J. L. Terveen Colossians 2
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personality, the risen Lord with whom a Christian has intimate personal and existential
relationship. The language of "mystical" union with Christ speaks well to the mysterious
and unseen aspect of this spiritual reality, though commonly perhaps wrongly
ascribed nuances of unworldliness and denial of real life applications compromise the
usefulness of the term. To affirm close personal integration with this Jesus perhaps
captures as well as possible the reality of being a person "in him."
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The person who
"has been filled in him" becomes for Paul the identity marker for the true people of God.
For Paul in the context of Colossians, not ethicity, nor cultic and cultural observations,
nor alignment with the elemental forces of the universe, nor conformity to the traditions
of men serve to identify the people of God, but only the fullness achieved and found in
the "in him/Christ" relationship marks the child of God.
The polemics of this truth become explicit as Paul returns once more to the
supremacy of Christ theme by utilizing the "head" imagery (
). The all-inclusive
supremacy and authority of Christ "over every power and authority" (NIV) apparently
the erstwhile representatives of the
receives due emphasis in
Colossians, owing to the virtue of Jesus role in creation (1:16-17) and his conquest of
such hostile forces (
, 2:15). To submit to any other Lord
than Jesus, would be to submit to defeat and the very delusion about which Paul had so
adamantly warned them.
Having firmly grounded his argument now in the "in him/Christ" relationship,
Paul further expands upon what Christ has done in redemption and the nature of its
impact on the believer. In what does the fullness "in Christ" consist? Pauls answer to
this question launches him into a sequence of picturesque metaphorical images in 2:11-15