Defeating the Powers

When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Colossians 2:15

Paul describes how God has defeated and disarmed the spiritual powers of evil and darkness. In the previous verse he stated that God took what was against us and nailed it to the cross. He is claiming that the cross of Christ not only removes death’s hold on us, but also defeats the forces of evil in the world.

This is not an “other-worldly” claim that somehow is not related or relevant to our lived experience. It is the opposite. For Paul, these malignant spiritual powers are what lie behind the corrupt and oppressive institutions and structures in this world. Their influence is not ethereal, abstract, or theoretical, but what we encounter constantly.

Paul announces that the powers behind what we experience wherever there is systemic injustice and any form of inhumanity embedded in society and human endeavors, were disarmed and defeated. If we recognize that the world is under the influence of malevolent but finite spiritual forces, then the news of the those being disarmed is good indeed.

The source of what we sense is wrong with the world is not ultimately other people, but the “principalities and powers” that Paul identifies. These are what we struggle against (Ephesians 6:12). The cross, according to Paul, is how God in Christ vanquished the evil behind it all.

Moreover, he claims that the cross is the public display of their defeat. Paul seems to be playing off how Jesus’ death was a public execution. Unlike how it first appears, the defeat of good, the cross was in fact the public demonstration of evil’s defeat.

For everyone who has eyes to see, love and faithfulness remained unshakeable despite all the power of evil unleashed against Jesus. Love was not destroyed. Jesus forgave his enemies. Evil can never overcome the good.

If we can believe it, truly trusting what we witness in the cross, all the powers which undergird the evils of our world are unable to conquer the goodness of God. They are shown to be impotent against the only thing that matters, “faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6).

This message of the cross is how we can find hope to live in the world in which we find ourselves. As immense as the systemic expressions and manifestation of evil are, whether racism, sexism, every form of prejudice, war, hatred, oppression, or anything else that oppresses human flourishing and which is entrenched in society, culture, and human institutions, these cannot overcome the love of God. The power of evil is illusory, for in the end it falls to goodness, truth, and beauty.

The challenge for us is to hold to the good always, to love relentlessly, to not succumb to the temptation to use evil to fight evil, but to live in the faith of love’s infinite power. When we take up the cross, we become undefeatable, living within the same ‘faith expressing itself though love’ that triumphs over all evil.