“… And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.” Colossians 1:20
That one verse in the Bible appears to empty hell.
Paul writes God was pleased, through Christ, “to reconcile to Himself all things.” Read that slowly. All things. Not some things. Not believers only. All things—in heaven and on earth—brought back into peace with God through the cross.
If those words mean what they seem to mean at first glance, the story ends well for everybody. Nobody’s finally lost. Hell is either empty or temporary. And a very large part of what the church has taught for 2000 years is simply mistaken.
That’s a serious claim.
Who Uses This Verse, and What Do They Say?
Two different groups appeal to Colossians 1:20. It helps to keep them apart, because they’re not saying the same thing.
- Universalists. Universalism is the belief that in the end every human being will be saved. The ancient word for the idea is apokatastasis, a Greek term meaning “restoration of all things”. Origen taught a version of it in the third century. In our own day, David Bentley Hart has argued the case forcefully in his book That All Shall Be Saved, and British writer Robin Parry has made a gentler evangelical version of the same argument.
- Those who reject definite atonement. This is a smaller claim. Definite atonement is the teaching that Christ died with the specific purpose of actually saving His own people, and that His death certainly achieves what it was sent to achieve. Many Christians disagree. They read Colossians 1:20 as proof the cross was aimed equally at every person who has ever lived.
The argument in one sentence
“Paul says God has reconciled all things through the cross. ‘All things’ cannot possibly mean ‘some things’. Therefore everyone is reconciled—and any teaching that says otherwise is shrinking the Bible to fit a system.”
That’s a fair statement of the objection. The rest of this article tests it against the letter Paul actually wrote.
A Letter Written Into a Crisis
Before we can know what Verse 20 means, we need to know what Paul was doing when he wrote it.
Paul had never visited Colossae (Colossians 2:1). The church there had been planted by a man named Epaphras, and it was in trouble. Somebody was pressing a strange mixture of ideas on the congregation. Paul calls it “philosophy and empty deceit” (2:8). We can reconstruct its features from the letter itself:
- Rules and regulations—restrictions about food, drink and religious festivals (2:16).
- Angel worship—veneration of spiritual beings and reliance on visions (2:18).
- Harsh treatment of the body—severity towards oneself as a supposed path to holiness (2:23).
- Fear of unseen powers—anxiety about what Paul calls “the elemental spirits of the world” (2:8, 2:20).
That last point is the key to everything. The Colossians lived in a world crowded with invisible powers. They believed spiritual beings ran the universe, and that a person had to keep those beings satisfied through rituals, rules and secret knowledge. They were frightened.
Paul’s answer isn’t a lecture about who gets saved. His answer is a song about who’s in charge.
Colossians 1:15-20 is widely recognised as a hymn—an early Christian poem or song, possibly one the churches were already singing, which Paul takes up and uses. Its whole subject is the supremacy of Christ over every power the false teachers feared.
This matters enormously. The passage answers a question it is asking.
Colossians 1:15-20 asks, “Who rules this universe?” It isn’t asking, “For whom did Christ die?” We mustn’t treat it as a head-count of the saved.
A Short Detour: “The Firstborn of All Creation”
One phrase in this passage trips people up, so it’s worth clearing away before we go further.
Paul calls Christ “the firstborn of all creation” (1:15). Some read that to mean Christ was the first created being. He was not.
“Firstborn” (the Greek word prototokos) is about rank and inheritance, not about date of birth. In Psalm 89:27 God says of David, “And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth”—and David was the youngest of eight sons. Firstborn means heir, chief, the one who holds the rights.
Paul then explains himself in the very next verse: “For by him all things were created” (1:16). The little word “for” gives the reason. Christ is over all creation because he made all creation. As Richard Bauckham has argued, the New Testament writers consistently place Jesus on the Creator’s side of the line. It separates God from everything else. Creators aren’t creatures. John Calvin, commenting on “the image of the invisible God”, made the related point: God, who is in Himself unseen, becomes visible to us only in His Son.
