Lorenzo Palon

Colossians 1:15–20 and Christian Peacemaking in a Time of War

There are moments in history when the world seems to come apart in public. Missiles, retaliation, alliances, threats, displacement, and fear are just a few examples. The headlines move fast, but the wounds they describe do not. In such moments, Christians are often pulled in opposite directions. Some retreat into private religion: “Just preach the gospel and stay out of the mess.” Others rush into anxious speculation, treating every conflict as a code to be cracked. Still others absorb the rage of the age and simply baptize one side’s violence as righteousness.

Colossians 1:15–20 refuses all three reactions.

Paul does not respond to a fearful church by giving them a chart of world events. He gives them a vision of Christ. Not only does he portray Christ as a personal savior, but also as the one who created everything, holds everything together, and reconciles everything through the blood of his cross.

That is one of the most explosive claims in the New Testament.

It means the cross is not a small religious mechanism for getting souls to heaven. It is the public, world-shaping act of God in which the Creator begins to set the creation right. The Messiah’s death is not simply about my guilt (though it includes that). It is about God’s answer to the long rebellion of the human race and the long fracture of the world. Paul’s language is breathtaking: “all things… whether on earth or in heaven” (Col. 1:20). The scope is cosmic.

We must be careful here. “Cosmic reconciliation” is not vague optimism; it does not deny the reality of evil or assume every wound heals itself with time. Paul is not sentimental. He speaks of “peace” being made through blood—through the Messiah’s blood, shed on a Roman cross. In other words, reconciliation is costly. Peace requires acknowledging enmity. It is achieved when enmity is faced, judged, and overcome by God’s self-giving love.

This is why the cross stands at the center of Christian peacemaking.

The world has many versions of “peace.” There is the peace of exhaustion, where people stop fighting only because they can no longer afford to continue. There is the peace of intimidation, where silence is maintained by fear. There is the peace of denial, where wounds are covered over but never healed. And there is the peace of tribal victory, where one group calls it “peace” because it won.

Paul has something else in mind.

The peace of Colossians 1 is the peace of new creation. It is not cheap. It does not flatter power. It does not excuse evil. But neither does it surrender the future to revenge. It says that Jesus, not Caesar, an empire, a nation-state, a militia, or an ideology, is the world’s Lord. And if he is Lord, then history is not finally driven by the logic of retaliation. The deepest truth of reality is not “strike back,” but “God was pleased… through him to reconcile.”

That changes what the church is for.

The church is more than a waiting room for heaven or a religious chaplaincy for our preferred political tribe. The church is the body of the One in whom the reconciliation of all things has begun. Paul moves seamlessly in Colossians 1 from Christ as Lord of creation to Christ as “head of the body, the church.” That is not an accident. The community that belongs to the reconciling Messiah must become a reconciling community.

This is where the text becomes uncomfortable—because it is easier to admire cosmic reconciliation than to practice local peacemaking.

It is possible to speak movingly about peace in the Middle East while refusing to speak to a brother or sister in the same congregation. It is possible to post prayers for the nations while nurturing grudges at home. It is possible to denounce the violence of governments while excusing the violence of our tongues. But Paul will not let us split cosmic theology from congregational life. If Christ made peace through the cross, then the church cannot be formed by contempt, gossip, factionalism, or fear-driven rhetoric.

The church’s peacemaking, then, is not a side project. It is a sign.

It is a sign that Jesus is actually Lord.

When Christians tell the truth without hatred, forgive without pretending, seek justice without vengeance, and bear one another’s burdens across social and ethnic lines, we are not merely being “nice.” We are embodying the future God has begun in Christ. We are demonstrating, albeit imperfectly, what happens when the powers do not have the final say.

And our witness matters especially in a time of international turmoil. When public discourse becomes fevered, the church must resist the temptation to become an echo chamber of panic. We are called to lament honestly, pray concretely, help sacrificially, and speak carefully. We do not trivialize suffering by turning war into a prophecy hobby. We do not sanctify cruelty because “our side” seems threatened. We do not call vengeance “faithfulness.” The cross has permanently exposed those habits.

At the same time, Christian peacemaking is not passivity. Colossians 1 does not invite us to float above history in spiritual detachment. The Christ who reconciles “all things” embraces every aspect of life, encompassing diplomacy, relief work, truth-telling, public responsibility, and the costly task of restoring trust. The church cannot solve every geopolitical crisis. But it can refuse to rehearse the world’s hostilities in miniature. It can become a school of reconciliation—where enemies learn to pray, where strangers become family, where wounds are named, and where hope is disciplined by the cross and resurrection.

That is why Paul’s powerful Christ-hymn is so urgently relevant. In a frightened age, he gives us not a technique but a Lord. He presents us with a cosmic Messiah, not a secret timetable. He offers us a crucified peace, not an escape plan.

And that peace is strong because it rests on God’s faithfulness, not human sincerity. It rests on the One in whom all things hold together.

So when the world shakes, Christians need not deny the shaking. We grieve. We pray. We serve. We tell the truth about evil. But we remain calm, and we do not worship power. We remember the crucified and risen Christ: the future of the world is in the hands of the One who makes peace through the blood of his cross, not those who destroy.

That is cosmic reconciliation. And that is the ground, the shape, and the mission of the church’s peacemaking.

The world may be loud with war, fear, and the hunger for revenge—but the final word over history belongs to the crucified and risen Christ, who makes peace through the blood of his cross.

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Suggested Further Reading:

• James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon
• N. T. Wright, Colossians and Philemon
• Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross
• Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament