Chapter 1 – One God Translation

Colossians

   1 From Paul, an Apostle of Messiah Jesus by God’s will, and Timothy our brother, 2 to the saints, the faithful brothers and sisters in Messiah, who live in Colossae: Grace and peace to you from God,[1247] who is our Father.
    3 We are always thankful to God, the Father of our lord Jesus Messiah, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard about your faith in Messiah Jesus and your love for all the saints. 5 This faith and love are based on the hope[1248] stored up for you in heaven.[1249] You heard about this hope in the word of the truth, that is, the Gospel, 6 which has come to you. That Gospel is producing fruit[1250] and growing all over the world, just as it has among you, since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in truth.[1251] 7 You learned the Gospel from Epaphras, our much-loved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of the Messiah on our behalf, 8 and he has told us about your love in the spirit.
    9 And so, since the day we heard this, we have not stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you may conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the lord, fully pleasing to him, producing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. 11 Our prayer is that you may be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, leading to a steady endurance and patience, with joy, 12 giving thanks to the Father, the One who has made you fit to have a share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. [1252]
    13 He rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred[1253] us to the Kingdom of the Son whom He loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.
    15 He is the visible image[1254] of the invisible God, the firstborn[1255] over all creation, 16 because in him [1256] in intention everything was originally created[1257] by God in heaven and on earth — the visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities — all these things are now created[1258] by God through him and for him. 17 He is superior to all things and in him everything coheres. 18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,[1259] so that he himself might be promoted to become first in everything. [1260] 19 For God was pleased to have all His fullness live in him, [1261] 20 and through him to reconcile all things to Himself by making peace through the blood of his cross — through him, whether things on earth or in heaven.
    21 And you were once alienated and hostile in your minds, participating in evil activities. 22 But now He has reconciled you through the death of the historical person[1262] of His Son, to present you before Him holy, faultless and blameless — 23 that is, if you remain in the faith, grounded and steadfast, without shifting away from the hope promised in the Gospel which you heard.[1263] This Gospel has been heralded in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a minister of that Gospel.
24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and I am completing in my present human life[1264] what still remains of Messiah’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. 25 I became the church’s servant, according to God’s commission which was given to me for you, to complete the preaching of the Gospel-word of God,[1265] 26 that is, the divine secret hidden for ages and generations which has now been revealed to His saints. 27 God chose to make known among the Gentiles the riches of the glory of this revealed mystery, which is Messiah in you, the hope for glory. [1266] 28 We proclaim him, warning and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Messiah. 29 I work hard for this, striving with his energy[1267] which works powerfully in me.

Colossians

[1247]

The one God (o theos: transliteration reflects modern Greek pronunciation), the only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and of Jesus. “The only one who has immortality whom no one can see or has ever seen” (1 Tim. 6:16). The God of the NT is certainly not the triune God of later church councils. “God” (often “the God”) means the Father over 1300 times in the NT, echoing the summary statement of the Hebrew Bible in Mal. 2:10, where the one Creator God is defined as the one Father. Thousands of singular personal pronouns define God as a single divine Self/Person (cp. “I am YHVH,” and “I YHVH” some 215 times, plus thousands of other singular personal pronouns defining God). This concept is very uncomplex. It has been passionately held by Jews during the whole of their history and is the heart of Jewish belief today. Jews are rightly aghast that a triune God should be imported into their sacred Scripture. The unitarian view of God was held by Jesus and is thus binding on his followers (Mk. 12:29; Jn. 17:3; 5:44). The simple concept of One God, the Father became hopelessly confused when later “church fathers” tried to explain God in terms of Greek philosophical concepts unknown to Jesus and the NT. Ps. 110:1 provides the key to the relationship between the One God, Yahweh, and “my lord” (adoni). Adoni is always a non-Deity title, every one of the 195 times it appears in the OT. The false capital on the second lord of Ps. 110:1 misleads many readers. Many commentators have even misreported the second lord as “Lord” and misled the public by saying the second lord is Adonai, which it is not! Jesus is the lord Messiah (Lk. 2:11), not the Lord God, which would make two who are God and thus two Gods. In about every 6th verse in the NT (17% of the verses) you are going to encounter the word GOD or equivalent. This is very often in the Greek “the God,” i.e. the One God of Israel, not any God of our invention. Bishop N.T. Wright says that with the expression “the God” (not just “God”) the writers of the NT were providing “an essentially Jewish monotheistic concept of God” (Jesus and the People of God, 1992, pp. xiv-xv). That truth is explicitly stated by Jesus in Mk. 12:29: “The Lord our God is one Lord.” That is not a Trinitarian creed and the founder of our faith was a unitarian. Jesus never authorized worship of a triune God. There is no verse in the Bible where “God” means a triune God. In the Bible when people said “GOD” (YHVH, Elohim, Adonai, theos, about 11,000 times) none of those statements about GOD means a triune God. For an intelligent devotional life and relation to God in spirit and truth, this is the first truth which needs to be taught. It must not be withheld from seekers after God and Jesus.

