What Does Colossians 1:12 Mean?

(12) **Giving thanks unto the Father.**—These words naturally follow the words “with joyfulness,” with which, indeed, they may be grammatically connected. But the “thankfulness” here is, as the context shows, the thankfulness of humility, sensible that from the Father’s love we have received all, and can but receive. **Which hath made us meet.**—The same word is used in 2Corinthians 3:6, “who hath made us able ministers of the new covenant,” and corresponds to the word “sufficient” in St. Paul’s previous question (2Corinthians 2:16), “Who is sufficient for these things?” The reference is clearly to God’s foreknowledge and call (as in Romans 8:29-30), in virtue of which “we are more than conquerors,” and “cannot be separated from His love in Jesus Christ our Lord.” **To be partakers of the inheritance of the saints.**—Literally, for *the part* (appointed to us) *of the lot of the saints.* (Comp. Ephesians 1:11, where, however, the sense is slightly different). The “lot” (like the Old Testament type of the share in the land of Canaan,” the lot of their inheritance”) is the place assigned to the saints primarily by the grace of God. It may have, as in the case of the type, to be fought for; but it is won not by our own arm, but by “God’s hand and His arm, and the light of His countenance, because He has a favour unto us” (Psalm 44:3). Hence, in accordance with St. Paul’s usual teaching (especially emphatic in this and the Ephesian Epistle), the whole stress is laid on God’s grace, giving us our lot, and “making us meet” to accept it. **In light.**—Properly, *in the light.* See Ephesians 4:8-14—a passage dwelling on the idea of the kingdom of light, almost as strongly and exhaustively as St. John himself (1John 1:5-7, *et al.*)*.* “In the light” (opposed to “the power of darkness” of the next verse) is in the light of God’s countenance, revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.