Mike Pilato

Greek Exegesis
Dr. Melvin
Eden Theological Seminary
Spring 2014

Transliterated Greek Exegesis of Colossians 1:15-20: The Cosmic and Incarnate Christ’s
Universal Reconciliation of Creation

He is the likeness1 of the invisible God2, the first-born3 of all creation.4 For in him
all things5 were created6 in the heavens7 and on the earth,8 the visible things and
the invisible things,9 whether thrones10 whether dominions11 whether rulers12
whether authorities.13 All things have been created14 through him and for him.
And he is before all things and in him all things subsist.15 And he is the head16 of
the body17 the church;18 who is the beginning,19 the first-born from the dead,20 in

1
Eikon: noun nominative feminine singular, meaning “image” or “likeness.” This word also means “a manifestation
or embodiment of the invisible.” Friberg, Analytical Greek Lexicon. The NRSV translates this as “image.”
2
Tou Theou tou aoratou: Tou Theou – noun genitive masculine singular (of, or belonging to God) modified by Tou
aoratou – adjective genitive singular (invisible). Friberg, Analytical Greek Lexicon.
3
Prototokos: adjective nominative singular, meaning “first-born.” This indicates that Christ is at the head of
Creation. Friberg, Analytical Greek Lexicon.
4
Pases ktiseos: Pases – adjective genitive (all) modifying ktiseos – noun genitive feminine singular (of Creation).
Could also be translated as, “Of every creature.” Friberg, Analytical Greek Lexicon.
5
Panta: adjective nominative plural, meaning “all,” “every,” “each.” Plural form translates “all things.” Friberg,
Analytical Greek Lexicon.
6
Ektisthe: verb aorist passive third person singular, meaning “were created.”
7
Suranois: noun dative plural, meaning “in/to/for/with the heavens.”
8
Ges: noun genitive singular, meaning “on/of the earth.”
9
Horata and aorata: Both are nominative plural adjectives, meaning “visible things and invisible things.”
10
Thronoi: noun nominative masculine plural.
11
Kuriotetes: noun nominative masculine plural, meaning “dominions,” “lordships,” “authorities” implying that
Christ is above all earthly powers.
12
Archai: noun nominative masculine plural, meaning “rulers,” as well as “beginning.”
13
Exousiai: noun nominative masculine plural
14
Ektistai: verb indicative perfect passive third person singular, meaning “have been created.”
15
Sunesteken: verb indicative perfect active third person singular, meaning “to consist, “to stand with” preceded by
ta panta en autou – “in him all things.” Friberg, Analytical Greek Lexicon. The word “subsist” is used here as a
synonym of “consist” to communicate the author’s emphasis that all things reside and/or abide in Christ. The NRSV
translates this as “in him all things hold together.”
16
Kephale: noun nominative feminine singular.
17
Sumatos: noun genitive singular.
18
Ekklesias: noun genitive feminine singular, meaning “church,” “congregation,” “assembly.”
19
Arche: noun nominative singular, meaning “beginning,” also “ruler” connoting that Christ is sovereign over
Creation.
20
Ek ton nekron: genitive preposition modifying nekron – noun nominative plural meaning “from the dead,”
literally “all who have died.”
 order that he might become21 first place22 in all things. For in him all the fullness23
[of God] was pleased24 to dwell25 and through him all things were reconciled26
into himself, by making peace27 through the blood28 of his cross,29 whether on the
earth or in the heavens.

One of the key issues in Christian theology that has persisted since its inception is the

nature and scope of salvation. Is salvation limited to the “elect” or is it universally poured out to

all of Creation? Does the Cross of Christ and Christ’s omnipresence affect a select few or is it

all-encompassing? The Deutero-Pauline text of Colossians can in part answer this question as it

emerged in the wider context of an array of letters that were produced after the apostle Paul

continuing his emphasis on the universal effect of Christ’s incarnation and Resurrection. In the

letter to the Colossians the author moves even further than Paul in terms of Christology,

salvation, and how it transforms the community of faith. This passage contributed to the

scriptural corpus a closer focus on Christ’s unification of heaven and earth in a universally

cosmic sense. The apostolic author adds to Paul’s contribution of new life in the earthly

