Notes on Colossians 1:9-20

Colossians 1:9-20 lays out the work of God in the lives of those who believe. This may be the reason Paul was so quick to give thanks to God for these who believed. They were sharing in the work of God in their lives, and this work is astonishingly wonderful and praise-worthy to the extreme. Paul’s praise for Christ is sublime.

Just listing the work of Christ in the lives of those who believe is benefitial.

He begins with the prayer that God’s people would have a fuller knowledge of God’s will:

1:9 — that they may be filled “with the knowledge of his will.”

But there is the practical exhortation that they might not merely affirm something to be true, but that the truth of the Gospel would be transformative in their lives.

1:10 — so they may “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” and to be “fully pleasing to him.”

The petition that they would be “fully pleasing to him” is a high and extrordinary request and a life-long ambition of every true believer.

Paul goes further requesting that they would be fruitful and that they would not only know God’s will but that they might increase in the knowledge of God — something that is very different from knowing the will of God.

1:10 — the result of that would be that they would be “bearing fruit in every good work” and “increasing in the knowledge of God.”

1:11 — they would be “strengthened with all power” according to “his glorious might”

They were to receive the power and might of God. Paul ties this power to the resurrection of Christ from the dead and he includes believers as those who would share in that same power working in them, see the prayer of Ephesians 1.

1:11 — that they would display “all endurance and patience” and that these qualities would be manifested “with joy.”

Paul is always grace-centered in everything he writes and in all he teaches. The qualification to inherit the blessings of glory, is something that God does for and to them, it is not based on anything out of the lives of these Christians who are the heirs of the kingdom of God. God qualfied them. He did this through the cross of his Son. God alone qualifies those who are heirs.

1:12 — he turns to thanks to God the Father “who has qualified [them] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”

Paul joins with his recipients in the description of their former lives: “he delivered US.” He, too, had lived in terrible darkness, as we know. Paul adds his voice to their’s in the declaration and confession about their past lives.

The use of “light” may point to the very presence of God, in the Shekinah of the Old Testament, and at the Transfiguration, in the New.

1:13-14 — he begins to conclude his prayer by restating how “he delivered us from the domain of darkness (in which we used to live)and “transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

The section that follows (1:15-20) is all in praise to “his beloved Son.” Here Paul drives out a sequence of praise and an offering of glory to Jesus Christ. He presents the majesty of the Beloved Son of God who has delivered us from darkness.

1:15-16– He is the image of the invisible God. The Firstborn of all Creation. He created all things. “All things were created through him and for him.”

The eternal connection with the Father and the preexistence of the Son before anything else was created is made clear.

1:17 — Christ “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

This is his eternality. Before anything was made, he was alive. Uncreated, Creator.

1:18 — He is “the Head of the Body, the Church.” “He is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.”

The position of Christ as the head of the church is established. This would imply that Christ is the Head of the church in Colossae, as much as the Church in Jerusalem or anywhere he is worshiped and loved.

1:19 — In Him “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

God’s fulness dwells. He is now part of God, but he is the fullness of God. The Trinity breaks language apart, but the principle is held forth that Christ is the fullness of God.

1:20 — through Him “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

The work of Christ on the Cross is the supreme action of the beloved Son, and it is his most glorious work for God the Father, and it is redemption for us who believe. Making peace was unimaginably costly to God.