trees are suffering becauThat is whyColossian 1:15-20 is the unique passage which has given the idea if

Christ authority toward universe. It has also emphasized the existence of God having primary position in
all practical life of Christian. The term of ‘head’ which is integrated into Christ is intimated with the other
phrase as mentioned in other letters of Paul 1. This term is also frequently mentioned in other letters of
Paul. And church is familiar to this term and sometimes express that Christ is the head of the church.
When I was a member of Indonesian Christian Student Movement, I would hear the term of ‘Christ is the
head of movement’.
In verse 18, Christ is identified as the head of body, that is church.

Mission is assigning work of institution or organization which is carried out by a person or group
to accomplish her vision or aim, involved method of approach. All institutions have mission because they
establish themselves for any reason of aim and objectives. Church is one of any institution and known as
religious group which her members are Christians. Church has been established by community of
Christians for one reason: the result of discipleship by members of early church, and Jesus Christ as the
incarnation of God is the initiator.
From the idea of mission above, mission of church can be identified as assigning work or calling
which is carried out by a person or group, laity or ministers as representative of God to accomplish their
aim or vision on confessing that Jesus Christ is the Lord and the Savior for all creation.
Acknowledging Jesus Christ as the savior is very important today because our basic belief says
that all people have fallen in sin. The relationship between human and God has been broken and even
the horizontal relationship between human and other creation is also broken. It is only God can
reconcile it, and it has been accomplished through his incarnation in Jesus Christ by being human,
sacrificing himself to redeem human’s sin. Now the relationship has been reconciled and healed, we
should be glad and even all nature should be glad and peaceful.
However, the reality today is in contrast. Many people are suffering because of war, conflict,
and poverty. Animals are killed, trees are exploited, circumstance is damaged, in short, God’s creation is
suffering and crying.
are Why the confession is very important? And what is the mission of the church for the world
or creation of God? And how does Paul explain the importance of the head of the body according to
Colossian 1:15-20? We can discuss it in this paper.

II. The Context of The Letter

There is a unique hymn attached to this passage as a hymnic description of the significance of
Christ: he is the agent of creation, redeemer of the world, the head of the church (1:13-20)2.
Deutero-Paul begins by defining the place of Christ: (1) with reference to God; (2) with reference to
creation. Taking up an idea which he had already touched on in 2 Cor. 4:4 he describes Christ as the
likeness (or image) of God. The word implies (as it does in Philo) that he not merely reflects God but in
some real sense represents Him; the invisible God becomes manifest in Christ. As thus manifesting God

1
As theological scholars admit that Colossian is Deutero-Pauline, and I agree with that, however, I will simply use
the name of Paul as my exposition in this paper.
2
Werner Georg Kummel, Introduction to The New testament, Abingdon Press, New York, 1973, p. 336.
He is born first before all the creation (the first born of all creation), i.e. prior in time to all created things
and also prior in dignity. Christ is prior to creation because he is the ground of creation; by or in him all
things were created. In Christ the creation has has its purpose source and inner purpose. He is the
principle behind all things, and through Him they have unity and meaning. Not only the visible but the
heavenly world is thus grounded in Christ (things both in heaven and on earth)3.
It is the same thought which the writer of Revelation expresses when he calls Christ the Alpha
and Omega – the ultimate cause of the universe and also its final goal. This, then, is the cosmic
significance of Christ. He is prior to (before) all (things) – not merely in point of time but causally – and
all coheres in him (in him all things hold together). Springing from him they find in him their common
bond and centre. He is like the root which makes the innumerable branches and leaves into a living
tree4.
Paul now proceeds to affirm the unique worth of Christ from another point of view. As he is the
source of universal life so he is the source of that new life which is operative in the church. Elsewhere
Paul thinks of Christ as the second Adam – the progenitor of a new race of mindkind. Here he ascribes a
still wider scope to Christ’s work of redemption. Through him not only the race of men but all created
beings have entered on a new phase of existence. The church in which he reigns is the beginning of a
world-wide process of reconciliation. Christ is the central principle of the universe, and he is the head of
the body, that is, of the church. He is the head of the church, not merely in the sense that the head is
the most important member of the body and controls all the others. The thought rather is that all the
forces of the body are gathered up in the head. It is the seat of that life and will which are distributed
through the different members and unite them into an organic whole. This significance of Christ as the
head is more fully defined in the words that follow: in virtue of his primacy as the first to be born from
the dead.
Two ideas are combined in this description of Christ as the beginning. The church originated
with him, who was ‘the first-born among many brethren’ (Rm. 8:29), and it depends on him continually,
as the source of all its life and energy. This is due to the fact of the resurrection. He was the first to be
born from the dead, and so possesses in himself that new and higher life which his people now share, in
virtue of their mystical union with him5. He rose again to have preeminence over all 6. Always he had
been first, but by his resurrection he entered on a sovereignity which was still wider in its scope than
that which was his already. This is brought out by the addition of words, which may either be translated
‘in all things’ or over all (beings).
At the point of ‘fullness’, Paul introduces the idea in which the epistle to Ephesians is to have its
central motive7. Since ‘the fullness’ of the divine nature dwells in Christ he has power to reconcile all
(thins) to God, and this he does because he has made peace by the blood of his cross. For Paul the dead
of Christ is the divine act by which the whole work of salvation is accomplished. All the powers hostile to
man – sin, death, the law, the demonic agencies – were vanquished on the Cross, so that now there is

