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.
Spurgeon writes that...
In the new life there is no distinction
of race and nationality. We are born into one family; we become members of
Christ’s body; and this is the one thing we have got to keep up—separation
from all the world beside: no separations in the church, no disunion,
nothing that would cause it, for we are one in Christ, and Christ is all.
Now, as we have to put off these things, that is the negative side: that is
the law’s side, for the law says, “Thou shalt not”—“Thou shalt not.” But
now look at the positive side.
Whenever you hear certain very wise
brethren say, “Such-and-such a promise in the Bible is for Israel, not for
the Gentiles,” do not you be misled in the least by their assertion; but
just quote this text to them: “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all,
and in all.” These distinctions all vanish when once we come to Christ; we
are one in him, and every promise to believers is good to all who are in
Christ Jesus, for “Christ is all, and in all.”
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
Christ, as the all-sufficient Lord and
Savior, is all that matters. His Spirit-mediated indwelling in all
believers, of whatever racial-religious, cultural, or social background they
be, guarantees the creation and gradual perfection in each and in all of
“the new man, who is being renewed for full knowledge according to the image
of him who created him.” Thus, most appropriately, the very theme of the
entire letter, namely, “Christ, the Pre-eminent One, the Only and
All-Sufficient Savior,” climaxes this passage. (Hendriksen,
W., & Kistemaker, S. J. New Testament Commentary Set, 12 Volumes. Grand
Rapids: Baker Book House)