Matthew Gordley on the use of passive verbs for Christ in Colossians 1:16
[T]he creation language of [Psa 32:6, LXX] maintains the passive construction found in the Hebrew. It reads:
τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ κυρίου οἱ οὐρανοὶ ἐστερεώθησαν καὶ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ πᾶσα ἡ δύναμις αὐτῶν.
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firmAnd by the breath of his mouth all their power. (Ps 32:6 LXX)
This passive construction is analogous to the language of the Colossian hymn where Christ’s role in creation is depicted through the use of passive verbs. Though Christ is the subject of the passage as a whole, in Col 1:16 the subject of the sentence is “everything in the heavens and on the earth.” Christ’s involvement in their creation is presented though the use of εν with the dative so that all things were created “in him.”
ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς . . τὰ πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται
For in him everything in the heavens and upon the earth were created . . . All things were created through him and for him. (Col 1:16)
Just as in Ps 33 (32 LXX) where the word of the Lord does not create, but is the means by which God created, so in the Colossian hymn Christ does not create, but is presented as the one in whom, through whom, and for whom God created all things. (Matthew E. Gordley, The Colossian Hymn in Context [Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2007], 61-62 [square brackets my own for clarification]).
