The Triumph Of Christ’S Death
THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST’S DEATH
COLOSSIANS 2:8-15
Have you participated in both Christ’s death and his triumph?
This paragraph is one of the most important in the whole letter. After a warning not to be captured by false tradition (2:8), it offers to the readers an incisive statement of the importance of Christ’s death for them (2:9-14), and affirms the cosmic extent of his triumph (2:15).
Paul’s warning resumes the interrupted thought of 2:4 and vividly depicts the danger which the church is in danger of falling into; the false teachers are slave-raiders who would carry the believers off physically (2:8).
“Philosophy” is probably the designation used by the advocates of the new teaching to commend their distinctive emphases. In the first century the term denotes a way of life rather than intellectual pursuit, and is frequently similar to the term “salvation.” Paul uses the word derogatorily, describing the teaching it embraced as “empty deceit,” the product of human cleverness and demonic inspiration (see 2:20; Galatians 6:3,9). It reflected on cosmic powers hostile to Christ and entailed enslavement rather than freedom.
What was promised in the offer of “philosophy” was “fullness of life” (see 2:10). The Colossians already enjoyed this in Christ (2:9-10)! What the believers needed was not new teaching but a return to the tradition (see 2:6-7). Paul therefore echoes the great hymn in honor to Christ which he had introduced in 1:15ff. Because the totality of the Godhead lives in Christ as it was embodied in him at the incarnation (2:9), there is no reason to seek God or power of life elsewhere.
The completion sought by the Colossians is already their possession “in him” (2:10). It is probable that the local teachers urged circumcision as a preliminary rite to the visions which constituted perfection (2:11,17f.). Paul insists that believers have already experienced enrollment in the covenant fellowship through the circumcision of Christ, a description of Christ’s death (2:11; see also 1:22; 2:15). He lists three benefits which come to believers from Christ’s death: the removal of spiritual separation (symbolized by literal uncircumcision, Ephesians 2:11f.); the enjoyment of the resurrection life of Christ; and the forgiveness of trespasses (2:13).
What this forgiveness entailed for Christ, the apostle makes vividly clear through the image of a statement of indebtedness personally signed by the debtor (see also Philemon 19). We had clearly failed to fulfill our obligation to God and deserved the penalty of death. But Christ assumed our debt and discharged it by his death; he canceled our signature on the bond by nailing it to his cross (2:14), and triumphed completely. Participation with Christ in his triumph is incompatible with submission to a teaching which owes its inspiration to the defeated cosmic powers.