In the passage below (Col 1:9-20-Green’s Literal Trans.), I think that some interesting cross lights are thrown on the relations between Jesus as redeemer, the father, his work as creator and his pre-eminence.
It seems that it would deflate Christ’s pre-eminence (v.18c) if all things created by him and for him included the death that he came to end, wresting us away from the accuser. Those who want to meld the revelation of creation in the Bible with materialist constructions and say that materialism gives us the ‘means’ while the Bible gives us the ends, fail, I think to see the dominance of means over ends, if the means includes the very destruction that the end puts away for ever. Given that this passage links together Christ as creator, sustainer, head of the Church, redeemer and the one who ends the reign of death their linking draws together these lines of thought within the Bible, including, obviously, the creation. The very point seems to be that death is an intruder, which we know from elsewhere in the scriptures (1 Cor 15:26) and Christ’s victory over it is of vast significance. To have death within Christ seems ridiculous to the point of theological self-destruction.
The full passage:
For this cause also, from the day in which we heard, we do not cease praying on your behalf, and asking that you may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, 10 for you to walk worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and growing into the full knowledge of God; 11 being empowered with all power according to the might of His glory, to all patience and longsuffering with joy;
12 giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for a share of the inheritance of the saints in light, 13 who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins; 15 who is the image of the invisible God, the First-born of all creation. 16 For all things were created in Him, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, the visible and the invisible; whether thrones, or lordships, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and all things consist in Him. 18 And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He be preeminent in all things; 19 because all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, and through Him making peace by the blood of His cross, to reconcile all things to Himself; through Him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens.
