, with 2Co 5:17,18; but this is not material, because all things are brought under his empire. Others, because the primacy doth belong to him by undoubted right, and that he, being Head of his church, did ultimalely design to save it, and so to glorify his Father, do expound it rather as the event, consequent, and conclusion from the antecedent, which is the end of the work, so as that, or in such a sort as, he actually is declared to be the first, or he holds the primacy in the old and new creation. According to the agreement with his Father, he is such a one as not only hath all manner of privileges, that any in this or the other world do, or may be supposed to, excel in; but also with a pre-eminence, a primacy in all, above what any one hath in any thing he may glory of.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
18. Revelation of Christ to theChurch and the new creation, as the Originator of both.
heemphatical. Notangels in opposition to the false teachers’ doctrine concerningangel-worship, and the power of Oeons or (imaginary) spiritemanations from God (Col 2:10;Col 2:18).
head of the body, thechurchThe Church is His body by virtue of His entering intocommunion corporeally with human nature [NEANDER],(Eph 1:22). The same One who isthe Head of all things and beings by creation, is also, by virtue ofbeing “the first-born from the dead,” and so “thefirst-fruits” of the new creation among men, the Head of theChurch.
who isthat is, in thatHe is the Beginning [ALFORD].Rather, this is the beginning of a new paragraph. As theformer paragraph, which related to His originating the physicalcreation, began with “Who is” (Col1:15); so this, which treats of His originating the new creation,begins with “who is”; a parenthesis preceding, which closesthe former paragraph, that parenthesis (see on Col1:16), including from “all things were created by Him,”to “Head of the body, the Church.” The head of kingsand high priests was anointed, as the seat of the faculties, thefountain of dignity, and original of all the members(according to Hebrew etymology). So Jesus by His unction wasdesignated as the Head of the body, the Church.
the beginningnamely,of the new creation, as of the old (Pro 8:22;Joh 1:1; compare Re1:8): the beginning of the Church of the first-born (Heb12:23), as being Himself the “first-born from the dead”(Act 26:23; 1Co 15:20;1Co 15:23). Christ’sprimogeniture is threefold: (1) From eternity the “first-begotten”of the Father (Col 1:15); (2)As the first-born of His mother (Mt1:25); (3) As the Head of the Church, mystically begotten of theFather, as it were to a new life, on the day of His resurrection,which is His “regeneration,” even as His people’s comingresurrection will be their “regeneration” (that is, theresurrection which was begun in the soul, extended to the body and tothe whole creation, Rom 8:21;Rom 8:22) (Mat 19:28;Act 13:33; Rev 1:5).Sonship and resurrection are similarly connected (Luk 20:36;Rom 1:4; Rom 8:23;1Jn 3:2). Christ by rising fromthe dead is the efficient cause (1Co15:22), as having obtained the power, and the exemplary cause, asbeing the pattern (Mic 2:13;Rom 6:5; Phi 3:21),of our resurrection: the resurrection of “the Head”involves consequentially that of the members.
that in all thingsHeresumes the “all things” (Col1:20).
he might have thepre-eminenceGreek, “He HIMSELFmay (thus) become the One holding the first place,” or,”take the precedency.” Both ideas are included, priority intime and priority in dignity: now in the regeneratedworld, as before in the world of creation (Col1:15). “Begotten before every creature, or “first-bornof every creature” (Psa 89:27;Joh 3:13).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And he is the head of the body, the church,…. By “the church” is meant, not any particular congregated church, as the church at Colosse, or Corinth, or any other; but the whole election of grace, the general assembly and church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven in the Lamb’s book of life; the church which Christ has given himself for, and has purchased with his blood, and builds on himself the rock, and will, at last, present to himself a glorious church without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; this is compared to an human body, and therefore called “the body”; which is but one, consisting of many members in union with each other, set in their proper places in just symmetry and proportion to each other, and subservient to one another, and are neither more nor fewer; see 1Co 12:12, c. and of this body, the church, Christ is “the head” he was the representative head of this body of elect men from all eternity, and in time; he is a political head of them, or in such sense an head unto them, as a king is to his subjects; he reigns in them by his Spirit and grace, and rules them by wholesome laws of his own enacting, and which he inscribes on their hearts, and he protects and defends them by his power; he is an economical head, or in such sense an head of them, as the husband is the head of the wife, and parents and masters are the heads of their families, he standing in all these relations to them; and he is to them what a natural head is to an human body; of all which [See comments on 1Co 11:3]. The Messiah is called one head, in Ho 1:11; which Jarchi explains by David their king, and Kimchi on the place says, this is the King Messiah:
who is the beginning; which either denotes the eternity of Christ, who was not only in the beginning, and was set up from the beginning, from everlasting, but is also the beginning and the end; and who is, indeed, without beginning of days, or end of life: or his dominion; he is the principality, as the word may be rendered; he is the principality of principalities, the head of all principality and power, the angels; he is the Prince of the kings of the earth; he is King of saints; the kingdom of nature and providence is his, and the government of his people in a special manner is on his shoulders: or this may design his being the first cause of all things; he is the beginning of the creation of God; the efficient cause of all created beings; he is the beginning of the church, of which he is the head; as Eve was from Adam, so is the church from Christ; it is a body of his preparing, and a temple of his building, and where he sits as a priest on his throne, and has the government of it: the second number, wisdom, in the cabalistic tree of the Jews, is called “the beginning” n, as is the Logos, or Word, by Philo the Jew o:
the firstborn from the dead; the first that rose from the dead by his own power, and to an immortal life; for, though others were raised before him, and by him, yet not to a state of immortality; the path of life, to an immortal life, was first shown to him as man; and who also is the firstfruits of them that sleep, and so the pledge and earnest of the future resurrection of the saints; and is both the efficient and exemplary cause of it; the resurrection of the dead will be by him as God, and according to his own, as man:
that in all [things] he might have the pre-eminence; or might be the first and chief over all persons, angels, and men; having a superior nature, name, and place, than the former, and being the firstborn among many brethren designed by the latter: and in all things he is the first, and has the precedence and primacy; in sonship, no one is a Son in the sense he is; in election, he was chosen first, and his people in him; in the covenant, he is the surety, Mediator, and messenger of it, he is that itself; in his human nature, he is fairer than the children of men; in redemption, he was alone, and wrought it out himself; in life, he exceeded all others in purity, in doctrine, and miracles; and in dying he conquered death, and rose first from it; in short, he died, revived, and rose again, that he might be Lord both of dead and living; and he ought to have the pre-eminence and first place in the affections of our hearts, in the contemplations of our minds, in the desires of our souls, and in the highest praises of our lips.
n Cabala denudata, par. 2. p. 7. & Lex. Cabal. p. 679, 681. o Philo de Conf. ling. p. 341.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The head of the body ( ). Jesus is first also in the spiritual realm as he is in nature (verses 18-20). Paul is fond of the metaphor of the body () for believers of which body Christ is the head () as seen already in 1Cor 11:3; 1Cor 12:12; 1Cor 12:27; Rom 12:5. See further Col 1:24; Eph 1:22; Eph 4:2; Eph 4:15; Eph 5:30.
The church ( ) Genitive case in explanatory apposition with . This is the general sense of , not of a local body, assembly, or organization. Here the contrast is between the realm of nature ( ) in verses 15-17 and the realm of spirit or grace in verses 18-20. A like general sense of occurs in Eph 1:22; Eph 5:24-32; Heb 12:23. In Eph 2:11-22 Paul uses various figures for the kingdom of Christ (commonwealth , verse 12, one new man , verse 15, one body , verse 16, family of God , verse 19, building or temple and , verses 20-22).
Who (). Causal use of the relative, “in that he is.”
The beginning ( ). It is uncertain if the article () is genuine. It is absolute without it. Christ has priority in time and in power. See Re 3:14 for his relation as to creation and 1Cor 15:20; 1Cor 15:23 for used of Christ and the resurrection and Ac 3:14 for used of him as the author of life and Heb 2:10 of Jesus and salvation and Heb 12-2 of Jesus as the pioneer of faith.
That in all things he might have the preeminence ( ). Purpose clause with and the second aorist middle subjunctive of , “that he himself in all things (material and spiritual) may come to (, not , be) hold the first place” (, present active participle of , old verb, to hold the first place, here only in the N.T.). Christ is first with Paul in time and in rank. See Re 1:5 for this same use of with (the dead).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
And He. Emphatic. The same who is before all things and in whom all things consist.
The head of the body, the Church. The Church is described as a body, Rom 12:4 sq.; 1Co 12:12 – 27; 1Co 10:17, by way of illustrating the functions of the members. Here the image is used to emphasize the position and power of Christ as the head. Compare ch. 2 19; Eph 1:22, 23; Eph 4:4, 12, 15, 16; Eph 5:23, 30.
Who is the beginning [ ] . Who is, equivalent to seeing He is. Beginning, with reference to the Church; not the beginning of the Church, but of the new life which subsists in the body – the Church. The first – born from the dead [ ] . Defining how Christ is the beginning of the new spiritual life : by His resurrection. Compare 1Co 14:20, 23, and Prince of life, Act 3:15 (note) See on Rev 1:5, where the phrase is slightly different, “first – born of the dead.” He comes forth from among the dead as the first – born issues from the womb. Compare Act 2:4, “having loosed the pains of death,” where the Greek is wjdinav birth – throes. 188 There is a parallelism between first – born of the creation and first – born from the dead as regards the relation of headship in which Christ stands to creation and to the Church alike; but the parallelism is not complete. “He is the first – born from the dead as having been Himself one of the dead. He is not the first – born of all creation as being himself created” [] .
In all things. The universe and the Church.
Might have the preeminence [ ] . Lit., might become being first. Prwteuw to be first only here in the New Testament. Genhtai become states a relation into which Christ came in the course of time : ejstin is (the first – born of all creation) states a relation of Christ ‘s absolute being. He became head of the Church through His incarnation and passion, as He is head of the universe in virtue of His absolute and eternal being. Compare Phi 2:6, “being [] in the form of God – was made [] obedient unto death.” This sense is lost in the rendering might have the preeminence.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “And he is the head of the body, the church” (kai autos estin he kephale tou somatos tes ekklesias) “and he is the head of the body (assembly), that is, of the Church!” In this position he is supreme as; originator of the Church and the one who presides over and is to be obeyed by her, Mat 16:18-19; Mat 28:18-20; Eph 1:22.
2) “Who is the beginning,” (ho estin arche) “who exists as (or is) from or in beginning.” In him time and alI things exist Joh 1:1-2.
3) “The firstborn from the dead (prototokos A ton nekron) Firstborn from the dead corpses,” first in order or rank to come forth alive, living, from the realm of the dead, “alive forevermore,” Rev 1:5; Rev 1:18; Act 26:23; 1Co 15:20; 1Co 15:23.
4) “That in all things he might have the preeminence, (hina genetai en pasin autos proteuon) In order that in all things he might have or hold preeminence or first place,” priority of honor, respect, and obedience. This is a strong affirmation of the nature, power, and eternality of Jesus Christ SS 5:10; Mat 28:18; 1Co 15:25; Rom 14:9. He is to be sought and shared as the Saviour, Master, Intercessor, Judge, and coming King over all men.
THE BIBLE POINTS TO CHRIST
“Don’t you know, young man,” said an aged minister in giving advice to a younger brother, “that from every town, and every’ village, and every little hamlet in England, there is a road to London?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “So,” continued the venerable man, “from every text in Scripture there is a road to the metropolis of Scripture, that is, Christ And your business is, when you get a text, to say, Now, what is the road to Christ? and then preach a sermon running along the road towards the great metropolis – Christ”
–Gray & Adams, p. 324
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
18. The head of the body. Having discoursed in a general way of Christ’s excellence, and of his sovereign dominion over all creatures, he again returns to those things which relate peculiarly to the Church. Under the term head some consider many things to be included. And, unquestionably, he makes use afterwards, as we shall find, of the same metaphor in this sense — that as in the human body it serves as a root, from which vital energy is diffused through all the members, so the life of the Church flows out from Christ, etc. (Col 2:19.) Here, however, in my opinion, he speaks chiefly of government. He shews, therefore, that it is Christ that alone has authority to govern the Church, that it is he to whom alone believers ought to have an eye, and on whom alone the unity of the body depends.
Papists, with the view of supporting the tyranny of their idol, allege that the Church would be ( ἀκέφαλον) without a head, (309) if the Pope did not, as a head, exercise rule in it. Paul, however, does not allow this honor even to angels, and yet he does not maim the Church, by depriving her of her head; for as Christ claims for himself this title, so he truly exercises the office. I am also well aware of the cavil by which they attempt to escape — that the Pope is a ministerial head. The name, however, of head is too august to be rightfully transferred to any mortal man, (310) under any pretext, especially without the command of Christ. Gregory shews greater modesty, who says (in his 92 Epistle, 4 Book) that Peter was indeed one of the chief members of the Church, but that he and the other Apostles were members under one head.
He is the beginning. As ἀρχὴ is sometimes made use of among the Greeks to denote the end, to which all things bear a relation, we might understand it as meaning, that Christ is in this sense ( ἀρχὴ) the end. I prefer, however, to explain Paul’s words thus — that he is the beginning, because he is the first-born from the dead; for in the resurrection there is a restoration of all things, and in this manner the commencement of the second and new creation, for the former had fallen to pieces in the ruin of the first man. As, then, Christ in rising again had made a commencement of the kingdom of God, he is on good grounds called the beginning; for then do we truly begin to have a being in the sight of God, when we are renewed, so as to be new creatures. He is called the first-begotten from the dead, not merely because he was the first that rose again, but because he has also restored life to others, as he is elsewhere called the first-fruits of those that rise again. (1Co 15:20.)
That he may in all things. From this he concludes, that supremacy belongs to him in all things. For if he is the Author and Restorer of all things, it is manifest that this honor is justly due to him. At the same time the phrase in omnibus ( in all things) may be taken in two ways — either over all creatures, or, in everything. This, however, is of no great importance, for the simple meaning is, that all things are subjected to his sway.
(309) See Institutes, vol. 2, p. 11.
(310) “ Est si honorable et magnifique qu’il ne pent estre transferé a homme mortel;” — “Is so honorable and magnificent, that it cannot be transferred to a mortal man.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CHRIST VERSUS THE POPE
Col 1:18
POPE LEO died! The Congress of Cardinals concerned themselves with one subject and one only, who should be his successor? Throughout the whole world Roman Catholics waited, with the deepest solicitude, that selection. When once it was made, they proclaimed a man chosen to be the head of the church on earth, and employed the term the Church in the most exclusive sense the only true Church, and most of them firmly believe that the man exalted to this office was Gods selection, just as surely as it was that of the Congress of Cardinals.
Why was it that the millions of Christians, outside the pale of Romanism, regarded this whole subject with comparative indifference? Why is it that these millions think it matters little what Cardinal is pontiff, or whether the selection was made speedily and with great unanimity of opinion upon the part of the voters; or after long and bitter debate, division and strife, as in some notable instances of the past?
Our text answers all of these questions. The evangelical churches of the world make the Bible alike the basis of their faith and practice, believing, with Isaiah, that we are to go to the law and to the testimony and if men speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them; and the testimony of inspiration here is such as to convince the worlds best students of Scripture, the greater portion of its plain, yet thoughtful people, as to who is the Head of the Church, and as to how the Church is constituted.
I want, therefore, to say that I bear no ill will toward a man because he is a Catholic. I have some friends in that faith, whose fellowship I prize, and whose Christianity I cannot question. But even these know that an honest man has a reason for the faith which he holds, and they expect that he will present his reason with a fervor proportionate to his confidence in it.
Who is the Divinely appointed Head of the Church? Elsewhere, I have spoken on What Priests are Recognized in the New Testament?; and Does Purgatory Prepare the Soul for Heaven? and kindred subjects.
Now to the discourse under considerationHe 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 pre-eminence.
I remark first:
THE CHURCH HAS A HEAD
One of the figures most commonly employed in the New Testament to set forth the Church is the Body. It is the figure here when Paul writes to the Colossians. In writing to the Romans, Paul says, For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one Body in Christ, and every one members one of another (Rom 12:4-5).
In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, the twelfth chapter, Paul employs the same figure, elaborating it to the last possible point, and concludes, For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one Body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. But now are they many members, yet but one Body. Now ye are the Body of Christ, and members in particular (1Co 12:13; 1Co 12:20; 1Co 12:27). In his Epistle to the Ephesians, he speaks of God as having put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph 1:22-23).
It is a complete Body. No body is complete without the head; it cannot even live without the head!
It can live without the feet; it can live without the hands; almost any member of the body may be removed and one yet live; but not so with the head. Charles Spurgeon tells us that the Romanists have an extraordinary miracle of their own about St. Dennis, of whom they report the lying legend that after his head was off, he took it up in his hands and walked with it two thousand yards, regarding which a wit remarks, So far as the two thousand yards is concerned it is nothing at all. It is only the first step in which there is any difficulty.
Why not the first step? Because the body is incapable of it without the head. Not a single step without the head to direct it. When the head is taken away, personality is gone, identity is gone, the man is gone; the body is incomplete.
At the opening of the Chicago University, Dr. Small uttered this eloquent speech, Scores in this audience will remember that memorial chapel in the city of Florence, commemorating the Medici family. On either side of the chapel, you remember those sitting statues of two of the later scions of that family, Lorenzo and William; and those statues are two allegorical groups in which the critics have discovered the culmination of Angelos art. The one group of two figures represents, allegorically, day and night. The one recumbent figure is perfect in poise, perfect in proportion from feet to neck, but where the head of the human figure should be, is a rough, unshapen, unhewn block, out of which gazes the hideous specter of what should become the countenance of a man. As you look upon that unfinished spectacle, does it not occur to you, that Angelo, has, in spite of himself, immortalized a deeper allegory than he intended? Although one be a Lorenzo, the magnificent, although he have the best command of physical resources, yet is he but a burlesque of a man if the higher spiritual potencies are not enthroned? In other words, no matter how perfect the other members, the head removed, the body is so incomplete as to become a travesty of that high term. God never meant that His Church should be after that mannerit is a complete Body.
