To Reconcile All Things, Col, 1:19-20
Colossians 1:19-20 · Vern Peterman · May 2, 2004
Ephesians & Colossians, No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826235466506

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We are indeed going to be studying Colossians 1 here, 19 and 20. But first, we want to take a minute to kind of draw the curtain back, if you will, an early peek at the July electives. Believe it or not, next month, the electives that you're currently in will be done. So we want to take just kind of an early look at what's coming up here. Church history and great doctrines of salvation that will be offered for now a second time and those are repeated for those who didn't have a chance for whatever reason to take them when they were offered before perhaps you were in another elective for example.

Nonetheless those will be a couple that will be offered and then actually having three more on top of that. Principles of spiritual growth will be one of them. And Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians. And finally, Bible backgrounds, history and culture. So those three.

So we actually have five electives going on here. With that many going on, one of the things that we're intending to do is give people a number of different options. But we do have a particular purpose in mind. And of course, one thing is to offer people meat and milk. And just so you know, Helmut, if somebody walks into an elective and they see steak knives, it's meat.

All right. So at any rate, we will offer a spectrum of different things there for people to choose from. One of our intents also is to have the opportunity for some smaller groups in each of the electives so that there's better opportunity for interaction and involvement in the class. OK. The other thing to bring out is just what's the purpose of offering these different electives?

We're looking at equipping the Saints for service, most certainly. We're looking at building up the body of Christ. This, by the way, this is the purpose of the church. You say, what's the church for? It's not just for rummage sales on Saturday. It's for building up the body of Christ.

It's for the spiritual maturity of every believer. As we look in this first chapter of Colossians later on, we'll see that. It is definitely the Lord's intent that every believer grow to spiritual maturity, not just a percentage, not just some special group, every believer. We're looking for spiritual maturity of the church as a whole. This is sometimes overlooked. There's two aspects to spiritual maturity. One is for the individual believer, the other is for the church as a whole. We're also looking for growing the whole church together into Christ as the head. And that is a key purpose and goal in our teaching. And finally, beholding the Lord through His Word.

So as we have these various electives, it's not just so that we can offer electives, not just so that we have something interesting. Some people have mentioned, why do you have so many? It's hard to pick. Good. That's intentional. We'd like it for you to be having a tough time picking. But we most certainly want it to be spiritually profitable, not just because it's interesting.

Anyway, more on that in weeks to come. Let's take a look at Colossians 119 and 20 here. And you have on your handout this verse as well. One starting remark, and I would say in verse 20, and you might have noticed earlier, there are kind of phrases in there that are switched in between, say, the King James and the New American Standard Version. And the message is basically the same, even though the English translation of it is switched. Anyway, we'll dig into that in a little more detail here.

Now, we've been bringing out since the last Sunday in March the fact that a good number of scholars who've looked at this passage are convinced that it's a hymn. and that Paul is basically bringing in the words from a hymn. One of the clues is color-coded here on the overhead, and that is a lot of similar words and phrases that keep popping up and being used here. We're looking at verses 19 and 20 out of that section there, 15 through 20, that's considered by many to be a hymn. One of the things, just to kind of bring us up to date, is we've seen titles of Christ brought forward in the passages we've seen so far, verses 15 through 18. Now, we have with respect to God, Christ is called the image, the exact and visible expression of who God is, okay? With respect to God, Christ is the image of God.

With respect to the old creation, and just to make it clear, that's the one we're living in now physically, okay? This is the old creation. He is the creator. He is the firstborn. He is the one having preeminence. The designer, the builder, the purpose and the sustainer of the old creation. All those things.

And finally, with regard to the new creation, if you are a believer here this morning, you are spiritually, not physically yet, spiritually a new creation. By the way, I hope you know, This isn't the way it's going to be. Physically, we're still connected to this old creation, but we're spiritually a new creation.

With respect to the new creation, of which Christ is the first, He is the head, that is, He is the undisputed authority and source of the body of Christ. He is the beginning, and you notice He is the beginning but not the end of the new creation, because the new creation has no end. and he is the firstborn. Here we see that phrase, firstborn again. It means he's preeminent among the new creation. Alright, so now, we step into this verses 19 and 20, having seen the titles of Christ in 15 through 18. 19 and 20, we want to take a look at some particular words and phrases here. We're going to start off with verse 19.

