I. Personhood and the Imago Dei: Colossians 3:1–17
Colossians 3:1–17 constitutes a distinct unit that addresses people redeemed in Christ and the various imperatives created by believers’ union with Christ. In this passage, Paul addresses both the individual believer and the new covenant community. In the preceding section of 2:8–23, he has argued for the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ, urging the Colossian believers to stand firm against the philosophies of this world or the restrictive regulations associated with the Torah. He does this through a “theology of the incarnation and a redemptive historical scheme of promise and fulfilment” through Christ’s resurrection and triumph.4
The imagery of 3:1 thus picks up on the theme of the resurrection and Christ’s enthronement in 2:10, 12, 15 and Christ’s lordship, which Paul has discussed in 1:15–20. In 3:1–17 Paul also advocates a moral vision to compete with the restrictive system of heavenly intermediaries, asceticism, and coercive Torah observance of the teachers he opposes.
Just like he does in his letter to the Romans (6:1–23; 7:1– 6; 8:1–16; 12:1– 2) and the Galatians (5:13–6:10), Paul discusses the behavioural implications of his theological exposition of the gospel of Christ. Because people redeemed in Christ are united with Christ, they are no longer to offer their bodies to the service of sin. Thus, 3:1–17 functions “as an exhortation focusing on the transformative nature of the gospel” as believers live between the triumph of Christ’s death and the manifestation of his glory at the Parousia—an in-between period in the “already-not-yet” where believers struggle against evil desires of the flesh and the powers.
In Christ, in the here and now, believers have already been transported from darkness to light (Col. 1:13–14) and from death to life (Col. 3:3–4). They have been given a new and transforming identity in Christ (Col. 2:6–7, 11; 3:11). As Charles Moule puts it:
“The new life is a fait accompli because of Christ: it is a free gift from God; but it carries a challenge. If we accept that challenge, we begin to belong to the final event, to God’s ultimate purpose: we have entered into the new covenant…But the process of fully becoming detached from the old and fully belonging to the new remains to be painfully and laboriously completed.”5
Thus Paul begins by urging the Colossians to identify themselves with a source of identity that is bound up with Jesus Christ (3:1–4). This new relation with Christ would mediate all their perceptions and actions. What Paul advocates would lend itself to seeking and setting their minds on things above, which entails the hope of the gospel (1:5), the invisible God (1:15), and the reign of Jesus over the cosmos (2:8).
Signifying key aspects of his theology of the person, Paul identifies believers as people “raised with Christ” in verse 1. He also says in verse 3, “For you have died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God.” Furthermore, he states in verse 10 that Christians are now clothed with a “new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” The inference Paul draws from the believers’ in-Christ identity is that they must enact Christ’s death and put to death immorality and idolatry (v. 5). The command to put to death (v. 5) and put off (v. 8) can be taken as a description of the stark contrast between the new life in Christ and the human depravity that marked their life before Christ (cf. Col. 1:21; 1 Cor. 1:26–31; 6:9–11; 12:2; Gal. 4: 8–9; Eph. 2:1–3).
Since for Paul the self is always a self in relationship with an external and indwelling other, insofar as the self still lives “in the flesh” as an “earthly being,” it must continually confront the old existence that was crucified in Christ—this is the crux of Paul’s language of putting to death and what putting off/stripping off entails. Implicit in Paul’s overall argument is the idea that there are two spheres of existence that are mutually opposed. The self in union with Christ is a newly constituted self that has agency in faith. Susan Eastman puts it well:
Christ indwelling and thereby re-creating the self is the source of faith in Christ; Christ crucified in human history is the basis and goal of such trust, because the self-giving of the Son of God generates and sustains trust in himself.
When Paul urges the Colossian believers to put to death that which belongs to their earthly nature (v. 3), he describes an important aspect of life in the faith which mediates all human relationships—that is, all of life. Thus, he urges believers to put to death sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, anger, rage, malice, slander, perverse talk, and falsehood (vv. 5, 8, 9).
Instead, they are to put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, and a heart that is ruled by the peace of Christ and saturated with the word of Christ and gratitude to God (vv. 12–16). In these imperatives, Paul identifies his readers (believers) as moral agents. For Paul, the life believers live is summed up with the statement “Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:19–20; cf. Rom. 7:15–18). The person is shaped in relationship to a separate entity (Christ) that is both external and indwelling. In Christ, the person’s whole self has been crucified with Christ, and Christ’s indwelling presence enables and actualises a putting to death of evil fleshly desires.
