Alive in Christ: Covenant Structure in Colossians 2

“Systematic typology” is not conjecture. It puts exegetical speculation to death and opens to us the mind of Christ.

A scholarly friend took to task my approach to biblical exegesis. “If only we understood the architecture, it would all be apparent to us!” he ridiculed. He asked me to “put the system aside” and argue my point from the text itself. But what if the Bible Matrix is not a system imposed upon the text? What if it is the actual governing principle built into the text, the “genetic” source code that explains not only its form but also its meaning?

His request was akin to asking that all of the musical notes be cast from their respective treble and bass clefs onto the floor that each one might be interpreted not only in isolation but also out of its sequential context. That level of exegesis might be acceptable to those who are tone-deaf, which includes just about all modern biblical scholars. There is a reason that those with a musical background find this process easier than those who do not. Training in the movements of music crosses over easily into the realm of literature.¹For more discussion, see James B. Jordan, Music and Hermeneutics. This should be no surprise. The best literature, TV, and cinema all progress through familiar “musical” beats. A good lecture, comedy, and even a computer game will do the same. The Bible uses “musical” sequencing to create typological harmonies, but also to introduce tensions and dissonances that groan for resolution and rest.

To change the analogy, “putting the system aside” in the analysis of a literary architecture is like ignoring the shape of the house that we might attempt to make sense of the gathered construction materials. Or again, it is insisting on throwing away the key because it is an “imposition” upon the door. Sorry, friend, but the key actually works. There’s no need to break in and steal.

Although the chapter and verse demarcations in the Bible are not inspired and are sometimes inexplicably insensitive to the rhythm of the text, most often they do get it right. The same goes for the subheadings that have been inserted into the text in many translations. In the ESV, the demarcation of Colossians 2:6-15 under the heading “Alive in Christ” is a helpful one, and, as we will see, this pericope works through the common architectural pattern.

Identifying the governing principle not only explains the order of the content included in the passage but also allows all previous instances of the pattern to shine their light upon it through their corresponding use of the biblical covenant-literary convention. Once we perceive the literary “tune,” we are in on the literary “joke.” But the architectural beauty of this particular joke, like all of the “sequential” types in the texts of the Bible, is no laughing matter. It is a revelation of the God who tabernacled among us.

Parsing a passage requires the analyst to identify the beginning of a particular cycle. Because we are dealing with the same structure working at multiple levels, this is not always as easy as we might expect. So, like Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot of God, we must begin with a view from a distance and slowly work our way in to discern the details. In this, I am speaking from experience! We must begin at the beginning. A verse that describes the authority of Christ might be Transcendence, or Ascension, Kingdom, or Glorification. The bounds of the actual sequence must be correctly identified or we will get off on the wrong foot.

This passage begins with the word “Therefore” (verse 6), indicating a new cycle, and its possible end occurs just before another instance of the word “Therefore” (verse 16). That supports the demarcation by subheadings in the ESV. However, we must move beyond the work of these wise translators as we move into analysis of Paul’s use of the covenant-literary cycle.

A quick scan of the passage with the Bible Matrix in mind makes it fairly easy to divide into sections that match the basic themes. The ESV maintains the word order of the original languages as much as possible, so Paul’s meticulously arranged rhythm of ideas is, for the most part, intact.

One thing to watch out for in your initial “flyover” is extreme variation in the lengths of your sections. Sometimes this is simply due to the fact that the translation of some Hebrew or Greek words requires a number of English words to get the point across, but if you have some sections that are twice or three times as long as others, that is a warning that either you have not discerned the rhythm or you have conflated the major cycle with the smaller cycles that comprise it. The text is “wheels within wheels,” so although it can seem complicated, simply standing back and watching them turn—discerning the rhythm—is the best approach to parsing the basic structure of any biblical passage.

1. Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
2. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
3. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
4. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,
5. having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
6. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,
7. by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
8. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Based on that approach, this passage gives us not seven but eight sections. The most common reason for this is the twofold nature of Step 3. In the Creation Week, that is the Land and the Firstfruits. In the Tabernacle, it is the Bronze Altar and the Golden Table. Pictorially, it is the ground raised (as the altar) to create Adam, who is lifted up from the Land into the Garden as a “firstfruits sacrifice,” the “firstborn” in a unique sense. When the Creation Week is viewed as two columns, we can see eight elements because the fruits of Day 3 are a promise of the union with God intended for Day 7. It was the same with the grapes of Eshcol as a firstfruits of the vineyards and cities of the Promised Land. It was the same with the command to honor one’s parents which was the first commandment “with a promise” (Ephesians 6:2). The establishment of the government of Adam follows the same pattern: the Man was given promises of fruitfulness, and a bride (Ascension) before he was qualified or disqualified (Testing). Instead of receiving kingly glory as a gift from God’s hand following priestly obedience, he stole it.