So What Exactly Are “All Things”?
Now to the heart of the matter.
The Greek phrase behind “all things” is ta panta. Everybody agrees it’s a big phrase. The real question is: big in which direction?
Here’s the decisive point, and it’s remarkably simple. Paul tells us himself what he means by “all things”—4 verses earlier.
Table 1: What Paul actually includes in “all things” (Colossians 1:16)
| PAUL’S OWN WORDS | WHAT THAT CATEGORY REFERS TO | ARE THESE INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE? |
|---|---|---|
| “in heaven and on earth” | The entire created order, top to bottom | No—it is the whole realm |
| “visible and invisible” | Physical matter and the spiritual world | No—it includes non-living things |
| “thrones or dominions” | Ranks of angelic and spiritual beings | No—these are spirit powers |
| “rulers or authorities” | Governing powers, seen and unseen | No—these are structures and forces |
Look carefully at that list. It’s not a list of people. There’s no mention of individuals, of sinners, of the human race. It’s an inventory of the furniture of the universe—matter, spirits, structures and powers, including hostile powers.
So when Paul says God reconciled “all things”, the phrase carries the meaning he has just given it. And that creates a severe problem for the universalist reading:
- If “all things” in verse 20 means every human being is finally saved, then the very same two Greek words must also mean every demon is finally saved.
- It must also mean that rocks, stars and oceans are “saved”—which isn’t a category they can even belong to.
Origen, to his credit, accepted the first consequence and taught that even Satan would eventually be restored. Almost nobody who quotes this verse today wants to follow Origen that far. But the phrase doesn’t permit picking and choosing. If ta panta means “every single individual is saved”, it means that for the whole list.
THE TRAP INSIDE THE CLAIM
The universalist reading insists “all things” must mean absolutely everything, with no limits.
But if it does, it includes the demonic powers Paul names in verse 16.
We cannot stretch the phrase wide enough to save every person without also stretching it wide enough to save every devil.
What Kind of Peace? The Question Nobody Asks
There’s a second reason the universalist reading breaks down. And it’s the strongest argument in the letter. It comes from Paul himself, one chapter later.
Verse 20 says peace was made “by the blood of His cross”. Now watch what Paul says about the very same powers he listed in 1:16:
“He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” Colossians 2:15
Same letter. Same author. Same categories—rulers and authorities. But the outcome here isn’t conversion. It’s defeat. They’re stripped of their weapons, publicly shamed and dragged along in a victory parade. Paul’s picture is drawn from a Roman triumph, where a victorious general marched his conquered enemies through the streets for everyone to see.
So Colossians shows two things happening at the cross, not one.
Table 2: Two ways a war can end—and Paul describes both
| KIND OF PEACE | WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS | WHO THIS APPLIES TO IN COLOSSIANS |
|---|---|---|
| Peace by reconciliation | Enemies become friends; the broken relationship is healed and restored | Sinners who are brought to Christ (1:21-22) |
| Peace by subjugation | Enemies are beaten, disarmed and forced to submit; the rebellion is simply ended | The hostile spiritual powers (2:15) |
Both are genuinely peace. A war can end because the two sides embrace, or because one side wins decisively. Paul’s world understood this instinctively. The famous Pax Romana, the Roman peace, wasn’t produced by negotiation. It was produced by the sword. Every reader in Colossae knew it. Paul says peace was made by blood—and blood is the language of a battlefield quite as much as of an altar.
Douglas Moo, in his commentary on Colossians, argues reconciliation here must include this pacifying of hostile powers, precisely because the letter itself tells us what became of them. FF Bruce made a similar observation: a universe restored to proper order doesn’t require that every rebel inside it be pardoned.
Paul gives us a clear parallel elsewhere. In Philippians 2:10-11 every knee bows to Jesus, “in heaven and on earth and under the earth”. Every knee. Yet nobody imagines the forced bowing of the condemned is their salvation. Universal submission isn’t the same thing as universal salvation.
