IN WHICH THERE IS NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN: hopou ouk eni (3SPAI): (Ps 117:2; Isa 19:23-25; 49:6; 52:10; 66:18-22; Jer 16:19; Hos 2:23; Amos 9:12; Micah 4:2; Zec2:11; 8:20-23; Mal 1:11; Mt 12:18-21; Acts 10:34,35; 13:46-48; 15:17; 26:17,18; Ro 3:29; 4:10,11; 9:24-26; Ro 9:30,31; 10:12; 15:9-13; 1Cor 12:13; Gal 3:28; Eph 3:6)

"In which" (hópou compound relative adverb from poú = where) when used of place it means where, in which or what place. The "place" described is the renewed state of the "new man" in Christ, i.e., in Christ there are no class distinctions. People are not born equal in terms of mental capacity, physical capacity, etc, and so there is no such thing as true equality in this life. Christianity changes that because regeneration brings true equality to people.

"There is" (éni is the contraction of énesti = there is, third person singular present active indicative). The verb as used here signifies not only the fact but the impossibility. The thrust of the Greek is "in which state there continually cannot be".

Paul declared to the Galatians

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28)

All those who are one with Jesus Christ are one with each other.  All believers share the same privilege and position. Within the body of Christ all have the same relationship to God. All are of equal value.

No is the Greek word ou signifying absolute negation. In other words "There absolutely does not exist..." is the force of this statement.

As Lightfoot says

“Not only does the distinction not exist, but it cannot exist. It is a mundane distinction, and therefore has disappeared.” 

Regeneration brings true equality. People are not equal physically, mentally or economically in this life. Only the gospel can place people on equal footing with God and others.

The Christian church should have no barriers for Christ breaks down all barriers and accepts all people who come to Him. Christians should be building bridges, not walls.

In Christ all distinctions are transcended; at the foot of the cross the ground is level.

GREEK AND JEW CIRCUMCISED OR UNCIRCUMCISED BARBARIAN SCYTHIAN: Hellen kai Ioudaios peritoms kai akrobustia, barbaros skuthe: (Circumcision 1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 5:6; 6:15) (Barbarian Acts 28:2,4; Romans 1:14; 1 Corinthians 14:11)

The Greek (Héllēn) when he is converted, becomes a new being, with a new citizenship, a new allegiance. Now he is not so much a Greek but is in fact a Christian. The same reasoning holds for each of the categories Paul lists. The result is a unity in one body with One Head, Christ Jesus.

The Greek and Jew (Ioudaíos), the latter circumcised (peritomé from perí = around, about + témnō = to cut off) and the former, uncircumcised, (akrobustía from ákron = the extreme + búō = to cover) were separated by seemingly insurmountable racial and religious barriers. o label someone as uncircumcised means to designate somebody as not being a Jew and, therefore, outside of the promises.

The Jew and the Greek had nothing to do with each other. The world of the New Testament, as our day, was full of divisions between people. The Greek looked down on slaves and barbarians and Scythian. The Greek was the aristocrat of the Roman world and lauded it over anyone who was not Greek in his culture.

The Jew looked down on the Gentile. Jews refused to enter a Gentile house, would not eat a meal cooked by Gentiles and would not buy meat prepared by Gentile butchers. When Jews returned to Israel, they showed their disdain for Gentiles by shaking off the dust from their clothes and sandals. Even the apostles were reluctant to accept Gentiles as equal partners in the church (cf. Acts 10-11). The Pharisee would pray each morning,

“I thank Thee, God, that I am a Jew, not a Gentile; a man, not a woman; and a freeman, and not a slave.”

Yet all these distinctions are removed in Christ. (see note) (see also discussions of in Christ and in Christ Jesus) The gospel broke down every barrier, so that Jew and Gentile became one in Christ.

Paul described that supernatural transaction Ephesians writing that

"But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father." (Eph 2:13-18).

Barbarian (barbaros) strictly means stammering, stuttering or uttering unintelligible sounds and so was used to describe strange speech or foreign language. The Greeks used the word of any foreigner ignorant of the Greek language and the Greek culture, whether mental or moral, with the added notion after the Persian war, of rudeness and brutality. When someone spoke in another language, it sounded to the Greeks like “bar-bar-bar,” or unintelligible chatter.

Paul’s point is that God is no respecter of persons—the gospel must reach both the world’s elite and its outcasts

Vine adds that barbaros

"properly meant one whose speech is rude, or harsh; the word is onomatopoeic, indicating in the sound the uncouth character represented by the repeated syllable bar–bar and hence, in the mouth of a Greek it meant anything that was not Greek, language, people or customs. With the spread of Greek language and culture, it came to be used generally for all that was non-Greek. In time it acquired the additional meaning of rude or uncivilized. Used pejoratively, ‘barbarian’ demeaned those lacking Hellenistic culture as crude, coarse, boorish, savage, or bestial "

And so as you can imagine a fellowship composed of all the people groups mentioned in this verse was unthinkable in the ancient world. Yet that is precisely what happened in the church. Christ demolished the cultural barriers separating men.

Vincent writes that Scythians (Skúthes)

"More barbarous than the barbarians” (Bengel). Hippocrates describes them as widely different from the rest of mankind, and like to nothing but themselves, and gives an absurd description of their physical peculiarities. Herodotus describes them as living in wagons, offering human sacrifices, scalping and sometimes flaying slain enemies, drinking their blood, and using their skulls for drinking-cups. When a king dies, one of his concubines is strangled and buried with him, and, at the close of a year, fifty of his attendants are strangled, disemboweled, mounted on dead horses, and left in a circle round his tomb." (Vincent, M. R. Word studies in the New Testament. Vol. 3, Page 1-504).

