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Colossians 2:9-15

Today, I’m going to get a bit deep, but I trust you to follow along as you are very smart (this is an ancient rhetorical device we call shamelessly flattering the reader). I want to talk a bit about one of the pillars of Christian doctrine: atonement. On its face it’s a very simple concept, but it has sparked much debate and controversy when it comes to deeper understandings.

Atonement is what Jesus did so that we can be saved. That’s a very simple explanation of something that it turns out is very difficult to fully understand from scripture. One of the most popular understandings is that “Jesus paid the penalty for our sin.” We deserved death, but Christ died in our place. Scholars call this understanding “penal substitution.” It does a lot to help us understand atonement, but by itself leaves some questions open and fails to encompass the full breadth of biblical atonement.

The Bible makes a lot of Jesus’ victory over death. Penal substitution doesn’t really help us understand how a victory over death is saving for us. This model is more interested in Jesus’ use of death than his victory over it. At this point I could turn to other models of atonement (ransom, christus victor, moral influence, etc.) and get very academic. However, I’d like to back away from academia and turn to our passage in Colossians 2 that gives a very concrete explanation of how Jesus’ death and resurrection saves us.

In the middle of a larger argument Paul gives a retelling of the gospel in verses 9-15. He introduces this retelling with the sentence, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.” This is followed with what scholars call a “chiasm,” which is a pattern ancient authors often used to structure their ideas. They would write in sets of parallels moving toward their main point and then moving back away from it toward a summary. Understanding this helps us better group the ideas Paul presents here.

Due to space limitations, I’ve had to greatly abbreviate the chart of Paul’s chiasm, but I trust that you can follow along in your own bible and see the parallels. (A parallels A’, B parallels B’, and C parallels C’)

A) Head over powers and authorities… (9b)

B) Circumcised by Christ… (11)

C) Buried in baptism, raised by faith… (12)

C’) Dead in sins, made alive in Christ… (13)

B’) Canceled the charge… (14)

A’) Made a public spectacle… (15)

A/A’) Jesus is Head Over Every Power and Authority

On the cross, Jesus publicly unmasked all powers and authorities (spiritual, physical, and systemic) that would claim importance over God for what they truly are. They are weak, dishonest and evil. The religious leadership of Judah brought charges against the Messiah. The Roman justice system crucified the only truly innocent man to ever live. Death, the most feared power of all, couldn’t hold onto Jesus in the face of true power and authority. In the cross, Jesus publicly established his universal sovereignty over every power and authority.

B/B’) Cancelled the Charge

In the first half of this parallel, Paul uses the image of circumcision to say that our sin was cut out of us and tossed aside. In the second half, Paul again turns to imagery to say that Jesus cancelled our debt. I wish I had more space to explore this. Our sin involves a debt to God, but it also chains us to multitudes of would be “creditors” — powers and authorities that would hold our sins against us. In making a public claim of absolute authority, Jesus automatically buys all our bad sin debt and casts it aside.

C/C’) From Death to Life

Finally, Jesus invites us to move from death to life. Having completely redefined the rules of powers, sin, and death, Jesus invites us to follow him into resurrection. Jesus went ahead of us and took the worst that the world could throw at any of us and defeated it once and for all. In the simple act of true belief in that reality, we are made free.

The gospel summary in Colossians 2:9-15 reminds us that death is already defeated. Whatever fear holds us back from faithfulness to God has been publicly exposed as meaningless and we can live in the full confidence that, in Christ, we are more than conquerors.