Colossians 1:18 vs. “Above All”

Paul Baloche & Lenny LeBlanc · checked 2026-08-21

What we checked

PassageColossians 1:18 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on Colossians 1 →

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumOpen The Eyes Of My Heart · 2000

Words addressed toJesus

Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Never says it is quoting: no verse cited, no reference given, no translation named, nothing in the recording framed as scripture
The verses are a sustained assertion of Christ's supremacy over about eleven named categories, which is the same claim Colossians 1:18 makes in its purpose clause
By count the song is overwhelmingly about Christ. About seventeen comparative phrases, one line in the first person
The chorus is about the crucifixion and burial, so the cross itself is what identifies who is being addressed
Widely published under CCLI 2672885 and carried in ten hymnals, so what it says is easy for anyone to look up and check

⚠ Cautions

The chorus's closing line is the subject of a documented, two-decade disagreement among worship leaders and pastors, with serious people on both sides. Read Kauflin and Theobald before leading it, not after someone asks
Colossians 1:18 answers the question that line leaves open. The song's other comparatives all name what Christ is above. That one does not, so whoever is singing supplies it
No divine name or title appears anywhere in the song. Someone joining mid-verse has an unnamed You until the chorus reaches the cross
Baloche has said he meant what Galatians 2:20 says about Christ loving and giving Himself for the individual. That is his account of what he intended, and it is worth knowing, but intent is not what the words do in a room
No reference is given anywhere, so the weight behind the verses has to be brought by the singer

Verse Proof

Colossians 1:18

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and firstborn from among the dead, so that in all things He may have preeminence.”

Paul and Timothy write to a church at Colossae that Paul had never met face to face (Colossians 1:1-2; 2:1). Verse 18 sits in a compact passage about Christ running from 1:15 to 1:20, and it is the hinge. The first half is creation. Verse 18 turns to two new things, the church and the resurrection, calling Him the head of the body and the firstborn from among the dead, and then it does something the earlier verses do not: it gives a purpose. All of it is so that in all things He may have preeminence. Two verses later the same paragraph reaches the cross, saying God was pleased through Him to reconcile all things to Himself by making peace through the blood of His cross. So this one paragraph holds both the cross and a ranking of Christ, and it puts the ranking in the purpose clause.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song is built out of one comparative construction, repeated. Two verses stack up categories the addressee is above: powers, kings, the natural world, all created things, wisdom, the ways of man, kingdoms, thrones, wonders, wealth and treasures. The chorus leaves the list and goes to the crucifixion, describing Him crucified and buried and using a crushed-flower image, then closes on a single line that places the singer inside the comparison as the one Christ had in mind at the cross. Across the printed text the comparative phrase appears about seventeen times, roughly a dozen of those as line openings, and exactly one line is in the first person. No divine name or title appears anywhere in the song. Not Jesus, not Christ, not Lord, not God, not Father. The addressee is identified only by the crucifixion and burial. Nothing is cited, no translation is named, and nothing is framed as a quotation. The recording checked here is Paul Baloche's, released by Integrity Music from the album Open The Eyes Of My Heart; published accounts say Baloche wrote the verses and had no chorus for about a year until LeBlanc supplied one. The dates in circulation do not agree: every publisher copyright line reads 1999, while Songfacts and Wikipedia give 1995 as the year it was written. The year in the fact box is the year of the recording checked here.

Nothing is taken from Colossians, and the song does not say it is quoting it. The published reference lists point elsewhere and they are worth following. Lifeway's song page lists Isaiah 53:3, Psalm 95:3, Psalm 97:9, Acts 2:36 and Ephesians 1:21. Hymnary lists Ephesians 1:23. Colossians 1:18 is on neither list, but the trail lands right beside it. Ephesians 1:21 is itself an above-all list, naming rule and authority and power and dominion and every name that is named. The very next sentence, Ephesians 1:22-23, says God put everything under His feet and made Him head over everything for the church, which is His body. That is Colossians 1:18's other half, said in the other letter. So the song's own reference trail arrives one book away from this verse. What Colossians 1:18 adds is the piece the song's central phrase never supplies. A comparative needs a second term, and roughly a dozen times the song gives one. The last one does not. Colossians 1:18 gives it, and gives it as the reason the resurrection happened: in all things, Him.

· Not a quote: The song cites no verse, names no translation and frames nothing as scripture. So the word-for-word standard does not apply. Its verses assert the preeminence that Colossians 1:18 states as the resurrection's purpose. Its closing line leaves a comparison open that the passage closes.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Seventeen times the song says above all. Once it does not say above all what, and that once is the whole argument.

Why it matters

This is one of the most-argued lines in modern worship, and the argument has been running since at least 2006 in print. Bob Kauflin wrote then that the natural reading makes the singer what Christ valued most at the cross, and said he does not use the song. Pastor Gabe Hughes made the same case in 2017. David Theobald answered both in 2015 from Philippians 2, arguing that Christ counting others more significant than Himself is Paul's own point.

