Christ

Christ is referenced here as the one whose table defines exclusive loyalty — Paul's argument hinges on the fact that union with Christ is a total commitment that cannot be shared with competing spiritual allegiances.

Christ is the ultimate standard Paul points to here — the one Paul himself is following, making Christ the real model for the Corinthians, with Paul merely serving as a visible example along the way.

Christ is portrayed here in his reigning, conquering role — actively subduing every authority and power until the Father's enemies are fully under his feet, at which point he will hand the completed kingdom back to the Father.

Christ is the concluding anchor of Paul's argument — the one in whom all divisions dissolve, because belonging to him means possessing everything, leaving nothing worth fighting over.

Christ appears here as the title Peter uses before the Sanhedrin — asserting that Jesus holds the identity Israel's council has rejected, making the confrontation explicitly about who Jesus is.

Christ is used here as the title embedded in Paul's climactic phrase 'Christ in you' — the Anointed One who once dwelled in a Temple now taking up residence in individual human beings.

Christ is used here as the title of the one whose peace Paul had called the Colossians to live under — the anointed king whose rule over their inner lives was the letter's central practical summons.

Christ is invoked here as the model for the kind of integrity Daniel embodied — his consistent, cross-shaped character is described as the daily rhythm that made him who he was long before the lions' den.

Christ is invoked as the fulfillment of the tree-curse law — the Anointed One deliberately took on the status of the condemned, bearing the curse that Deuteronomy associated with public execution on wood.

Christ is the source of the 'new self' here — Paul's point is that the new identity isn't manufactured by effort but already created in God's likeness, given through Christ and simply waiting to be put on.

Christ is the model for wifely submission in this passage — the church's willing trust in Christ frames the submission Paul describes as voluntary and relational, not coerced or hierarchical in a worldly sense.