2 Corinthians 5:18–21 · Featured Study · Katallassō
Reconciliation
“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself… and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” Paul's charter verse names a single act with a widening blast radius: one enemy made a friend at Romans 5, two hostile peoples fused into one new man at Ephesians 2, and: at Colossians 1: a scope Paul states as nothing less than cosmic: “all things… whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.”
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son (c. 1663-1669) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Summary
This page traces reconciliation through three widening circles, from one person made right with God, to Jew and Gentile fused into one, to Colossians' claim that reaches 'all things'.
- A physical exhibit, the Temple's warning inscription, corroborates the literal wall Ephesians 2:14 tears down
- Colossians' cosmic 'all things' is checked against the same letter's own language of enemies subdued rather than saved
- Reconciliation is distinguished from propitiation, with the Godward direction held throughout: God reconciles us, never the reverse
- Three Greek words trace the shift from the ordinary verb to the intensified compound used for the widest scopes
The Charter
2 Corinthians 5:18–21: the ministry named before it is anywhere applied
"But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation. We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ… be ye reconciled to God. Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him."
Notice what verse 19 does with the reckoning word: "not reckoning unto them their trespasses" is the same accounting vocabulary the doctrine of imputation runs on, one verse before the great exchange of verse 21. Reconciliation and imputation are not the same doctrine, but in this one paragraph Paul states them side by side, the ledger and the peace treaty in the same breath.
Three Widening Circles
one reconciliation, three scopes: personal, corporate, cosmic
the cross, at the center of every ring
“For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
One person, one enmity, ended. The starting scope: an individual sinner and the God he stood against.
“…that he might create in himself of the two one new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby…”
Reconciliation widens in two directions at once: Jew and Gentile fused into one new man, and that one new man reconciled to God. Horizontal and vertical, in a single act.
“And through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross; through him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.”
The furthest-reaching reconciliation statement in Paul: not merely people but “all things,” a scope matching the same hymn's claim that all things were created “through him, and unto him” (Col 1:16).
The Wall You Can Go and See
Ephesians 2:14: the dividing wall, and the stone that carried its death sentence
“For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility”
The stone
In 1871 Charles Clermont-Ganneau recovered a Greek inscription near the Jerusalem Temple platform; it is held today in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, and a second fragment surfaced later. In substance it warns that no foreigner may pass inside the balustrade and enclosure around the sanctuary, and that whoever is caught has only himself to blame for the death that follows.
Josephus describes the same barrier and the same warning independently (Antiquities 15.11.5; Jewish War 5.5.2 and 6.2.4): a first-century historian and a first-century stone agreeing about one wall.
What it does to the reading
Paul's middle wall of partition , mesotoichon, a dividing wall, joined to phragmos, a fence: most naturally names that specific barrier rather than a general mood of hostility. Gentile exclusion was not an attitude to be talked through. It was masonry, publicly lettered, carrying a death sentence.
Which is the measure of the next verse's claim: the one new man of Ephesians 2:15 is announced over the rubble of a wall that had the penalty carved into it. Most biblical background has to be reconstructed. This one can be walked up to and read.
How Far Does “All Things” Reach?
Colossians 1:20 read with the rest of Colossians: scope without universalism
Colossians sets the limits of its own cosmic circle. Paul brackets the hymn with a matched pair: everything is created “in the heavens and upon the earth” (1:16), and everything is reconciled “whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens” (1:20). The reconciliation is deliberately built to the same measurements as the creation: an inclusio, not a throwaway flourish. Whatever Christ made, Christ reconciles.
The universalist reading, at its strongest
Take “all things” at full extension in both verses, since Paul plainly means it at full extension in 1:16, and the conclusion follows: nothing finally stays outside the peace. The argument has real force. It refuses to let the same two words shrink between one verse and the next, and it takes the blood of the cross to be as effective as the creating word was.
What the same letter goes on to say
“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”Colossians 2:15 names the same ranks 1:16 had listed among the created “all things” , principalities and powers: and describes what the cross does to them in the imagery of a Roman triumph, the general parading captives he has stripped. That is a real outcome inside the cosmic peace, and it is not salvation.
So Colossians distributes its own “all things” across two outcomes rather than one: peace made for some, submission enforced on others, both of them ways an insurgent cosmos stops being at war. Paul also keeps the personal application conditioned in the very next breath: the reconciled are presented holy “if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and stedfast” (1:23). A universe with no rebel left standing is not the same claim as a universe with no one lost.
Which Direction?
the Godward flag: reconciliation and propitiation distinguished
Every one of these texts states the direction the same way: God reconciled us to himself (Rom 5:10; 2 Cor 5:18–19; Col 1:20, 22): never the reverse. Scripture nowhere describes humanity reconciling an angry God to itself, and it nowhere describes God being talked out of anything by a mediator working on him from the outside.
In His Own Words: Wesley on the Direction of 5:19
“God - The whole Godhead, but more eminently God the Father. Was in Christ, reconciling the world - Which was before at enmity with God. To himself - So taking away that enmity, which could no otherwise be removed than by the blood of the Son of God.”
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Bible (1765), on 2 Corinthians 5:19 — public domain
Where the readings meet: Reconciliation and the cross's Godward work name two real, distinguishable things: what the cross does about sin before God, and what it does to the resulting relationship: enmity ended, peace made. What the first precisely is remains a live lexical dispute: propitiation: the turning away of God's wrath, satisfied rather than evaded (Leon Morris's case): or expiation: the purging of sin's defilement (C. H. Dodd's counter-case). Either way the direction holds: God himself provides the sacrifice (2 Cor 5:19, "God was in Christ") and initiates the reconciliation ("who reconciled us to himself," 5:18): the Judge and the Peacemaker are the same Person, acting from love rather than being placated against his will. The word-level dispute sits with the Romans material and the mercy-seat vocabulary.
The Word
katallassō: an exchange of enmity for peace
The root sense is commercial and relational at once: an exchange, here of enmity for peace. The word-group is strikingly small for the weight it carries: the noun is rare in the New Testament, concentrated in Romans and 2 Corinthians, and the plain verb keeps almost the same company: Romans 5, 2 Corinthians 5, and one domestic verse in 1 Corinthians about a separated wife. Ephesians and Colossians reach instead for the strengthened compound apokatallassō: the same act, prefixed for reach, spent on the two places Paul pushes the scope furthest.
Word studies
The Hebrew and Greek under this study, each word in its own room.