Robertson adds that

a Scythian was simply the climax of barbarity (Word Pictures in the New Testament)

SLAVE, FREEMAN: doulos eleutheros: (1Cor 7:21,22; Eph 6:8)

Slave (doulos from deo meaning to bind > click for word study of doulos) a person held in servitude as the chattel of another and under their master's total control. A social barrier existed between the slave and the freeman.

Aristotle referred to a doulos as “a living tool.”

Both slaves and freemen were saved and became brothers in Christ because they

“were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free” (1Cor 12:13).

Paul told Philemon to view Onesimus, his runaway slave,

“no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother” (Phile 16).

Freeman (eleutheros) (Click for the verb form eleutheroo) refers primarily to freedom to go wherever one likes and described a person in the Grecian culture who was capable of movement and so called "the free one". They were free socially and politically allowing for self-determination.

The unity of slave and freeman was dramatically demonstrated in the arena of Carthage in AD 202. Perpetua, a young woman from a noble family and Felicitas, a slave girl, faced martyrdom for Christ. As they faced the wild beasts, they joined hands. Slave and free woman died together for the love of the same Lord.

Grant Richison comments that

"Regardless of the level of culture or civilization, each ethnic group seems to be able to point to some other group regarded as uncivilized. We cannot excuse racism on the basis of class or background. Jesus sets aside all our education, background, nationality and experience. Jesus breaks down social barriers. Jesus sets aside national, religious, cultural and social distinctions. God's Word says that there is one place where everyone is equal and that is at the foot of the cross. There is no ultimate answer to race problems because of the degeneracy of the human being. We can legislate rights but we cannot legislate the heart. Slavery was rampant in Paul's day. In the Devil's world there is no solution to the inequalities of life. There never will be an ultimate solution to the social and racial problems except the gospel....It comes as a shock to religious people that all they need to be acceptable to God is the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no need for catechism, baptism or joining a church. Christ is all we need for salvation. Moreover, Christ is all we need for the Christian life. We do not get more of him than we have. He is a person and we do not receive a person on the installment plan (Jn 1:16). Since we received new life in Christ we received Christ fully. All we need to do is learn to appropriate him personally to our experience (2Co4:10; Phil 1:20,21)." (Today's Word)

BUT CHRIST IS ALL AND IN ALL: alla (ta) panta kai en pasin Christos: (Col 2:10; 1Co 1:29,30; 3:21-23; Gal 3:29; 6:14; Php 3:7-9; 1Jn 5:11,12; 2Jn 1:9) (Jn 6:56,57; 14:23; 15:5; 17:23; Ro 8:10,11; Gal 2:20; Eph 1:23; 3:17; 1Jn 5:20)

All is the plural panta which is more inclusive than the singular pan would have been.

Lightfoot paraphrases this verse as follows...

Christ is all things and in all things. Christ has dispossessed and obliterated all distinctions of religious prerogative and intellectual preeminence and social caste; Christ has substituted Himself for all these; Christ occupies the whole sphere of human life and permeates all its developments.

Christ has obliterated the words barbarian, master, slave, all of them and has substituted the word adelphos (brother). 

Matthew Henry explains all in all this way...

There is now no difference arising from different country or different condition and circumstance of life: it is as much the duty of the one as of the other to be holy, and as much the privilege of the one as of the other to receive from God the grace to be so. Christ came to take down all partition-walls, that all might stand on the same level before God, both in duty and privilege. And for this reason, because Christ is all in all.

Christ is a Christian's all, his only Lord and Saviour, and all his hope and happiness. And to those who are sanctified, one as well as another and whatever they are in other respects, he is all in all, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end: he is all in all things to them.

MacDonald writes that

For the Christian these worldly distinctions are no longer of importance. It is Christ who really counts. He is everything to the believer and in everything. He represents the center and circumference of the Christian’s life. (Believer's Bible Commentary : Old and New Testaments. Nashville: Thomas Nelson)

KJV Study Bible says...

To the redeemed Christ is all; that is, He is everything, and He is what matters most to them. And Christ is … in all; that is, He dwells in all believers." (KJV Study Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson)

Wuest writes that...

One heart now beats in all. The pulsating life of the Lord Jesus is the motive power. One mind guides all, the mind of Christ. One life is lived by all, the life of the Lord Jesus produced by the Holy Spirit in the various circumstances and relations of each individual believer’s experience." (Wuest, K. S. Wuest's Word Studies from the Greek New Testament: Studies in the Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)

Johnson writes in Bibliotheca Sacra (Jan, 64)

"The new man lives in a new environment where all racial, national, religious, cultural and social distinctions are no more. Rather, Christ is now all that matters and in all who believe. The statement is one of the most inclusive in the New Testament and is amply supported by the pre-eminence of Christ in New Testament theology. It is a particularly appropriate statement for the Colossians and affords an excellent summary statement of the teaching of the letter. There are three realms, relevant to the Colossians, in which He is all. He is everything in SALVATION; hence there is no place for angelic mediation in God's redemptive work (cf. 1:18-22; 2:18 ). He is everything in SANCTIFICATION; hence legality and asceticism are out of place in the Christian life (cf. 2:16-23). He is our life (3:3-4). Finally, He is everything necessary for human SATISFACTION; hence there is no need for philosophy, or the deeds of the old man (1:26-28 ; 2:3, 9-10). He fills the whole life, and all else is hindering and harmful." (Bibliotheca Sacra: Theological Journal Library)

Hendriksen sums this section up commenting that