Resurrection the significance of the Cosmic Christ, the Christ who is also preexistent and

universally present within Creation, the Logos who unites and reconciles all Creation to Himself,

and how Christ’s incarnate action on the Cross had a universal effect on the Church alongside

Creation. This exegetical paper will use primarily a linguistic analysis from the original Greek,

21
Genetai: verb aorist middle third person plural, meaning “might become,” “might come to be/have.”
22
Proteuon: verb participle present active nominative masculine singular, meaning “first place,” “preeminence,”
“first rank,” indicating Christ’s lordship over the salvation of all.
23
Pleroma: noun accusative singular, meaning “fullness” or “totality” communicating that Christ is fully united to
God, of the same essence of God the Father – homousios foreshadowing the Nicene theology. The same word is
used in Ephesians 1:23.
24
Eudokesen: verb indicative aorist active third person singular meaning “was pleased.”
25
Katoikesai: verb infinitive aorist active third person singular meaning “to dwell.”
26
Apokatallazai: verb infinitive aorist active third person singular meaning “were reconciled.” More specifically,
this means “to reestablish proper friendly interpersonal relations after these have been broken.” Louw-Nida, Greek-
English Lexicon of the NT. This word is directly related to katallason (reconciling) used in 2nd Corinthians 5:19 and
Romans 5:10. Related to apokatastasis (restoration) in Acts 3:21
27
Eipenopoiesas: verb participle aorist active nominative masculine singular meaning “making peace.”
28
Haimatos: noun genitive singular meaning “blood.”
29
Staurou: noun genitive masculine singular meaning “cross.”

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an intertextual canonical approach, and Patristic commentary to examine the meaning of the

passage. It will be established that the author of Colossians in this specific passage was

communicating a Universalist vision and meditation of Christology and salvation by

emphasizing both Christ’s cosmic relationship to Creation and incarnational relationship to

Creation.

Beginning with the first half of the first verse, the writer of Colossians provides a

Christology that entails Jesus’ oneness with God is revealed to humanity. “He is the likeness

(eikon) of the invisible God.” The author starts this passage with Christ’s Incarnation that brings

together the seen and unseen. What is unseen Christ makes seen as the “icon” of God. God in

Christ is manifested and embodied. God’s incorporeal nature in Christ becomes corporeal,

uniting God’s self with humanity. The sense here is that God is projected or “imaged” into

visible, perceptible reality in Christ. This is correlated to Hebrews 1:3 - “The Son is the radiance

of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.”30 Christ’s Incarnation mirrors God’s

being completely. The most prolific exegete of the early Church, Origen of Alexandria,

comments on this first part of Colossians 1:15: “The Father’s image is reproduced in the Son,

whose birth from the Father is as it were an act of his will proceeding from the mind. Our

Saviour is therefore the image of the invisible God, the Father, being the truth, when considered

in relation to the Father himself, and the image, when considered in relation to us, to whom he

reveals the Father.”31 The idea here from Origen’s interpretation of this phrase is that Christ’s

twofold nature serves a twofold purpose. One is so that Christ Incarnate is the complete

depiction of God the Father in order to bring the divine to us and the other is to represent God’s

30
NRSV
31
Origen, On First Principles, Ed. G.W. Butterworth (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). Book
I. Chap. II. 6.
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image in humanity perfectly in order to bring humanity to God – uniting divinity and humanity

in one image fused with the two natures. This language and understanding was communicated

decisively and officially at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 in which it was declared that Christ

is fully and human and fully God in order to fully divinize humanity.

The second half of verse 15 states that Christ is “the first-born of all creation” in which

the Deutero-Pauline author gives a dual preexistent/incarnational Christology. “First-born” in

the Greek, prototokos, communicates that Christ is at the head of all who are born, that is,

humanity, and that Christ is ever-present in Creation. “Of all Creation” in the Greek, pases

ktiseos, also translates “of every creature.” The author was not communicating that Christ did

not have preexistence, but the specific sense here is that Christ is the progenitor of the rebirth of

humanity, focusing on His role in relation to human salvation, which also includes his eternal

existence in Creation. In this particular case, this activity and role of Christ is to be understood

mainly in connection to the new Creation birthed from His Resurrection. This is in direct

correlation to the Pauline understanding of Christ’s Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 in which

