Let me share my thoughts con­cern­ing expres­sions of divine favour, a con­cept so often ignored by the expos­i­tors of the NT. As an exam­ple let us con­sider the fol­low­ing passage:

Col 1:16 for in him all things were cre­ated, in heaven and on earth, vis­i­ble and invis­i­ble, whether thrones or domin­ions or prin­ci­pal­i­ties or author­i­ties — all things were cre­ated through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

There is a dan­ger in tak­ing such state­ments lit­er­ally. In the Gospel of the Hebrews (the Ara­maic ver­sion of Matthew) used by the Ebion­ites Jesus says about James (cor­rectly Jacob) his brother:

“For his sake heaven and earth was created”.

It is clear that this state­ment can­not be taken lit­er­ally, rather, such state­ments were used as ref­er­ences to divine favours. James was right­eous, there­fore, highly favoured of God, and God cre­ated the world for the sake of the right­eous (and not for the wicked), and this is the real mean­ing of the passage.

The “all things”, which are “thrones or domin­ions or prin­ci­pal­i­ties or author­i­ties” are offices of author­ity cre­ated “through him and for him” makes more sense when we under­stand that Jesus fills two of these, namely the office of the High Priest and that of the King, thus, these offices were cre­ated for him. There are other posi­tions of author­ity that will be filled by oth­ers in the Kingdom.

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