Colossians 1:13 Commentary and Bible Study

Secondly, on Calvary’s cross there had to be not only the death of the whole person, of each believer, but there had to be as well the defeat of Satan. Because Christ took away the guilt and the punishment of his people’s sin, he deprived Satan of his trophies, of his prey. Satan no longer has a claim over us. Christ took us from his ownership, his control, his mastery – Psalm 68 pictures it prophetically. Christ says, ‘Now is the judgement of this world, now shall the prince of the world be cast out.’ Among other things he saw his death on Calvary very much as the defeat of Satan. There would be no grounds for Satan any longer to claim ownership of the people he had captured in sin. If they are among the redeemed, then Christ has atoned for them and died for them. It is in Ephesians 4, Paul quotes Psalm 68 – ‘Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men’, and this describes Christ leading captive Satan with his hosts of demons. Previously Satan possessed us. He resists our salvation all the way. He knew what was going to happen even before Christ came. He knew that the Saviour of the world was coming. We read in Revelation 12 – ‘And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered’ – this is picture language, as if the church gives birth to Christ – ‘for to devour her child as soon as it was born.’ All the way the devil and his hosts opposed Christ, including on Calvary’s cross, but at no point did he fall to them, and finally he defeated them by taking away our sin and bearing our punishment, and thereby depriving them of any claim over us. So we are delivered from darkness, rescued from the darkness from ignorance and ruin at the hands of Satan, rescued from imprisonment in life. We are no longer boxed in to material earthly and carnal things, chained to our sins with no view of Christ, shut in to hopelessness. Thirdly, there is the redemption aspect: ‘and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood.’ Redemption is a purchase price. Most often in Scriptural usage it refers to the purchase of a slave from slavery, and a price is paid to release the slave. There is a transaction; the money is paid; the slave is immediately freed, just as in a shop you pay your money and you take your goods. It is something which happens simultaneously, immediately. The purchase price was paid over so you could be transferred, translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. It was accomplished on Calvary, but put into effect later on in history when you were converted. The word ‘translated’ refers to an Old Testament event, where a conqueror would take a territory and literally uproot thousands of people and carry them off. The Jews were carried out of their homeland against their will and transplanted into the Babylonian Empire, and other nationalities were put back in their place. Now, in a good sense, this very idea is here. God by the Spirit worked in our hearts, showed us our state, picked us up from the kingdom of darkness and carried us into the kingdom of light. ‘His dear Son,’ or as many translate it, ‘the Son of his love’. We are the Father’s gift to the Son, to people his eternal kingdom. He, of course, has purchased us, suffered and died for us, there would be no salvation without him but it has been the Father’s good pleasure to give us to his keeping.