Paul calls Him “the first fruits of those who have died.” Christ gives new birth to all after Him

because of His all-encompassing Resurrection. Christ as the “first-born” is the New Adam –

“For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come

through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (1 Corinthians

15:21-23 NRSV). Christ’s perfect humanity reconstitutes fallen humanity that was caused by

Adam. The idea here is decisively Universalist as salvation is not exclusively for “the elect,” but

includes all of creation and humanity that is reborn in Christ. What was universally lost in Adam

will be universally restored in Christ the God-human. Irenaeus’ Recapitulation Theory sheds

light on the meaning of Christ as “first-born of all creation”: “The only-begotten Word, who is

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always present with the human race, united and mingled with his handiwork…Thus there is one

God the Father, as we have demonstrated, and one Jesus Christ our Lord who came in fulfillment

of God’s comprehensive design and consummates all things in himself. Man is in all respects the

handiwork of God; thus he consummates man in himself.”32 Christ’s takes on human nature

entirely and conjoins it with his preexistent and omnipresent divine nature, manifesting as the

first and head of all beings in order to be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28 NRSV).

In verses 16-17 the author moves towards a Christology that can be called panentheist,

meaning that all Creation lives in Christ and Christ lives in all Creation. “For in him all things

were created in the heavens and on the earth, the visible things and the invisible things, whether

thrones whether dominions whether rulers whether authorities. All things have been created

through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things subsist.” Christ’s

being is the medium by which everything was brought into being (panta ektisthe), which

includes both material reality and spiritual reality (ta horata kai ta aorata) – physical beings and

matter as well as spiritual beings such as the angels. The hierarchical ranks of thrones,

dominions, rulers, and authorities then correspond to both earthly powers and heavenly powers.33

Christ’s reign over the powers is universal and all-encompassing. Christ’s sovereignty and

power therefore offers protection from and gives strength to the Church and all of Creation

against the evil spiritual forces at work in Creation, due His cosmic and earthly omnipresence

and omnipotence. This is parallel to the Church’s battle in Ephesians 6:12 – “For our struggle is

not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the

cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly

32
Irenaeus, “Against the Heresies,” Book III. Chap. XVI. 6., In The Early Christian Fathers, Ed.
and Trans. Henry Bettenson (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 81.
33
Andrew T. Lincoln “Colossians Commentary,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1994), 598.
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places.” The Church as Christ’s body - reborn in Him - is able to counter the dark forces that

Christ supersedes. All of Creation essentially lives “through” Christ and “for” Christ. This is

informed by the Platonic language used in the Gospel of John Chapter 1 in which Christ is the

Logos (Word) through whom “all things came into being” (panta di autou egeneto). Logos also

translates “reason,” “wisdom,” or “logic,” signifying that Christ is the mediating divine person

through which everything has meaning and intelligibility, the one who brings the knowledge of

God to the world. Origen adds, “For just as our word is the messenger of what is seen in the

mind, so the Word of God knows the Father and reveals the Father whom he knows, since no

created being can approach him without a guide.”34

Verse 17 communicates that in Christ “all things subsist” (panta en auto sunesteken).

My translation, “subsist” (sunesteken), is a synonym for “consist,” and also means “comprised

of,” “composed of,” “to stand with,” or “to hold together.” Christ is the metaphysical glue that

binds the Universe together. Here is a monist cosmology in which all things have their being in

one single essence who is Christ. The author of Colossians therefore is continuing the Logos

Christology that places Christ at the beginning of Creation and the One who permeates and

sustains all being. This is the foundation upon which this Universalist vision of salvation in

Colossians is built. All was made for Christ and through Christ so all will be restored through

Christ as will be demonstrated in my exegesis of verse 20.

Verse 18 shifts to Christ’s relationship specifically to humanity and the birth of the

Church. “And he is the head of the body the church; who is the beginning, the first-born from

the dead, in order that he might become first place in all things.” Christ is the head (kephale) or

the constitutor of His Kingdom on earth, the body (sumatos), which the author of Colossians

34
Origen, “Commentary on John” I. 37-38 (42), In The Early Christian Fathers, 211.
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equates with the church (ekklesia) borrowing from Paul’s metaphor in 1 Corinthians 12. Another

way of understanding this is to cross reference this concept with Ephesians 1:22-23: “And he has

put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is

his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” The idea here is that the Church is the visible

body that has the completeness of Christ who will bring all into Himself. While Origen states

that “outside the church, no one is saved,”35 he also surmises that those outside “will yet be able

to be vessels in the great house, according to the same mysterious dispensation of God.”36 The