It’s worth noticing, too, that Colossians 1:20 mentions things “on earth” and “in heaven”—and, unlike Philippians 2:10, it doesn’t add “under the earth”.
Paul’s Own Next Sentence Settles It
If Colossians 1:20 had just announced every person is saved, we’d expect Paul to stop. There’s nothing left to say.
Instead, he immediately says something more:
“And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.” Colossians 1:21-22
Notice the shift. Verse 20: all things. Verse 21: and you.
Paul uses the same verb for “reconcile” in both places. Yet he plainly doesn’t treat verse 20 as having already settled matters for the Colossians personally. He has to say it a second time, specifically about them—about people who were once “alienated and hostile in mind”.
This is Paul’s own commentary on his own sentence. He moves from the cosmic to the personal because the 2 aren’t identical. The universe is brought back under Christ’s rule. Individual rebels are brought back into Christ’s family. The second doesn’t follow automatically from the first.
The Objection Proves Far Too Much
Here’s where the argument turns around on the person making it.
Look closely at the wording. Paul doesn’t say God made all things reconcilable. He says God reconciled them. It’s stated as something done, finished, accomplished.
That creates a fork in the road, and every reader has to take one path or the other.
Table 3: Three ways to read Colossians 1:20—and where each one leads
| THE READING | WHAT IT MUST CLAIM | THE DIFFICULTY IT RUNS INTO |
|---|---|---|
| Everyone is finally saved | The reconciliation is actual, and it applies to every individual without exception | Colossians itself warns “the wrath of God is coming” (3:6) and urges believers to continue in the faith (1:23) |
| Christ died equally for all, but it works only when a person believes | The reconciliation is merely potential—an offer made, not a result achieved | The verse says “reconciled”, not “made reconcilable”. This reading limits the verse just as much, only more quietly |
| The cross actually accomplished what God intended | The reconciliation is real, and “all things” means the created order restored under Christ’s rule | It must explain what became of the hostile powers—which Colossians 2:15 does, explicitly |
This is the point most often missed in the debate. If Colossians 1:20 is read as a plain statement that everyone is saved, it doesn’t merely contradict one view of the atonement. It contradicts every view except universalism. It would flatten the idea that anyone is saved through faith at all.
And if the verse is read instead as an offer rather than an achievement, we’ve quietly inserted a limit into “all things” that Paul never intended. We’ve done the very thing we accused others of doing.
Everybody places a boundary somewhere. The only question worth asking is whether the boundary comes from the passage or from outside it. Ours comes from Colossians 1:16 and from Colossians 2:15.
The Irony: What the Rest of This Letter Says About Salvation
There’s an irony here that deserves a moment of attention.
The letter used to overturn the doctrines of grace turns out to be one of the clearest statements of those doctrines anywhere in the Bible.
Table 4: How Colossians itself describes the way people are saved
| VERSE | WHAT PAUL SAYS | WHAT IT SHOWS ABOUT WHO ACTS |
|---|---|---|
| 1:12-13 | God “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” | God does the delivering and the transferring. We are carried out, not self-rescued |
| 2:12-13 | “You were dead in your trespasses … God made you alive together with him” | Dead people cannot co-operate. Life is given first, and it is given by God |
| 2:11 | A circumcision “made without hands” | The decisive inward change is God’s work, not a human ritual or decision |
| 3:12 | “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved” | Paul simply calls the church God’s chosen people, without argument or apology |
| 1:27 | “Christ in you, the hope of glory” | Salvation is Christ’s own presence, given to particular people |
Paul calls dead people alive by God’s act. He calls the Colossians God’s chosen ones. He describes conversion as a rescue operation performed on people who were in no position to help. Herman Ridderbos observed that for Paul salvation is never a possibility waiting for us to switch on; it’s a rescue already accomplished in Christ, into which believers are placed.