It is also a sentient Body. The headless body is insensible. Not so with the Church. Paul, when he writes his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, says, We shall live with Him by the power of God (2Co 13:4). He is speaking not of that future of Heavenly fellowship, but of that which we have in the Church. Peter, in his First Epistle, 1Pe 2:5, says, Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, If the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last man Christ was made a quickening Spirit. There can be such things as dead members of the church, decaying branches tied on by a string of mere profession; but the Church of God, bought by the Blood of Jesus, organized under the hand of the Holy Ghost, is a living Church, deriving its life from the Head, who, having been raised from the dead, is alive for evermore.
A noted preacher said, Doubtless you have thought The Mariner a strange piece of fiction, where the author presents a ship manned by dead men. Dead men spreading the sails; dead men steering; dead men piloting, and so forth, but I have lived to see that allegory realized in the so-called church; I have gone where there was a dead man in the pulpit; dead men rendering the music; dead men taking the offering; dead men filling the pews. Without disputing what the sermonizer may have seen, it is sufficient to say, if so, he was not looking upon the body of which our text speaks, for it, like its Head, is alive forever more. It is built up of living stonesit is sentient.
Moreover, it is an intelligent Body. For the human body the head does the thinking. For that Divine Body called the Church, the same truth obtainsthe great master thoughts are with Christ. They control and dominate the members of the body. Their actions, therefore, are according to wisdom; their ways are the ways of sanity. Occasionally a man comes upon some superficial thinker who sneers at Christianity, and utters his criticisms of the Church, and talks loudly of Science and Philosophy, as if the Church were characterized by its folly, while the latter were the exponents of wisdom. But such boasters only bring themselves into contempt with the observing. It is no wonder that the Church has been, and remains, the embodiment of wisdom, when its Head is Christ, whose wisdom is infinite. It is little wonder that the great Gladstone, when at the zenith of power, while in possession of his every faculty, should have remarked, Most men at the head of great movements are Christian men. During the many years I was in the Cabinet, I was brought into association with sixty master minds, and all but five of them were Christians.
Henry Van Dyke has given a fine page in proof of this assertion of the great statesman Gladstone. In his defense of the Christian faith, he says, It makes men strong, ardent, persistent, heroic. Nothing truly great has ever been done in any department of the worlds work without faith. Think of the faith of our explorers and discoverers: Columbus, who found the New World; the Pilgrim Fathers, who planted it with life; Livingstone, who opened a new continent to civilization. Think of the faith of our men of science: Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Henry. Think of the faith of the reformers: Wyclif, Luther, Knox. Think of the faith of the martyrs: Polycarp, Huss, Savonarola, the Covenanters of Scotland, the Huguenots of France. Faith is a force, and those who grasp it, lay hold of something which is able to make them mightier than themselves.
These men, without exception, acknowledged the headship of Christ, and gratefully confessed that whatever wisdom was with them had come from Him. And everyone knows that to these names thousands more, equally famed for their efficiency, scholarship, and conquering strength, could be added; members of the Church of God, with whose Head wisdom is.
While we have already mentioned the subject of our second remark, in order to illustrate and emphasize some precious truths, we repeat
CHRIST IS THAT HEAD
He is the Head of the Body, the Church.
There is no question here as to the reference.
The character of Christ is described. He is spoken of as the One in whom we have redemption through His Blood, even the forgiveness of sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. (Col 1:14-15).
We have no redemption through the popes blood; the pope is not the image of the invisible God, nor is he the one by whom all things were created, visible and invisible, though they be thrones or principalities, or powers. It is the Christ. He is the Creator. Of Him John had said in his Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men (Joh 1:1-4).
Some years since, I read that little volume, The Son of Man by the late T. B. Walker, in which he collates the statements made by famed men concerning Christ, and was interested to read the tribute paid to Christ by Jewish men, the very men who in their traditions are taught to reject Himeven they are compelled to admire His character. Moritz Friedlander says of Jesus, Always higher, on to unapproachableness grew His personality, including all that is beautiful, lofty, sublime, and Divine, and forcing every one to adoration and self-mobilization. This Divine Son of Man became the world-ideal, and this sublime ideal originated in Judaism, which will ever be remembered as having been predestined by Providence to bring forth such a creation.
He is the Head of the Church! That long line of pontiffs, so much praised in certain parts, pale to insignificance in His presence. One cannot institute a comparison between their characters and the character of Christ without feeling the supremest sorrow that they should ever have been so foolish as to fulfil the prophecy of those opposers, those children of the antichrist, who exalt themselves above everyone, even Christ, and sit in the Temple of God, setting themselves forth as God.
It required 1870 years for even the arrogant, self-exalted church to reach the point where they took the crown of headship over the Church from the brow of Christ, and by the act of an Ecumenical Council, placed it on the low forehead of a pope. It was only after Alexander the VI., the man whose shameful conduct has been the subject of literary subterfuge, and enforced blushes for the better element in Romanism, had passed under the triumphal arch inscribed Caesar was a man; Alexander is a god. It was only after Marcellus, at the fifth Lateran Council, had addressed Pope Leo X., Thou art another God on earth; it was only after Gregory II. had blatantly remarked to the Greek Emperor, All the kings of the West reverence the pope as a God on earth, and the Pontiff Nicholas had written Wherefore, if those things which I do be said to be done, not of man, but of God, what can ye make me but God? that Christ was denied the Headship of the Church to which, for centuries, inspiration had assigned Him.
Even now, good Romanists are compelled to do Him the honor of saying, He is the great spiritual Head, but God mentions Him as the one, the only Head of the Body, the Church.
His Name is plainly called as the Head of the Church. Go back in the context here to see of whom the Apostle is speaking, and he says, Gods dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His Blood, even the forgiveness of sins. He is the Head of the Body, the Church. And a little farther up in the context, He is spoken of as our Lord Jesus Christ.
I do not care to detract in any measure from the good name and the Christian character which some popes have won for themselves; I am not solicitous to deny that the man who, a few years ago, passed from the Roman throne was a man of parts, whose opinions brought progress alike to the church which acknowledged him as its head, and introduced a more liberal policy toward the people of other and more Biblical faiths. But I do say that neither he nor any of his predecessors were worthy to share the throne, or even to be mentioned in such connection with Him, of whom it is written, God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a Name which is above every name: that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in Heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Php 2:9-11).
This leads to the third remark in this text:
Christ is Head, without competitor or confederate. The fate of Lucifer awaits everyone who seeks Christs office. It is in vain to say that the man who proposes to share the throne of God is a good man. What of it? The very proposal is the quintessence of rebellion. Lucifer was more than a good man, he was an archangel; and yet Milton has only interpreted Isaiah when he pictures him as hurled with hideous ruin and combustion down to the bottomless pit because he aspired to reign in Heaven. What then shall be the fate of a sinner who sets himself up to reign on earth?
The Israel of the Old Testament is the type of the Church of the New. There was a day when she was a pure theocracy; she desired no other governor than God, Father, Son, and Spirit, and in that day she was blest and blessed. But when the elders of Israel, in their lust for power and their conformity to the nations about, besought Samuel, saying, Make us a king to judge us like all the nations, God answered and said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. He plainly proclaims the ability of the Divine Head to administer temporal affairs. Has that ability waned so that Christ is incompetent to rule in the affairs of His Church, and a common sinner must be exalted to that office?
George W. Searle, in a 360 page volume in defense of Romanism, believes that there never could have been a pontiff had he not been Divinely appointed, on account of the impossibility of such enormous usurpation of power as this would be, without the force of arms to carry it out. And yet, when Israel apostatized, Saul was willingly selected by them and exalted to this office. There never has been a church on this earth which, in proportion as it swung from God, was not tempted to put a man in the place of power. As a rule, every movement away from the true worship of God is toward the deification of man. Think of the action of France, a hundred fifty years ago, in voting the dethronement of the God of Heaven, and exalting an abandoned woman to the seat of worship, and prostrating themselves before that sinner.
Beloved, it is time that those of us who worship the Lamb, should concern ourselves, for both the loyalty of our own souls, and those of every deluded friend. If men will bow down before their fellows, we must join with Paul in saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? and preach unto them that they should turn from these vanities unto the Living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein, and worship Him.
Napoleon, in a marvelous speech, showed that even the most exalted, conquerors of the earth, potentates of most pronounced virtue, were not worthy to be mentioned with Jesus; while the picture of the Apocalypse describes the hallelujahs of saints and angels to the Lamb that was slain, and who alone is worthy to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing, while every creature which is in Heaven, or on earth, join in giving Him the same, and the four beasts said, Amen, We repeat, He is without a competitor!
He has never named a confederate in office. The Scriptures were never more plainly contorted than when attempt is made to compel their approval of the human headship of the Church. Take the three passages of Scripture, commonly quoted in that connection, Mat 16:18, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, If one is bent on making this refer to the person of Peter, rather than to the profession of Peter, Thou art the Christ, the utmost that He could then claim would be that Peter was not the head but the foundation of the Church. An institution does not stand on its head; the head crowns it, instead! It stands on its feet, and Peter would remain the feet of the Church, and perhaps the reason why this more sane interpretation has not been given to this Scripture is found in the fact that instantly it would involve a conflict of inspiration, for has not Paul written, Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ (1Co 3:11), In the words of Lukes Gospel, Luk 22:31, The Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren, and in Johns report of Jesus words to Peter, Feed My lambs, feed My sheep, feed My sheep, is it not perfectly clear that these are the plain duties of every living pastor? Peter, then, was not a pope to share the office of governor with the Son of God, but a Pastor instead, to do the work of an under-shepherd. It would seem, indeed, that the very Scriptures were careful to enter their protest against this apostasy before it ever came to pass, that men might be without excuse, when once they should attempt to exalt Peter to any such an office.
You remember how, when Cornelius met him as Peter was coming in, Cornelius fell down at his feet and worshipped him, and Peter took him up, saying, Stand, up; I myself also am a man. And opening his mouth, he said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, putting himself forever on a level with the common saints to enjoy with them that equal grace of God which is bestowed alike upon the high and the humble, and joining him concerning Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. I believe if there is anything that Peter most longs to return to earth to accomplish, it is to rebuke those who have attempted to thrust him into the place which he so jealously guarded for the Son of God.
If this text means anything, it must mean what it says concerning Christ, He is the Head of the Body, the Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. And if there be one other sentence in Scripture which makes Him to share with another, in reading this Book a number of times, from Genesis to Revelation, we have never happened upon it.
But finally, will we make mention of His preeminence. That in all things He might have the preeminence. Mark you, in all things; in all things; in all things!
Mr. George M. Searle has one chapter in his volume on The Primacy of the Roman Pontiff and in the discussion he ardently defends the suggestion. But let us remember that according to inspiration, the primacy is Christs appointment; the pre-eminence in all things, is His inheritance.
I read a sermon years ago in which Dr. A. B. Simpson attempted to mention some of the respects in which Christ is pre-eminent. It was vain endeavorHe is pre-eminent in all respects. Pre-eminent as a babe, because begotten of the Holy Ghost; pre-eminent as a child, because wisdom which confounded His elders was given Him; pre-eminent as a carpenter, because He linked Divinity to human labor; pre-eminent as a citizen, because He hated injustice and loved the truth; pre-eminent as a man, because He shared alike the joys and sorrows of all His fellows; pre-eminent as a philosopher, because wisdom was in His lips; pre-eminent as a teachernever man spake like this Man; pre-eminent as a preacher, the Truth was in His tongue; pre-eminent as a priest, for He appeared without sin; pre-eminent as a rulerHis dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth! But why need one keep up expletives? It is in vain, I say! Preeminent in all things!
But, ere we finish, let us lay emphasis upon His pre-eminence in the power to save.
There is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved! The Son of Man, and the Son of Man, alone, hath power on earth to forgive sins. Ah, here, indeed, is His preeminence seen at its climax!
Henry Van Dyke, in The Gospel for a World of Sin, says, If Jesus were not the Christ who came to save us from our sins, then there is no salvation from sin, no conqueror from Satan, no liberator of souls. We must fight the battle alone against known and heavy odds.
But, blessed be God, we need not fight that battle alone, concerning which He has cried already, It is finished.
We know that Christ has drawn the bolts of the very cells in which the Adversary had incarcerated sinners; we know that Isaiahs prophecy has been literally fulfilled, and Christ has already been anointed to preach Good Tidings unto all men, and to bind up the broken hearts, and not only to proclaim liberty to the captives, but to even open the prison for them that are bound. It is ours to accept His captaincy, and joyfully acknowledge His pre-eminence as Saviour; to ask and receive His absolution from sin; and walk the ways of the earth saved until time for us shall be no more; and then go up with the saints and angels to tread the streets of the Eternal City, where on every hand His praises shall be heard, and we shall have joyful part in the same.
Oh, men and women of God, go tell how great things the Lord has done for you! Oh, men and women, without God, come and taste and see that the Lord is good. Surrender, and learn from experience His power to save; be victors for time, and conquer for eternity, so that with the Apostle you can say, For to me to live is Christ, and, when face to face with the last grim enemy, shout with triumph in his ears, For me * * to die is gain.
Years since, in the city of Galveston, I was introduced to a Mrs. Hughes, who with thousands of others had gone through that awful Galveston storm when eight thousand people were destroyed in a night. She told me her own experience, saying her house had gone to pieces and knowing that she was caught in one part with her little girl, while her son was in another, she said, I was fastened in with my little girl, trying to keep our heads above water, and my believing, Christian boy called to me through the walls and said, Mamma, I shall not see your face again, but you will want to know how long I live, and so I will sing. And with trained voice, for he was a member of the choir, he sang:
Rock of ages, cleft for me,Let me hide myself in Thee;Let the water and the blood,From Thy wounded side which flowed,Be of sin the double cure,Cleanse me from its guilt and powr.
And thenthe silence came. But, said this bright-faced Christian woman, even though the song was hushed on this side, it was renewed on the farther shore. He, with the redeemed, is singing it still, and like his Lord, is ever more alive. Christ saves!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
THE CHURCH AFTER NINETEEN HUNDRED YEARS
Col 1:18-24
Delivered before the Northern Baptist Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, Sunday night, June 1st, 1930.
THE Christian Church is now celebrating its nineteen hundredth anniversary. Though conceived with the Virgin Birth, it was born at Pentecost following Christs resurrection from the grave.
Revelation is not a novelty and the Church is not a recent innovation. Revelation is co-existent with man upon the earth; and the Christian Church has held its place in the world and the worlds increased attention, for nineteen hundred years.
By Revelation we mean Gods communication with and to man. This, we know, began immediately upon mans creation and is recorded in this language: God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth (Gen 1:28). This was the primary, or original, revelation to man.
The record of the original Church is in this language: Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there was added unto them (together) about three thousand souls (Act 2:41). Revelation began with the finished creation; the Church was consequent upon a finished redemption.
Our task is not that of tracing revelation through six thousand years; it is rather that of studying the Church in its development through near two thousand. The task, while fraught with difficulties, should be attended also by delights. Men take great pleasure in tracing their family tree, even when told that they will discover a monkey in the trunk thereof. Surely the saints should find greater joy in a spiritual genealogy that originated with the Son of God. To its consideration, then!
THE CHURCH
This organization is called Christs Body.
He is the Head of the Body, the Church (Col 1:18).
For His Bodys sake, which is the Church (Col 1:24).
The figure here employed is appropriate and applicable. The body has no will of its own, but expresses that of the head. Not one of its members moves until the mind has commanded. It is the head that effects the organic unity of the body. Each and every member of the body is nervously, and hence vitally, united with the head.
So it is with Christ and the Church. Our unity and fellowship with Him are alike shown by a surrender to His will; and the proof of our claim to a healthy place in the Church exists in implicit obedience to Christthe Head.
It is not then, a community of belief, nor an identity of interest, nor a uniformity of language, that makes possible the Church. Those things are associated with, but they are not adequate to an organism. An organism is possible only as the product of a life; and the true Church is created by the Christ life that vitalizes the same.
The figures of Scripture that prove this fact are the Head of the Body, the Vine and the branches, in both of which there is unity and community of life. Therein is the necessity of regeneration. One must become not only a new creature as the King James version gives it, but, in fact, If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation (2Co 5:17), as the correct translation tells us.
This Body is constituted of the Blood bought.
Through the Blood of His Cross, hath He reconciled all things unto Himself; so that we who were sometime alienated and enemies, by wicked works, now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death (Col 1:20-22).
If there is one historical fact of the Church that can never be called into question, by Bible believers, it is the place appointed to the shed Blood of the Son of God. From the Old Testament teaching, where the high priest made an atonement with blood (Leviticus 4), through the New Testament truths of redemption through His Blood (Eph 1:7) justification by His Blood (Rom 5:9), sanctification with His own Blood (Heb 9:22), to the final victory which is to be accomplished by the Blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony (Rev 12:11), the Scriptures are harmonized and replete.
That strange deflection from the faith once delivered that scorns the Blood, and speaks of it as the gospel of the shambles belongs, beyond all question, to fulfilled prophecy, on the part of those who now deny the Lord that bought them, and trample underfoot the Blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified. But let us not be misunderstood! We are not supposing that any soul is bathed in the drops of Blood that trickled from Christs hands, or feet, or side; we are not at all speaking of the white and red corpuscles, nor yet of the serum in which they floated, that fell from His wounded frame; but we are teaching, as every intelligent man should understand that the life is in the blood. When Christ lay down His life for men He provided by that sacrifice, for their redemption. That truth was the potential one in the early Church, and has never failed in power, when rightly proclaimed.
Baptists, at least, are profoundly interested in the history of Christmas Evans, that remarkable Welshman. He was born December 25, 1766 and named for his natal day, Christmas; converted at the age of eighteen, and, shortly after, he began to preach by memorizing one of Bishop Beveridges sermons and one of Mr. Rolands.
In spite of his total lack of education, the delivery of these sermons was such as to profoundly move his auditors.
