Masters, render to your servants justice and equity; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, free: but Christ is all, and in all."
But God will be all in all in the time of restitution; not in the sense that the Father alone will be, and the Son be wholly resolved into him, like a torch into a great pyre, from which it was pulled away for a short time and then put back … when we shall be no longer divided (as we are now by movements and passions) and containing nothing at all of God, or very little, but then we shall be entirely like God, ready to receive into our hearts the whole God and him alone. This is the perfection to which we press on. Paul himself indeed bears witness to this.
Ver. 11. "Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is all, and in all."
Lo! Here is a third encomium of this "man." With him, there is no difference admitted either of nation, or of rank, or of ancestry, seeing he has nothing of externals, nor needs them; for all external things are such as these, "circumcision, and uncircumcision, bondman, freeman, Greek," that is, proselyte, "and Jew," from his ancestors. If you have only this "man," you will obtain the same things with the others that have him.
"But Christ," he says, "is all, and in all": Christ will be all things to you, both rank, and descent, "and" Himself "in you all." Or he says another thing, to wit, that you all have become one Christ, being His body.
[AD 202] Irenaeus on Colossians 3:11