Colossians 1:18

He is the head. — “He” is again emphatic. “He who is the image of God, He also is the Head.” (On the title itself, see Ephesians 1:22.)

The beginning. — Chrysostom reads here a kindred word, the first-fruits. The reading is no doubt a gloss, but an instructive one. It shows that the reference is to Christ, as being in His humanity “the first principle” of the new life to us — the “first-fruits” from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:20; 1 Corinthians 15:23), and “the bringer of life and immortality to light” (2 Timothy 1:10).

The firstborn from the dead. — The same title is given to Him in Revelation 1:5. In his sermon at Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13:33), St. Paul quotes the passage, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee,” as fulfilled in that “He raised up Jesus again.” (Comp. Hebrews 5:5.) In Romans 1:3, he speaks of Christ as “declared” (or, defined) “to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.” The Resurrection is (so to speak) His second birth, the beginning of that exaltation, which is contrasted with His first birth on earth in great humility, and of His entrance on the glory of His mediatorial kingdom. (See Ephesians 1:20, where the starting-point of all His exaltation is again placed in the Resurrection.)

That in all things he might... — Literally, That in all things He might become pre-eminent. The words “He might become,” are opposed to the “He is” above. They refer to the exaltation of His humanity, so gloriously described in Philippians 2:9. Thus absolutely in His divine nature, relatively to the mediatorial kingdom in His humanity, He is “the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 1:8; Revelation 1:11; Revelation 1:17).