When he spoke before a Baptist Association shortly thereafter, the people said the one to another, The one-eyed man of Angelaea is a prophet sent from God. And so it proved! In all Baptist history we have scarce had his equal. The time came when his ministry was thronged by the thousands, and when his preaching was with such power that hundreds fell under conviction. He took front rank in the Welsh ministry; and for more than half a century without a stain on his name, and with a mind that grew by the process of self-education, hea giant in body and in brain, so preached as to impress Robert Hall as being the tallest, stoutest, and greatest man that he had ever seen. When at last he was dying at Swansea, July 19, 1838, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the fifty-fourth of his ministry, he said to those about his bed, I am leaving you. I have labored in the sanctuary fifty-three years, and this is my comfort, that I have never labored without Blood in the basin. The Church is a Blood-bought Body.
That Blood-bought Body is the custodian of the Sacred Book. That is why Paul speaks of Christs intention to present its members holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight: if they continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel, which ye have heard (Col 1:22-23).
That is why Paul, writing to Timothy concerning the oracles of God, said, O Timothy, keep (or guard) that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith (1Ti 6:20-21).
That is why he was careful to base his own contention for the Truth upon that which he also had received (1Co 15:1).
That is why John, as he approached the close of the Sacred Canon, felt compelled to say, I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this Book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this Book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the Book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the Book of Life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this Book (Rev 22:18-19).
Dr. Gaussen, the great theological teacher of Geneva, in his volume on Theopneustia. says truly enough, The Church is a depository and not a judge. She delivers a testimony, not a judicial sentence. She discerns the canon of Scripture; she does not make it. She has recognized its authenticity; she has not given it. * * The authority of the Scriptures is not founded, then, on the authority of the Church; it is the Church that is founded on the authority of the Scriptures.
That is why she prizes the Book; it is her Magna Charta. That is why she has fought foes, fiends and fagots in its defence. Christ is the origin of the Churchs life, but the Bible is the source of her light.
That is why the history of Christian martyrdom marks the progress of Church life. That is why you can track the Church of God through seventeen centuries by the Blood line. It was the very insistent practice of Christianity to retain the Bible, study the Bible, exemplify the Bible, and teach the Bible, that brought the wrath of men upon her head. It was when John told Herod what the Bible had to say about monogamy and domestic decency that Herodias demanded his head on a charger. It was when the early Christians proclaimed Jesus King of the Jews, according to the prophecy of Sacred Writ, that their lives and fortunes were instantly put into peril. It was when Diocletian, the Roman emperor, saw the behavior of his sinful subjects unfavorably contrasted by the saintly character of the Christians of his domain, and heard that they talked of a King to come and a new Kingdomboth prophesied in the Book that he sought to exterminate the entire movement by the beheading of thousands. The chief charge against most of them was that they were in possession of the Sacred Book.
Dr. Armitage, the great Baptist historian, in speaking of the frightful persecutions that broke out in 303 A. D., says: Because the Scriptures were regarded as the source of all Christian aggression, the aim of the persecutors was to destroy every copy, and the cry passed up and down the empire, Burn their Testaments!
When an African ruler demanded that Felix should give up his Bible, he answered that he would prefer to be burned than to lose the Book.
In Sicily, when Euplius was seized with the Gospels in his hand, and asked, Why do you keep the Scriptures forbidden by the Emperor? he replied, Because I am a Christian. Life eternal is in them; he that giveth up them loses life.
Baptists, at least, ought to be both familiar with this history and sympathetic with the same, for literally hundreds of their martyrs, centuries later, offered their bodies to be burned rather than surrender the Sacred Book.
In the city of Zurich there stands to this day a monument to the honor of Arnold of Brescia. It was erected to that noblest of martyrs. The statue itself is of bronze, and is four meters (13 ft. 4 inches) in height. Arnold stands on the top of the same preaching, his gigantic figure being that of a Monk in long graceful robe. On its base there is another representation of him, as he stands before the crowd who have gathered to hear, holding in his hand the Sacred Book, the Bible.
The history of Michael Sattler should never be forgotten by the denomination now assembled in this city. He had been a Papist, but through study of the Book, became a Baptist, and insisted upon impressing its precious truths upon the people who gathered to hear him. He was warned, but went on with his work, until, by and by, in 1527, refusing to recant or to be silenced, his tongue was cut out, his flesh was torn with red hot pinchers again and again, and finally his dying frame was flung to the fires and burned to ashes. But he went down to his grave, and through it, to glory, retaining, defending, and proclaiming the Sacred Book.
This trail of martyrdom is almost too gruesome to pursue further. Only let it be known that that infamous invention, the rack, that indescribable custom of torture, the gibbet, that unthinkable brutality of burning women alive, that devilish ingenuity of making a coffin so small that the victim must be crowded into it, unable to stretch out, and then buried aliveno one of these, nor yet all of them combined, brought these children of faith, the truest representatives of the true Church of God, to either recant or compromise. Is it any wonder that the Church lives and that the Bible remains at once her Magna Charta and her charge!
THE CENTURIES
But my theme is, The Church after Nineteen Hundred Years! Permit me then, to make a hasty review of these centuries; and to dwell briefly at least upon their high spots.
The first three centuries mark the conquest of the Church. From that day when Saul made havock of the Church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison, and they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the Word, until that other apparently victorious day when Constantine saw the Roman empire capitulate to the Church herself, what a series of conquests! As the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its ninth edition, said, The history of the world presents no phenomenon so striking as the rise and early progress of Christianity. Originating in a country not remarkable for any political, commercial, or literary influence, emanating from One who occupied a humble sphere in the community amidst which he appeared, and announced in the first instance by men of mean extraction, of no literary culture, and not endowed with any surpassing gifts of intellect, it nevertheless spread so rapidly that in an incredibly short period of time it had been diffused throughout the whole civilized world, and in the fourth century of its existence became the recognized and established religion of the Roman empire. When it is remembered that this result was achieved not only without the aid of any worldly influence, but in the face of the keenest opposition on the part of all the learning, wealth, wit and power of the most enlightened and mightiest nations of the earth, the conclusion is strongly forced upon us that a power beyond that of man was concerned in its success, and that its early and unexampled triumphs afford an incontestable proof of its inherent truth and its Divine origin. The discerning student of history will not forget the vision of the Son of Man. It was after He had endured the worlds worst; it was after He had faced death and conquered the grave, that He met His eleven disciples in the mount in Galilee, and standing there with their adoring eyes upon Him, said, All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world (Mat 28:18-20).
Therein is the secret of Church success! Its Head is none other than the Son of God; its commission is from His lips; and its empowerment was, and is, in His promised presence.
A recent writer tells us that high up on the Post Office building in New York City, is this inscription: Neither snow, nor rain, nor hail, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift commission of their appointed orders.
This is an intended compliment to the faithfulness and efficiency of the old-time postal service men; but it is a poor compliment as compared with that which might have been paid to these first century couriers for Christ; for with them neither fire, nor sword, nor rack, nor gibbet, nor kings, nor devils, nor hell could stay their feet, nor still their tongues, nor even slow their victories.
Gibbon, the historian, says: While the Roman world was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion quietly insinuated itself into the minds of men; grew up in silence and obscurity; derived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the triumphal banner of the Cross on the ruins of the capitol.
So much, then, for the first three centuries of Church History.
The fourth century effected its corruption. There are triumphs that eventuate in defeat. There are victories that result in reverses. There are conquests that destroy the conquerors!
One historian tells us, In her contest with Rome Christianity succeeded in realizing and giving expression to her claim to universal dominion; but in Romes overthrow she inflicted an almost fatal wound on herself, when she was unconsciously induced to take the government of a pagan empire as her model for the organization of a spiritual kingdom.
The attainment of Constantine to the emperors throne, followed as it was by his professed conversion to the Christian faith, seemed like a climax of accomplishment for the Church herself. History reveals that it was an anti-climax instead.
His spectacular conversion by the vision of a flaming cross in the sky, upon which was written, En touto vika,by this conqueris supposed by many to have been only a parhelion, while the phrase, en touto vika, was the part of a dream that followed.
His occupancy of the throne itself by the slaughter of all competitors, including his sons and even Fausta, his wife, provided poor evidences of personal Christianity, and, although he stopped the slaughter of Christians and restored to them civil and religious rights, he was actuated by personal and state interests rather than those of the Church itself; while his middle-of-the-road policy in the matters of both faith and order was the signal for a descent in spirituality that far exceeded even the Churchs growth in numbers and national potency.
For nearly 1200 years, the Church felt the consequences of the Constantine policy, and that period is known to ecclesiastical history as the dark ages. That appellation was not in consequence of the Churchs dethronement from power; it was the direct result of her degradation in character. The principles imposed by Constantine produced her prostitution.
He was not so much an advocate of comparative religions as he was of combined religions. His coins bore the Name of Christ on the one side and the figure of Apollo on the other. It was Constantine who conceived the inclusive policy and demanded of the Alexandrian bishops that they recognize alike the Arians and the orthodox.
Whether he believed in baptismal regeneration may be questioned, but it is certain, from his delaying his own baptism until he knew himself to be on his death-bed, that he believed in baptismal remission.
It was Constantine also who ignored the New Testament distinctions between Church and Kingdom and by forgetting that ecclesia and basileia are wholly different words and relate to different Divine institutions, he combined Church with state and claimed that he, rather than a returned Christ, had brought the Kingdom of God to the earth.
The product of such procedures occupies large place in the pages of national and ecclesiastical history. Not only were the Church and the state inextricably interwoven, but the Church and the world were so far identified as to make it difficult to distinguish one spiritual feature of the former.
S. E. Herrick in his volume, Some Heretics of Yesterday, writing of Savonarola, the very period that is to produce the reformation, gives us this graphic presentation of the times:
The drama of history presents us with no scenes more fascinating in their splendor or more impressive in their tragedy than those which the fifteenth century saw enacted. Private magnificence reached its zenith and common wretchedness sunk to its nadir. Art achieved its most brilliant triumphs, and religion fell into its dreariest formalisms. Government, nominally republican, was the plaything of strong-handed and unprincipled adventures, who were rich, or mighty, or cunning enough to control the nerveless popular will. Learning among the clergy meant dabbling in scholasticism; among the higher or wealthier laity, some slight acquaintance with pagan writers, and a love for classic antiquities; among the common people there was little or none. It is almost enough, in order to describe the moral and social life of the century, to say that it was the age of the Medici at Florence and of the Borgias at Rome; an age of culture wedded to corruption; an age whose external garb was elegance, whose inmost heart was moral rottenness; an age whose only grand enthusiasms were for art and vice; all other enthusiasms were accounted vulgar and had died out. Patriotism and religion, at least, if not dead, were camatose. The one needed a Judas Maccabaeus, the other a John the Baptist.
It is the custom of Moderns to hold to scorn the theological view and the ecclesiastical life of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Let it be forever known, however, that this is the very age when reformation effected increasing recovery for the Church of God; the age that brought Savonarola, the eloquent, to the fore; that gave rise to the bravest and noblest of all ecclesiastical reformers, Martin Luther; that witnessed the lives and listened to the testimonies of Latimer, Cranmer, Melanchthon, Knox, Calvin, Coligny, William Brewster, and Wesleya succession of men, saints of God, who sought the recovery of the New Testament teaching and exemplified the purity of Christian life and demonstrated the spiritual power of the Church when disentangled from the state and guided by the Holy Ghost of God.
It is little wonder that those centuries saw apostles of the faith worthy to be compared with Peter, James, John and Paul, and marked Church progress comparable again to that of the first three centuries of ecclesiastical history, having sent her missionaries to, and established her stations and schools in, every continent and island of the earth, exciting even the expectation of a young Mott that the world might be evangelized in a single generation. This period was climaxed by the production of such as John Eliot, Hans Egede, Ziegenbalg, Cary, Boardman, Judson, Duff, Morrison, William Burns, Gilmour, John Williams, Samuel Marsden, Patteson, Allen Gardiner, Moffat, Krapf, Livingstone, Hudson Taylor, Clough, Ashmore, and others too numerous to mention.
Is it any wonder that one writing at the close of the nineteenth century, said, Let those who think Christianity is a spent force ponder the following: when Carey, the first Protestant missionary of the world, went to India, the whole of nominal Christians in the world was about 200,000,000. Now there are about 500,000,000. When he in the eighteenth century went out from Christendom as a missionary to the dark world of heathendom, the population of the world was about one thousand millions. It is now supposed to be about fifteen hundred millions, which is only another way of saying that while the population of the world has increased during this period fifty percent, Christianity has increased 150 percent, and the ratio shows that the cause of Christ advanced more within the past twenty-five years than it did in the seventy-five preceding. Our God is marching on!
The nineteenth century -closed with the question of Christs disciples once more upon the lips of His followers, Wilt Thou at this time restore again the Kingdom? Never since Constantine came to his throne were the prospects of the Church so bright or her conquests so incomparable as in the year 1900.
But the twentieth century threatens to repeat the fourth. The most discussed subject of the day is this subject: Will the Church live? Will Christianity be retained? or is the first dead and the second in the very experience of being cast away?
Newspapers, magazines, books and orators are all discussing this subject. In ecclesiastical circles it is a theme of insistent argument, while, in world circles, it is brazenly asserted that the question is settled, and the Church is a corpse and Christianity is a divested garment.
These discussions are not wholly without occasion. Never since Pentecost of 1900 years ago has the Church of God faced more or greater enemies than at this moment. The world, the flesh, and the devil were never combined against her more furiously than now. If there is one agency at Satans command which he has not called to the conflict, we can scarcely imagine its character or its name.
Atheism no longer wears the veil of shame. She exposes her face with pride and boldly affirms her purpose to wreck the Church of God and bury out of sight the debris of the same.
Bolshevism, which is a combination of atheism in philosophy and communism in government, enjoys at this moment a fungus growth. Having conquered in Russia by killing millions of Christian opponents, she proposes to carry her revolution of irreligion to every nation of earth, and her emmissaries are on every continent and every land.
Modern education has largely succumbed to the Darwin philosophy which is not only, as Haeckel declared, anti-Genesis, but anti-Bible and anti-Christian! Dr. Gilkey of Springfield, Mass., is reported to have said in his recent Brown University address, Your generation will see a terrific mortality among churches. A nation wide student conference, one thousand strong, at Evanston, Illinois, said, We are here to hold the post-mortem of the Church.
Modern inventions have enormously contributed to mans conquest of earth and sea and air, but yet more to his neglect of the Church and to his moral degradation.
Still further, the entire philosophy of Constantine has been reintroduced into the very life of the Church itself, and our greatest single menace is not from without but from within, and threatens the Church of God with a new paganism, with another refusal to distinguish between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, with the false hope of baptismal remission and consequent unregeneracy, and with the unspeakable affliction of confusing the Church of God and the Kingdom of God, imagining afresh that we can retain the first, after having rejected the historic Christ, and bring in the second without His re-Appearance in glory and power.
The confusion that has resulted from all of this has produced cults out of number and divisions past enumeration. It has undermined in a large measure the seat and source of all authority, it has evilly affected the morale of the Church itself, and deluged the world with waves of crime that stagger, and prospects of war that leave it no rest better than a nightmare.
Country and village churches are being sold to secular uses. City churches are falling in attendance. Missionary funds are suffering annual decline and denominational combinations are being resorted to, to keep up an appearance of progress, until one writer is justified in saying, The more elaborate our ecclesiasticism, the finer and costlier our churches, the more sparkling our periodicals, the longer our lists of societies and the more abundant and exquisite their machinery, the smaller our relative growth has become.
What then is the conclusion of the whole matter? Is the Church defeated, or, as some have recently been asking, Is the Church dead?
We answer, NO to both questions.
The words of Jesus Christ live. They have, today, the same meaning that they had when He uttered them: the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (the Church). The conditions to which we have referred simply involve
A CHALLENGE
In a recent sermon before my own church, I laid out all of those arguments, presenting them with a fair degree of fulness, not with the intention of discouraging, but for the express purpose of making them a basis of sound, and sane and even challenging appeal.
The Church of God may be sick from maladministration. We believe she is. She may be disabled by mistaken doses. If we have studied our Bible aright, it is even so.
But she will not die: she will live! She will recover! She will conquer!
Johns appeal to the seven Churches of Asia shows a prophetic decline. The Laodicean age, or the last, was the most corrupt. Yet even in that there was enough left to excite the Saviours promise of riches and clothing and ointment.
If He is Head over all things to the Church, the Body cannot die, while the Head lives.
The true Church, then, will continue to function, it is in no danger of death. It can never be! The immortality of Christ insures the immortality of His Body, the Church.
There are those who both imagine and dare to say, that science will end the Christian superstition and finally put the Church herself out of commission.
Such speakers and writers have studied history all too poorly. What science, pray? The shallow surmisings of the school teachers of this generation are not likely to disprove the Christian evidences that mastered a Newton, a Sir John Herschel, a Kepler, a Davy, a Faraday, a Boyle, a Harvey, a Simpson, a Beale, or a Duke of Argyle, a David Brewster, a Dana, a Hitchcock, a Miller, a Guyot, a Pasteur, a Kelvin and a Dawson.
Even the Soviet leaders of Russia and their propagandists in China and Europe and America are not likely to put out of commission the Book that conquered the intellect of a Cromwell, a Blackstone, a Selden, a Sir William Jones, a William Pitt, a Wilburforce, a Wright, an Earl Cairns, a chief justice Marshall, a Webster, and an Abraham Lincoln.
The literati of the present day who dip their putrid pens in ink, blackened by their own lifes experience, are not likely to discredit even the ministry that was revered by a Shakespeare, a Milton, an Addison, a Johnson, a Coleridge, a Sir Walter Scott, and that has been honored in office by a Tauler, a Wyclif, a Huss, a Savonarola, a Luther, a Latimer, a Cranmer, a Melanchthon, a Knox, a Coligny, a William Brewster, a Wesley, a Spurgeon, and a Moody, not to mention thousands of others worthy to stand at their side and share their justifiable honors.
As one notable writer has truthfully said, Science had no foundation upon which to raise herself until Christianity supplied the same. Paganism had utterly failed to furnish such. The men, therefore, who are dealing in mere philosophies may discover again, as Greek philosophers had to do, that their theories will either be wholly disproven or essentially reformed by Christian theology; while those theories that are falsely called Science, will fail every one and be forgotten by the final victors of faith.