[1248]

Of the future Kingdom on earth (Mt. 5:5; Rev. 5:10; Ps. 37, etc.). The fact is that love, the cardinal virtue of Christians, is based on, i.e. is dependent on a grasp of the hope of the future Kingdom on earth, the promised inheritance. Any confusion over the future hope will result in a diminishing of love and a distortion of the Gospel. It will result in a loss of vital life through the spirit.

[1249]

It is essential not to misunderstand here. The reward is now promised and stored up in heaven, waiting to be conferred on true believers by Christ when he returns to the earth in order that the saints can rule with him on that future renewed earth (Rev. 2:26; 3:21; 5:10; 20:1-6; 1 Cor. 6:2; 2 Tim. 2:12; Dan. 7:18, 22, 27; Lk. 19:11ff). Note the parallel with John 17:5 where Jesus asked for the glory which he “had with God,” i.e. prepared and promised from the beginning. In God’s great plan, and in biblical idiom, you can “have” things now which are guaranteed for the future (see also Mt. 6:1). In John 17:22, 24 believers who were not even yet born “have been given” (i.e. in promise) the same glory. On no account is the NT to be read with alien English thought forms in mind. Jesus and the early church leaders (with the exception of Luke) were Jews! And Jesus never said, despite mistranslation in some versions like NIV, that he was going back to the Father! He was in fact going to the Father, with Whom he now is, at God’s right hand, until his future Second Coming (Acts 1:11; 3:21, etc).

[1250]

An obvious reference to the parable of the sower, where fruit is born by those who first accept and understand the Gospel of the Kingdom — “the word of the Kingdom” (Mt. 13:19). All true Gospel preaching goes back to the Gospel as preached by Jesus (Heb. 2:3). Without the life-giving seed, which is the word of the Kingdom (Lk. 8:11; Mt. 13:19), there can be no fruit. There can be no true repentance and forgiveness in the absence of an understanding of the word of the Kingdom (Mk. 4:11- 12). The Devil works at destroying the faith at its root which is the Gospel of the Kingdom. Luke 8:11- 12 are dramatically significant on this point. The Devil knows that an intelligent and obedient reception of the Gospel of the Kingdom leads to the acquiring of immortality (2 Tim. 1:10).

[1251]

Grace and truth are not opposing values. They are bound up with each other. There is no grace apart from truth and no truth apart from grace. Grace in the NT never means a weakening of the importance of the truth (2 Thess. 2:10). Jesus “came to give us an understanding in order to know God” (1 Jn. 5:20), and it is by Messiah’s knowledge that he makes us right with God (Isa. 53:11), as well as by his atoning, substitutionary death.

[1252]

In the Age to Come. The power of the spirit must be experienced now as a downpayment of the future inheritance of the Kingdom at the return of Jesus (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14).

[1253]

The Kingdom of God has not yet begun worldwide. This happens at the future 7th trumpet (Rev. 11:15-18). But Christians in preparation for that Kingdom have been removed from the evil of the present world-systems by being radically separate and different. In that sense the international body of believers, God’s Israel (Gal. 6:16; Phil. 3:13), the church, is the Kingdom of God, the royal family in training for the coming worldwide empire of God and Jesus, when Jesus returns at his spectacular, visible return. Until that future arrival of Jesus in power and glory, Christians must be prepared to suffer affliction. This will be alleviated and brought to an end when believers receive “release and relief” at the future coming of Jesus following the Great Tribulation (Mt. 24:29ff; 2 Thes. 2:4-9). On no account should believers fall for the colossal falsehood that the teachings of Jesus, including of course in Matt. 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, are not for them! See also 1 Tim. 6:3; 2 John 7-9.

[1254]

Jesus as the image of God is of course the second Adam, not God (which would make two Gods, which is not monotheism) or a created angel. The subject of discourse here is the Messiah supernaturally begotten in Mary (Mt. 1:18, 20; Lk. 1:35). He is the fulfillment of the wisdom of God planned from the beginning. Jesus is here, as always, the man Messiah as in 1 Tim 2:5.

[1255]

Israel was also God’s firstborn (Ex. 4:22). The sense is that of the preeminent one. Jesus is now, under God, the head of all creation and also the preeminent one from the dead, as being the first human to be raised from death to immortality. Only God has immortality inherently (1 Tim. 6:16). Jesus the Son of God was given immortality when he was resurrected on the Sunday following his crucifixion on Friday (Lk. 24:21, etc). All things will ultimately be subjected to the One God, the Father (1 Cor. 15:28).