As we take a look at that, We want to make note that although it's in the translations, the father's good pleasure, the father's is actually not in the Greek. Oh no! Is that a problem? Why do we think Paul means the father here if it's not in the Greek? Oh, I was hoping you'd have an answer. Alright, we better ask this question then and look at it. This word, good pleasure, that shows up in here is eudoceo, okay? And fortunately, there is a very consistent pattern of use of that word in the New Testament, and that gives us the strong clue here.

Numerous passages use this word to refer to God and specifically to God the Father, and those occur not only in Paul's writings, but here in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and even in 2 Peter. So it's a consistent teaching, not just in Paul, but throughout the New Testament, that this is in reference to the Father. We have a related noun, eudokia, that we've already seen twice in Ephesians chapter 1, in verses 5 and 9. In each case, it's referenced to God the Father.

So that's why you see it in your translations, even though it's not referenced in the Greek. Then we see there, the full expression there, for it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him. And the fullness is pleroma, and to dwell is katoikeo. Alright, let's step through that.

A number of people, and if you look up in some commentaries, you're going to see a lot of people look at Colossians 2.9 and say, well, that looks similar.

Therefore, this verse in Colossians 1.19 just means that it pleased the Father that Christ would have all deity dwell in Him. But there's some questions to ask here. The fullness of deity already dwells in Him inherently. In eternity past, now and into the future. That was already the case.

Furthermore, the prior context as we look at this passage is about Christ as the head of the Church and Him being resurrected. And then as we look into the next subsequent passage, what we find, it's about Christ's work in salvation and reconciliation and not His deity. So the subject of His deity is not directly in the context.

So we need to ask the question, what about this pleroma and dwell? Pleroma and katoikeo. We're going to look at those words here. So we've got to ask the question, pleroma, is this what it is? This is not a pleroma, okay? All right. Not it. What it is? Pleroma. Now we've shown this little diagram here. We keep changing the angels in the middle, but we've shown this diagram. Here's what I think Paul's getting at.

The Gnostics, which is a group that was apparently getting itself founded there in Colossae. The Gnostics, after the time of Paul's writing here, developed this term Pleroma, and it was in reference to the series of angels that they saw as being between a good God and an evil world. Remember the idea that these Gnostics had was God is so good and matter is so evil that God couldn't possibly have created this world. So the Gnostics came up with the idea that there's a whole emanation, a series of angels, between the good God and the evil world, and Christ just happens to have been created by mistake in this evil world. That was the Gnostics' idea. And they used the word pleroma to describe this series of angels. What did Paul turn around and say? He says, Christ Himself is the fullness. Everything is invested in Him.

All right, now, then there's this word, katoikeo. Now, we haven't run across that before. What is that? What does katoikeo mean? Katoikeo, okay, is this katoikeo? Okay, probably not. I don't think that's what Paul's talking about. All right, so that's not it.

Katoikeo is this. It means to dwell with a sense of permanence. To dwell permanently is the idea of karoikeo. And so here, the fullness dwells in Christ permanently. And we need to take a look at that. Christ is not given his role temporarily, he's saying, but on a permanent basis. It's a long-term view that God has in mind in the old creation, all of it, and in the new creation, all of it. It's the fullness of all that time.

So, after looking at that, we've got to ask the question, what is Colossians 1.19 saying? Oh, you're still not going to answer? Alright, let's go here. Let's take a look.

Because it well pleased the Father for the entire work of creation and its purpose to be fully invested in Christ. the fullness of His purpose in Christ. Not just temporarily, not just a little bit, permanently dwelling in Him. That's not all. It pleased the Father for the entire work of reconciliation of the all things to be fully invested in Christ. All of it. The whole thing. The fullness. Pleroma.

That's not all. It pleased the Father for the entire work of salvation by means of our identification with Him to be fully invested in Christ. We were identified with Christ. And that identification with Christ is God's means of salvation. It's how God is going to carry it out. That is what the fullness is talking about. The completeness. Everything about the old and new creation. All of God's program is invested in Christ, the fullness in Him.