Doubtless there are many living opponents of the Christian faith and of the Church of God who, like Haeckel, will on their death beds want the Bible, and like Huxley when they near the end request the reading of 1 Corinthians 15, and like Darwin, according to Lady Hope, grieve their philosophical meanderings.
The Church of God like its Sacred Book will live and thrive on the very ground that has provided a cemetery for these uncertified claims and these superficial philosophies. Hawthorne was not mistaken when he declared that the little church on main street was the one building that gave promise of permanence to civilization.
For the Church will not only live but as her Master spake the words of mercy to the dying thief who hung at His side, so she, His Body, will minister at the graves of her present opponents.
Crowns and thrones may perish Kingdoms rise and wane,But the Church of Jesus,Constant will remain,Gates of hell can never,Gainst that Church prevail,We have Christs own promise,And that cannot fail.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved!
Her witness will characterize the close of the age. It was no less an authority than Jesus, Head over all things to the Church, who said, This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations: and then shall the end come (Mat 24:14).
The darkness may deepen: the sky may be filled with still other wandering stars; the moon may hang there like a clot of blood and the sun refuse to give its light, but even then the true Church will have no occasion of discouragement but rather a reason to lift up her head and know that the day of her redemption draweth nigh.
The final conquest of the Church will be complete in the Kingdom. The King will come; His throne will be established in the earth; the scepter of His power shall sway from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. We hold that Blessed Hope, the Glorious Appearing of our great God and SaviourJesus Christ, who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify us unto Himself a peculiar people.
Without such a Hope present conditions would oppress; apostasy would discourage; the prodigious growth of iniquity and crime would cast a shadow on every soul. The skeptical philosophy that abounds would suffice to produce pessimism.
But with that Hope the effect is exactly the opposite, for did not Christ Himself say,
There shall he signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
Mens hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall he shaken.
And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh (Luk 21:25-28).
It was when Paul had finished that most eloquent presentation of this Blessed Hope, and its attendant truths of the Resurrection and Rapture, that he wound up with these adequately inspiring words; Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord (1Co 15:58).
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Col. 1:18. And He is the head of the body, the Church.As He held priority of all creation, so also His is the name above every name in the new creation. The firstborn from the dead.The cardinal point of the apostles faith.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Col. 1:18
The Relation of Christ to the Moral Creation.
After showing that Christ holds the position of absolute priority and sovereignty over the whole universe, the apostle now proceeds to point out His relation to the principal part of that wholethe Church, as the symbol and embodiment of the new, moral creation. From this verse we learn that Christ is the supreme Head, and primal life-giving Source of the Church, and as such is invested with universal pre-eminence.
I. Christ is the supreme Head of the Churchthe new moral creation.
1. The Church is the body of Christ. The body, the Church. Much controversy has prevailed as to what constitutes the Church; and the more worldly the Church became, the more confused the definition, the more bitter the controversy. The New Testament idea of the Church is easily comprehended. It is the whole body of the faithful in Christ Jesus, who are redeemed and regenerated by His gracethe aggregate multitude of those in heaven and on earth who love, adore, and serve the Son of God as their Redeemer and Lord. The word contains two leading ideas: the ordained unity, and the calling or separating out from the world. Three grand features ever distinguish the true Churchunbroken unity, essential purity, and genuine catholicity. (Cf. Eph. 1:22-23; Eph. 4:15-16; 1Co. 12:12-27).
2. Christ is the Head of the Church.And He is the Head of the body, the Church. That the world might not be considered this body, the word Church is added; and the materialistic conception of a Church organism thus refuted. As the Head of the Church
(1) Christ inspires it with spiritual life and activity.
(2) He impresses and moulds its character.
(3) He prescribes and enforces its laws.
(4) He governs and controls its destinies.
(5) He is the centre of its unity.
II. Christ is the originating, fontal Source of the organic life of the Church.In respect to the state of grace, He is the beginning; in respect to the state of glory, He is the firstborn from the dead. He gives to the Church its entity, form, history, and glory; except in and through Him, the Church could have no existence.
1. He is the Author of the moral creation.The beginning. Christ has been before described as the Author of the old material creation. Here He is announced as the beginning of the new spiritual creation. The moral creation supplies the basis and constituent elements of the Church. In the production, progress, and final triumph of the new creation, He will redress all the wreck and ruin occasioned by the wrong-doing of the old creation. Of this new moral creation Christ is the source, the principle, the beginning; the fountain of life, purity, goodness, and joy to the souls of men.
2. He is the Author of the moral creation as the Conqueror of Death.The firstborn from the dead. Sin introduced death into the old creation, and the insatiable monster still revels and riots amid the corruptions he perpetually generates. The Son of God, in fulfilment of the divine plan of redemption, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. He descended into Hades, and placed Himself among the dead. On the third day He rose again, the firstfruits of them that slept. He was the firstborn from the dead; the first who had risen by His own power; the first who had risen to die no more. By dying He conquered death for Himself and all His followers. He can therefore give life to all that constitute that Church of which He is fittingly the Head, assure them of a resurrection from the dead, of which His own was a pattern and pledge, and of transcendent and unfading glory with Himself in the endless future.
III. The relation of Christ to the Church invests Him with absolute pre-eminence.That in all things He might have the pre-eminence.
1. He is pre-eminent in His relation to the Father.He is the image of the invisible God; the Son of His love, joined by a bond to us mysterious and ineffable, and related in a sense in which no other can be. He is the first and the last; the only divine Son.
2. He is pre-eminent in the universe of created beings.He existed before any being was created, and was Himself the omnipotent Author of all created things. The whole hierarchy of heaven obey and adore Him. He is alone in His complex nature as our Emmanuel. Mystery of mysteries; in Him Deity and humanity unite!
3. He is pre-eminent in His rule over the realm of the dead.He entered the gloomy territory of the grave, wrestled with and vanquished the King of Terrors, rose triumphantly from the dismal battle-field, and is now Lord both of the dead and of the living. I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore; and have the keys of Hades and of death (Rev. 1:18).
4. He is pre-eminent in His relation to the Church.The Church from beginning to end is purely His own creation. He sketched its first rough outline, projected its design, constructed its organism, informed it with life, dowered it with spiritual riches; and He will continue to watch over and direct its future until He shall present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing!
5. He is pre-eminent in the estimation and homage of a ransomed world.He is the central figure of all history; around Him all events group themselves, and by Him are stamped with their true character, significance, and worth. The dream of the ages, the teaching of figures and symbols, the shadows and forecastings of coming events, are all dismissed in the effulgent presence of Him to whom they all point, like so many quivering index-fingers. Christ has to-day the strongest hold upon the heart of humanity. His perplexed enemies admire while they reject Him; the ever-increasing multitude of His friends reverence and adore Him; and the era is rapidly advancing when to Him a universe of worshippers shall bow the knee and acknowledge that in all things He has the pre-eminence.
Lessons.
1. The pre-eminence of Christ entitles Him to universal obedience.
2. The highest blessedness is found in union with the Church of Christ.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSE
Col. 1:18. The Church the Body of Christ.
I. As the body of Christ the Church is one with Him.
1. One in covenant dealing with God.
2. One in respect of the principle of life.
3. One in history.
4. How Christ may be served or persecuted.
II. As the body of Christ the Church is one in itself.
1. Identity of principle.
2. Substantial agreement in faith.
3. A visible association through sympathy.
III. As the body of Christ the Church has many co-operating and mutually dependent members.
1. The members are as numerous as are believers or as are offices.
2. Their mutual dependence and co-operation illustrated in the work of spreading the gospel.
3. Let each one know his own place and duties.
IV. As the body of Christ the Church must grow up to completeness and maturity.
1. Each believer is first a babe in Christ, and advances to the measure of the stature of a man in Christ.
2. As a whole the Church is gradually augmented and increasedfrom Abel onwards.
3. To gather in and perfect the elect is the peculiar work of time.
V. As the body of Christ the Church must be restored to perfect soundness and health.
1. Christ receives the Churchdead.
2. The first step towards perfect soundness is a resurrection.
3. Hence each believer is quickened with Christ in order to be healed.
4. The bodies of the saints shall likewise be perfect.The Physician.
5. In heaven no one shall say, I am sick.
VI. As the body of Christ the Church is the object of His unremitting care.
1. To provide for the wants of his body is mans unceasing care.
2. Christ has made ample provision.
3. He now ministers to His Churchs wantsclothing, food, defence, habitation.
VII. As the body of Christ the Church is the instrument through which He accomplishes His purposes.
1. The body the instrument of the heart or soul.
2. The Church the instrument of Christ.
3. The Church but the instrument.Stewart.
Christ the Firstborn from the Dead
I. In the dignity of His person.
II. Because He rose by His own power.
III. Because He is the only one who rose never to die again.
IV. Because He has taken precedence of His people who all shall rise from their graves to glory.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(18) He is the head.He is again emphatic. He who is the image of God, He also is the Head. (On the title itself, see Eph. 1:22.)
The beginning.Chrysostom reads here a kindred word, the first-fruits. The reading is no doubt a gloss, but an instructive one. It shows that the reference is to Christ, as being in His humanity the first principle of the new life to usthe first-fruits from the dead (1Co. 15:20; 1Co. 15:23), and the bringer of life and immortality to light (2Ti. 1:10).
The firstborn from the dead.The same title is given to Him in Rev. 1:5. In his sermon at Antioch in Pisidia (Act. 13:33), St. Paul quotes the passage, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee, as fulfilled in that He raised up Jesus again. (Comp. Heb. 5:5.) In Rom. 1:3, he speaks of Christ as declared (or, defined) to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. The Resurrection is (so to speak) His second birth, the beginning of that exaltation, which is contrasted with His first birth on earth in great humility, and of His entrance on the glory of His mediatorial kingdom. (See Eph. 1:20-23, where the starting-point of all His exaltation is again placed in the Resurrection.)
That in all things he might . . .Literally, That in all things He might become pre-eminent. The words He might become, are opposed to the He is above. They refer to the exaltation of His humanity, so gloriously described in Php. 2:9-11. Thus absolutely in His divine nature, relatively to the mediatorial kingdom in His humanity, He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (Rev. 1:8; Rev. 1:11; Rev. 1:17-18).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
(18-20) In these verses St. Paul returns from dwelling on the eternal nature of the Son of God to describe Him in His mediatorial office as Son of Man, becoming the Head of all humanity, as called into His Body, the Church. In this he touches on a doctrine more fully developed in the Epistle to the Ephesians. (See Eph. 1:10; Eph. 1:20; Eph. 1:22; Eph. 2:19; Eph. 2:21; Eph. 4:15-16.) But still, as has been already noted, there is in this Epistle more stress on the supreme dignity of the Head, as in the other more on the unity, and blessing, and glory of the Body. It should be observed that in this, His mediatorial office, there is throughout a mysterious analogy to His eternal sonship. In both He is the Head, first, of universal creation, next, of the new creation in His Church; He is the beginning, in the one case in eternity, in the other in time; He is the firstborn, now in Eternal Sonship, now in the Resurrection making Him the new life of mankind.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
c. His relation to the Church, Col 1:18 .
18. He is the head Better, he himself. Not any angel or mere created being, but the Son, who has this high dignity, is the head of the Church. The incarnate and glorified Christ is now spoken of. The Church, including those who have passed away and those yet on earth, is a new spiritual creation, of which he is the beginning, the founder, as he is creator of the universe, and so rightful Lord and Governor of both. He is also the firstborn from the dead, , out from the dead, leaving others behind. The phrase occurs in but three other places. See note on Luk 20:35. He is the firstfruits (1Co 15:23) of the coming harvest, the first who rose out of all the myriads of the dead with the immortal, glorious body. Here, too, he has precedence.
Preeminence In order that in all things he might become preeminent. The must be held as co-extensive with the . The pre-incarnate Son, the , was Lord of the entire creation, and the purpose of maintaining this supremacy in the , the Son incarnate, requires his priority in the resurrection, which in its turn is essential to his supremacy in the Church. Our Lord’s Headship in the Church is fully brought out in the parallel passage in Eph 1:22, where see notes. Here it enters as an element in the broader view of him as Head of the universe, which distinguishes the present epistle. It was the divine purpose that everywhere and in all things the incarnate Christ should have the highest place, although it will not be fully realized until the final triumph at the end of time.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘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 pre-eminence.’
Not only does the old creation have its being from Him, but also the new creation. He is not only Lord and Head over all things (Eph 1:22) but also the Head, the Overlord, of the church, that gathering of people who have been united with Him in His body. Firstly because He is ‘the beginning’, and secondly because He is ‘the firstborn from the dead’. Thus the aim is that as the Firstborn of all creation, the source and Lord of the old creation, and as the Firstborn from the dead, the source and Lord of the new creation, He should have total pre-eminence in and over all things.
‘He is the Head of the body.’ This does not mean that we are to see Him as the head in heaven and we as, as it were, a body joined to that head, and representing Him on earth. It refers to His sovereignty over the body, a body which is made up of Himself and His people united with Him. As Eph 1:22 tells us, as Head He is not just the head of the church but the ‘Head over all things’ to the church. His Headship stresses His supremacy, not a direct connection with the body. Consider how in 1 Corinthians 12 the body, which is Himself and His people, includes the head, all of whom are represented by it (1Co 12:16 where ear and eye are part of the body, and 1Co 12:21 where the head is contrasted with the feet, all within the body). So He Who is Head of creation (Eph 1:22 and implied here in Colossians) is also Head of the church (not as its head as opposed to its body but as its sovereign Lord).
‘Of the body.’ The people of God are His body because they have been united with Him in His body. They have been crucified with Him (Gal 2:20; Gal 5:24; Gal 6:14; Rom 6:5-6; Rom 7:4; Eph 2:16), they have risen with Him (Rom 6:4-6; Eph 2:1-6), they are one with Him (Eph 5:31-32; 1Co 12:12-13) and the bread at the Lord’s Table represents both Him and them (1Co 10:16-17). To suggest that this speaks of the church as the ‘extension of His incarnation’ is to miss the point completely. It does not mean that. It emphasises spiritual union within the body. The idea of the body is never as outward in relation to the world, but always as inward in relation to God and to each other. They are one with Him, and one with each other. They have been presented blameless ‘in the body of His flesh through death’ (Col 1:22). For further treatment of this subject see the Appendix.
‘Who is the beginning.’ He was its founder and commencer. It is ‘His church’, which He would build on Peter’s confession (Mat 16:18). And He is its originator and the source of its life. He began it all.
‘The firstborn from the dead.’ He is pre-eminent in resurrection and indeed the prime cause in the raising from the dead (Joh 5:26). He had the power to lay down His life and the power to take it again (Joh 10:18). It was only through His resurrection that the resurrection of others became possible (consider Mat 27:52-53). We can live because He lived. And when He speaks all the dead will rise (Joh 5:28-29). Thus He is Lord of the resurrection.
‘That in all things He might have the pre-eminence.’ Both old and new creation owe their being and continuing existence to Him. And the overall goal of the Godhead was His total pre-eminence.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Col 1:18. And he is the head of the body St. Paul had proved Christ’s superiority to all the creatures, by his making and sustaining them; and now, by a third argument, he confirms his full authority over the church, and that is by God the Father’s constitution and appointment at his resurrection. The insisting expressly upon this was agreeable to his grand design, to confirm the Colossians in their regard to Christ, being apprehensive that they were in some danger of being drawn off from him. The beginning here mentioned, (who is the beginning) is very different from that spoken of before; and yet this beginning, which is his resurrection, is plainly laid down as a foundation of the principality and headship which he holds over the church. He was the beginning, with respect to the creation of all things, being the Lord or first born of every creature; He is the beginning and head of the church, being the firstborn from the dead;the first who ever rose to an endless life. 1Co 15:20; 1Co 15:23. Act 26:23. Rev 1:5. In all things, means in all respects; not only as the Maker of all things, but as the Mediator raised from the dead.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Col 1:18 . Second part (see on Col 1:15 ) of the exhibition of the exaltedness of Christ. To that which Christ is as (Col 1:16-17 ) is now added what He is as , namely, the Head of the Church, and thus His has its consummation ( ). The latter, namely, , embraces also a retrospect to that , and includes it in , without its being necessary, however, to attach Col 1:18 to the carrying out of the relation to the world expressed in . . . (Hofmann, comp. Rich. Schmidt). The perspective proceeds from the dignity of the original state of our Lord to that of His state as Saviour , from His cosmical to His soteriological glory, and so at length exhibits Him to view as the .
That Col 1:18 , with its confirmation in Col 1:19 f., has an apologetic reference to the Gnostic false teaching, must be assumed from its connection with what goes before. The passage is to be looked upon as antagonistic to the worship of angels (Col 2:18 ), which disparaged Christ in His dignity as Head of the Church, but not (in opposition to Bhr and Huther) as antagonistic to a theological dogma, such as is found in the Cabbala, according to which the body of the Messiah (the Adam Kadmon) is the aggregate of the emanations. For the emphasis of the passage and its essential point of doctrine lie in the fact that Christ is the Head of the church, and not in the fact that He is the head of the church; it is not the doctrine of another , but that of any other , which is excluded.
] stands again, as . in Col 1:17 , in significant reference to : et ipse, in quo omnia consistunt, est caput, etc ., so that the passage continues to divide itself as into the links of a chain.
.] to be taken together; the second genitive is that of apposition (Winer, p. 494 [E. T. 666]), which gives to the word governing it concrete definiteness; comp. Mller in the Luther. Zeitschr . 1871, p. 611 ff. On the familiar Pauline mode of considering the church of believers, livingly and actively ruled by Christ as the head (Eph 3:10 ; Phi 3:6 ; Act 9:31 ), as His body , [40] comp. 1Co 10:17 ; 1Co 12:12 ff., 1Co 10:27 ; Eph 1:23 ; Eph 4:12 ; Eph 5:23 ; Eph 5:30 ; Rom 12:5 .
