Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Colossians · About this commentary
Nailed to the Cross
Colossians 2:13-14
13 You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, · WEB
What was canceled at the cross is a certificate of debt — and the text says twice whose side it was on.
You, being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses. The condition was death, the remedy is life given, and the participle forgiven is how it was done. Nothing is described as owed after that clause.
Verse 14 names what was removed. Having wiped out the handwriting in ordinances that was against us — cheirographon G5498, a word found nowhere else in Scripture. It means a document written by hand, and in ordinary use it was a certificate of debt, an IOU acknowledging what the signatory owed.
Two phrases in the verse describe it, and both are about opposition rather than content: it was against us, and it was contrary to us. What is canceled is something that stood as a charge — the record of debt a person's own trespasses had run up, which verse 13 has just said were forgiven.
Three verbs dispose of it, escalating. Wiped out — the word for erasing writing from a surface. Taken out of the way. And nailed to the cross, the only occurrence of that phrase in Scripture. The debt is not reduced or rescheduled but destroyed publicly, fixed where anyone could see it had been dealt with.
settled What this mark means