Does Colossians 1:20 teach that all people will be saved?

Colossians 1:19–20 (NIV) reads:

 “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him [i.e., Jesus Christ] to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

The question arises, if God was pleased to reconcile all to Himself, both in earth and in heaven, does it not follow that all men without distinction are in fact saved, through the Incarnation and the atoning death of Christ? 

This is the way it has been interpreted by universalists down through the ages, and it is certainly a question the church has to deal with carefully in the light of all other passages that pertain to the objects of Christ’s salvation.

It would immediately follow from the universalist position that if Christ died to save all people without distinction, these consequences would ensue:

  1.      Faith is completely unnecessary; for Christ’s atoning blood would avail for the redemption of all men, whether or not they respond to God’s call, whether or not they repent and believe, and whether or not they forsake sin and their loyal service of Satan and all the evil he stands for.

  2.      Hell never had any occupants in it, has none at present, and never will have; and all Scriptures that speak of unsaved sinners suffering torment in hell are completely mistaken.

  3.      If the reconciliation is spoken of in Colossians 1:20 be understood as guaranteeing the ultimate salvation of everyone, even the unrepentant who die in their sins, whatever punishment there may be in hell amounts to a mere temporary chastisement more or less equivalent to the Roman Catholic purgatory, which purgatory, however, will give way to complete emptying of the abode of the damned, all of whom will be transferred to heaven, without any distinction between those who rejected Christ and those who surrendered their heart and life to Him.

  4.      Thus interpreted, Colossians 1:20 and all similar passages lead to the result that God does not make any permanent difference between good and evil, since no ultimate distinction is made in His actual treatment of those who honour His moral law and those who despise and reject it. This can only mean, then, that there is no genuine difference between right and wrong; and there is no moral dimension to human life or experiences except that which is temporary, illusory, and subjective. 

Furthermore, there was no necessity for the Bible or for revelation or for the divine offer of forgiveness and grace. Forgiveness and grace automatically devolve on every living soul, no matter how he may despise them and abhor them, and no matter how cordially he abominates God Himself and everything that is good and holy.

All these consequences unavoidably ensue from such an interpretation of Colossians 1:20. 

If the sacrifice of Christ means the reconciliation of all moral agents of all ages, whether in heaven or on earth, whether or not they repent and believe, then there is no reality to divine justice (except insofar as Christ suffered for sin on the cross); and heaven will swarm with hate-filled, blaspheming, God-despising, Christ-mocking degenerates, who will condemn as fools all those who in this life ever denied themselves anything that they wanted for themselves, just for the sake of moral scruples. 

In such a heaven Satan will reign supreme, for his cause will be magnificently vindicated.

To this horrible spectacle of hell in heaven, the traditional universalist will object that he had no such thing in mind. What he meant was that by the temporary sufferings of a transient hell, all the wicked who go there will be transformed into saints. In the excruciating torments of their sojourn in the abode of the damned, they will learn to love God; they will come to a sincere hatred for sin; and they will surrender their hearts to Christ without any admixture of a self-seeking motive (such as a desire to escape the torments of hell). 

To articulate this idea is to expose its utter absurdity. In this life, for instance, with the constantly available influence of the Holy Spirit, criminals consigned to earthly prisons do not experience a real change of heart through the punishment imposed on them by the courts of this world. 

Rather, in the end they only come out more hardened in sin and hopeful of escaping future punishment as they continue their lives of crime more cleverly than before. Therefore, what possibility is there that totally without the available influence of the Holy Spirit (who alone can bring about regeneration in sinners’ hearts), the wicked serving out their sentence in hell can ever come to a change of heart toward God or toward the moral law?

In Revelation 16:8–10 we read of the true reaction of fallen man toward divine punishment:

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent or glorify him. The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. Men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done (NIV).

If this is the response of the unconverted heart of fallen man while still here on earth, what prospect is there that in the agonies of hell the punishment or suffering will lead to any true repentance or reconciliation with God? None whatever!

No matter how long an unbeliever rots or writhes in hell, he will never come to the breaking point, so far as his opposition to God is concerned. No amount of suffering will ever change his mind or lead to his purification from an evil heart. Hence the entire premise behind a purgatory is false, for it overlooks the incorrigible nature of the hardened, sinful heart. 

He who has denied and rejected Christ to the end of his earthly life can never learn to love Him and believe in Him in the hate-filled atmosphere of hell, or in the lake of fire that he will share with Satan as his eternal abode (Rev. 20:10; 21:8).

The Lord Jesus was very clear in His teaching concerning the endless torment of the damned. “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’ ” (Matt. 25:41, NIV). This chapter closes with the same concept of eternity for both the redeemed and the lost: “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (v.46). 

