What Was Nailed the Cross?

Paul & The "Old Testament:" What Was Nailed To the Cross: A Look at Colossians 2.14

"having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross."

It is commonly assumed across much conservative Christianity (and Churches of Christ included) that with this verse Paul taught that the "law" or the "Old Testament" was blotted out or abrogated or done away with. This particular interpretation has contributed to the semi-Marcionite view toward the Hebrew Bible among CofCs. A recent writer for example claims that this interpretation is so clear and established that one has to "shut his eyes, stop his ears, and scar his heart like the Pharisees of old to miss this truth" (Wade Webster, "Crucial Questions Concerning the Old Covenant," Power {June 2008}). I confess that I am guilty because I do not agree that Colossians says anything of the sort about the "Old Testament."

Something was nailed to the cross but it was not the "Old Testament." It is an interesting fact to note that if Paul was concerned about the Law why he never even used the word a single time in Colossians. "Law" or nomos does not occur even once in the epistle. A strange fact if it was the "law" that was nailed to the cross.

Whatever was nailed to the cross Paul says it was "against us and stood opposed to us." This statement is hard for me to reconcile with not only Paul's attitude toward the Torah/Hebrew Bible elsewhere but also what the Bible itself says. For example the following attitude is directly contradictory the attitude expressed in those words

"The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.
The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The precepts of the LORD are right giving joy to the heart"

This attitude in Psalm 19 could never be understood as saying the law was "against us or stood opposed to us." Further no one could read Psalm 119 and come away with such a conclusion. The Bible itself does not support the idea that the Law was "opposed to us." Paul does not support that idea either. In fact he states in Romans "the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good" (7.12). He further declares that the Hebrew Bible is "spiritual" (7.14). Paul says that the problem was not the law but you and me! Paul is not anti-torah, nor anti-Hebrew Bible and Paul never believed that God's word was destroyed or obliterated.

Paul says that the cheirograph was nailed the cross. This word is a Pauline hapax and never occues again in the NT. In the 19th century the word turned up in the sands of Egypt inscribed on papyri. Adolf Deissmann in his epoch making book Light from the Ancient East demonstrates that the term refers to an I.O.U., a certificate of debt incurred by a person (cf. pp. 331-334).

Historical context is a cardinal rule in biblical interpretation. In Jewish apocalyptic there was an idea that there existed a book of records that kept track of our evil deeds. This book, like the mortgage (an I.O.U.) at the bank, provided powerful leverage with less than friendly spirit beings called principalities, powers, angels and the like. This book is mentioned often in Jewish literature of the time (1 Enoch 89.61-64; 108.7; Testament of Abraham 12.7-18; 13.9-14; and many other places). Enoch, for example, tells how he heard the words "write down every destruction {sin} ... so that this may become testimony for me against them." We have an IOU that stands against us and that IOU is our own sin debt. It is that sin that the malignant powers hold over us.

Paul shows the Colossians that the cross was not a defeat of Christ by the cosmic forces of evil. Rather the cross was where Christ stripped the powers of their power. He nailed the debt we owed to the cross and canceled it. He then paraded those beings in a procession like a victorious Caesar. Once Jesus took our Sin Debt out of the way those beings had no power of us. The cross was a triumph not because it destroyed three-fifths of God's word rather the Cross was victorious because it was there that Christ won the cosmic battle. Eugene Peterson captures the sense of this text in The Message,

"Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate whiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ's Cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets."

That is what Colossians 2.14 celebrates. The removal of sin ... not the removal of the Hebrew Bible.

Shalom,
Bobby Valentine