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Book of Colossians 2:14-15 Nailing It to His Cross

[Study Aired September 22, 2026]

“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” Colossians 2:14–15.

Where the Last Study Stopped

The last study took the first six verses of this passage and stopped. Before we take the last two, it is worth recalling what the first six settled.

Paul had named a danger. Someone might carry these people off (G4812) “through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8). Teachers were at the door of that church with something to add to Christ — a wisdom held elsewhere, a discipline, ranks of beings between a man and God.

Against that Paul laid six verses of ground. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ, bodily. These people are complete in Him, and He is head of all principality and power. They were circumcised by no hand, buried, raised, and made alive — and every verb of it was one they did not perform.

It ended on one more thing done to them: “having forgiven you all trespasses.” That raised a question the last study named and did not answer. If the trespasses are forgiven, what became of what stood written against them?

Paul answers that first, and the answer takes three verbs. Then he says what became of those who stood over them.

Four things stand in these two verses: What the writing was, and what was written on it; Who it stood against, and how it reached men who never received the law; What became of it — three things done to it, and all three at one cross. Then the powers: put off, shown openly, and set against what this letter had already said of them in chapter one. Three of the words in these two verses stand nowhere else in all of Scripture.

Blotting Out the Handwriting

He begins with what was written.

Colossians 2:14 “Blotting out (G1813) the handwriting (G5498) of ordinances (G1378) that was against us, which was contrary (G5227) to us, and took it out of the way, nailing (G4338) it to his cross.”

Something was written against the Colossians. It is gone.

Start with the thing itself. “Handwriting” is cheirographon (G5498), a word used nowhere else in Scripture. There is no second place to weigh it against, so the sense comes from the lexicons, and they give it as a document in a man’s own hand — a bond he has signed. Paul does the thing itself in another letter, though he does not use the word: “I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it” (Philemon 1:19). That is the picture: an obligation, acknowledged in writing, by the man who owes it.

Now what was written on it.

“Ordinances” is dogma (G1378), and Paul does not leave us guessing. The verb built on it stands six verses on (G1379) — “why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” (Colossians 2:20) — and then names them: “Touch not; taste not; handle not” (Colossians 2:21). Just before that he had listed “meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days” (Colossians 2:16).

Those are the laws of Moses. Writing to another church he joins the word to the law itself: “the law of commandments contained in ordinances (G1378)” (Ephesians 2:15). And the word names binding requirement delivered to churches: “they delivered them the decrees (G1378) for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem” (Acts 16:4).

So the decrees written on it were the ordinances of the law, and the bond is what those decrees held a man to. That keeps both halves of the verse: a writing of ordinances, and an obligation standing against men.

Paul is not describing a page that someone tore up. What kind of writing can be nailed to a cross?

Hebrews answers it. It speaks of a covenant made with the fathers and broken — “they continued not in my covenant” (Hebrews 8:9) — and of another to come, whose terms God says He will “put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10). Written. Nowhere on a page. Of the first, that God “hath made the first old” and it is “ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13).

That is the kind of instrument in view. A covenant binds. It sets terms. Its terms can be written where no page exists. The same book assigns the very things Paul names — meats, drinks, washings — to that first covenant (Hebrews 9:1, 9:10). It does not use Paul’s word there; it makes the same list belong to the same covenant.

Hebrews 9:1 “Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.”

Hebrews 9:10 “Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation.”

So the handwriting was not a scrap someone tore up. It was an obligation, and it held men the way a signed bond holds a debtor.

Now who it held.

Paul states it plainly: the writing was “against us.” He was a Pharisee. He could say of himself, “touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6), and he says the writing stood against him. Not against the Gentiles who never had it. Against the man who kept it best.

He explains that elsewhere. The law speaks to those under it, he says, “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Romans 3:19). Being outside it did not leave the Gentiles innocent: “as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law” (Romans 2:12). To the Ephesians he names a second effect — a wall standing between two peoples, broken down at the cross.

Ephesians 2:14–15 “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.”

So the writing cut two ways. It stood against the people who had it, and it shut out the people who did not. 

“Contrary to us” is hupenantios (G5227). It is used once besides here, where a fiery indignation “shall devour the adversaries (G5227)” (Hebrews 10:27). What was written was no inconvenience standing between them and a blessing. It was an opposing party.

Then what became of the writing. Three things.

It was blotted out. “Blotting out” is exaleiphō (G1813), and the verb by itself decides nothing, because Scripture uses it of very different things. Of sins: “that your sins may be blotted out (G1813)” (Acts 3:19). Of a name: “I will not blot out (G1813) his name out of the book of life” (Revelation 3:5). Of tears: “God shall wipe away (G1813) all tears from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17). Sins, a name, tears. The verb names an erasure, and what is erased is named beside it. Here what is named is the writing.

Notice what was blotted out together with it. The clause just before says “having forgiven you all trespasses.” Those are not two acts laid side by side. Paul says elsewhere that sin is not reckoned where there is no law — “sin is not imputed when there is no law” (Romans 5:13) — and that “the strength of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56). The writing did not make these people sinners. It made their sin chargeable. Blot out the writing and the charge has nothing to be written on.

It was taken out of the way. Carried off, so that it no longer stands where it stood.

And it was nailed to the cross. “Nailing” is prosēloō (G4338), used nowhere else in Scripture. The bond was not filed away where it might be produced again. It was fastened, in public, to the cross where Christ died. What was nailed there was not the law’s goodness. Paul calls the law holy, and the commandment “holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12), and says faith does not make it void but establishes it (Romans 3:31). What ended was the bond men were held to, not the righteousness the law spoke of. The Lord Himself said He came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it, and that not one jot or tittle should pass from it “till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17–18).