3
E.F. scott,. The Epistles of Paul., The Colossians, to Philemon and To Ephesians. Hodder and Stoughton, London. P.
21.
4
E.F. Scott., Ibid. p. 22.
5
E.f. scott. Ibid. p. 24.
6
Ibid Scott. P. 24-25.
7
Ibid, scott. P. 26.
peace; that relation between man and God which was formerly broken has been restored. By his
reference to the blood of his cross Paul does not mean to suggest any of the sacrificial ideas which have
often been read into his theology. All that the phrase implies is that Christ died a violent death, like a
soldier on the field of battle – only in this instance the death was also the stroke of victory. Man’s
enemies were destroyed in the death of Christ. In the present verse, however, Paul is not thinking
merely of the peace which was secured for man. He conceives of the strife in which human life has been
involved as only a single phrase of a wider conflict. The whole universe has been at war with itself, and
Christ has brought peace into man’s life because he has reconciled all (things), destroying those
mysterious forces which have everywhere caused disunion8.
The significance of Paul’s thesis that in verses 16-17 is that Christ is the Cosmic Christ, cannot be
exaggerated. The writer is daring to declare that Jesus is God’s agent in the creation of the universe, that
he is the sustaining power that maintains its life, and the ultimate goal to which it is working its way, the
centre of the divine event to which the whole creation moves 9.

Christ relation to the universe

First, Christ establishes the unity of creation. All realms of nature are held together by the Divine
presence. The true genealogy of Christ reaches back not merely to the Jew, but, as even the Jewish
Gospel of St. matthew reminds us, it will bring us then the term of the son of Adam’ necessitate at last
the final link ‘which was the son of God’ 10.
Christ establishes the essential Goodness of the universe, considered not in its present stage of
imperfection or incompleteness, but in the light of that glory which is to be revealed. Very much of the
present day cynical and often hypocritical depreciation of this world would be corrected, and become
impossible, if only we were continuously expectant through Christ of that great climax of evolution
which is to justify the existence of things material as well as of ‘things to come’. Whether we accept the
evolutionary theory of cosmology or that of continuous creation, the whole mysterious order (which
looks more like a multiverse, with its myriads of galaxies) becomes a real universe by becoming Christo-
centric. It is revealed as being ‘in him’ because he is its creative centre. It is also ‘through him’ that it is
carried onward to its goal by ‘the love that moves the sun and the stars. It is ‘unto him’ as perceiving in
him its ultimate goal. Seen thus, all things cohere in him who holds up with his pierced hands the whole
creation11.

III. Exegetical Work on

IV. Cosmo-centric Vision of the head of the body and Its Relevance for the Mission of Church
3.1.
3.2. Global Solidarity
3.2. Mission of the church for Nature

8
Ibid, scott, p. 26.
9
L.J. Bagott., A New Approach to Colossians, A.R. Mowbray, London, 1961, P. 49.
10
L.J. Bagott, p. 60.
11
L.J. p. 61.
IV. Conclusion