We get the same message when we looked at Ephesians 1.3, and one aspect of it, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. The fullness, every bit of it, the fullness in Christ.

What is Paul saying? Why is he saying this? Because the Gnostics were saying that Jesus was just a sort of a mistake out of a series of angels. God didn't really know what the angels were doing, and Jesus was sort of a mistake at the end, dropped into an evil world. That was the Gnostic idea.

And he's coming out and saying, no. The whole thing from start to finish, God had in mind. And the fullness of all of what God was doing is in Christ. There's nothing partial about what God's doing in Christ. The whole thing, the fullness, the completeness of all of God's plan is focused and centered on Him. Alright.

Now, we look at this, let's look back at this hymn that we've been looking at here, starting with verse 15, the last half. We saw Christ was the firstborn of all of the old creation. The fullness was centered in Him, wasn't it? Last half of verse 15 into verse 17.

All of the old creation, the fullness of God's plan of salvation, and creation was in Him. We get into verse 18, the fullness of the new creation centered in Christ. All of God's plan in Christ. And finally, verses 19 is basically saying that. Old creation, new creation, all of what God is doing in creating the old creation, in saving those out of the old creation into the new, is in Christ. All right, now let's take a look at verse 20. "...and through him to reconcile all things to himself." Let's take a look at that particular phrase, and let's zero in on the word reconcile here. Let's take a look at that.

The word there is apokatalaso, okay? And that isn't a guy named Apo who cut a lasso, okay? This is apokatalaso. It's a compound word, and by itself you compound what it means, and it's still kind of puzzling. But here's the idea. In all the New Testament, this word is only used here in Colossians 20 and 21, and then we'll see it as we get farther on in Ephesians 2.16. Only place it's used. It's also one of the reasons for studying Ephesians and Colossians together, as we're doing.

But it means to completely reconcile. Now, that's good news. Even if you don't immediately understand Apocatiloso, completely reconcile. That's a good thing. You are completely reconciled by Christ's work. Completely. It's not like, okay, God did it most of the way, you've got to finish it. God did it most of the way, it's now up to you to pull off the rest of it. No. Completely reconciled. There is nothing left for you to reconcile that Christ did not deal with. Okay? It's not your job. It's His. That's what this Word is saying.

Okay, now, the reconciling is to Himself, and there's a key point we want to grab out of this. It wasn't God reconciling Himself to us. You see that? It wasn't God reconciling Himself to us. It wasn't like, alright God, I'm mad, and you've got to fix it. It's not that way. He doesn't say, God being reconciled to us. It's not God meeting us in the middle.

We're doing some reconciling, and he's doing some, and the mixture of the two is kind of pulling us both together. The picture that we get from here, completely reconciled to himself, the whole distance is from us to him. To himself. That's the picture. The Apocatiloso, which is completely reconciled, it's entirely in the direction of Him. And we do it graphically this way. The Lord did the reconciling, we are entirely reconciled, and all the reconciliation is in the direction of Him. That's the picture we get out of this passage here.

Having made peace through the blood of the cross, and we pointed out before that King James puts this thought at the end. It doesn't change the meaning, but just the order is different here between the different versions. But let's look at this, having made peace. In the Greek that's one word. And this arene, which is where we get the lady's name in English, Irene. And it means peace. Now if you know any ladies named Piaeo, let me know, I'd be interested. But it's make peace is the idea. Make peace.

It's only here in all the New Testament. This is the one place where this word occurs, where we're reading right now. And this word is active in God's part. God is the one who is active. You feel like you've got to make peace with God? Ever heard people talk about making peace with your Maker? God's the one who makes peace. It's through Christ. That's the message of this verse. God's the one who does it. He is the one who is the peacemaker. And this verse says it very explicitly.

The other thing that this does is it has an implication that scripture elsewhere, and what we'll see as we go through Ephesians and some through Colossians as well, the other thing it does is it makes a strong implication. If there's peace to be made, there must have been an animosity before. God is the one who deals with the animosity. He's the one who takes the action. to deal with the animosity and to make peace.

Romans 5.1 puts it this way, therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Just a very simple statement, justified by faith we have peace with God. Not a part way, not a you're going to have peace with God eventually, not if you do this and this you'll have peace with God, done deal, fact, accomplished, in history. Finished.