. . .] epexegetical relative clause (as in Col 1:15 ), the contents of which are related by way of confirmation to the preceding statement (Matthiae, p. 1061 f.; Khner, ad Xen. Mem . i. 2. 64; Stallbaum, ad Phil . p. 195 f.), like our: he, who, etc ., which might be expressed, but not necessarily , by (or ). Comp. on Eph 1:14 . If Christ had not risen, He would not be Head of the church (Act 2:24-36 ; 1Co 15 ; Rom 1:4 , et al .).
] beginning; which, however, is not to be explained either as “initium secundae et novae creationis ” (Calvin), progenitor of the regenerate (Bisping), or “ author of the church ” (Baumgarten-Crusius), or even “ ruler of the world ” (Storr, Flatt); but agreeably to the context in such a way, as to make it have with the appositional its definition in , just as if the words ran: , , although Paul did not express himself thus, because at once upon his using the predicate in and by itself the exegetical suggested itself to him. Accordingly Christ is called ( ) , inasmuch as He is among all the dead the first arisen to everlasting life . It is arbitrary to discover in an allusion to the offering of first-fruits sanctifying the whole mass (Chrysostom, Beza, Ewald, and others); especially as the term , which is elsewhere used for the first portion of a sacrifice (Rom 11:16 ), is not here employed, although it has crept in from 1Co 15:20 ; 1Co 15:23 , in a few minusculi and Fathers, as in Clement also, Cor . I. 24, Christ is termed . To assume a reminiscence of 1Co 15 (Holtzmann) is wholly unwarranted, especially as is not used. On , used of persons , denoting the one who begins the series, as the first in order of time, comp. Gen 49:3 , where is equivalent to , as also Deu 21:17 . In what respect any one is of those concerned, must be yielded by the context, just as in this case it is yielded by the more precisely defining . ; hence it has been in substance correctly explained, following the Fathers: , , , , [41] Theophylact. Only is not to be mentally supplied , nor is it to be conjectured (de Wette) that Paul had intended to write . , but, on account of the word presenting itself to him from Col 1:15 , did not complete what he had begun. It follows, moreover, from the use of the word , that is to be taken in the temporal sense, consequently as equivalent to primus , not in the sense of dignity (Wetstein), and not as principle (Bhr, Steiger, Huther, Dalmer, following earlier expositors).
. .] . . is conceived in the same way as in . . (Eph 5:14 ), so that it is the dead in Hades among whom the Risen One was, but from whom He goes forth ( separates Himself from them, hence also . ., Mat 14:2 ; Mat 27:64 ; Mat 28:7 ), and returning into the body, with the latter rises from the tomb. Comp. , Act 26:23 , also 1Co 15:22 f. This living exit from the grave is figuratively represented as birth; comp. Rev 1:5 , where the partitive genitive . (not . . .) yields a form of conceiving the matter not materially different. Calvin takes . . . as specifying the ground for : “ principium (absolutely), quia primogenitus est ex mortuis; nam in resurrectione est rerum omnium instauratio.” Against this it may be urged, that has no more precise definition; Paul must have written either , or at least instead of . Calvin was likewise erroneously of opinion (comp. Erasmus, Calovius) that Christ is called Primogenitus ex mortuis , not merely because He was the first to rise, but also “ quia restituit aliis vitam .” This idea is not conveyed either by the word or by the context, however true may be the thing itself; but a belief in the subsequent general resurrection of the dead is the presupposition of the expression ( , Theodoret). This expression is purposely chosen in significant reference to Col 1:15 , as is intimated by Paul himself in the following . . . But it is thus all the more certain, that . . is to be taken independently, and not adjectivally together with (Heinrichs, Schleiermacher, Ewald), which would only amount to a tautological verboseness ( first-born beginning ); and, on the other hand, that may not be separated from in such a way as to emphasize the place, issuing forth from which Christ is what He is, namely, , ; the former , “as the personal beginning of what commences with Him;” the latter , “in the same relation to those who belong to the world therewith coming into life as He held to the creation” (Hofmann). In this way the specific more precise definition, which is by means of . in significant reference to Col 1:15 attached to the predicates of Christ, and , would be groundlessly withdrawn from them, and these predicates would be left in an indefiniteness, in which they would simply be open vessels for receiving a gratuitously imported supplement.
. . .] not to be restricted to the affirmation (Hofmann), [42] but to be referred to the whole sentence that Christ is , . ., expressing the divine teleology of this position of Christ as the Risen One: in order that He may become , etc.; not: in order “that He may be held as ” (Baumgarten-Crusius), nor yet “that He may be ” (Vulgate, and so most expositors), as and are never synonymous. The is looked upon by Paul as something which is still in course of development (comp. Steiger and Huther), and is only to be completed in the future, namely, when the Risen One shall have conquered all the power of the enemy (1Co 15:25 f.) and have erected the kingdom of the Messiah but of this result His resurrection itself was the necessary historical basis , and hence the future universal is the divinely intended aim of His being risen.
] in all points , without excepting any relation, not, therefore, merely in the relation of creation (Col 1:15-17 ). Comp. Phi 4:12 ; 1Ti 3:11 ; 1Ti 4:15 ; 2Ti 2:7 ; 2Ti 4:5 ; Tit 2:9 ; Heb 13:4 ; Heb 13:18 . is more commonly used by Paul ( 1Co 1:5 ; 2Co 4:8 , et al .). According to Beza, is masculine : “inter omnes , videlicet fratres , ut Rom 8:29 .” So also Kypke and Heinrichs. But this would be here, after the universal bearing of the whole connection, much too narrow an idea, which, besides, is self-evident as to the Head of the church. According to Pelagius, it denotes: “tam in visibilibus quam in invisibilibus creaturis .” At variance with the text; this idea was conveyed by Col 1:16-17 , but in Col 1:18 another relation is introduced which does not refer to created things as such.
] emphatic, as in Col 1:17-18 .
] having the first rank , not used elsewhere in the N. T., but see Est 5:11 ; 2Ma 6:18 ; 2Ma 13:15 ; Aquila, Zec 4:7 ; Plat. Legg . iii. p. 692 D, Dem . 1416. 25: . Xen. Cyr . viii. 2. 28; Mem . ii. 6. 26. This precedence in rank is to be the final result of the condition which set in with the . .; but it is not contained in this itself, an idea against which the very is logically decisive (in opposition to de Wette’s double signification of .).
[40] In which is expressed the idea of the invisible church. Comp. Julius Mller, Dogmat. Abh. p. 316 ff. And this conception and representation belong quite to the apostle’s general sphere of ideas, not specially to that of the Epistle to the Ephesians, into which the interpolator is supposed by Holtzmann again to enter here, after he has manifested a comparative independence in vv. 15 18.
[41] The Fathers have already correctly judged that even in regard to the isolated cases of rising from the dead, which have taken place through Christ and before Him, Christ remains the first-risen. Theophylact: , . Comp. on 1Co 15:20 .
[42] So that it would express the design, which Christ Himself had in His coming forth from the dead.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
“Handfuls of Purpose”
For All Gleaners
“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? ( Col 1:18 ).
When the Apostle says, “He is the head,” we are to understand that the “he” is emphatic. It is also emphatic in the seventeenth verse, where we read, “He is before all things.” We are indeed in this instance to read “he is” as if they were but one word, and that one word is the emphatic term in the statement: thus he, and he only, is; really is; essentially is; is, according to the very nature of the being of God, all else is called forth or created, or is in some sense an expressing of Divine and active power. When we read in Joh 8:58 , “Before Abraham was, I am,” we are not to regard the word “before” as expressive of higher excellence or nobler dignity, we are rather to take it as a time-term, and as indicative of the fact that Jesus Christ lived before Abraham lived. It is beautiful to see how Paul associates what is, at present, the very small idea of “the Church” with all the glory and grandeur of the sovereignty and empire of Christ. Jesus Christ is the “beginning,” or the firstfruits; he is “the firstborn from the dead,” he is the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. The resurrection was, in his sense, the second birth of Christ; the beginning of that phase of existence which, by glory, eclipsed all that had ever one before. We may start the earthly history of Christ from his nativity or from his resurrection. Each point is equally strong, but the second infinitely exceeds in glory. A marvellous idea it was to associate death with him who is the image of the invisible God, by whom were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. How daring the imagination to introduce the element of death into a panorama burning with such ineffable glory! Yet here is the sacrifice of the Saviour; here is the Cross of Christ; here the agony, the shame, the weakness, the forsakenness of the Son of God! Yet it behoved him who is the captain of our salvation to be made perfect through suffering. Had he known everything but death, how could he have known men who were taken out of the earth, and shaped out into the Divine likeness, and made alive by the Divine breath? Jesus Christ became pre-eminent through suffering. Without the Cross, the chief gem in the crown of Christ would have been wanting. The Apostle makes this part of his statement even more vivid and poignant by specific references:
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
III
CHRIST’S RELATION TO THE CHURCH
Col 1:18-22
Before taking up this chapter proper let us review briefly the doctrinal part of the previous chapter. We stopped at Col 1:17 , and the special points made were that Christ in his relation to the Father was the image or visible of God invisible. The term “image” was further carefully explained in this context, being interpreted by the subsequent qualifications that creation was “in him,” “through him” “unto him” and “consisting by him,” and he was “before all things.” All these expressions were in turn carefully explained in their own context and compared with the parallel passages in John’s Gospel and Revelation, in Hebrews and Philippians, and their bearing on the essential deity of Christ was pointed out, together with their pertinence to the prevalence of the heresy at Colosse. We should especially fix clearly and definitely in our minds the meaning of the words “image,” “firstborn,” “consist,” and the force of the prepositions “in,” “through,” “unto” and “before.”
This chapter, commencing at Col 1:18 , considers Christ’s relation to the church expressed in the figure of a head and body. Whenever this figure (a common one with Paul) is employed, the church is conceived of as an organism, a much stronger term than organization, but by that very fact emphasizing the inherent, essential idea of organization in the word “church.” The word “head” implies not only sovereignty but rule, the source of the body’s life and growth through vital connection with it. In every sense of the word “church,” Christ is the head. He is the head of every particular church in which alone the institution expresses itself, and he is the head of the prospective church in glory, whose constituent elements, or component parts, will be the whole number of the elect saved by him.
The only sense in which the church in the third meaning above now exists, is in the gathering and preparing of material, which, when all is gathered and fully prepared, will be constructively fitted together as an everlasting habitation of the Holy Spirit. The time and circumstances of the constitution of the universal, or glory church, with every orderly step leading thereto, are as clearly set forth as in the case of any particular church here on earth: (1) Jesus will come in glory, (Mat 25:31 ); (2) he will bring with him the spirits of the Just made perfect, (1Th 4:14 ); (3) will raise and glorify their bodies, (1Th 4:16 ) ; (4) will change, or transfigure, living Christians, (1Th 4:17 ; and 1Co 15:51-54 ); (5) will separate Christians from sinners, (Mat 25:32-33 ); (6) will present the church to himself as a glorified bride, (Eph 5:27 ; Rev 21:2 ; Rev 21:9 ; Rev 19:7-9 ); (7) infilling of the finished temple by the Holy Spirit, (Rev 21:3 ). This church when constituted, will be a local, visible, organized assembly. It is as yet only a concept to become an actuality, a plan of the architect according to which he continually works in order ultimately to a finished house, a purpose of the divine mind conceived of as fulfilled, because with him the end is present as well as the beginning.
It is every way important that the reader should have clear ideas of the several meanings of the word “church,” set forth above, and be able to determine from the context which one of the meanings is employed in any particular passage. While this is essential to a right interpretation of the word where ever it is used in the New Testament, it is emphatically so in Colossians and Ephesians which, while employing the word in all its meanings, especially stress the third meaning. Full discussion of this matter will be reserved to the exposition of Ephesians whose usage is much more extended and elaborate. And I say in advance that whoever can expound the word “church” in Colossians and Ephesians is a past master in exegesis so far as that term is concerned.
We find next the expression: “Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” There is here a relation between “the beginning” and the “firstborn from the dead.” The two expressions seem to be in apposition, the second modifying or defining the first. That is, Christ is called the beginning from the dead in that he was the first-born from the dead. He had the preeminence in relation to the creation, as has been set forth, and the preeminence in relation to the church, just expressed, so must he now have pre-eminence in relation to the dead, being the beginning or first-born from the dead. Thus it pleased the Father that in him ail the fulness should dwell fulness as to being God’s image, fulness as to creation, fulness as to the church, fulness as to the resurrection.
On the meaning of “firstborn from the dead” the question of fact has been raised: Was the resurrection of Christ absolutely the first one in history? We must say, “Yes, absolutely.” Elsewhere he is called “the firstfruits of them that are asleep.” It has been objected that Lazarus and others were raised from the dead. But all these were but restorations to life under the old conditions. The bodies were not glorified. They were yet subject to mortality, weakness, dishonor, and corruption. They all died again. In Christ’s case he rose to die no more. There was complete and final triumph over the grave. “I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore.” Again, it has been objected that Moses, who certainly died and was buried, was seen alive on the Mount of Transfiguration. Yes, but was not alive in the body. The Jewish myth of the assumption of the body of Moses is as false as the later papal myth of the assumption of the body of the virgin Mary. The bodies of Moses and of Mary are yet “Mouldering in the ground.” Elijah, indeed, was bodily visible on the Mount to Peter, James, and John, but Elijah, like Enoch, was translated that he should not see death. The disciples were illumined to see Moses in the spirit as well as Elijah in the body. The purpose of the transfiguration is defeated if we interpret that Moses was there bodily. The transfiguration scene was designed, at least in part, to give a miniature representation of the second coming of Christ, as follows: (1) When he comes he will come in glory (Christ was there seen glorified). (2) When he comes living Christians will be glorified without death. Elijah represented that class. (3) When he comes he will raise the dead. Moses represented the class to be raised. So that the transfiguration scene imaged in miniature the power and majesty of the second advent. John so understood it, for he testifies: “We beheld his glory, as the glory of the only begotten from the Father” (Joh 1:14 ). Peter so understood it, for he testifies: “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there was borne such a voice to him by the majestic glory, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: and this voice we ourselves heard borne out of heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount” (2Pe 1:16-18 ). He had said, “There are some of them that stand here who shall in no wise taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Mat 16:28 ). Or, as Mark puts it: “Till they see the kingdom of God come with power” (Mar 9:1 ). Or, as Luke puts it: “Till they see the kingdom of God.”
Matthew prefaced his statement with the words: “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels,” thus showing that the kingdom they would be enabled to see before death was not the kingdom in any of its earthly aspects, but the glory kingdom as his second advent. The promise finds no fulfilment except on the Mount of Transfiguration, and both Peter and John declare it to be a vision of Christ in glory as at his second advent. Hence to represent Moses as having already risen from the dead destroys the completeness of the Transfiguration imagery to represent all the power and majesty of the second advent.
Again it has been objected that some of the saints rose from the dead at the moment Christ died on the cross. This objection misreads the scripture, which says, “And the tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after his resurrection they entered into the holy city and appeared unto many” (Mat 27:52-53 ). Let us not balk at the doctrine. It is fundamental. Christ is the first-born from the dead. In that old English classic, The Spectator, is an article by Addison entitled, “The Vision of Mizra.” In this vision Mizra sees a flowing river whose source and exit are hidden in clouds, but across the section visible is a bridge over which pours the tide of successive generations. The bridge is sadly out of repair, and so, sooner or later, each passing pilgrim drops through some crevice into the river below and is swept away into the impenetrable darkness which veils its exit. The vision was designed to teach that unaided human philosophy can neither discover the origin of life nor the destiny to which death bears us. Shakespeare also represents death as “that bourne from which no traveler has ever returned.” Like the tracks of the animals which visited the sick lion in the cave, they could all be seen going in, but none could be seen coming out. So was death a dark realm until Jesus was raised and brought life and immortality to light. He is the one traveler who has returned from death and for us flashes light on its secrets. He tells of the state of disembodied spirits, good and bad, of his coming advent in glory, bringing with him the souls of the saints in heaven and dragging to him the souls of the wicked in hell, and the general resurrection of both the just and the unjust, the reunion of long severed souls and bodies, the general judgment of all, and the final state of the just and the unjust.
All this is pledged in his own resurrection. He is declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection. Or, as the psalmist puts it: “This day have I begotten thee,” referring to the demonstrations of his sonship by the resurrection. Just here it is important to note that what we call the second advent will be really the third. When he suffered on the cross his spirit left this world and went to the Father. There, as high priest, he made the atonement behind the veil by sprinkling his own blood on the mercy seat in the true holy of holies. On the third day he returned to earth for his risen body, and this was his second advent. So “when he bringeth his only begotten again into the world, he said, Let all the angels of God worship him” (Heb 1:6 ). His first advent was to assume by incarnation the body of his humiliation. This was when he was born of Mary. His second advent was when he returned from heaven to assume his body of glory. This was when he was born by the resurrection. His third advent will be when he comes to assume his mystical body the church and to judge the world.
This is a great doctrine a multiform doctrine the resurrection of Christ. It is the one sign of his divinity and the one pledge of our glory. As a historical fact it is attested by witnesses. John says, “That which we have seen with our eyes, heard with our ears, and handled with our hands that we declare unto you.” He himself said, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, such as ye see me have handle me and see.” Luke said, “He showed himself alive after his passion, by many infallible proofs.”
The church, with all its officers and ordinances, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the witness through the ages to his last advent that Jesus is alive he was dead, but is alive forevermore. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are all witnesses to this one great pivotal fact that Jesus is risen indeed. Baptism is a witness to the same fact whenever administered in font, pool, flowing stream, lake, gulf, sea, or ocean. It memorializes all spectators on earth, in hell, in heaven, that Christ is risen, is alive, is exalted to be the head of the church, and head over all things to the church. The Lord’s Supper testifies that he died for our sins, but is alive now, and points its finger of triumphant hope to his last advent, for “as oft as ye do this ye show forth the Lord’s death till he come.”
