NT Text: Colossians 1:16-17
OT Source(s):
Source: Beale & Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (2007); Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Redemptive-Historical Progression + Longitudinal Theme
Anchor Text: Gen 1:1 — In the Beginning
Significance: Colossians 1:16-17 is the most comprehensive Pauline statement of creator-Christology: "For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." Paul takes the heaven-and-earth merism of Genesis 1:1 — the totality of created reality named by its two poles — and applies it wholesale to the Son. The Genesis 1:1 Creator-frame is not merely echoed but exhaustively claimed for Christ: He is the sphere (in Him), the agent (through Him), the goal (for Him), and the sustaining cause (in Him all things hold together) of everything Genesis 1:1 declares God to have made. The phrase "things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible" expands the Genesis merism to embrace the unseen powers as well, leaving no creature outside Christ's lordship. This is redemptive-historical and longitudinal development rather than typology: the divine act of Genesis 1:1 is disclosed as Trinitarian, with the Son as the personal mediator of creation (cf. John 1:3; Heb 1:2; 1 Cor 8:6). The pastoral telos is overwhelming for the Colossians tempted to fear cosmic "thrones and dominions": every power they dreaded was made through and for the Christ who reconciled them by the blood of His cross (Col 1:20). The One in whom all things hold together is the same One in whom they themselves are held — so that beholding Christ as the cohering center of the universe is to find Him the cohering center of the soul, infinitely worthy of trust and delight.