Jesus 1, Satan 0: Christ’s triumph in Colossians 2:15

It was a stunning victory, a serpent-smashing triumph. Paul explains:

When you were spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were not free from the power of your sinful self, God made you alive with Christ, and he forgave all our sins. He canceled the debt, which listed all the rules we failed to follow. He took away that record with its rules and nailed it to the cross. God stripped the spiritual rulers and powers of their authority. With the cross, he won the victory and showed the world that they were powerless (Colossians 2:13-15, NCV, bolding added).

This militant tone is woven through Colossians 1 & 2. In 1:13, the Apostle rejoiced that “God has freed us from the power of darkness, and he brought us into the Kingdom of his dear son” (NCV). Having been liberated, we must avoid being recaptured through “philosophy and empty deception” (2:8, NASB).

Sometimes theologians are uncomfortable with the Christus Victor motif in the New Testament. It doesn’t seem to fit very well with “loving God and neighbor,” the watchword of relational theology. But the two needn’t be seen as contradictory. If someone is captive, only love is a strong enough motivation for daring raids behind enemy lines.

Yet Paul understood the importance of balance. In Colossians 3, he urges patience, compassion, and humility, then caps it off with a call to love:

 Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful (vv. 14-15, NASB).

There is a place in Christian theology for both Mildred Wynkoop and her emphasis upon love and Gregory Boyd and his image of earth as a spiritual battlefield. There is room for both because the New Testament speaks of both. What God has joined together, let no one put asunder.

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