Dying and rising with Christ in Colossians.

Colossians was written to a congreaation threatened by a jewish mystical teaching which offered a proleptic experience of salvation in the form of visionary journeys to heaven. To counter this false teaching the writer reminds the readers of the blessinas they already possess, centrina his araument around their participation with Christ in his death and resurrection. Christ himself is identified as God's end-time aaent of reconciliation and new creation, who, throuah his death and resurrection, restores the cosmos to the state of harmony God intended from the beainnina (1:ll-20). To accompllsh this tast Christ identified himself with humanity's fallen state and made himself responsible for their sins. By dying their death he secured acquittal before the divine tribunal and victory over the hostile spirits (2:13-15). In his triumphal passage from death to new life he inaugurated the new age and became the founder of the new redeemed human race as a second Adam (1:18). In these eventl Christ acted in a representative capacity so that his experience of deliverance might be both the basis and the prototype of the salvation or believers. In conversion-baptism ChrIstians become participants in ChrIst's death and resurrection as God includes them in his saving acts towards Christ by pronouncing on them the same verdict of acquittal and exercising anew the same life-giving power towards them as when he raised Christ from the dead. Thus they are made to pass with Christ out of the old fallen existence in which they were subject to the hostile spirits and the reliaious rules and reaulations (stoicheia) of this world, and they enter the heavenly life of the new creation. Although Christians have been raised with Christ (as Paul also atrirms in Rom 6), they possess this new life only in preliminary form and in hiddenness (3:3). They must yet strive to actualize this salvation by putting to death what remains within of the old existence (3:5-11) and cultivating Christlike virtues as they await the parousia, when they will enter upon this resurrection life in its fullness (3:4).