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Colossians 1:19-20, 'reconcile to himself all things'

Simon Wartanian | 7,120 views | 2,057 words | 0:11:03 hours | 26 April 2014 22:29

...o;, meaning He is the head both over the good and the bad. He reigns as supreme. But notice here that the verse speaks about institutions and not persons, I mean, about rule and authority, and not rulers and authorities.

In 1Cor 15:24, Christ at His glorious Parousia will destroy all evil “every rule and every authority and power.” That those things are evil which Christ will destroy, needs not be argued about.

In Eph 1:21, Christ reigns supreme “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” in heavenly places. His reigns is over and above all rule and authority, whether it be good or bad, Paul is not concerned in Ephesians 1. Notice also in Eph 1:10 the uniting together of all things in Christ, similar to the “reconciliation” in Colossians 1:20.

In Eph 3:10 we read that it pleased God to display His wisdom through the Church, so that His wisdom may be known to “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” The Lord wanted to demonstrate His wisdom in that He works all things after the counsel of His will and has brought salvation to the Gentiles and Christ through His blood has brought Jewish and Gentile together in one Body (Eph 2). God wanted to clearly demonstrate His victory over the wicked powers which had the unbelieving Gentiles, which now are in Christ, under their sway.

In Eph 6:12 I believe we read the clearest example that this phrase often refers to evil authorities. Paul says:

Eph 6:12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers [τὰς ἀρχάς], against the authorities [τὰς ἐξουσίας], against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Our struggle against sin, is also our struggle against those powers. These rulers and authorities want to bring us down, but God has provided the way in which we can resist and overcome them.

There is a last use of the phrase under question in Titus 3:10 where Paul says that believers should “be submissive to rulers and authorities”. This does not refer to the rulers and authorities as in Eph 6:12, i.e the evil spiritual rulers and authorities, but it refers to the government, which was not really good in the time of the Romans. They were not pro-Christian, but anti-Christ. But still, Paul calls believers to be submissive and obedient to the government.

By now you may rightly question, why I went through this research of the phrase “rulers and authorities”. The reason I believe is, to demonstrate the clear context of Colossians and the sovereignty of Christ over the whole of the created order. Namely, that both good and evil rule and authority exists for His purpose and are under His reign.

In Him All Things Hold Together

The whole cosmos holds together and stays in exists because it is Christ who reigns. This is what Col 1:17 is teaching when it says that “in him all things hold together”. It is because of Him they were created. It is because of Him they still exist. It is for His purpose they exist.

The reason that order rather than chaos exists, is exactly because Christ reigns supreme over all things. It is He who is sovereign over every minute thing and it is He who is directing all things to their purpose (e.g. Heb 1:3; Eph 1:11).

We should keep this mind while we proceed further, that it is because of Christ that even the evil powers exist. It is to demonstrate His glory. It is He who keeps them in existence. Even they “hold together” in H...

1689 Baptist Confession Chapter 27: Of the Communion of Saints

Simon Wartanian | 11,326 views | 4,813 words | 0:25:13 hours | 06 March 2015 23:08

The 1689 Second Baptist Confession Of Faith Confession Commentary Reformed Baptist Chapter 27 Of The Communion Of Saints Fellowship Christian Love Union With Christ

...o be in us (John 15:5; Rom. 8:10; 2 Cor. 13:5; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 3:17; Col. 1:27; 1 John 4:4; Rev. 3:20)! What a blessing! What a great comfort and love!

The Scope of Union With Christ

Eternity Past

The union of Christ with His people begins before time began. In eternity past, the Father gave Him a people to save from their sins (Eph. 1:3-4). He would perfectly obey the Law on their behalf and take the punishment for their law-breaking upon Himself. What the Lord Christ did, He did not do for Himself, but for His people. He is our covenant head. What He did in fulfilling the Covenant of Redemption, He did for His elect, not for Himself. It is said in Ephesians 1:4 that God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him”. The sovereign election of God and the plan of redemption was made with Christ as the center of it all. Notice carefully what is said. it is not said that God chose Christ. But it is said that God chose us in Christ.

Christ’s Life, Death, and Resurrection

We were also united with Christ in His life because the life that He lived He lived in our place so as to provide us positive righteousness. The apostle Paul writes, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). This concerns our union with Christ as our covenant head doing for us what we could never do and that is living a perfectly righteous life. In this way, the righteous life which Christ lived is credited to us. He is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9). This is the active obedience of Christ (see here).