The reason it matters is not that one side has to win. It is that the phrase is genuinely open, so every congregation singing it is quietly deciding what it means, several hundred times a year, without stopping to decide. Colossians 1:18 is the verse that ends the guessing, because it answers the question the line asks. It names what Christ is above, it says all things, and it says the resurrection happened so that this would be so.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is a list. Sung on a loop, this song rehearses about eleven categories of thing that Christ outranks, and it rehearses them in the second person, so the list is spoken to Him rather than about Him. That is a good thing to have planted, and it is the reason the dwelling tag is God rather than mixed. The single first-person line arrives once per chorus, at the end, after the list has done its work.

The formation question is what that one line does to the list it closes. If it is heard as the last item, the song forms a singer who has just named everything Christ is above and then found themselves inside the same sentence, which is close to what Colossians 1:18 does when it moves from creation to the church. If it is heard as a ranking, the song forms a singer who ends every chorus at the top of the pile. The words permit both, so the passage has to be doing the deciding. Read verse 18 with it. The purpose clause is not a detail of the paragraph, it is the point of the paragraph, and it tells you which of the two readings the paragraph is willing to carry.

Helpful comparison

Reverence is graded on this site whether or not a song quotes anything, so it has to be worked through here rather than assumed, and the grade is pass on all three checks. The Name: no divine name appears in the song at all, so it cannot be used as filler or as an exclamation. Holiness: two entire verses do nothing but assert that Christ is above every category the writers could name, which is the opposite of shrinking Him. True of God: this is where the argument lives, and it does not reach a failing grade, because a reverence flag on this site has to be provable and the disputed line is provably ambiguous rather than provably false. The phrase functions as a refrain through roughly a dozen lines before it lands on the singer, so it can attach as a ranking or as an echo of the subject already established. Kauflin, who objects to it, calls his reading the most natural one, which is itself an admission that another reading exists. Grading a song fail on the more likely of two available readings would be grading a probability, and the standard here is a provable statement. So it goes in the cautions, with both sides named and linked, where a reader can weigh it.

Worth adding: the passage does not leave the two readings equally weighted. Colossians 1:18 puts the purpose of the whole thing in a clause about Christ's preeminence, and verses 19 and 20 reach the cross afterward, inside that same purpose. A singer who knows the paragraph will hear the closing line as the last item in a list of things Christ is above rather than as a ranking that ends with the singer on top of it.

Sources

Paul Baloche — Above All (Official Live Video) · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed reports the channel as Integrity Music, the label's own channel, and the description gives the album Open The Eyes Of My Heart, writers Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche, © 1999 LenSongs Publishing and Integrity's Hosanna! Music, CCLI 2672885)
PraiseCharts — Above All chords · (independent confirmation of the writers, the 1999 copyright line and CCLI 2672885, plus the publisher's theme tags)
Leadworship — Open The Eyes Of My Heart (2000) · (Baloche's own site: album year 2000, Above All is track 5)
Lifeway Worship — Above All · (publisher metadata and the scripture list Isaiah 53:3, Psalm 95:3, Psalm 97:9, Acts 2:36, Ephesians 1:21)
Hymnary.org — Above All · (authors, 1999 copyright, the scripture reference Ephesians 1:23, and ten hymnal instances)
Easy Song — Above All copyright holders · (publisher split between Integrity's Hosanna! Music and Lensongs Publishing, CCLI 2672885)
Songfacts — Above All · (LeBlanc and Baloche as writers, a 1995 composition date, and Michael W. Smith finding the song for the 2001 inaugural prayer service)
Wikipedia — Above All (song) · (Smith's Worship recording, the 2002 and 2003 Dove Award nominations, and Baloche's published comment about the song's reach)
Worship Matters — Evaluating Worship Song Lyrics · (Bob Kauflin, 1 December 2006: the objection, his statement that he does not use the song, and his report of Baloche pointing to Galatians 2:20)
Pastor Gabe Hughes — Examining the Worship Song "Above All" · (30 January 2017: the argument that the chorus contradicts the verses, citing Philippians 2:9-11, Titus 2:14 and Ephesians 1:6)
Grace Baptist Church, Dansville — In Defense of the Worship Song "Above All" · (David Theobald, 21 January 2015: the Philippians 2:5-11 defense, answering Kauflin directly)
Song Scoops — Above All · (the writing account, Baloche's verses and LeBlanc's chorus at Muscle Shoals, sourced to Lindsay Terry, *I Could Sing of Your Love Forever*, Thomas Nelson, 2008)
Word to Worship — Above All · (a user-contributed reference list that reaches Colossians 1:14, 1:15, 1:16 and 1:19-20, and skips 1:18)
praisehiminsong — Above All · (first of two independent transcriptions used for the counts: two verses and a chorus, no divine name or title anywhere in the text, one first-person line)
Genius — Above All · (second independent transcription, agreeing on the same counts: about seventeen occurrences of the comparative phrase, roughly a dozen as line openings, one first-person line, and no occurrence of Jesus, Christ, Lord, God, Father or Spirit)

Corrections

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