That’s the theology of the whole letter. Verse 20 sits inside it.
What the Doctrine Actually Claims
It’s worth stating this plainly, because it is so often stated badly.
The teaching isn’t that the cross was small. The teaching is that the cross was effective.
The old formula, which goes back to medieval theologian Peter Lombard, puts it neatly: Christ’s death is sufficient for all and efficient for the elect. There’s no shortage of value in it. Nothing about it is rationed or in short supply. The question isn’t “how much could the cross achieve?” but “what did God intend it to achieve, and did it succeed?”
John Owen, in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, pressed the question with an argument that has never been comfortably answered. Christ died, he said, for one of three groups: all the sins of all people, or all the sins of some people, or some of the sins of all people. If He died for all the sins of all people, why is anybody lost? The usual answer is unbelief. But unbelief is itself a sin—so either Christ paid for it, and it cannot condemn anyone, or He didn’t, and the cross didn’t in fact cover all sins.
A BIG CROSS, NOT A SMALLER ONE
The cross in Colossians is cosmic in reach. It restores creation, defeats the powers and rescues sinners.
Nothing about that is narrow or mean. What’s being claimed isn’t that Christ’s death reaches too few people.
It’s that his death genuinely saves the people it was sent to save—and doesn’t merely make salvation available in theory.
Read this way, Colossians 1:20 becomes a magnificent verse rather than an awkward one. Set it beside Romans 8:19-22, where creation itself is set free from its bondage to decay, and Ephesians 1:10, where God’s stated plan is “to unite all things in him”. GK Beale reads this passage as a declaration of new creation—the whole order remade under its rightful head.
That’s not universalism. It’s something larger and better ordered: a universe with nothing left in rebellion anywhere, because every rebel has either been reconciled or overthrown.
“If Indeed You Continue in the Faith”
One last verse, because careful readers will raise it.
Paul adds a condition: “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel” (1:23). Does that little word “if” mean a Christian’s salvation hangs in the balance?
Read the sentence just before it. Christ reconciled you “in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (1:22). That’s a purpose clause. It tells us what God intends to accomplish—and God accomplishes what He intends.
The “if” therefore describes the road, not the odds. Continuing in the faith is the appointed way believers arrive where God has determined they will arrive. Warnings are one of the ordinary means God uses to keep His people walking. Paul writes in exactly the same manner in 1 Corinthians 15:2, and the writer to the Hebrews does the same in Hebrews 3:14.
A father who tells his child, “you’ll get home safely if you hold my hand”, isn’t expressing doubt about the outcome. He is describing how the child will get home.
Conclusion: Vast and Specific at the Same Time
So, does Colossians 1:20 teach universal reconciliation?
It teaches something vast. And something specific. And we need to hold both.
- Vast, because the reach of the cross is the entire universe. Not one corner of creation lies outside the authority of the crucified and risen Christ. The powers that terrified the Colossians have been disarmed and paraded as beaten enemies. The creation that groans will be made new. Every rebellion will end.
- Specific, because Paul immediately explains how that peace reaches individual people: “And you … he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death.” Sinners are not swept up in a general amnesty announced over their heads. They are named, called, made alive, transferred out of darkness, and finally presented holy and blameless.
Those who read this verse as proof that everyone is saved must ignore what Paul says four verses earlier about what “all things” contains, and what he says one chapter later about how those powers were dealt with, and what he says in the very next breath about the Colossians themselves.
The verse doesn’t shrink the cross to fit a doctrine. It refuses to let the cross be anything smaller than the universe.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
What do we make of apologists, Sam Shamoun among them, who claim they once held all 5 points of Calvinism, but later abandoned them, naming Colossians 1:20 as one of the verses that changed their minds?
