Christ is All
Christ is All
Having considered Christ’s full divinity, we now come to our third theme in our study of Colossians —Christ’s Full Reign. We begin this theme with Paul’s statement, "And Christ is the head of the body, the church... that in all things he may have the first place" (Col 1:18).
Popular eschatology (teaching about the second coming of Christ) makes a distinction between Christ’s church and Christ’s kingdom. The kingdom, they say, is a future kingdom on earth which will last for 1000 years. This kingdom, they say, was supposed to be set up at Christ’s first coming, but that plan was frustrated and failed. So the new plan is to set up the kingdom at Christ’s second coming instead. What to do in the meantime? Christ set up his church to fill up the 2000 year gap between when the prophets said the kingdom would come, and when it actually will. So the church is a stop-gap measure. According to this doctrine, the only superiority the church has over the kingdom is that it lasts twice as long. The church, they say, is only a forerunner to the kingdom, not the kingdom itself — a partial and temporary solution until the kingdom comes.
Paul’s declaration of Christ’s headship over the church is the last item of a list in which Paul declares Christ’s divine image, firstborn status, creative power, eternal nature, and headship of the church. Then Paul goes on to say that all the fullness dwells in Christ, enabling him to effect full reconciliation through his blood (Col 1:14-20). In Paul’s thinking, neither "head" nor "body" (Col 1:18) is given second-rate status.
Let us ask Paul if he thinks there is anything preliminary and partial about Christ’s present headship. After saying that Christ is the head of the church, and speaking of his pre-eminence in this position, Paul adds, "For it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should dwell" (Col 1:18-19).
Paul later says, "Christ is the head of all principality and power and you are complete in him" (Col 2:10). Not only is Christ’s present headship full and complete, but so is his body the church. As Paul said to the Ephesians along similar lines, "God put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Eph 1:22-23).
Paul pictures the church as a body which "holds fast to the head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God" (Col 2:19). Earlier Paul speaks of the church members as "rooted and built up in him" (Col 2:6-7). Just as Christ promised, “I will build my church”, so he does. It is not a part of what Jesus builds, it is the fullness.
And in this body "there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcised nor uncircumcised, Scythian, barbarian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all" (Col 3:11). There are no longer different bodies, different flocks, different “churches” or callings, but all are one and the same, in the one body, and none is excluded.
Paul declares, "God has delivered us out of the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of his dear Son" (Col 1:13). This is an accomplished fact, not a future promise —otherwise aren't we still in the domain of darkness? Five verses later, Paul declares, "And he is the head of the body, the church..." (Col 1:18). If we are in the kingdom and in the church, surely we are not in two different bodies, but one, as Paul says, "You were called in one body" (Col 3:15). In Paul’s letter to the Colossians, the kingdom of Christ is not yet to come, but has come. It is the church, and the church is the kingdom. They are one and the same.
Series outline