“All
things” comprises every animate and inanimate thing that has been created.
Included among these created things are “the visible things and the invisible
things” (τα ορατα και τα αορατα, ta orate kai ta aorata). There are
realities in the creation that can be seen and those that cannot be seen with
the naked eye. The latter is especially pointed to by the directly following
enumeration of heavenly sovereign forces that cannot be seen with the human
eye, so that at least part of the “heaven” in verse 16 overlaps with the “heavenlies”
in Ephesians, where the evil powers of Satan reside (Eph. 1:21; 3:10; 6:11-12).
(G. K. Beale, Colossians and Philemon [Baker Exegetical Commentary on
the New Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2019], 93)
The
second half of Col. 1:17 clarifies this very point about the ongoing
preservation of creation: “in Him all things hold together.” Here the εν (en, in) plus the dative αυτω (auto, him) is ambiguous. It could connote
sphere (so most translations) or agency (the latter being preferred by Douay,
KJV, and HCSB), though both might be in mind. Yet since Christ as the agent of
creation has been repeated twice in verse 16, it may be that this is more of
the focus here. It is by Christ’s sovereign rule that creation is maintained,
as it was created from the beginning. (ibid., 96)
Philo’s
repeated reference to an incorporeal and eternal Adam-like figure and a
subsequent corporeal Adam is a striking parallel to Col. 1:15, where Christ is
portrayed as existing before creation yet with Adamic features. This is a
precedent showing that one could be thought to be in the image of God and not
have bodily, visible existence before the creation of the earthly Adam in Gen.
1-2. However, there appears to be no direct dependence of Paul on Philo at this
point, though presumably Paul may have been aware of Philo’s writings.
Occasionally
other Jewish writers referred to a physical Adam being the image of the “invisible”
God, but they did not distinguish between two Adam-like figures in the way
Philo did. Thus LAE 35 (ca. 100 AD) refers to God as Adam’s “unseen Father”
because “he is your image.” (Ibid., 120)
[Col
1:20] does not indicate “universal salvation,” but that at the consummation
Christ will bring about a harmony of all things in the new, eternal creation,
after decisively judging evil and putting it in its judicial place (as 3:6
indicates; cf. also 3:25). This the idea of “reconciliation” in this passage is
a reference to the restoration of all things. . . . “reconciliation” is
virtually equivalent to the OT concept of the restoration of Israel . . . (Ibid.,
111)
What
points further to κτισις
in Col. 1:23 being a reference to the entire creation and not merely human
creatures is that, as we have seen in verse 20, restoration at the very end of
time involves bringing about a harmonious restoration of the entire animate and
inanimate creation (see Rom. 8:19-21). (Ibid., 132)