Review: "Christ All Sufficient"

Brian G. Hedges, Christ All Sufficient:  An Exposition of Colossians, is something of a digest of the best commentaries – including those by Douglas Moo, Peter O’Brien, David Pao, and N. T. Wright (16).

Hedges wrote this commentary to emphasis it’s theme that Christ is sufficient in Who He is and all He does – against the syncretism of Paul’s day and ours – where we continue to try to add to Christ and His Work to make Him even better.

Hedges commentary is very readable and hits on all the main points – showing how we bring them into our world.  It is a commentary I find very commendable.

The one point at which I groaned in startled disappointment, ironically, is in chapter five, “The Sufficiency of Christ” where he begins with the oft told example of how we are like ship’s passengers who are going down with the ship and grab on to refuse to stay afloat in the hopes of a savior – and that Savior comes in the form of Christ, Who brings us up on His passing ship and keeps us from our demise (77).

But this is not what the Scripture tells us – not even in Colossians!  “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14, ESV).

We were not alive, barely hanging on to rubbish; we were dead on the bottom of the sea – drowned!  Our Savior did not merely rescue us, but He brought us back to life!

I would urge Mr. Hedges to revise this part of his book.

Otherwise, I highly commend this work.

#ChristAllSufficient

[I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  This review appears on my blog and on Amazon.com.]