Both all preeminence and all fulness are vested in Christ. So is the Father’s good pleasure. That there are heights and depths in this thought seldom realized by the profoundest Bible students will appear as we examine the next thought, the thought of reconciliation and its scope. Mark the text: “And through him to reconcile all things unto himself . . . whether things upon the earth or things in the heavens.” Or, as the thought is more broadly expressed in Phi 2:10 , “That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of beings in heaven, beings on earth, and beings under the earth.”
In some real sense the atonement made by Christ in the holy of holies in heaven, based upon his expiation on the cross, will touch either to save, confirm, or subdue every angel in heaven or hell, every man, saint, or sinner. The saints it saves, the good angels it confirms, bad men and demons it subdues, so that they ground arms of active rebellion, and in receipt of final punishment and chains show that the war against God is over forever, and the whole universe is pacified.
Throughout the universe the authority of God is forever established. The kingdoms of this evil world have become the kingdom of Christ; Satan’s kingdom is overturned; the earth itself is redeemed unto the liberty of the children of God; death and Hades are cast into the lake of fire, and even Gehenna itself shall float no flag of rebellion. There is no more conspiring or fighting against God. Gehenna’s inmates, men and demons, in everlasting punishment, endure, but resist no more. All things through Christ are in this way reconciled. As when a victorious army marches through a revolting province, disperses all armed companies, captures all strongholds, receives the surrender of all antagonists, rescues and rewards all the loyal, expels, confines, and punishes all the disloyal.
Angels and men finally lost are not merely conquered in the sense that they surrender and are by banishment and confinement debarred from future revolt, but they are forced to see and publicly acknowledge on bended knee that Christ is King and their punishment is just.
More than this: Because angels were appointed to be ministering spirits to man, who was made originally “lower than the angels,” Satan, through pride, revolted. He was unwilling to be subordinate to the lower creature man. This was the origin of sin in heaven, and led to Satan’s being cast out from heaven with his fellow apostates. Hence his hatred of man and his purpose through temptation to alienate him from God and thereby destroy him, and thus defeat the purpose of God in subordinating him to man. This led to sin on earth, and thus man passed under bondage to Satan with the earth, his home.
But Jesus, the Second man, was appointed to destroy the devil and his works. On the cross of expiation he triumphed over Satan, making a show of him openly, despoiling principalities and powers as we see further on in this letter. Through his consequent exaltation to the throne of the universe, he makes all things work together for good toward the consummation described above. Now the unfallen angels were yet on probation. They did not follow Satan, but it remained to be seen if they would actually become ministering spirits to the human heirs of salvation achieved by Christ’s expiation. If they did so become, then they would be confirmed and so lose all liability to fall, and thus things in heaven would be reconciled. When the saints at Christ’s advent sit with him on his glory throne they will “judge angels.” Their testimony of help received vindicates and confirms the unfallen angels. The fallen angels who fell trough unwillingness to be under man are now brought before men to be judged. Think of it! Peter and Job judging Satan! When Satan and his angels thus bow the knee to redeemed and glorified humanity, confess their sovereignty, and receive sentence of punishment from them and go away into everlasting confinement, the war is over and all things are reconciled. What a pity that Milton in his great epic, Paradise Lost, so misconceived the reason of Satan’s rebellion! And what a greater pity that in his feebler epic, Paradise Regained, he stops at Christ’s resistance to Satan’s temptation, so very short of the cross. But Milton, in more points than one, was a very unsound theologian.
This letter to the Colossians transcends all other scriptures in its comprehensive grasp of the atonement. Very clearly it shows that the cross is the keystone of the arch, the hinge on which swings open every door of revelation. No wonder its author could say elsewhere: “I determined to know nothing among you but the cross. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross, and if an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel, let him be anathema.”
We thus see that Christ’s first advent was to assume the body of his humiliation and in it to make expiation on the cross, followed by his making the atonement, or reconciliation in heaven, where, for this purpose, his spirit went immediately after his death, and this, in turn, followed by his second advent to earth for his risen or glorified body, and this followed by his ascension, soul and body, to the throne of the universe, and this followed by his sending of his vicar, the Holy Spirit, to accredit, endue, and abide with his church, and this followed by his reign in heaven and the Spirit’s reign on earth in the church, and this followed by his third advent to assume his mystical body, the glorified church, and this followed by the final judgment, and this followed by the Spirit-filled glorified church, descending to occupy the now purified and redeemed earth, not only completes the story of reconciliation, or purification of the universe, but shows how the reconciliation severally touches all beings and things, saving saints, confirming good angels, subduing and forever expelling evil angels and men, so that in all his holy mountain there is nothing left to offend, to make afraid, to awaken tears, or to incite to pain, sickness, or death.
But while all this presents reconciliation in its general aspects, we need to consider it, as does Paul, in its special relation to the Colossians. Reconciliation implies previous alienation. Sin alienated God from men and men from God. Christ is the mediator who brings the two together. The ground of his mediation is his sacrificial and vicarious death. This satisfies the punitive demands of the law, and so propitiates or placates toward God. The offering of the blood of the sacrifice by Christ as high priest, in the holy of holies in heaven, reconciles God. The reconciliation of men to God is effected by the ministry of the gospel, savingly applied by the Holy Spirit. Accordingly Paul says in our text: “And you, being in times past alienated and enemies in your mind and in your evil works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh, through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreprovable before him.”
The last clause shows not only the end of reconciliation, but indicates that their salvation involves more than justification. Not only must the penal sanctions of the law be satisfied, but they must be internally fitted for presentation to God. That is, not only saved from guilt and condemnation of sin, but also from its dominion in their hearts and lives. This makes the doctrine of reconciliation intensely practical. It involves regeneration, sanctification, and glorification. The presentation of the redeemed in the completeness of salvation is a definite and official transaction. Indeed, it is compared to a marriage. We are engaged or betrothed to Christ by faith here in time. Paul says: “I have espoused you to Christ as a chaste virgin.” The marriage comes later. The bride must be made ready for the husband. This marriage takes place when our Lord comes again. In the accompanying letter to the Ephesians the thought is amplified, closing thus: “That he might present the church unto himself a glorious church, not having a spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”
The grandest scene of time or eternity will be this presentation of the redeemed considered as a unit, a bride, glorious in her apparel. So in the apocalypse John saw and heard: “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth. Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev 19:6-9 ).
Reconciliation is therefore a call to holiness. Let not Baptist preachers skip this “if” of Paul’s: “If so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel.” A transient faith is not the faith of the gospel. Any professed regeneration that does not move on toward sanctification is not true regeneration. It was not the purpose of God to imitate human rulers who, when exercising power, turn loose a criminal on society. “Whom God justifies, them he sanctifies and glorifies.”
QUESTIONS
1. How is Christ’s relation to the church expressed?
2. What is the conception of the church in the use of this figure?
3. What does the word “head” imply?
4. In what senses of the word “church” is Christ the head?
5. In what sense only does the glory church now exist?
6. What the time and circumstances of the constitution of the glory church? (State this in seven orderly steps.)
7. When so constituted, what will be the nature of this glory church?
8. Which meanings of the word “church” are employed in Colossians and Ephesians?
9. What is the relation between “the beginning” & the “firstborn from the dead”?
10. What do they mean?
11. What question of fact raised here?
12. What its answer?
13. Explain, then, the cases of Lazarus, Moses, and Elijah, and their bearing on the transfiguration.
14. Give proof that the transfiguration gave a miniature representation of Christ’s second advent.
15. What a second objection and its answer?
16. What is the vision of Mizra?
17. What is it designed to teach?
18. Explain his several advents, and the purpose of each.
19. What is the one sign of Christ’s divinity & the one pledge of our glory?
20. What are the witnesses to the fact that Jesus is alive?
21. What is the scope of Christ’s reconciliation? Explain fully.
22. Give an account of the origin of sin: (1) By whom originated? (2) Where? (3) The cause? (4) The result?
23. Who was appointed to destroy the works of the devil, and when was it accomplished?
24. What is the position of the unfallen angels now?
25. What is the position, of the saints at the judgment?
26. What vital mistake in Milton’s Paradise Lost? In Paradise Regained?
27. In what does this letter transcend all other scriptures, and what the keystone of the arch of revelation?
28. On reconciliation in its special relation to the Colossians answer: (1) What does it imply? (2) Who the mediator? (3) What the ground of reconciliation? (4) How effected? (5) How applied?
29. Show that salvation involves more than justification, and that reconciliation is intensely practical.
30. Compare the redeemed to a bride.
31. Describe the scene when the bride shall be presented to her husband.
32. What is, therefore, the call of reconciliation?
33. Give the clause following Paul’s “if.”
34. What are the evidences of real faith?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
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.
Ver. 18. And he is the head ] See the note on Eph 1:22 . Angels are under Christ as a head of government, of influence, of confirmation, not of redemption, as we. (Elton.)
The firstborn from the dead ] sc. of those that rise to eternal life. Others rose, but to die again, and by virtue of his resurrection; as the firstborn among the Jews communicated his good things to his brethren.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
18 20 .] Relation of Christ to the Church (see above on Col 1:15 ): And He (emphatic; not any angels nor created beings: the whole following passage has a controversial bearing on the errors of the Colossian teachers) is the Head of the body the church (not ‘the body of the church:’ the genitive is much more naturally taken as one of apposition, inasmuch as in St. Paul, it is the church which is , not which possesses, the body, see reff.): who (q.d. ‘in that He is:’ the relative has an argumentative force: see Matthi, Gr. 477: in which case it is more commonly found with a particle, , or ) is the beginning (of the Church of the First-born, being Himself . . .: cf. , 1Co 15:23 , and reff., especially the last. But the word evidently has, standing as it does here alone, a wider and more glorious reference than that of mere temporal precedence: cf. ref. Rev. and note: He is the Beginning, in that in Him is begun and conditioned the Church, Col 1:19-20 ), the First-born from (among) the dead (i.e. the first who arose from among the dead: but the term (see above) being predicated of Christ in both references, he uses it here, regarding the resurrection as a kind of birth. On that which is implied in ., see above on Col 1:15 ), that HE (emphatic, again: see above) may become (not, as Est., ‘ex quibus efficitur, Christum tenere:’ but the aim and purpose of this his priority over creation and in resurrection) in all things (reff. Beza, (and so Kypke) argues, that because the Apostle is speaking of the Church, must be masculine, allowing however that the neuter has some support from the which follows. In fact this decides the question: the there are a resumption of the here. The then is not ‘inter,’ but of the reference: ‘in all matters:’ , as Chrys.: because the which follows applies not only to things concrete, but also to their combinations and attributes) pre-eminent ( first in rank : the word is a transitional one, from priority in time to priority in dignity, and shews incontestably that the two ideas have been before the Apostle’s mind throughout. Add to reff., from Wetst., , Demosth. 1416. 25: and Plut. de puer. educ. p. 9 B, ).
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Col 1:18 . The false teachers not only wrongly represented the relation of the angel powers to the universe, but they assigned them a false position in the work of redemption and a false relation to the Church. Hence Paul passes from the pre-eminence of the Son in the universe to speak of Him as Head of the Body. He is thus supreme alike in the universe and the Church. . ( cf. Col 2:19 , Eph 1:22-23 ; Eph 4:15-16 ; Eph 5:23 ). For Christ as Head simply, cf. 1Co 11:3 . For the Church as the body of Christ, Col 1:24 , Eph 4:2 , 1Co 12:27 , Rom 12:5 . For Christians as the members of Christ’s body, Eph 5:30 , 1Co 12:27 . For Christians as “severally members one of another,” Rom 12:5 . By this metaphor of “the head of the body” is meant that Christ is the Lord and Ruler of His Church, its directing brain, probably also that its life depends on continued union with Him. The Church is a body in the sense that it is a living organism, composed of members vitally united to each other, each member with his own place and function, each essential to the body’s perfect health, each dependent on the rest of the body for its life and well-being, while the whole organism and all the individual members derive all their life from the Head and act under His guidance. And as the body needs the Head, to be the source of its life and the controller of its activities, and to unify the members into an organic whole, so the Head needs the body to be His instrument in carrying out His designs. It is only in Colossians and Ephesians that Christ appears as Head of the Church, but the emphasis in Colossians is on the Headship, in Ephesians on the Church. : often taken as in apposition to . For this we should have expected . . . . ( cf. Col 1:24 ). It may also be taken as epexegetical of (so Weiss and Haupt, who quotes 1Co 5:8 , 2Co 5:5 , Rom 4:11 ; Rom 8:21 ; Rom 15:16 as parallels, all of which, however, are not clear). . is here the universal Church. : inasmuch as He is. Paul is giving a reason for the position of the Son as . . . is not to be taken in the sense of , nor is it certain that it has, as Lightfoot and others think, the sense of originating power. It is defined by . . , and this seems to throw the stress rather on the idea of supremacy than that of priority. There is perhaps a tacit reference to (Col 1:16 ). : “firstborn from among the dead”. In Rev 1:5 we have , which expresses a different idea. If the temporal reference in . is the more prominent, the meaning will be that He is the first to pass out of the dominion of death. But if sovereignty is the leading idea, the meaning is that from among the dead He has passed to His throne, where He reigns as the living Lord, who has overcome death, and who, before He surrenders the kingdom to the Father, will abolish it. : the purpose for which He is , . . . He is supreme in the universe. He has to become supreme in relation to the Church. is emphatic; neuter not masculine, on account of the context.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Head. See Eph 1:22, Eph 1:23.
church. App-186.
beginning. See Pro 8:22-30,
from the dead. App-139.
have, &c. = become the pre-eminent One. Greek. pro teuo. Only here.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
18-20.] Relation of Christ to the Church (see above on Col 1:15): And He (emphatic; not any angels nor created beings: the whole following passage has a controversial bearing on the errors of the Colossian teachers) is the Head of the body the church (not the body of the church: the genitive is much more naturally taken as one of apposition, inasmuch as in St. Paul, it is the church which is, not which possesses, the body, see reff.): who (q.d. in that He is: the relative has an argumentative force: see Matthi, Gr. 477: in which case it is more commonly found with a particle, , or ) is the beginning (of the Church of the First-born, being Himself . . .: cf. , 1Co 15:23, and reff., especially the last. But the word evidently has, standing as it does here alone, a wider and more glorious reference than that of mere temporal precedence: cf. ref. Rev. and note: He is the Beginning, in that in Him is begun and conditioned the Church, Col 1:19-20), the First-born from (among) the dead (i.e. the first who arose from among the dead: but the term (see above) being predicated of Christ in both references, he uses it here, regarding the resurrection as a kind of birth. On that which is implied in ., see above on Col 1:15), that HE (emphatic, again: see above) may become (not, as Est., ex quibus efficitur, Christum tenere: but the aim and purpose of this his priority over creation and in resurrection) in all things (reff. Beza, (and so Kypke) argues, that because the Apostle is speaking of the Church, must be masculine, allowing however that the neuter has some support from the which follows. In fact this decides the question: the there are a resumption of the here. The then is not inter, but of the reference:-in all matters: , as Chrys.: because the which follows applies not only to things concrete, but also to their combinations and attributes) pre-eminent (first in rank: the word is a transitional one, from priority in time to priority in dignity, and shews incontestably that the two ideas have been before the Apostles mind throughout. Add to reff., from Wetst., , Demosth. 1416. 25: and Plut. de puer. educ. p. 9 B, ).
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Col 1:18. , and) He now comes down from the whole to the principal part, the Church, comp. Eph 1:22, note.- , who is) The Anaphora [repetition of the same words in beginnings], comp. Col 1:15, shows that there is here the beginning of a new paragraph, and its own , because, is added to each member.-, beginning) This word corresponds to the Hebrew word , especially concerning Christ, Hos 2:2, and , concerning a first-begotten in particular, Deu 21:17, but chiefly of Christ, Pro 8:22. , first fruits, is the term used, 1Co 15:23, the word being rather restricted to the resurrection of the dead: , beginning, more expressly denotes distinguished excellence; comp. Col 2:10; Psa 89:27. in the singular is antithetic to , principalities, in the plural, Col 1:16.- , the first-begotten from the dead) Christ, even before His resurrection from the dead, nay, before the creation of the world, was the first-begotten, Col 1:15; but He is said to be first-begotten from the dead, because, for this reason, inasmuch as He was the Son of God, He could not but rise again, and because, in consequence of His resurrection, He is acknowledged [recognised] to be the Son of God; comp. Act 13:33, note; and especially since there flows from His resurrection the life of many brethren.-, in all things) In the neuter gender, Col 1:17.-, He) by Himself, without deputies or substitute.-, holding the first place) for example, in His resurrection, ascension, etc., Joh 3:13. Victorinus translates it, primarius, the pre-eminent One.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Col 1:18
Col 1:18
And he is the head of the body, the church:-The church is the spiritual body of which Christ is the head. The individual Christians are members of that body, all moved and directed by the Head. [The same is taught in the following: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodys sake, which is the church. (Col 1:24). The plain statement is that the church is the body of Christ. The same thing is said in the following: And he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. (Eph 1:22-23). Everyone therefore who belongs to Christ necessarily belongs to the church. To be out of the church is to be out of Christ. To be in Christ is to be in the church.]
who is the beginning,-He is the beginning of the new life to us-the first fruits from the dead. But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them that are asleep. . . . But each in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; then they that are Christs, at his coming (1Co 15:20-23), and the one who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2Ti 1:10).
the firstborn from the dead;-The same title is given him by the apostle John. (Rev 1:5). He was the first raised from the dead to die no more. Some had been restored to fleshly life. But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them that are asleep. (1Co 15:20). He was the Head, above all, and was the leader of all. He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. (Eph 4:10). In the Scriptures the resurrection is called a birth. Of course this and to be born of water and of the Spirit are both figurative births. Birth is the beginning of a new life and separate existence. When a child is born of his mother, it is the beginning of a new and separate life. Birth does not give life; it introduces into a new state. When a man passes out of a state of sin into the life of Jesus Christ, the beginning of this new life is called a birth; when he is raised from the dead and begins a new and separate life in eternity, it is called a birth from the grave.
that in all things he might have the preeminence.-[That he and none other, the very one who rose, might become the first in rank; the word occurring only here in the New Testament. This is Gods purpose, partially fulfilled already, to be entirely fulfilled at his coming. The central place Paul assigns to the person of Christ is the proper place in all Christian thought.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
he is: Col 1:24, Col 2:10-14, 1Co 11:3, Eph 1:10, Eph 1:22, Eph 1:23, Eph 4:15, Eph 4:16, Eph 5:23
the beginning: Joh 1:1, 1Jo 1:1, Rev 1:8, Rev 3:14, Rev 21:6, Rev 22:13
the firstborn: Joh 11:25, Joh 11:26, Act 26:23, 1Co 15:20-23, Rev 1:5, Rev 1:18
in all: or, among all, Psa 45:2-5, Psa 89:27, Son 5:10, Isa 52:13, Mat 23:8, Mat 28:18, Joh 1:16, Joh 1:27, Joh 3:29-31, Joh 3:34, Joh 3:35, Rom 8:29, 1Co 15:25, Heb 1:5, Heb 1:6, Rev 5:9-13, Rev 11:15, Rev 21:23, Rev 21:24
Reciprocal: Gen 37:7 – obeisance 1Ki 10:23 – exceeded Psa 45:7 – above Psa 68:18 – for men Son 3:11 – his mother Son 7:5 – head Eze 46:8 – he shall go Zec 6:13 – and the Mat 2:6 – a Governor Mat 3:16 – and he Mat 16:18 – my Joh 3:30 – but 1Co 12:12 – as Eph 2:6 – hath Phi 2:9 – given Col 2:19 – not 1Th 1:10 – whom Heb 1:2 – appointed Heb 1:4 – so Heb 3:3 – this
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH
And He is the Head of the Body, the Church.
