Colossians

According to the last words of this phrase, God will triumphantly-parade these powers “in him.” The Greek phrase is actually ambiguous. It could mean either “in him” (probably referring to Christ) or “in it.” The it would be the cross, mentioned at the end of verse 14. Perhaps there is no need to decide between the two, for when Paul refers to the cross, he’s referring to the cross of Christ; and when he refers to Christ, he’s thinking of Christ as the crucified one. So either way, the cross was the scene where God through Christ stripped the powers and exposed them for what they are. Jesus was not, then, purely passive on the cross, but was accomplishing the defeat of the primal-powers (Gunton 1989: 77).

The cross shows Jesus to be a conqueror completely unlike the Roman emperors. While the emperors used violence against their foes in war, Jesus did not act violently toward the powers, but instead suffered violence himself at their hands. While the emperors rode in the back of the parade, driving their foes ahead of them to their deaths, Jesus did not ride in the back, but went to his own death first. While the emperors rode to public acclaim as heroes, Jesus went forth as a loser in the eyes of the world. Jesus has no desire to gloat over the primal-powers, but he did and does want their reign in the world and in our lives to end. “The powers of evil are defeated not by some overwhelming display of divine power but by the weakness of Christ’s death” (Lincoln 2000: 628), “not by might versus might, not by regime overtaking regime, but by sacrificial love absorbing the violence and fury of the powers (Walsh and Keesmaat 2004: 111). Evil wins when the battle is hate versus hate, but loses at the cross.

Most people in the first century would have regarded Jesus’ crucifixion as signaling defeat and humiliation, and it did. But it was not the defeat of the one hanging on the cross, but the defeat of those who put him there. It was not so much the humiliation of Jesus as the humiliation of the powers. In some strange way, when the powers put Jesus to death on the cross, they were unwittingly doing themselves in. They thought the cross was their moment of triumph, in which even God’s Son had come under their power, but instead they were defeated at the cross, losing not only Christ, but everything else formerly under their control. “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8, ESV). But as it is, they did crucify him, and in a sense, Jesus pulled them onto the cross with himself. In the stripping of Jesus, the powers were also stripped. In the mocking of Jesus, they were being mocked. In the parading of Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem, they were being paraded. Although the powers want to give the impression to the world that they are respectable, law-abiding, truthful, peace-loving, honorable, just and even religious, the cross of Jesus exposed their false claims, their rebellion against God, their lies, their violence and injustice. Their actions against Jesus demonstrated that they had over-reached their authority, and thus lost their authority. There is a sense in which this is true on the political level, for Jesus was crucified “under Pontius Pilate,” but Paul is especially thinking of how this is true in a broader sense of all the powers-that-be. This broader sense is spelled out in Isaiah’s prophecy of the last days in which he states, “On the day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth” (Isa 24:21, ESV). In the same way, both spiritual and political powers are defeated by Christ.

Because the primal-powers were exposed by Christ and his cross, there is no more need to fear them. The only power they have is the power of the bluff, to fool us into thinking they still have power over us. The primal-powers want us to think that they have tempting goods to fulfill us. They want us to think that we still have a debt (perhaps to God, society, the flesh or themselves) that we need to work off. They want us to think that they’ve got the plan to save us or the power to destroy us. They are like the bank robber who looks as if he has a gun inside of his coat pocket pointing straight at us, even though all he really has in his pocket is his finger. As long as we believe the robber has a gun, we’ll do as he says, but once we realize he has no weapon, we can call his bluff. It’s the same with the primal-powers. As long as we believe the primal-powers do indeed have power, then they can control us. But it’s a different story when we realize that God has exposed them. We will not be taken captive by the lies of these primal-powers (Col 2:8) once we realize that they have been taken captive by God. This is why Paul wants the Colossians (and us) to call their bluff. The powers have nothing we want and nothing we fear, for we are in Christ, dead to sin and alive to God.

But if we only focus on the fate of the primal-powers, we have missed the primary message here. Not only does this parade expose and shame the primal-powers and authorities, but it also shows that Jesus is the Victor. God “raised [Jesus] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Eph 1:20–21, ESV).