It is important to read Paul’s imperatives of putting to death sinful behaviour and putting on attitudes and actions in line with the life of Christ in terms that do not slide into a competitive account of divine and human agency. As J. Louis Martyn says:
We can reiterate that Paul is serious when he allows human beings to be the subject of the verb “to place one’s trust.” Those who believe in Christ are not puppets, moved about and made to speak by others. … But just as these persons are not puppet believers, so they are not believers as a result of an act of their own autonomous wills, as though the gospel were an event in which two alternatives were placed before an autonomous decider, and faith were one of two decisions the human being could make autonomously. … Thus, when Paul speaks about placing one’s trust in Christ, he is pointing to a deed that reflects not the freedom of the will but rather God’s freeing of the will.
In contrast to an anthropology that is premised on the notion that human beings are autonomous and self-directing individuals, for Paul it is the death and resurrection of Jesus (not the strength of the human will) that accomplishes redemption and transforms the lives of believers.
For Paul it is “those who belong to Christ Jesus [that] have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24), and again he says of himself, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which [or whom] the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). He also describes the Colossians as being constituted anew through Christ’s death, saying, “Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2:11b–12). He again says to them, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins” (Col. 2:13). For Paul, it is by belonging to Christ that believers can crucify the flesh with its passions and desires. It is believers’ crucifixion with Christ that actualises their crucifixion to the cosmos and the world’s crucifixion to them (Gal. 6:14).
Earlier Old Testament texts view human beings as having free will—that is, the ability to freely choose between good and evil without any inherent impairment to their moral capabilities. Texts such as Deuteronomy 4:1–9; 30:6–10 and Proverbs 6:20–24; 7:1–5; etc. do not reflect a focus on the issue of inner moral conflict or the inability to freely choose between good and evil.
In later prophetic literature, we find the view that human agency is impaired, and the self cannot choose what is right and pleasing to God. The impairment is so pervasive that it cannot be overcome by human effort—instead, according to texts such as Ezekiel 36:26, God is the one who will enable genuine moral agency through a transformation that is initiated and actualised by him.
In contrast, in some Second Temple Jewish literature such as 4 Ezra, humanity’s sinfulness and moral failure is attributed to “the evil heart” with which humans were created. In this view, human beings have the capacity to make moral decisions, but because of some sort of inherent condition, such as a guilty inclination or propensity to lust, human beings can have disordered desires. The impairment can also be the result of an external influence by demonic beings, as is the case in Jubilees, 1 Enoch, the Aramaic Levi Document—these external influences cause error and lead humans astray.6 In this view, internal moral impairment can be overcome through correct teaching that will equip the person to resist wrongful desire. There is a direct link drawn between accepting Enochic wisdom or the teachings of the Yahad and having moral agency and the ability to resist sin through the will.
Another model we find in Second Temple Jewish thought is the possibility that the majority of humanity does not possess moral agency at all. In the pre-sectarian wisdom text called 4Qinstruction, there are two kinds of people in the world. Genesis 1 recounts the creation of a “spiritual people,” who are made in the likeness of the holy ones (Gen 1:27). To these fortunate persons has been given the capacity to become moral agents, though they must work hard to obtain the necessary insight to actualize this capacity. Then there is another type of human created, the “spirit of flesh” that is not able to discern between good and evil. This is the being created in Genesis 2 from the dust of the earth. To this second group belong the majority of humanity, both Jews and Gentiles.
A sectarian text from Qumran, the Hodayot or Thanksgiving Hymns depict all humanity as incapable of moral action. The writer argues that all humanity are animated beings characterised by a spirit of error and perversion. “Thus, as created, no one possesses moral agency, since the moral faculty is so defective as to produce only guilty actions.”7 Resolution is found when the author draws on Ezekiel’s 36:26–27 promise of “I will put my spirit into you.” In contrast to Ezekiel, however, where the defective piece of moral equipment is definitively removed, the speaker of the Hodayot is not freed entirely from his “spirit of flesh,” since he still expresses distress and anxiety about its power (lQHa IV, 37; cf. V, 30–32). This defective spirit remains as an alienated and rejected part of the self.8
This is in stark contrast to the Pauline model of moral selfhood. When Paul says, “I no longer live but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:19–20) and again, “It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Rom. 7:17), he describes personhood as a self in relation to another, “suggesting that it is not only ‘in Christ’ but also in the realm of sin and death that the person is shaped in relationship to a separate entity that is both external and indwelling.”9 All humanity is thus indwelt by the realm of sin and death. Those who are redeemed in Christ are redeemed from sin and death and united with Christ. For Paul, Christians are no longer to offer their bodies to the service of sin since they are no longer in the realm of sin. Their personhood and therefore their moral agency is reconstituted through union with Christ.