Col 1:18
To St. Paul the Church was the Body of Christ. The Father, he says, gave Christ to be Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. St. Paul loved to contemplate Christ as the Head, and the Church as His Body.
I. The unity of the Church.St. Paul loved the thought of unity. He saw with his minds eye one Body, but many members, the members different from each other, each having his own function, but joined together into a unity infinitely the grander because of the differences, through allegiance to the Head and harmony amongst themselves. But that, you would say, is an ideal figure; it describes what a Body, of head and members, would be in its perfection. That is so.
II. St. Paul was accustomed to contemplate the Church as it should be.But this ideal was not an imaginary one, in the sense of being a fancy of his own; it had to him a reality transcending that of visible things, because he saw it in the mind and purpose of God, and was sure that God was actually working towards the fulfilment of it. That is the true Catholic or Universal Church; it is one Body, Christ the Head, men the members; real and living, because it is the creation of the living God, and is the heavenly pattern of all that is ecclesiastically right and good on the earth.
III. You may find it easier to know the Church as the ideal Body of Christ, if you compare with this view of the Church what St. John said of the individual Christian: Whosoever is begotten of God cannot sin, because he is begotten of God. This is from him who had said before: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. What he means is that the true son of God in a man cannot sin. And he reconciles both his statements in the words, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God? Beloved, now are we children of God.
IV. The Church, then, in its fullest sense, is mankind seen in its true divinely appointed relation to Christ.And that is the conception of it which we shall find to be truest, most in harmony with what has been revealed to us, and also with what life and history present to us.
V. The actual Church was no more ideal and perfect in St. Pauls time than it is now.The Apostle found his Christians very imperfect, distressingly imperfect. He pressed upon them the true character of the Church in order that they might strive to be more tolerably conformed to it. The Christian societies had to grow up, in knowledge and graces, into the perfect Body, the fulness of Christ, and agencies were given to help this growth. Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, and, above all, His inworking Spirit, for the building up of the Body of Christ, till we all attain unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies.
Illustration
Let us be thankful for all that the Church has done for the salvation of mankind, let us rejoice to make the most of it. It has been the office of the Church to bear witness to Christ, the Jesus Christ of the New Testament; to proclaim the Gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation; to beseech non-Christians to believe in the crucified Son of God, and to bid all Christians to be true to their calling, as children of the God of righteousness and love: and this glorious office it has with human imperfection more or less faithfully discharged.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
(Col 1:18.) .-And He is the head of the body-the Church. The latter genitive is in apposition. The apostle now commences the second portion of the paragraph, and portrays Christ’s relation to the Church. As Theodoret says, He passes . Still He stands out supreme-the one guardian and benefactor-the one Saviour and president- -He and none other. The meaning of the phrase, head of the body-the church, has been given under Eph 1:22-23; Eph 4:15-16. The probability is that Christ’s headship was impugned by the false teachers, in consequence of their theory of emanations and other fantastic reveries about the spirit-world. The church is not, as Noesselt says, the whole family in heaven and in earth,-nor yet the human race, one of whom Christ became;-but the company of the redeemed, the body of the faithful in Christ Jesus. The previous verses show His qualification for such a headship,-His possession of a Divine nature-His supremacy over the universe, and His creation and support of all things. Any creature would be deified were he so highly exalted; for he would, from his position, become the god of the Christian people, as their blesser, protector, and object of worship. But the church and the universe are under one administration, that of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. The king of the universe is able to be Head of the church, and He has won the Headship in His blood. It is no eminence to which he is not entitled, no function which he cannot worthily discharge. For the apostle subjoins the following statement as proof-
-Who is the beginning. This term has been variously understood. Storr and Flatt reduce its significance by making it mean governor of the world; Calvin comes near the true view in his paraphrase-initium secundae et novae creationis; Baumgarten, nearer still, when he defines it by Urheber, originator. Meyer, De Wette, Huther, Bhr, Steiger, and others, join it to the following words, as if the full clause were- . . . . Meyer and De Wette take it simply in a temporal sense ( , as Theophylact has it), and as if it were equivalent to , which some MSS. even have, while the other expositors give the sense of principium. Such a construction is certainly very strange, especially when we consider that precedes . We incline to keep the word by itself, and to regard it as being much the same as in the phrase, Rev 3:14 – -the cause or source of the creation of God. Wisdom of Solomon, 12:16, 14:27. The noun, standing by itself, would seem to point out Christ in His solitary grandeur as the prime source of all the blessings and honours detailed in the subsequent verses. The relative has plainly a causal sense, so that the connection is He is Head of the body,-the church,-inasmuch as He is the one source of its existence and blessings; and He is so, as being the first-begotten from the dead, and, as Col 1:20 shows, the Reconciler of men to God by the blood of His cross. This exegesis gives a special dignity to the epithet-Christ, the first source of existence and blessing. But for His gracious intervention, no church had ever existed, and no salvation been ever enjoyed. Having ransomed the church by His blood, may He not rule it by His power, and be the Head?
And no matter what blessing is enjoyed, what its kind or amount, He is its author. There may be subordinate supplies-wells of water; but His rain from heaven fills them. Conviction of sin and repentance unto life are produced by a glimpse of Christ. They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and mourn. The pardon of guilt comes directly from Him; and His death provides for the sanctification of the heart; His Spirit the agent, and His word the instrument. Every grace may be traced to Him, and it bears the heart away to Him as the source of saving influence. He has originated salvation, and He gives it. He is in the most unlimited sense–the beginning. And we are the more confirmed in this view of keeping separated from the following clause and giving it an absolute meaning, from the fact that, in the Philonic vocabulary, it is the name of Logos, and was probably introduced by the apostle with a special reference to current and insidious errors. The description proceeds-
-First-begotten from the dead. In Rev 1:5 we find but the simple genitive. It is out of the question, on the part of Bullinger, Keuchenius, Aretius, Erasmus, and Schleiermacher, to connect with -an abstract with a concrete. We must take this word as in the former clause – first – begotten of every creature, and regard it as referring, not to the priority of time, but to dignity and station. He was not the first that rose in absolute priority, nor simply the first who rose, no more to die. But He was among the dead; and as He rose from the midst of them, He became their chief, or Lord-the first-fruits of them that sleep. From Him the dead will get deliverance, for He rose in their name, and came–out from among them as their representative. In this character He destroyed him that had the power of death. Not only when He was cut off, but not for Himself, did He finish transgression and make an end of sin, but He abolished death. Nay, He has the keys of death and Hades. His people rise in virtue of His power. The instances of resurrection prior to His own were only proofs that the dead might be raised, but His resurrection was a pledge that they should be raised. The Lord Himself shall descend; the trump shall sound, and myriads of sleepers shall start into life; no soul shall lose, and none mistake its partner; neither earth nor sea shall retain one occupant. But He is not only the pledge, He is also the pattern. His people shall be raised in immortal youth and beauty; their vile bodies fashioned like unto His glorious body, and therefore no longer animal frames, but so etherealized and attempered as to be able to dwell in a world which flesh and blood cannot inherit-to see God and yet live, to bear upon them without exhaustion the exceeding weight of glory, and to serve, love, and enjoy the unvailed Divinity without end.
-In order that in all things He should have the pre-eminence. The conjunction appears to be telic, and not merely ecbatic, as Bhr supposes. It indicates, not the result, but the final purpose of the entire economy. And we cannot, with Meyer and others, connect this clause solely with the one that goes before it, as if His pre-eminence rested merely upon the fact that He was the first-born from the dead. The clause has its root in the entire paragraph, as we shall immediately endeavour to show. The emphatic verb does not occur anywhere else in the New Testament, but we find it in the Septuagint, 2Ma 6:18; Est 5:11; Xenophon, Cyrop. 8, 2, 28; Joseph. Antiq. 9, 8, 3; Plutarch, De Educat. lib. c. 13, where this very phrase occurs; Plato, Leges, 692, p. 54, vol. vii. Opera, ed. Bekker, 1826. Two distinct meanings have been assigned to . 1. It may be taken as masculine, among all persons, as is the opinion of Anselm, Beza, Cocceius, Heinrichs, Piscator, and Usteri. If the clause referred simply to the , of which Jesus is the first-born, then we should have expected the article- . That following may refer to persons, Kypke has shown in his note on this verse, though is the preposition as frequently employed, and more usually the simple genitive. 2. The phrase is more naturally taken by the majority in a neuter sense, in every thing, or in all respects. This is the ordinary meaning of the phrase in the New Testament. 2Co 11:6; Eph 1:23; 1Ti 3:11; 2Ti 2:7; Tit 2:9; 1Pe 4:11. The usus loquendi is therefore in favour of this interpretation, first in all points; or as Theophylact says, in all things- -in all things which have reference to Himself; as Chrysostom has it, . The verb is not to be confounded with the verb of simple existence. The meaning is not that He might be, but that He might become. Act 10:4; Rom 3:19; Heb 5:12. The verb in such cases denotes the manifestation of result-that He may show Himself to be in all things FIRST. We do not say, with Meyer and Huther, that this pre-eminence is looked upon as wholly future, and as only to be realized at the resurrection. If we held the close and sole connection of with , we should be obliged to keep this view partially, but not to its full extent; for, in respect to the dead, as now dead, Jesus stands out as the First who has so risen from a similar state. The meaning, then, is, that in consequence of His being what the apostle has just described Him to be, He has in all things the primacy; that He stands out as FIRST to the universe, for He is its visible God, its Creator and Preserver; and He is the Head of the Church, the fount of spiritual blessing, the Resurrection and the Life.
As the image–of the invisible God He has the pre-eminence. For He is without date of origin or epoch of conclusion. No eclipse shall sully the splendours of His nature. What He has been, He is, and He shall be. Nor is His essence bounded by any circumference, but it is everywhere, undiluted by boundless extension. His mind comprises all probabilities, and has decided all certainties. His power knows no limit of operation, and is unexhausted by effort. His truth is pure as the solar beam, and the fulness of infinite love dwells in His heart. But such Divine glory is common to the Godhead, and He shares it equally with Father and Spirit. Even here, however, He is First; for He has visibility, which the Father and Spirit have not; and He is the God of the universe whom it sees, recognizes, and adores. Nay, more, He has cast a new lustre over His original glory by His incarnation and death. He has won for Himself an imperishable renown. This dignity so earned by Him is specially called His own, in contradistinction from His prior and essential glory, and it is His peculiar and valued possession. Robed in His native majesty, which has been augmented by the mediatorial crown, is He not the most glorious being in the universe? Mat 25:31; Joh 17:24.
And He has pre-eminence as Creator, for creation is His special work. It existed in idea in the mind of God, but it was brought into existence by the power of Christ. These worlds on worlds, which in their number and vastness confound us, have Him as artificer, for He telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them by their names. Creation owns Him as Lord. The natural impulse is to reason from effect upwards to cause-from nature up to nature’s God: but the God whom such instinctive logic discovers, and whose might and wisdom, science and philosophy illustrate with rich, varied, profound, and increasing, nay, interminable examples, is none other than this First-born of every creature. On His arm hangs the universe, and He receives its homage. Above all, there is matchless grandeur in the constitution of His person as the Head of the Church. The Father is pure Divinity, and so is the Spirit: the wisest, greatest, and best; infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in essence, attributes, and character. But the Son has another nature, one in person with His Deity. The divine is not dwarfed into the human, nor has the human been absorbed into the divine, but both co-exist without mixture or confusion. The incarnation of Jesus illuminates the Old Testament as a promise, and fills the New Testament as a fact. Possessed of this composite nature, Christ is distinguished from every being: none like Him in unapproachable mystery-as the God-man who has gained His capital supremacy by His agony and cross. Was ever suffering like His in origin, intensity, nature, or design?
Again, as the source of blessing, has He not primal rank? These spiritual gifts possess a special value, as springing from His blood, and as being applied by His Spirit. He is seated in eminence as the dispenser of common gifts to His universe, but He is throned in pre-eminence as the provider and bestower of spiritual blessings to His Church. Are not His instructions without a rival in adaptation, amount, and power? What parallel can be found to His example, so perfect and so fascinating, that of a man that men may see, and admire, and imitate; while it contains in itself, at the same time, the secret might of Divinity to mould into its blessed resemblance the heart of all His followers who are changed into the same image from glory to glory? In short, there is such wondrous singularity in the glory of Christ’s person and work, so much that gives Him a radiance all His own, and an elevation high and apart, that it may be truly said, that in all things He has the pre-eminence. None like Christ is the decision of faith: none but Christ is the motto of love. The apostle assigns another or additional reason-
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians
Col 1:18. The church is declared to be the body, which is taught also in Eph 1:22-23. In Eph 4:4 Paul declares there is one body, so that is equivalent to saying there is one church; our present verse says Christ is the head of that one church. All of this is not only scriptural, but is logical or reasonable. A body with more than one head in nature would be a monstrosity, likewise a head with more than one body would be one. Hence it is easy to understand that since there is but one Christ (which is admitted by all professed Christians), there can be but one church recognized by the Lord. Who is the beginning. This is true of Christ in many respects, but here it means he is the beginning of the new creation or age of the one body. Firstborn front the dead does not mean Jesus was the first person to die and rise again, for there are numerous cases in the Bible where it occurred before the time of Christ. It means He was the first person to come to life never to die again. (See Rom 6:9.) The chief purpose of making Christ to be the first person to come from the dead never to die again, was that He might have the preeminence. That means to be above all other persons who would go through death and rise to die no more, in that He was the first to have that honor.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Col 1:18. And he (emphatic, as before) is the head of the body, the church. The emphasis resting on He suggests a reference to the errors prevalent in the Colossian Church (see above). Here the subject is the now glorified Christ; comp. Eph 1:22-23, where the same idea is expressed, also Eph 4:12; Eph 4:15-16, and similar passages, which leave no doubt that the rendering given above is correct. The emphasis rests on the word Head; their mistake was not respecting the Church, but respecting its Head; comp. chap. Col 2:19.
Who is the beginning. Since Christs relations to the Church are here set forth, it is true that He is the beginning, in that in Him is begun and conditioned the Church (Alford). Meyer, however, joins from the dead with this term. In any case priority in time, not in rank, is indicated, and the reference to the Church seems a natural one, though perhaps not the primary or exclusive one.
The firstborn from the dead. First born here also indicates priority in time, but the connection suggests a series of which He is first. Moreover He is first born from the dead, not simply of them. He left their realm and came again as with a new be-getting and new birth into life (Ellicott). Here too there is a reference to the Church, since this victory over death, as Paul everywhere indicates, is the fundamental fact in His giving life to His Church.
That (in order that) in all things; on all sides, in wisdom, holiness, might, death-over-coming power, dominion and glory, as respects the world as well as the Church (Braune). To render among all sadly mars the passage.
He, emphatic again. He and none other, the very one who rose, might have the preeminence, become the first in rank; the word occurring only here in the New Testament. This is Gods purpose, partially fulfilled already, to be entirely fulfilled at His coming. The central place Paul assigns to the Person of Christ is the proper place in all Christian thought.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Our apostle having, in the former verses, described what Christ is in himself, comes next to describe him with relation to his church; shewing,
1. That he is her Head, he is the Head of the body, the church; as the head and the members make one body, so Christ and his people constitute one church; he is of the same nature (as man) with his church, he poureth forth the same Spirit upon his church, he is both an Head of authority, and a Head of influence to his church, he sympathizes with her in all her sufferings on earth, and longs for the full fruition and final enjoyment of her in heaven.
2. He is the beginning of the Christian church, the root, the fountain and foundation of it, the active beginning, or the first principle and author of it, and of all those influences of grace and spiritual life which do animate and enlive it.
3. He is called the first-born from the dead.
1. Because he was the first that arose to an immortal life, never to die more; all others that were raised to life, besides him, died again, but death had no more dominion over him.
Again, 2. Because he was the principal and efficient cause of their resurrection; all that were raised before him, were raised by him, by a power derived from him:
And, 3. Because he is the pattern and exemplary cause of the resurrection; his members are not only raised by him, but like unto him. Fashioned like unto his glorious body Php 3:21.
Was his body raised sustantially the same? So shall ours be.
Was his body wonderfully improved by the resurrection? So shall ours, in point of purity and spirituality, in point of power and activity, in point of immortality and incorruptibility.
Was his holy body raised to be eternally glorified? So shall ours.