Then we look in verse 20 and there's a couple other things to point out here. There's this phrase, all things. And it's interesting, this has a definite article and as we've seen several times in this passage, it's the all things, okay? It's specific and it's the all things, the sum total. And this gets underscored here at the end of the passage there, things on earth are things in heaven. This is kind of the reverse of what we saw earlier in the passage. that reflects the kind of way of speaking of everything that comes out of the Old Testament.

Here's Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created what? The heavens, plural, definite article, and the earth, singular. What he does is the exact same thing and reverses it. You say, well, why do you reverse it? Isn't that changing things? Well, the Old Testament itself actually does some of that reversing, as we'll see here in a minute. But the main idea, he's trying to get across, God didn't just deal with a little bit here and sort of leave the rest undone.

He dealt with everything, and as we pointed out in weeks past, we'll have various expressions in English. We'll say the whole enchilada, the whole nine yards, lock, stock and barrel, the whole ball of wax, and terms like that. We mean everything when we use those terms, don't we? We mean everything. When God worked through Christ to bring about reconciliation, He didn't just say, okay, I got this little small percentage over here that I dealt with and then the rest of it is just loose ends. No, he was specific. Everything is included in this.

As we look at this passage, the heavens and the earth, we notice that he's reversed it. This is a pattern that you see on page three of your handout. Deuteronomy 432, a couple of places in Psalms and one in Proverbs are examples of places where the heaven and earth is used to describe everything, but the order is reversed, so it's not something that Paul just invented. It's something for which there was a pattern in the Old Testament that he drew upon. Also, what the English doesn't reflect is there's a definite article and the heavens is plural, so it's on the earth and in the heavens in the Greek text there.

Okay, let's ask, what about this reconcile? What does it really mean? When you get right down to it, we might say in English something like, when you get right down to brass tacks, what does it mean? Okay? Reconcile means that God through Christ provided the means to reconcile everything, that's the all things, that's heaven and earth, okay?

He's using these expressions to make sure that we get the big picture. Everything which came about from the fall of man and the curse on the earth, God's going to deal with it. He doesn't just say, alright, that earth is messed up and all the people on it, we're just going to hit the reset button on this thing and start over. Instead, He says, no, we're going to deal with the whole thing. We're going to deal with everything. Everything which came about through the fall of man and the curse on the earth will be dealt with. For the earth that was cursed, it means lifting it. Lifting the curse in the millennium. That's why you find the passages like Isaiah.

It actually says the wolf and the lamb, but the lion is referenced there as well. And Romans 8, about the creation groaning, awaiting revelation of the sons of God. For those who believe, it means bringing them into the new creation. And I'm not just referring to those in the Church. This is the Church. This is the Old Testament saints. This is those who are tribulation saints. This is those who are believers during the millennium.

All those who believe through all time, who are all saints, all those are brought into the new creation. We showed this diagram previously to get the picture here. Death is introduced at the beginning of the old creation. There is the resurrection. of Christ the firstborn, the Church is the first group of those who believe, who are brought up after Christ into the new creation. And then the Old Testament saints, and Tribulation saints, and finally the Millennial saints. And we pointed out there, with the end of the creation, the Old Creation will come the end of death as well.

All things will be put under His feet. Reconcile also means that even though not all will believe, every tongue will confess. Every tongue will confess. There will come a time, every being, they may not be a part of the new creation, but they will confess that Jesus is indeed Lord.

He is indeed the one with sovereign authority over the old creation and the new. Now, the work of God through reconciliation, through Christ, He is the author. He is the one that the Father was pleased to have the fullness dwell in. He is the agent. Everything is through Him. He is also the means, that is, through the blood of His cross, as spelled out in verse 20. He is the accomplishment there is by the making of peace. as Christ's accomplishment.

The direction, as we pointed out, was in the direction of Himself, reconciled to Himself. And finally, the extent is all things, heaven and earth, all things. Everything is dealt with. One of the things we pointed out in past weeks, and we've used this diagram to do so, is that the source of the Colossian problem was that they had this idea, here was a good God and an evil and so their idea was this emanation or series of angels resulted in the creation of Christ as a mistake. And so what does it do?

