Colossians 1:11-20

The emphasis of these weekly essays is on those who remain beyond the knowledge of Jesus Christ as God's Savior. In keeping with that, rather than expand on these verses of our Lord, I would like to look behind them to see the profiles of the people under their power.

These verses contain what the scholars would call "high Christology", and they make a perfect backdrop for the Sunday of Christ the King. Paul wasn't writing randomly in these verses about his Lord. He had a very specific situation in mind, which was the form of heresy coming into the Colossian church. Each phrase, each attribute of Christ is carefully crafted to bring to mind one or more of these heresies and then refute it.

There are three major heresies, with some overlapping of each - the spirit world, hostile gods who need to be appeased, and a severely diminished Jesus Christ.

The usual term for multiple spirit-beings is angelology. Another and more familiar term would be animism. The common link is the worship of spirits, of heavenly beings. One aspect about animists that is often undervalued is the complexity of their religion. The pantheon of gods form a full cosmology, one that relates to every important life issue. The people on Paul's mind may not have been strict animists as we understand them today, but they did live in a world of principalities and powers, angelic beings whom F. F. Bruce writes were "lords of the planetary spheres".

Furthermore, these gods were not innocent bystanders in the worlds of the devotees. In their power is the control of all communication between their world and people. Love is withheld, and fear dominates the lives of the adherents. The emphasis of religion would naturally be cultivating ways of placating, of appeasing these alien gods. After all, they controlled the weather, health, life beyond the grave. The intent and the ways of appeasing were uppermost in the minds and the lives of their followers.

Some of these ways would have been rituals, even some rituals borrowed and altered from Judaism. Also holy days, circumcision, and rigorous asceticism were all encouraged upon the fearful. The goal of these efforts always was to gain the favor of the gods.

Jesus Himself fit in most cosmologies but in a lesser role than that given in Scripture. By virtue of His incarnation to human form He lost considerable rank. His death by crucifixion was further evidence of His diminished status.

The beauty of the Bible is that what was true then applies today. We may not run into heresies exactly as Paul encountered in Colossae, but can we not see similarities in the post-moderns of the West and the animists or folk Muslims of Kano, Nigeria, or rural Malaysia.