For a look at how this pattern structures the order of sons of Jacob, see Jacob’s Tabernacle.

With this eightfold rubric in mind, we can see if the order of the ideas in the passage fits the architectural steps.

Once the basic structure is identified, many of Paul’s “covenant jokes” become apparent.

• “Rooted and built up” is a reference to Adam and Eve, the Man created from the ground and the Woman constructed like a city. Revelation shows us that Jesus is now our spiritual progenitor, and the Church is our spiritual mother.
• The captivity in stanza 2 alludes to the Exodus, but here the captors are the Judaizers who work for the Pharaonic Herods, the Egyptian-hearted kings who murdered the sons of Israel and were now murdering the Sons of God. The word stoicheia here refers to the “taboos” of the ancient world, especially the “trainer wheels” prohibitions of the Levitical Law which were now obsolete.
• In the Priesthood section, Jesus brings the promises to Abraham to their fulfillment. He is the ultimate fruit of the Land and the womb, the denouement of all the clues concerning barrenness and fruitfulness throughout the Old Testament. It is only Jesus who can stand upon the four-cornered Altar-Land as a lamb that is acceptable to God. Yet, He has turned God’s sword into a plowshare (Zechariah and gives us His own flesh and blood as bread and wine, that is, fellowship with God. Due to His willingness to be cut off without any children, we are not cut off, but only “pruned” by God as Abraham was, that we might bear the fruit that God desires—the fruits of the Spirit.
• The center of the sequence alludes to the death-and-resurrection of Israel in the wilderness, judged by God under the Law of Moses. This turning point in the chiasm was also the turning point in the journey of Israel through the wilderness and the journey of mankind through history.
• The Prophecy stanza refers to the “new Israel” that was uncircumcised yet inherited the promises given to their forefathers. Those events prefigured the inclusion of the Gentiles in the assembly of God, made possible by the death of Christ and the sending of the Spirit. Now that faith had come (circumcision of heart), both circumcision and uncircumcision were meaningless.
• Oath/Sanctions obviously refers to the Day of Atonement, where the curses of the Law were placed upon sacrificial substitutes. For first-century Israel, those Jews who did not believe would suffer the complete list of curses decreed in Deuteronomy 28, right down to the final verse. They would suffer as Israel had never suffered before, and yet, they would still bear that judgment for the sake of the nations. The gifts and calling of God cannot be revoked.
• Succession brings the great reversal: He who humbled Himself was exalted, and those who exalted themselves were humbled. It was not Jesus who was ultimately cut off but the Herodian dynasty. He was, and is, the final judge, the Great Son of God who perfectly represents the Father.

Now, that might be enough for many readers, but there are more typological delights for those who like to get “into the weeds” and zoom in upon each stanza.

• With the same pattern evident in stanza 1, we can see that Jesus is the “only God,” the Creator, and that walking “in Him” is like Israel leaving Egypt “in Moses.”
• Being rooted and being built up in Him refers to nature and culture, Garden and City, and its placement here alludes to the Temple of Solomon. This highlights the rivalry that was going on between the Church and the still-under-construction Temple of the Herods.
• Strength alludes to the “Boaz” pillar of the Temple, and all of the gibborim throughout the Old Testament, those who were valiant, mighty, or of great stature, including godly Boaz and the godless serpentine “gods” in Genesis 6.
• Line 6 corresponds to the Laver and the Edenic spring that watered the earth.

• This wonderful stanza is quite self-explanatory. The reference to the Exodus appears in the Exodus line. The deceit is placed at Testing. The taboos of the world allude to the tongue of gold, the silver, and the Babylonian garment stolen from Jericho, the devoted city, by Achan, son of Zerah. Like the line of Perez, into which Rahab married, it was the spiritual lineage of Christ that would soon inherit the earth.

• Sinai, the burning mountain, was replicated in the Bronze Altar. Moses ascended the mountain, but no priest was permitted to ascend the altar. It is fitting that this stanza is not only fivefold, alluding to the books of Moses, but that each line is a dyad, thus subtly to the above-beside-below structure of the Ten Commandments. Note that the progression is not “stamped” by the type of the Ten Words but stamped by the same die that stamped the Ten Words. Despite the differences, there is a “fraternal” similarity in the sequences, whose parents are a “Word and response” expression of the covenant.