It diminishes Christ's deity and work. Now, let's ask this question. Can we diminish Christ's deity and work? Not in reality. We can diminish our acknowledgement of it. And that's what they were doing here. But before we think, oh, that's just something that happened a couple thousand years ago, it doesn't happen anymore.

No, if you think there's a group of Jehovah's Witnesses that say that Christ was not deity, what have they done? They've diminished Christ's deity and work, not in reality, but in their recognition. Another group, the Mormons, say that Christ and Satan were brothers. What does that do? It diminishes Christ's deity and work. Christian science said that Christ had the divine mind only temporarily.

Remember verse 19? It says it dwells permanently. It dwells permanently. Now, we don't want to leave anybody out here. Legalism said that Christ's salvation, you've got to help him out. You've got to earn it. And now, before we say these are all about somebody else, If we as believers come to a place of saying, well, I've got a better list of rules than you do, aren't we in the same boat? Does that not diminish Christ's deity and work? If we say, I've got a better list of rules and laws for everybody to keep and abide by. If we, let's say as a believer, maybe it's even true here this morning of somebody, if you have blown it sometime, maybe even this last week, maybe this morning on the way to church, If you've blown it and then thought, you know, I've done something so bad it's going to be a while before I feel like I really have fellowship with God, isn't that legalism?

Because what is that saying? That says, I can't go back into fellowship with God right now because I've got to pay for it for a while. I've got to feel bad. Isn't that what we're saying? There's no message like that in Scripture. Hey, you've got to feel bad for 20 minutes and then you can come back and fellowship. There's no timeouts, okay? We can be in fellowship with the Lord right away. It's this attitude that says, no, I've got to stand out for a while and help God by feeling bad. And so I can't be in fellowship with God yet.

See that? Even that diminishes, not in reality, but in our recognition of Christ's deity and work. He paid the price. so that if you and I blow it, the very minute we agree with Him, we can be in fellowship. Anything less than that, any feeling like, boy, I've got to feel bad about this for a while, or something of that sort, is a diminishing in our recognition of His deity and work. That's legalism. It's just well-disguised, isn't it? As we look at this passage, there's something else to think about, too.

The truth is each one of us has difficult times of various kinds in the course of life, don't we? You may have had a difficult time this morning. You may have a difficult time this week. Sometimes I joke with people and I'll say, well, I've had a rough time this week all decade, you know? And the reality is we can go through all kinds of difficulties.

What's being said right here is not setting aside those difficulties at all. It says that what's going on in our lives, the tough thing that we're going through right now, and it may not be over quickly. It may even not be over in our lifetime. The tough thing we're going through right now is not outside of Christ's supremacy. The tough thing we're going through right now is not something that has escaped God's attention.

Everything that is happening in this old creation, everything that is happening in us spiritually as a part of God's new creation, is all under Christ's supremacy. Every last piece of it. Every jot and tittle. And isn't that key for us to keep in mind? Because we are going to go through tough times, folks. We will. Count on it. Scripture doesn't say if, it says when.

But key to recognize, none of that escapes the Lord's attention, and none of it falls outside of Christ's supremacy. The Lord has purpose and intent for every bit of it, just like He had purpose and intent for Christ's supremacy. Is not Christ supreme in the middle of whatever circumstance we're in?

Yes, He most certainly is. Does He not have an eternal purpose for it in His plan? Are we not already figured as part of the new creation? Is He going to waste anything? No. Everything that is wrong from the fall, including what goes on with our bodies and what goes wrong with our neighbors, everything that is wrong from the fall will be dealt with.

No exceptions. None. We can count on it. And that's a wonderful thing. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for who you are. Thank you for what you have done and what you've purposed. Thank you, Lord, for your marvelous grace and your awesome work on our behalf.

And Lord, we just pray that you would teach us, teach us not just in mind but in heart, to recognize your supremacy in everything and that absolutely nothing escapes your attention. Absolutely nothing falls outside of your plan. The all things, all of earth and all in the heavens, is all within your supremacy and your plan. You will deal with and reconcile and reckon with everything. And we just thank You for that. And we look to You, Lord, to open our eyes to Your love and care for us in the midst of each of the circumstances we find ourselves. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.