Note that the same word aiōnios is used for both classes—even as it is used of everlasting life in John 3:16. There is no way of scaling down aiōnios to mean something less than endless eternity (as universalists attempt to do) so far as the torment of hell is concerned without also reducing “eternal life” to something temporary and the abode of the redeemed in heaven to something transient.

In other words, Scripture teaches that both the life of Christ in heaven and the torment of the damned in hell are equally “eternal.” Jesus said, “I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore [eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn]” (Rev. 1:17–18, NASB). 

Compare this with Revelation 20:10: “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever [eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn].” 

This describes the ultimate abode of all the unsaved, according to Revelation 21:8 (“the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death”). The endless nature of this damnation completely excludes the theory of universalism and exposes it as a denial of the truth of Scripture.

So far as the moral objection of the universalists to eternal hell is concerned, it is only necessary to point out that once any human being has been created by God, he is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), a God who never passes away. 

Therefore, as an ever-existing person, every human being must carry on his conscious existence somewhere in the universe, whether in heaven or in hell (the Bible mentions no other possibility beyond these two abodes). Since the nonelect have misused their free will to remain in a state of rebellion against God and refuse His call to repentance and a new life, there is nothing left for them but endless eternity in the home they have chosen, the abode of Satan himself.

There is no possibility of repentance and change of heart for the sinner in hell; for the Scripture tells us, “It is appointed for men to die once, and after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). 

Once the Lord closed the door on Noah and his family in the safety of the ark (Gen. 7:16), there was no longer any possibility for any of the rest of Noah’s generation to enter it and be delivered from the Great Flood. They had scoffed at his warnings for 120 years, while Noah vainly urged them to repent and take refuge in the one way of deliverance that God had provided. Once the door was shut and the skies opened up with their death-dealing rain, it was too late for anyone to change his mind. His doom was unalterably sealed. It could not be otherwise.

Nor is it a valid objection to the goodness of God to raise the common protest, How can a good God condemn anyone to eternal hell? If God is good, He must be on the side of justice, right, and truth. Neither righteousness nor justice could ever allow the guilt of rebellion against an infinite God to be atoned for by a temporary stay in hell, where there is neither repentance nor change of heart (for the reasons that we have considered above), and from which only those could be released who still have hell in their hearts, and who by their presence in heaven would only turn it into a den of discord and misery. 

We must, therefore, reply to the universalist challenge that a good God can do nothing else but condemn the unrepentant who die in their sins to endless confinement in hell. For Him to do anything short of that would put Him on the side of injustice and destroy the sanction of the moral law.

What, then, is the correct interpretation of Colossians 1:20? 

What is meant by God’s reconciling all things to Himself through Christ? In this context, it is apparent that alienation and division have taken place between heaven and earth, and the “thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities” (v.16), both the visible and the invisible, are divided into opposing camps: those who are completely loyal to God and live for His glory, and those not truly submitted to Him. Furthermore, there is a certain hostility between God’s angels in heaven and the disobedient, Satan-serving race of Adam on earth. 

The only way the just demands of the broken law of God can be satisfied is by the shed blood of Jesus on the cross and by His resurrection victory as the covenant Head of a new race, the family of the redeemed. Only through Christ can all these opposing forces be reconciled and brought into harmony with one another, as all bow their knee in submission to Him (Phil. 2:10) in the final day of His coronation in the presence of all the universe, “when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

It is against this background that we are to understand the phrase diʾ autou apokatallaxai ta panta eis auton (“through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself”—that is, unto His sovereign authority). In that day Satan’s power will be crushed, all resistance from the rebellious world will be completely broken, and all will unite in confessing that Christ is Lord. Ta panta implies that all intelligent moral creatures, wherever they live and to whatever realm they belong, will unite in this confession of His absolute sovereignty.

In the case of demonic powers and the denizens of Satan’s kingdom, the confession of Christ as Lord will be in the nature of a reluctant admission of fact, rather than a surrender of their heart and life to Him. That is, they will acknowledge that Jesus is the Almighty Sovereign, whether they like it or not (even Satan and his demons acknowledged Jesus’ divine messiahship during His earthly ministry). The victory things will be reconciled to God through Christ. The day of opportunity to rebel and defy the Lord will be over. Both the saved and the unsaved will acknowledge themselves to be under His authority and will submit to His power. 

The angels of heaven will rejoice in perfect harmony with all of God’s redeemed from among the human race, all tensions and barriers having been removed by the Cross and the resurrection of the great Mediator, whom God the Father has appointed to be the heir of all things (Heb. 1:2–3). It is in this sense that He will “reconcile to Himself all things … on earth and in heaven, by making peace through His blood.”

Archer, G. L. (1982). New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (pp. 406–409). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.