HEAD (Adam – Priest)	COVENANT	BODY (Eve – People)
No False Gods For in Him	TRANSCENDENCE Heavenly authority	No False Oaths to God dwells
Keep the Sabbath (Land) All the fullness	HIERARCHY Earthly authority	Honor Parents (Womb) of the Godhead bodily
No Murder and you are	ETHICS Tablets of Flesh	No Adultery in Him complete
No Theft who is	OATH/SANCTIONS Blessing and Cursing	No False Witness the head
No Coveting House of all rule	SUCCESSION The Image of God	No Coveting Contents and authority

• Paul’s strange obsession with circumcision is explained as being related to the firstfruits promised to Adam in Genesis 2 that were saved, along with his life, only through the act of atonement in Genesis 3. Removal of the skin is an apocalypse, a tearing of a veil, an exposure of naked flesh before God on the Day of Coverings. Abraham’s bore the curse of barrenness upon the Land and the womb on behalf of all nations. Circumcision of heart (that is, a cutting of the heart by the Word) came in its fullness by the death of Christ and the sending of the Spirit. These epistles were written, after all, to the Firstfruits Church, a body that would be offered in accordance with the offering of the head, completing, and fulfilling, the pattern of the Levitical “ascension.”

• The Kingdom (Day 4) stanza works through the Heptateuch’s pattern of dominion-by-covenant, culminating with Jeshua as a better Adam in line 6. Note that the word “faith” is at the center of this central stanza, which makes it the thesis of the entire sequence. The irony is that it corresponds to Israel’s failure in the wilderness, and that fact ought to remind us of the exhortations to the first-century Jewish Christians in the book of Hebrews. The Pentecostal Church was about to be refined by the fire of persecution, and such faith still shines like lights (stars) in the world.

• Step 5 applies the history of Israel to the Gentiles, and appears to condemn the “kingly” sins of the nations. This was the case with the reunion of the northern and southern kingdoms via the “death” of Israel under the rule of Babylon. The book of Hebrews likens that post-exilic “new covenant” reunion to the reunion of Jew and Gentile in the first century.²See Jeremiah’s New Covenant.
• The placement of these statements at Trumpets means that in Christ, the “hosts” of the nations were now an acceptable fragrance before God, the scent of burial spices upon the resurrected body of Christ rather than the stink of death upon “all flesh” under the Edenic curse.

• There are shadows of the Heptateuch in this Atonement stanza (such as the handwriting of God in the Exodus line) but the primary thread is that of penal substitution.
• The “decrees” in line 3 corresponds not only to the ascension of Moses upon Sinai but also to the opening of the New Covenant scroll at Jesus’ ascension in the book of Revelation. The end of the book gives us a glimpse of the final judgment, and Jesus opens the books at the Ascension step in the Succession sequence of the prophecy (Revelation 20-22).

• Step 7 for Adam, if he had believed and obeyed God, would have meant investiture as the Lord’s legal representative on earth, a human “shekinah,” an elohim, a Great Prophet who speaks on earth as God speaks in heaven. This final stanza brilliantly highlights the fact that Jesus’ silence as a lamb exposed the lawless lawyers and lawmakers of the world as naked wannabe-be-gods like Adam.
• The festal calendar and the Tabernacle elements are the underlying themes in this sequence, and reading each line in the light of their typological stamps reveals Paul’s holy sense of irony concerning the claim of the kingdoms of this world. Every one of the seven lines is a joke. The “peace” of Sabbath was a disarmament. The rulers were in darkness like Pharaoh and their minds were veiled like the Israelites. The authorities would be the meat on the “Booths” table when the Roman eagles gathered. The seven golden bowls of the Lampstand-Law would be tipped out upon the City of David to expose its harlotry. That which was done in secret would be trumpeted from the housetops. The victim upon the cross was in fact Christis Victor. Like the sukkoth of Israel at the final feast of the harvest year, the gathered leaves of obsolete sacrifices would be kindling in the day of vengeance and leave them uncovered and unsheltered before God.

If you are new to this method of interpretation, please visit the Welcome page for some help to get you up to speed.

Art: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (detail), Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch.

Thanks to @RealMattGraves (a different friend) for kicking this one off.