These are serious men who’ve studied the text and aren’t being careless. But a testimony tells us somebody’s mind changed; it can’t by itself tell us whether the change was warranted. Traffic moves in both directions here, and there are just as many who once argued against these doctrines and later came to hold them, often citing the very same texts. If a change of view settled a question, the two groups would cancel each other out. So the best course is to set these biographies aside and ask what Paul wrote: who does he say “all things” includes in verse 16? What does he say happened to those powers in 2:15? And why does he turn and address the Colossians personally in verse 21 if verse 20 had already settled their case? Those 3 questions are the argument, and they are the ones any reader must answer, whichever direction they are travelling.
Is Colossians 1:15-20 really an early Christian hymn, and does that change how we read it?
Most scholars think so. The passage has a noticeable rhythm, a balanced two-part structure and vocabulary Paul rarely uses elsewhere, which suggests he is quoting or adapting material the churches already knew. That does not make it less authoritative. Whether Paul composed the lines himself or took up a song the churches were singing, he includes them in a letter written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and they are therefore the Word of God. If anything, the hymn form strengthens our reading, because hymns celebrate a great truth rather than settling a technical dispute. The passage is praising Christ’s supremacy, not calculating the number of the saved.
Why do Jehovah’s Witnesses add the word “other” to “all things” in Colossians 1:16-17?
Their translation reads “all other things” four times in these verses, though the Greek word for “other” is not present in any manuscript. The insertion is there to protect a doctrine: if Christ created all other things, then Christ himself can be counted as a created thing. But Paul’s whole argument runs the opposite way. He says Christ is supreme over creation precisely because he is the one through whom creation came into being. Adding a word to Scripture in order to defend a position is a warning sign about the position, not a defence of it.
Does “all the fullness” in verse 19 mean Paul was borrowing from Gnostic ideas?
The Greek word is pleroma, and later Gnostic writers certainly used it for a realm of lesser divine beings. But those systems developed well after Paul wrote, so the borrowing cannot have run in that direction. It is far more likely that Paul is taking a word already in use among the Colossian teachers and turning it against them. They spread divine fullness thinly across many intermediary spirits; Paul says the whole of it dwells in one person. Colossians 2:9 makes this explicit: “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”
Do angels need to be reconciled? What did John Calvin say about this?
It is a fair question, since verse 20 mentions things in heaven. John Calvin took the phrase seriously and suggested that even the unfallen angels are established and held secure in Christ, since no creature stands firm by its own strength. Others take the heavenly reference to mean that the disorder sin introduced between heaven and earth has been repaired, so that the two are no longer at odds. Either way, nobody argues that the good angels needed forgiveness for sin. And the fallen angels are dealt with in Colossians 2:15, where they are disarmed and defeated rather than pardoned.
How does Colossians 1:20 fit with 1 John 2:2, where Christ is the propitiation “for the sins of the whole world”?
The two verses raise the same question, and the same care in reading answers both. John was writing to a small group of Jewish believers, and “the whole world” naturally means that Christ’s saving work is not restricted to their nation but reaches every kind of person, in every place, throughout history. Read as “every individual without exception”, the verse would prove that nobody is ever condemned, which John plainly does not believe. The consistent pattern in Scripture is that universal-sounding language describes the removal of boundaries between peoples rather than a guarantee for each person. “All” usually means all kinds, not all without exception.
What does Colossians 1:24 mean when Paul speaks of filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions?
Paul is certainly not suggesting that the cross was incomplete or that his suffering adds saving value to it. Two chapters later he says the record of debt was nailed to the cross and cancelled outright. What is still “lacking” is the suffering that the church must pass through as the gospel spreads through a hostile world. Paul takes his share of that suffering gladly on behalf of the churches. His pain serves the delivery of the message; it never supplements the payment for sin.
Related Reads
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- Did Jesus Teach Calvinism? John 6 and the Doctrines of Grace
- The Covenant of Redemption: A Guide to the Pactum Salutis
- Why Did Jesus Have to Die by Crucifixion Specifically?
- Does Calvinism Make God the Author of Sin?