Church essentially has a special place in the salvation of the world, as it is the sign of universal

reconciliation. The “first-born” motif resurfaces here coupled with “from the dead” (prototokos

ek ton nekron) to more emphasize Christ’s Resurrection as the inaugurating event of the new

humanity. Irenaeus states, “And thus he came even to death that he might be ‘the first-born from

the dead, having the pre-eminence among all [or in all things]’, the Author of life, who goes

before all and shows all the way.”37 Christ as the result of His Resurrection is not only the head

of the church, but also “first place in all things” (en pasin autos proteuon) indicating that Christ

has lordship over the salvation of all.

The author in verse 19 reiterates his Christology as part of his Universalist vision that

hinges not only on the sovereignty of Christ, but on Christ’s Incarnation as the full disclosure of

God’s being in Himself. “For in him all the fullness (pleroma) of God was pleased (eudoken) to

dwell.” In Christ the pleroma, meaning “fullness” or “totality” of God is present and bestowed

upon the world through Him. Christ is fully united to God the Father. The same word pleroma

is also used in Ephesians 1:23 to communicate that the body of Christ has the “fullness” of

35
Origen, “Homily on the Book of Joshua” III. 5, In The Early Christian Fathers, 243.
36
Origen, “Homily on Jeremiah” XX. 3, Ibid., 244
37
Irenaeus, “Against the Heresies.” II. XXII. 4, Ibid., 80.
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Christ’s presence. This language foreshadows the later Nicene language of homousios – “of the

same essence” used to establish that Christ is coequal to God. The logic was that if Christ was

not fully united to God in substance or essence, then humanity would not be fully restored to

God through Him. Athanasius, the early church defender of Nicene orthodoxy stated: “so too

humanity would not be deified, if the Word who became flesh had not been by nature derived

from the Father and his true and proper Word.”38 This factors into the overarching Universalist

schema of the author of Colossians insofar as if Christ is the full disclosure of God’s being, and

Christ is the omnipresent head in whom all things have their being and is the “first-born” of His

new creation, then it follows that God will be fully bestowed upon all.

This brings us to the first half of the following verse 20, in which the author states that

the consequence of this Christology is universal reconciliation: “and through Him all things

(panta) were reconciled (apokatallazai) into himself.” The Greek word used here for “were

reconcilied” – apokatallazai – from the root word katallasso meaning “to reconcile” is also used

by the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:19 to communicate God’s reconciliation of the world

through Christ (kosmon katallasson), which is another Universalist vision in the scriptural

witness. Paul in Romans 5:10 uses katallasso to declare that God reconciles through Christ’s

salvific death. The word used in this passage for “all things,” panta (from pas), also more

specifically means “each,” “every,” “the whole,” or “every kind.” An expansive meaning of the

word apokatallazai is “to reestablish proper friendly interpersonal relations after these have been

broken.”39 Christ essentially as the God-human reconciles all of humanity and all of Creation

into Himself, repairing and reuniting what once was severed by the fall. Apokatallazai is related

as well to the term used in the Canon known as apokatastasis, “the restoration of all things” in

38
Athanasius, “Against the Arians” II. 70, In The Early Christian Fathers, 293.
39
Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the NT.
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Acts 3:21: “Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times

of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah

appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal

restoration (apokatastaseos panton) that God announced long ago through his holy prophets.”

The sense here is that the universal reconciliation through Christ written of in Colossians is

connected to the eschatological universal restoration vision in Acts in which the entire created

order is finally consummated in God through Him, returned to its original state. Origen

explicates the nature of the end consummation and restoration:

For the end is always like the beginning; as therefore there is one end of all
things, so we must understand that there is one beginning of all things, as there is
one end of many things, so from one beginning arise many differences and
varieties, which in their turn are restored, through God’s goodness, through their
subjection to Christ and their unity with the Holy Spirit, to one end, which is like
the beginning.40

The next half of verse 20 explains exactly how this universal reconciliation was

accomplished, which is through Christ’s redemptive act: “by making peace (eipenopoiesas)

through the blood of his cross, whether on the earth or in the heavens.” The sacrifice of Christ

bridged the gulf between humanity and God. Christ restored humanity’s faithfulness to God’s

moral law as intimated by Paul in Romans 8:3-4: “For God has done what the law, weakened by

the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with

sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us,

who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Christ became our substitute to

restore in ourselves what we could not – righteous standing with God (“justification” in Romans

3:25). This peace merited by Christ’s submission on the cross then was an act of satisfaction in

40
Origen, On First Principles, I. IV. II.
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which Christ as our representative returned our faithfulness to God, our relationship with God.