[1256]

“In him.” This is certainly not “by him.” “en auto. This does not mean ‘by him’” (Expositors Greek Testament, Vol. 3, p. 504). I take en here as causal, i.e., because of him, for his sake, with him in view, with him in intention. “We must render [en] ‘because of’ in Col. 1:16” (Turner, A Grammar of NT Greek, Vol. 3, p. 253). James Dunn translates “in him in intention” (Christology in the Making, p. 190). Christians were also “en” Christ before the world began (Eph. 1:4). This is existence in the divine plan, not actual existence (cp. 2 Tim 1:9; 1 Pet. 1:2, 20). F.F. Bruce was supportive of this understanding of Paul when he wrote to me in June, 1981: “But whether any New Testament writer believed in the Son’s separate conscious existence as a second Divine Person’ before his incarnation is not so clear. On balance, I think the Fourth Evangelist did so believe; I am not nearly so sure about Paul.”

[1257]

Aorist of “create.” The passive is a divine passive. “Everything was created,” i.e., by God, as is stated some 50 times in Scripture. God was entirely unaccompanied at the original creation. Isa. 44:24 is the decisive and definitive verse on this point. Cp. Rev. 4:11. “The passive ‘were created’ indicates, in a typically Jewish fashion, the activity of God the Father, working in the Son. To say ‘by,’ here and at the end of verse 16, could imply, not that Christ is the Father’s agent, but that he was alone responsible for creation” (N.T. Wright, The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and to Philemon, p. 71). To say that Jesus was involved in the original creation as active agent destroys the witness of Matthew and Luke in the birth narratives. It also destroys the unitarian creed of Jesus and the NT (Mk. 12:29; Jn. 17:3).

[1258]

Perfect passive tense of “create” with continuing results. The change of verb tense is striking and deliberate (see Turner, Grammatical Insights into the NT, p. 125: “They have been and are being created.”). The new creation is through Jesus and the earlier creation of authorities was “because of” of Jesus, “in him in intention,” certainly not “by him.” God the Father created by Himself (Isa. 44:24) and God, not Jesus (who did not yet exist!) rested on the 7th day (Heb. 4:4). Jesus the Son of God is actively involved in the New Creation and Jesus is the one now sanctifying his brothers and sisters (Heb. 2:11). Jesus knew that God, not he himself, “created them male and female at the beginning” (Mk. 10:6).

[1259]

The first human being to gain immortality by being raised by the Father from death.

[1260]

Jesus was promoted to this position of superiority, by resurrection. It is obvious, then, that he is not God, since God cannot be promoted! Jesus gained that supreme position when God exalted him to His right hand in accordance with Ps. 110:1 (equal to the celebration of man in Ps. 8:4-6), which is the key theological and Christological verse governing the NT. The second lord (adoni) is never a title of Deity. One cannot gain first position, if one always had it! The same confusion of thought is exposed by Bishop Wright’s “life after life after death.” You cannot become alive if you are already alive. It is likewise impossible to “begin to exist” (Mt. 1:18, 20; Lk. 1:35; 1 Jn. 5:18) if one already exists! The idea of a literally preexisting Son of God throws the entirety of Scripture into incoherence. There is no “God the Son” in the NT. This was an invention of the very confused philosophical theology of post-biblical “fathers.” The Son was “foreknown” by God (1 Pet. 1:20), and this is very different concept from “preexistence.” The Greek word for preexistence, prouparchein (found in the NT), is never used of Jesus. The whole point of the Bible is lost if Jesus is not fully a man. “Orthodoxy” declares him to be “man, but not a man.” Scripture is the story of the reconciliation of God and man, and how man can fulfill his destiny (Ps. 8; 110). God does not need to be reconciled to God! And Jesus, if his “ego” is God, is an inappropriate model for us as human beings.

[1261]

Note that the same language about “the fullness of God” is applicable to believers also in Eph. 3:19. Having the fullness of God, via His spirit, thus does not mean that a person is God!

[1262]

Note the use of “flesh” to mean human person, as in 2:1.

[1263]

An obvious rejection of the false popular teaching of “once saved, always saved.” Christianity in its pristine form constantly urges us to continue in the process of salvation. And “salvation is now nearer to us [not further behind us!] than when we first believed” (Rom. 13:11). Some people “believe for a while,” Jesus said, but they give up the Christian life when others things interfere (Lk. 8:13).

[1264]

My present human life.

[1265]

The word of God/Gospel is always to be defined as “the Gospel about the Kingdom and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12; Lk. 4:43; 8:12; Mt. 13:19; Heb. 2:3, etc).

[1266]

Glory and future Kingdom of God convey the same idea. James and John asked for positions of authority in the future “Kingdom” or “glory” (Mk. 10:37; Mt. 20:21).

[1267]

Heb. 2:11: Jesus is the one making the members of the church holy, sanctifying them.