How fitly then is our Lord here called the first-born from the dead? Even herein he had the pre-eminence.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
In addition to His power over the whole universe, Jesus has authority over the church as its head. In fact, the church had its beginning in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. His blood paid the price for our sins, thereby redeeming us from all iniquity ( Mat 26:28 ; Act 20:28 ; Tit 2:14 ). The redeemed, or saved, are added to the church, which is the body ( Act 2:47 ). Christ is the head over that body because He is its resurrected Lord ( Act 2:36 ). Jesus was the first raised, or born, from the dead to die no more. Thus, in the church, as well as the universe, Christ is the pre-eminent one, which means the first in rank ( Col 1:18 )!
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Col 1:18-19. And he is the head of the body, the church The apostle having displayed the greatness of the Son, as Creator of all things, visible and invisible, in the heavens and upon the earth, proceeds, in this clause, to display his glory as head of the church, which is called the body, and his body, to intimate, that as the human body is influenced, directed, and governed by the head, so the church universal, including the whole body of believers, is influenced, directed, and governed by Christ its head. Who is The repetition of the expression (see Col 1:15) points out the entrance on a new paragraph; the beginning , the principle, or cause of all things; absolutely the Eternal. The Greek philosophers expressed the first cause, or efficient principle of things, by this word , beginning. In this sense Christ called himself (Rev 3:14) , the first cause of the creation of God. But though it be a high honour to the church that he is its head who is the first cause of all things, yet, as the apostle in this verse is speaking of Christ as the head of the church, it is probable that he is here called the first cause, or beginning, in respect of it, which began immediately after the fall, in the view of Christs coming into the world to perform that one great act of obedience, by which the evil consequences of Adams one act of disobedience were to be remedied. The firstborn, or first-begotten, from the dead From whose resurrection flows all the life, spiritual and eternal, of all his brethren. Christ is called the firstborn, from, or of, (as may be here rendered,) the dead, both because he was the first who ever rose to an immortal life, and because he is the Lord of all the dead, (as well as the living, Rom 14:9,) and will raise them at the last day. That in all things Whether of nature or grace; he might have the pre-eminence Suitable to the infinitely superior dignity of his nature above all created beings. For it pleased the Father The words, the Father, are not in the original; but they are very properly supplied by our translators. For, as the expression is elliptical, it must be completed, either as our translators have done, or as others propose, by adding the word him: It hath pleased him; namely, Christ. But, not to mention the confusion which this method of supplying the ellipsis occasions in the apostles discourse, it represents the Son as taking the fulness of perfection and government to himself, independently of the will of the Father; contrary to the whole tenor of Scripture, in which the Son is said, in the affair of our salvation, to act in subordination to the will of his Father. Macknight. That in him should all fulness dwell All fulness of truth and grace, of wisdom, power, and love, and all divine perfections; or, as the expression may chiefly mean, all fulness of gifts and graces, to supply the wants of his church. That this fulness should reside in him constantly, and be always ready to supply the wants of those that in faith and prayer apply to him.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Verse 18
The first-born from the dead; the first who rose from death to immortality. (1 Corinthians 15:20.)
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
SECTION 5. CHRISTS RELATION TO THE CHURCH AND TO THE WORK OF SALVATION. CH. 1:18-20.
And Himself is the Head of the Body, i.e. of the Church; who is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead ones, in order that He may become in all things Himself first. Because in Him, He was well-pleased that all the fulness should dwell; and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself having made peace through the blood of His cross, through Him, whether the things upon the earth or the things in the heavens.
Col 1:18. And Himself is: exact and stately repetition of the opening words of Col 1:17. He through whom all things were created and in whom all find their bond of union is also the Head of the Body, i.e. of the Church. That this last short explanation is sufficient, shows how familiar to Paul was the thought that the Church is the Body of Christ. This important metaphor we have already found in 1Co 12:12-27; Rom 12:4-5. The new point here is that of this body Christ is the Head: so Col 2:19; Eph 1:22; Eph 4:15. Accordingly, in the earlier epistles this metaphor sets forth chiefly the relation of Christians one to another: here it sets forth, in harmony with the scope of the epistle which is to expound the dignity of Christ, their relation to Him. The Son of God is not only a Spirit animating, and directing from within, each member and uniting them into one body, but also Himself the Head of the Body, i.e. a part of it, yet occupying a unique and supreme position and from that position directing the whole Body. And this relation is vital. Some other members may be removed and the body live still: separation from the head involves instant death. Perhaps we may say that as divine Christ is the animating and invisible spirit of the Body: as human and yet superhuman and possessing a visible and glorified body He is its Head.
Notice here and in Col 1:24 the word Church in a sense more august than we have hitherto met, viz. as denoting definitely and unmistakably the entire family of God: so Eph 1:22; Eph 3:10; Eph 3:21; Eph 5:23-32. Inasmuch as Christ designs His people on earth to be joined in outward and visible fellowship, the word Church here denotes probably, not the simple totality of those who are inwardly joined to Christ, but the company of His professed followers with the implied exception of those whose profession is an empty pretence and therefore valueless. For the common local use of the word links with it indissolubly the ideas of outward confession and visible unity. And, in spite of the many ecclesiastical divisions of Christians, there is between all the professed and real servants of Christ a bond of union, recognised in some small degree even by the world around. The true significance of membership in a sectional Church is that by entering it we become members of the universal company of the professed followers of Christ.
Who is etc.: solemn assertions, expounding further Christs relation to His body.
The Beginning: earliest in time, as in Gen 49:3; Deu 21:17 where the same word is linked with firstborn. Very frequently the earliest is the cause of all that follow. So is Christ. Similarly, Rev 3:14, the beginning of the creation of God: for Christ is the Agent and in a real sense the Archetype of the whole creation. Here the reference of the word beginning is not stated: but it is suggested by the new topic introduced by this verse, viz. Christs relation to the Church, and is placed beyond doubt by the words following. He is the beginning of the New Creation because He is Firstborn from the dead. For resurrection is the gate through which we shall enter the fully-developed kingdom of God: and His resurrection made ours possible. By Himself rising He opened a path along which we shall enter the glory in which He already is. And by rising from among the dead through (2Co 13:4) the power of the Father, the God-Man entered a new mode of life and in some sense a new world; and may therefore be said to have been born from the dead. Since He was the first to pass through death, He is the firstborn from the dead. The word firstborn, recalling Col 1:15, emphasises the similar relation of Christ to the Universe and to the Church. But in Col 1:15 it was followed by mention of the later-created, every creature: here it is followed by mention of those from whose midst the Resurrection-Birth brought Christ, from the dead.
That He may (or might) become: purpose of Christs rising first. In all things Himself first or holding-the first-place. Already the Son is first in time and rank, as being earlier than every creature and as being agent, and bond of union, of the entire universe. That this priority may be universal, i.e. that it might extend to the Church, Christ rose from the dead before any of His servants: and He did so by the deliberate purpose of God.
Become; notes the historical development of Christ, in contrast to that which He is, i.e. to His abiding state, as described in Col 1:15; Col 1:17-18. The emphatic words in all things keep before us the sameness of Christs relation to the Church and to the Universe.
Col 1:19-20. A statement which explains the foregoing purpose by tracing it to its cause in the thought of God, and specifies two purposes of God touching His Son, one relating to His Incarnation and the other to the ultimate aim of His death in the restoration of harmony between God and the universe.
In Him: Christ, who is thrust prominently forward to the beginning of the sentence.
He was-well-pleased: same word as in Gal 1:15; 1Co 1:21. This good pleasure cannot be that of the Son: for in Col 1:20 the Son is distinguished, as the Agent or Instrument, from Him whose good pleasure it is to reconcile through Christ all things to Himself: cp. 2Co 5:18. It must therefore be either the Father as in A.V. and R.V.; or the fulness personified, as suggested by Ellicott. This suggestion, however, which implies a rather startling personification, has no support in the context or in the Epistles of Paul: whereas the constant presence of God in the entire thought of Paul as the ultimate source of all good makes the other exposition quite easy. [The change of subject between the verbs well-pleased and dwell is in complete harmony with the spirit of the Greek language even in the use of the word well-pleased.] Paul had no need to say whose good-pleasure it was that the fulness should dwell in Christ.
Fulness: a word all-important in these epistles: found in Col 2:9; Eph 1:10; Eph 1:23; Eph 3:19; Eph 4:13; Rom 11:12; Rom 11:25; 1Co 10:26; Gal 4:4. It denotes a result of the action described by the verb fill or fulfil; and takes all shades of meaning belonging to this verb. Since both the vessel filled and the matter filled into it are direct objects of the verb fill, the word fulness may denote (1) a filled vessel, (2) that with which it is made full, as evidently in 1Co 10:26, or (3) the increment by which a partly filled vessel is made quite full, as in Mat 9:16. Or, since the verb denotes the accomplishment of a purpose or promise or command, the word fulness may denote (4) that in which such accomplishment is attained, as in Rom 13:10, love is a fulness (or fulfilment) of the Law. The absence here of any defining genitive (contrast Col 2:9 all the fulness of the Godhead) implies that the word fulness itself conveys a definite thought present to the mind of Paul. And this can only be, in sense (2), the fulness of God, the totality of that with which God is Himself full, of the dispositions and powers which make up, in our thought, the personality of God. These, being infinite, leave no lack or defect in God. They are also a necessary development of our conception of God, thus approaching sense (4); or rather showing its close connection with the simpler meanings of the word. The fulness of God is the totality of attributes with which He is essentially full and which go to make up our conception of God. And this is the meaning of the less definite phrase here. The Father was pleased that all this divine fulness should dwell (or more accurately make-its-home) in Him who has been just described as the firstborn from the dead.
The past tense He-was-well-pleased suggests [as does the aorist ] that Paul refers, not to that which the Son is unchangeably from eternity-although we may reverently say (cp. Joh 5:26) that even in this sense these words are true-but to what He became in time; and, if so, to the incarnation in which the Eternal Son became the God-Man. In that divine-human Person, the entire circle of the attributes of God took up its abode. This is in complete harmony with the complementary truth in Php 2:7, He emptied Himself. For even on earth the Word (Joh 1:14) was full of grace and truth; and (Joh 1:16) from His fulness we all have received. All that belongs to the essence of God was present in Jesus. But the Son deliberately and definitely laid aside for a time in order to become a sharer of our weakness the actual exercise of the outer and lower circle of His divine attributes. It was the essential and unchangeable possession of these attributes which made possible, and gave worth to, this temporary surrender of the exercise and enjoyment of them. But nothing was surrendered even for a moment which was needful to the further purpose stated in Col 1:20.
All the fulness; recalls in all things. Because the Father had resolved that in Christ should dwell all the fulness of the divine attributes, He resolved further that even in the order of resurrection He should have the first place.
Col 1:20. Second element in the Fathers good pleasure. He was pleased (1) that in Christ should all the fulness dwell, and (2) through Him to reconcile etc.
Reconcile: slightly stronger form, found in N.T. only in Col 1:22; Eph 2:16, of the word in Rom 5:10-11; 1Co 7:11; 2Co 5:18-20; meaning possibly to restore a lost friendship. See under Rom 5:1.
Through Him: i.e. Christ, who is ever the Agent, as the Father is the Author, of this reconciliation; so Rom 5:1; Rom 5:11; 2Co 5:18.
All things: same words and same compass as in Col 1:16. Gods purpose is to bring into harmony with Himself all things rational and irrational.
To Himself: literally into Himself; a stronger term than that in Rom 5:10; 2Co 5:18-20; Eph 2:16, and suggesting close fellowship with God resulting from reconciliation.
Having-made-peace etc.: method of the reconciliation.
Peace: primarily peace with God, Rom 5:1 : but this brings with it the peace of God, Php 4:7. It is the blessed and abiding result of the act of reconciliation.
Through the blood of His cross: graphic exposition of through Him. God resolved to make peace between Himself and man by means of the blood shed on the cross of Christ. Similarly, though less vividly, Eph 2:16; Php 3:18; Gal 6:14; 1Co 1:17-18. The cross of Christ is used in this theological sense, in the N.T., only by Paul. It is therefore a mark of genuineness. About the genuineness of the words through Him, documentary evidence is equally divided. But their apparent needlessness might occasion their omission; whereas, if not genuine, it is not easy to explain their insertion. This gives a slight balance of probability in their favour. They are an emphatic resumption of the same words at the beginning of the verse.
Whether the things upon the earth etc.: exposition of the words all things, showing that they include not only all objects on earth but those in heaven; and thus indicating that the peace resulting from the death of Christ is designed to leave no discord upon the earth or in the heavens. The earth is put first because it chiefly and manifestly needs reconciliation. In Col 1:16 the heavens were put first, because the angelic powers were created before the inhabitants of the earth.
These words do not prove absolutely that there is disharmony in heaven. For they admit a negative interpretation, viz. that the death of Christ is designed to leave no discord in the entire universe. But they suggest it. And we may conceive that, the entire universe being essentially one and each part contributing to the good of the whole, the blight caused by sin in one part might be an element of discord to the whole. Paul declares that, whatever discord has thus been caused, the death of Christ was designed to remove it.
Although this purpose embraces everything and every one in heaven and earth, it is unsafe to infer from it that all men now living on earth will eventually be saved. For, although Gods purpose cannot fail as a whole but must receive worthy accomplishment, He has thought fit to make its fulfilment in individuals dependent on themselves, thus leaving it abundantly possible that they who now trample under foot the blood of Christ may be finally cast out both from earth and heaven and thus excluded from this universal harmony. Certainly this purpose is not sufficient to disprove the plain contrary assertion in Php 3:19. See under Php 2:10-11.
Section 5 reveals the importance of section 4. To the material world around and the angelic world above us, it links the work of redemption as wrought by the same exalted Person and as an accomplishment of one great purpose as wide as creation. Paul thus raises his readers at Coloss out of the narrow valley of the Lycus where they had lately found personal salvation to a platform from which they can survey the entire universe of God to its utmost bound and the successive ages of the past to the moment when the earliest creature began to be.
This width of view is a conspicuous and invaluable feature of these Epistles as compared with the earlier ones. Paul has reminded his readers (Col 1:6, so Col 1:23) that the Gospel preached to them was preached also throughout the world. He has led out their thoughts (Col 1:16) to the entire visible universe and to the invisible universe beyond it, to the beginning of the world and of whatever began to be, and (Col 1:17) to the abiding constitution of the manifold realm of creation. In Rom 5:12-19 Paul traced up sin and death to the first father of the race, and taught that the purpose of salvation was coextensive with the race. He here declares that the same purpose embraces not only earth but heaven. He thus makes the cross of Christ the centre of the universe, and links with it the creation of the earliest and loftiest archangel.
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
“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.”
Goodness, more theology.
Christ is the head of the body – you’d never know it to hear some pastors talk – “over at my church” “I’ve built this church and that church.” WRONG it is Christ that builds and maintains His church.
To have a church without Christ as the head is like a chicken that has had its head removed – a body running erratically from one end of the yard to the other. Today churches are going from one fad to another to get people in rather than allow the Lord to grow His church through His methods – jazzercise, gift conferences, greeting times, contemporary music, seminars, concerts – you name it.
He is the firstborn from the dead – if He made it out, then we also will make it out of the grave – no other can hinder us from our escape.
That He might have the preeminence – well he created it all, He is upholding it all, He will outlast it all, why not let Him have his day in the news – HE NOT ONLY HAS THE PREEMEINENCE, HE IS PREEMINENT.
He should be first in your life – Rom 12:1-2 tells the believer to give themselves a living sacrifice. Our pastor years ago said of the Romans text, “There’s only one problem with a living sacrifice – it keeps climbing down off the altar.” He is first – we only need to allow that relationship to develop in our lives.
That He might have first place in everything. Now, just how does that relate to our lives – He deserves as the first fruits from the grave to be first in our lives.
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
1:18 {8} And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the {l} firstborn from the dead; that in all [things] he might have the preeminence.
(8) Having gloriously declared the excellent dignity of the person of Christ, he describes his office and function, that is, that he is the same to the Church as the head is to the body, that is to say, the prince and governor of it, and the very beginning of true life. And as he rose first from death, he is the author of eternal life, so that he is above all, in whom alone there is most plentiful abundance of all good things, which is poured out upon the Church.
(l) Who so rose again that he should die no more, and who raises others from death to life by his power.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
3. In relation to the church 1:18-20
So far everything Paul had written about Christ other New Testament writers also revealed, but what follows in Col 1:18 is uniquely Pauline.
In 1Co 12:12-31 and Rom 12:4-8 Paul used the human body to illustrate the unity and diversity present in the church. Here he used it to illustrate the sovereignty of Christ over Christians (cf. Eph 4:11-13). Our Lord supplies authority and direction for His body. [Note: See O’Brien, Colossians . . ., pp. 57-61, for a discussion of the term ekklesia ("church") in Colossians and Philemon.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The term "head" (Gr. kephale) here does not point to Christ as the ruler of the church, though He is that, but to His being the beginning and the principle in creation and redemption. [Note: Stephen Bedale, "The Meaning of kephale in the Pauline Epistles," Journal of Theological Studies NS5 (1954):213.]
"In St. Paul’s day, according to popular psychology, both Greek and Hebrew, a man reasoned and purposed, not ’with his head,’ but ’in his heart’ . . ." [Note: Ibid., p. 212.]
He is sovereign because He is the first-born from the dead. Christ is the "beginning" of the church in that He is its power and source of spiritual life. He became this at His resurrection when He became the first-born from the dead in time. Christ was the first Person to rise from the dead with a glorified body never to die again. He broke death’s hold on humanity (1Co 15:20; 1Co 15:23). Thus Christ became preeminent also in the new creation, the church, as well as in the old creation (Col 1:16-17).
"Paul did not say that Jesus was the first person to be raised from the dead, for He was not. But He is the most important of all who have been raised from the dead; for without His resurrection, there could be no resurrection for others (1Co 15:20 ff.)." [Note: Wiersbe, 2:117.]
"Prototokos ["first-born"], used in both parts of the passage (Col 1:15; Col 1:18) unites His supremacy in the two realms, creation and salvation (cf. Act 26:23)." [Note: Johnson, 473:18. Cf. Romans 1:4; 8:29; 1 Corinthians 15:20.]