It was not nailed up at a distance from these people. Something else hung there that day, written over His head, naming the charge against Him — “set up over his head his accusation written” (Matthew 27:37). John records the same written charge, giving the title in his own words (John 19:19) “And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. The writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS.” The writing against us was fastened to the same wood. These people had already been told in this passage that they were buried with Him and raised with Him, and Paul says it of himself plainly: “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). What is done to the Head is where the body is.

One thing more. Two sayings here might seem to pull apart. Hebrews says the first covenant is “ready to vanish away” — something still passing. Paul says the writing was blotted, carried off, and nailed up — something finished. Scripture speaks both ways about one thing, and this series has met it before: God “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6) while we still walk about on the earth. The nailing was the act. The vanishing is what men see of it in time.

Paul writes “against us” and “contrary to us.” Not against them. He is not describing someone else’s trouble from a safe distance. The writing had his name on it too.

Spoiled, Shewn, Triumphed

Forgiveness was one half of it. There were also the powers — the thrones and dominions the teachers were pointing toward, the ranks a man was told to climb. Paul says what the cross did with those.

Colossians 2:15 “And having spoiled (G554) principalities and powers, he made a shew (G1165) of them openly (G3954), triumphing (G2358) over them in it.”

Read the two verses together and something seems to answer itself. Verse 8 warned that a man might spoil them. Verse 15 says Christ spoiled the principalities and powers. They would carry you off, and He carried them off.

However, that is not what Paul wrote. The word at verse 8 is sulagōgeō (G4812). The word here is apekduomai (G554). They share nothing but the English the translators chose for them.

Colossians 2:8 “Beware lest any man spoil (G4812) you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”

Colossians 2:15 “And having spoiled [put off] (G554) principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

What it does carry is a thread that entered four verses back. Apekduomai stands twice in Scripture, both times in this letter: here of the powers, and later of the readers — “ye have put off (G554) the old man with his deeds” (Colossians 3:9). Its noun stood four verses back, where these men were told of “putting off (G555) the body of the sins of the flesh” (Colossians 2:11). So the same root is used three times in this letter. The body of the sins of the flesh, put off. The old man, put off. And here, the principalities and powers put off.

Colossians 2:11 “In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off (G555) the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.”

Applied to the powers it raises a question the letter does not answer, since the form Paul uses will bear either a stripping of them or a stripping off from Himself. The other place the word stands shows why: at 3:9 it is the readers who put off the old man — the subject stripping something from himself. The KJV takes the first reading here. We need not choose between them, because what the verse states either way is that the powers were dealt with at the cross, and that they were shown openly.

Paul says next that the powers were shown. “Made a shew (G1165) of them openly” is deigmatizō (G1165), another word that stands nowhere else in Scripture. Its longer form is used of men who crucify the Son of God afresh and “put him to an open shame (G3856)” (Hebrews 6:6). That is the sense — something held up where it can be seen.

Paul is not content to let the verb carry it alone. He adds “openly” (G3954), which is a phrase of its own and not part of the verb.

“Triumphing over them” is thriambeuō (G2358), and it stands in one other place: “thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph (G2358) in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14). The same verb at both ends of it — something God works in us there, something Christ does to the powers here. What the two hold in common is a victory carried where it can be seen. And “in it” could look back to the cross, the nearest thing   named, or to Christ Himself. Either way the place of the triumph is the place of the dying.

Reconciled, and Triumphed Over

Now the hardest thing in the passage.

Back there he wrote that God was pleased “by him to reconcile all things unto himself… whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Colossians 1:20). The powers are among those things — He made them, and made them for Himself (Colossians 1:16). Here, at the cross, He puts them off and makes a shew of them openly. Reconciled, and triumphed over.

Colossians 1:15-17 “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”

These are not two separate dealings. The reconciling was made “through the blood of his cross.” The triumph was “nailing it to his cross… triumphing over them in it.” One cross for both.

What cannot be said is how it ends. Paul tells us what these beings are to Christ, and he tells us what the cross did to them. He never sets those two sayings side by side and tells us what they amount to together. That is a gap in the letter, not a defect in the question.

It is a gap this series said would close here. The third study set the reconciling of “all things” at 1:20 against the powers put off at 2:15, and said the answer would wait at this verse. It does not wait here. What such beings were made for, and what the cross accomplishes in that, are weighed across the whole of Scripture. That is a study of its own, on what the principalities and powers were made for.

What These Verses Establish

Read whole — these two verses and the six that carried us to them — the passage names a danger and then buries it under the Person Jesus Christ.

A man may be carried off. Paul does not identify the thing that would carry him off by what it teaches, but by what it is patterned after — the traditions men hand down, the rudiments of the world, and not Christ. Against that stands one sentence: all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him, bodily. Everything else here is drawn out of it.

These people are filled full in Him, and He is head over the very ranks a teacher would send them climbing toward. They were circumcised by no hand, buried, raised, and made alive, by a working that raised Christ from the dead and is the same working that exhausts the apostle who tells them so. The writing against them was blotted out, carried off, and nailed up where Christ died, and the powers were put off, and shown openly.

They did none of it. It was all done to them. Verse 8 tells them to watch; the seven verses under it give them nothing to do. The order of standing before doing holds again, and holds it in the strongest form the letter has yet given. What is new is the position: the warning came first this time, and the ground was laid underneath it rather than before it.

The fullness dwells in Christ; the church is filled in Him, and the letter never trades the one for the other. All of it was done to a people who could not have asked for it. What holds them holds us on the same terms, and for the same reason: not because we laid hold of the fullness, but because it dwells where God put us, in Christ.

Next study: (Colossians 2:16–19)

“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.”