Origen states: “Christ came that he might destroy the enmities and make peace, and reconcile us

to God when we were separated because of the barrier of wickedness we set up by sinning.41

The peacemaking of his cross also involved the defeat of the spiritual powers over whom Christ

is sovereign as mentioned earlier in this passage from Colossians. The author develops this more

in Colossians Chapter 2:15: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example

of them, triumphing over them in it.” In the cross Christ manifests His headship over the

deceptive spiritual powers that held humanity captive in sin. He took upon our nature to

overcome the enemy of our nature, “so that through death he might destroy the one who has the

power of death, that is the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). The universal nature of this passage also

correlates to The Gospel of John’s testimony of the scope of Jesus’ sacrifice: “And I, when I am

lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”42 “Whether on the earth or in the

heavens” indicates that Christ not only reconciled those on earth with God, but also those in the

hereafter as stated in 1 Peter 3:18-19: “He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the

spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former

times did not obey.” So the power of the cross extends even beyond this life.

While Colossians 1:15-20 does not explicate how exactly Universal salvation will be

dispensed and unfolded, nor on the nature of the efficacy of faith in Christ and the consequences

of rejecting Christ, the rest of the New Testament corpus that deals with universal salvation

indicates a progressive restoration. The Church is given new life on earth and will inherit the

Kingdom first in the hereafter and then in the Eschaton (final consummation, new heaven and

new earth) those outside (the wicked) will be brought into the fold of the Kingdom while on

41
Origen, “Commentary in the Epistle to the Romans,” 4.8, In The Early Christian Fathers, 226.
42
John 12:32 NRSV
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earth or posthumously after remedial punishment.43 This passage in Colossians however does

communicate that Christ’s cosmic and incarnational presence reunited humanity with God

through an act of overcoming our sin by defeating its power, bringing humanity back in oneness

with Him for whom and in whom everything was made and has its purpose. Christ as both the

Cosmic Logos and as the human-divine incarnate Savior brings God’s full purpose to the world

of restoring what was lost in Eden and continuously present working to bring all to Himself.

Since Christ lives in all things and all things live in Him, and is the New Adam who came to

reconstitute humanity what was universally lost in the first Adam through a perfect union of the

divine and human in himself, then it follows that Christ enacted universal restoration through His

Cross and Resurrection that will come to full fruition in the Eschaton.

43
See Ephesians 1:5-10, 20-23; 1 Corinthians 3:10-15; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Philippians 2:9-
11; Acts 3:19-24; Revelation 5:13; Revelation 21:1-6; 1 Timothy 2:3-6, 4:10; Romans 5:18-19,
11; 1 Peter 3:18-22.
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 Bibliography

Athanasius, “Against the Arians.” in The Early Christian Fathers, Ed. and Trans. Henry
Bettenson. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Irenaeus, “Against the Heresies.” in The Early Christian Fathers, Ed. and Trans. Henry
Bettenson. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Lincoln, Andrew T. “Colossians Commentary,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible. Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 1994.

Origen. On First Principles. Ed. G.W. Butterworth. New York: Harper and Row, 1966.

------“Commentary on John.” in The Early Christian Fathers, Ed. and Trans. Henry
Bettenson. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

------“Commentary in the Epistle to the Romans.” in The Early Christian Fathers, Ed.
and Trans. Henry Bettenson. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

------“Homily on Jeremiah.” in The Early Christian Fathers, Ed. and Trans. Henry
Bettenson. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

------“Homily on the Book of Joshua.” in The Early Christian Fathers, Ed. and Trans.
Henry Bettenson. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

The UBS Greek New Testament Reader’s Edition. 4th rev. ed. Ed. Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland,
Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger. Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 1993/2001.

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