Thus Paul says in Colossians 3:10–11: “Having clothed yourselves with the new man, which is being renewed according to the image of the one creating him. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, Barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is for all, and is in all.” For Paul, every aspect of the personhood and its social location have been nullified by the cross of Christ. For Paul, who was living in a culture that was pervasively shaped and dominated by systems of honour, union with Christ through the cross puts to death such values and systems. For this reason, Paul now considers his infant circumcision, his belonging in the tribe of Benjamin, and membership as a zealous Pharisee as loss, as garbage (Phil. 3:5, 8). Because the gospel of Christ produces a single new humanity, socially constructed selves are obliterated, for sources of human identity are taken up by and into the gospel. Similarly to Galatians 3:28, in Colossians 3:11 Paul advocates a negation of ethnic and economic realities as modes of honour, separation, othering, and superiority.
In delineating this new human identity and what the Colossians are to do in order to further their transition into the new life in Christ, Paul identifies what makes it possible for a believer to put off sins of aggression (anger, wrath, malice) and sins of the tongue (slander, perverse talk, lying to one another). It is not the strength of the believer’s moral will but rather “the power and glory of the new creation spilling over” into the believer’s life. He articulates this in v. 10: “Having stripped off the old man with its deeds and having clothed yourselves with the new man which is being renewed according to the image of the one creating him.” Renewal to the image of God is here presented as the outworking of faith in Christ, which the Colossians have been initiated into through Christ.
We find here an echo of Genesis 1:26–27 and Colossians 1:15 where Paul has stated that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God.” As Jesus Christ is the image of God, so too “human beings—when indwelt by Christ, become renewed after the image of God.”10 For Paul, the new humanity in Christ is a self that is indwelt by Christ—the self in Christ is also continually shaped after a pattern. It is a renewal to the pre-Fall state of humankind. Paul identifies the pattern after which God’s renews the believer as Jesus Christ who resembles God’s absolute likeness. He is “at once the new Adam, that is, the archetypal pattern of human existence, and simultaneously the triumphant Messiah who reigns as the sovereign Lord over the dominion of God.”11
Thus, believers in Christ
A. Have died and risen with Jesus (Col. 3:1)
B. Have their present life hidden with Christ (v. 3)
C. Are called to continually enact Christ’s death in this life (vv. 5, 8)
D. Have a new self which is being renewed to the image of God (v. 10)
Raised with Christ, the new self is a re-creation in God’s image and an embodiment of the imago dei—which is to be disclosed in adhering to God’s moral standards. In Ephesians 4:22–24, instead of language of re-creation in God’s image (εἰκών), Paul uses the phrase “created according to the likeness of God (κατὰ θεὸν) in true righteousness and holiness,” where likeness is synonymous to image.
Paul follows this indicative with the imperative in the following verse: “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours” (Eph. 4:25). He interprets believers’ re-creation to be like God or according to the image of God through a moral interpretation of the imago dei. Empowered by the Spirit, believers are called to exemplify God’s standards of morality.
II. Conclusion
Paul’s theological anthropology in Colossians 3:1–17 presents a distinctive understanding of humanity as image bearers who are restored and renewed through union with Christ. Against the backdrop of scholarly debate regarding whether the Fall completely destroyed, marred, or left intact the imago dei, I contend that Paul depicts redeemed humanity as bearers of God’s image who receive tangible restoration in and through Christ’s indwelling presence, thus implying that for Paul, the Fall had damaged the imago dei and the moral and relational aspects he associates with the notion of image bearing. Paul’s anthropology fundamentally challenges autonomous individualism by presenting personhood as relational—a self in relationship that is either shaped by the realm of sin and death or reconstituted through union with Christ. The transformation of believers toward Christlikeness is not accomplished through human moral effort on the basis of resolve or strength of the will but through divine agency, as “the power and glory of the new creation spills over” into the believer’s life. Paul also demonstrates that this renewal according to God’s image nullifies ethnic, economic, and social distinctions, creating a single new humanity where “Christ is for all, and is in all.”
For the Ethiopian evangelical church, this theological framework provides a biblical foundation for pursuing unity across ethnic lines while emphasizing that moral transformation flows not from human effort but from Christ’s transformative and indwelling presence.
