Charles Ellicott Commentary Colossians 2:14

"having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out that way, nailing it to the cross;" — Colossians 2:14 (ASV)

Blotting out the handwriting—that is, cancelling the bond which stood against us in its ordinances. The “handwriting” is the bond, exacting payment or penalty in default. (Compare to Philemon 1:19, “I Paul have written it with my own hand; I will repay it.”) What this bond is, we see from Ephesians 2:15, which speaks of “the law of commandments in ordinances,” there called “the enmity slain by the cross.”

On the meaning of “ordinances,” see the note on that passage. The metaphor here, however, is different and especially notable as the first anticipation of those many metaphors of later theology, from Tertullian onward, in which the idea of a debt to God, paid for us by the blood of Christ as “a satisfaction,” is brought out. The Law is a bond: “Do this and you shall live.” “The soul that sins, it shall die.”

On failure to do our part, it “stands against us.” But God, for Christ’s sake, forgives our transgressions and cancels the bond. It is a striking metaphor, full of graphic expressiveness; it is misleading only when (as in some later theologies) we hold it to be not only the truth but the whole truth, forgetting that legal and forensic metaphors can only imperfectly represent inner spiritual realities.

And took it.—Properly, and He (Christ) has taken it away. The change of tense is significant. The act of atonement is over; its effect remains.

Nailing it to His cross.—At this point, the idea of atonement comes in. Previously, we have heard simply of the free forgiveness and love of God. Now the bond is viewed, not as cancelled by a simple act of divine mercy, but as absolutely destroyed by Christ, by “nailing it to His cross.” It has been supposed (as by Bishop Pearson) that there is an allusion to some custom of cancelling documents by striking a nail through them. But the custom is doubtful, and the supposition unnecessary. Our Lord “redeemed us from the curse of the Law,” by His death, “being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).

St. Paul boldly speaks of that curse as a penalty standing against us, and as nailed to the cross with Himself, so to be forever cancelled in the great declaration, “It is finished.” If any more definite allusion is to be sought, we might be inclined to refer to the “title” on the cross, probably nailed to it. Such a title declared the explanation of the sufferer’s death. The cancelled curse of the Law was just such an explanation of the great atoning death, and the title, declaring His mediatorial kingdom, showed the curse cancelled by that means.