The New Testament teaches that we were united with Him in His death (Rom. 6:5-6, 8; Gal. 2:20). The curse of the law was removed and the wrath of God satisfied on behalf of the elect. In this sense, Christ’s death becomes our death. We, in Christ, died to sin and the punishment of the law of God. The union of the believer with Christ and Christ with the believer is so intimate that it is said, “our old self was crucified with him” (Rom. 6:6). His crucifixion on our behalf was also our crucifixion.

Scripture likewise teaches that we were united with Him in His glorious resurrection (Col. 2:1, 12). His resurrection is the source of our life and justification (Rom. 4:26). Without the resurrection, there would be no redemption.

Christ’s ascension is His entrance into His throne room, having accomplished everything which the Father had commanded Him to do. He went to heaven and sent us the Holy Spirit Who will apply the work of redemption to the elect. Scripture teaches that we share in the heavenly reign of Christ (Eph. 2:6). Furthermore, Scripture encourages to live as Christ currently lives His resurrection life (Rom. 6:2-11).

Our Lives

The elect were not only united with Christ in His life, death, and resurrection in the past, but they are also, in the present, intimately united with Him through faith. The Scriptures teach that our regeneration and new life is the result of our union with Christ. Paul writes that “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5). A few verses later he also says that we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10). In 2 Corinthians 5:17, the apostle says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” This great blessing of new life is a result of uni...

A Review of Perspectives on the Doctrine of God

Simon Wartanian | 1,484 views | 2,894 words | 0:14:58 hours | 14 May 2022 21:35

Theology Proper Arminianism Calvinism Open Theism Review

...ld, then his statement would have fully been justified. The responses made even moderate statements by Dr. Helm to be absolute and extreme. This was unhelpful. Dr. Helm even spends a lot of pages preemptively responding to various views which he thought would be represented in this book. He even discusses middle knowledge and the views of William Lane Craig on that in his section on Arminianism (Arminians usually reject middle knowledge). This space could have been used to focus more on the subject of the book.

Dr. Helm focused on the A-Team—Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, and provided citations from them on their views on predestination, especially as related to Romans 9 and Ephesians 1. His claims could be perhaps substantiated by his A-team, but it was disappointing for me to think that the book would have been more upon the classical attributes such as simplicity, impassibility, immutability, divine eternity, but to find out that the bulk of his chapter was about predestination. Certainly predestination says something about God, but it seems to me to have been better to not make predestination a major point in his chapter.

The modified Calvinist position

Dr. Bruce A. Ware presents the modified Calvinist view. Dr. Ware presents a good case for his modified model, which modifies the Reformed understanding of doctrines such as divine eternity and immutability, as well as employing middle knowledge (p. 77). His modified understanding is also related to how God relates to the world. In the classic understanding, God’s relation in a sense is one-sided. It is the world that changes its relation to God, but God does not change neither acquires new relation toward the world (to protect His aseity and pure actuality). God relation to the world is a relation of reason (not a relationship, a word which classical theists are not fond of). These three doctrines are not irrelated: “Both God’s relationship to time (divine eternity) and God’s relation to change (divine immutability) need some reconsideration and reformulation to demonstrate that the God who made us chooses to live in relationship with what he has made” (pp. 85-86).

Concerning divine eternity, the classical tradition has taught that God exists outside of time and “possesses the whole of His being in one indivisible present” (Louis Berkhof). Dr. Ware suggests we understand eternity in the same way we understand omnipresence, namely, that God exists outside of space-limitation as well as everywhere in space. He says, ‘we can understand God’s relation to time as comprising both his atemporal existence in himself (in se) apart from creation, and his “omnitemporal” existence in relation to the created order he has made (in re)”’ (p. 88). As critics have argued, this posits two existences in God whereby He is obviously not simple (without metaphysical parts), but also something other than the eternal God is interacting with us in time. In his words, ‘when he [God] created the heavens and the earth, he brought into being their twofold dimensions of spatiality and temporality. Since God chose to become immanent with the creation he had made, he chose, then, to “enter” fully into both the spatial and the temporal dimensions of creation’ (p. 89). God in Himself is different than God with us. Dr. Ware them moves to argue for compatibilism (in combination with middle knowledge). This is a fine chapter, well-written and not in a polemical voice. Although I disagree with his modi...