Thanks Pil! I know that there are various understandings of this verse (that aren't the obviously heretical universalist ones), so I wanted to get your all's interpretation.
Albert Barnes writes, "It can mean then, only, that he had executed a plan that was adapted to this; that if fairly and properly applied, the blood of the cross was fitted to secure entire reconciliation between heaven and earth. There was no enemy which it was not fitted to reconcile to God; there was no guilt, now producing alienation, which it could not wash away."
John Gill writes, "but rather all the elect of God are here meant, the family of God in heaven and in earth; all the saints that were then in heaven, when actual reconciliation was made by the blood of Christ, and who went thither upon the foot of peace, reconciliation, and redemption, to be made by his sacrifice and death; and all the chosen ones that were or should be on the face of the earth, until the end of time; all these were reconciled to God by Christ: and then the apostle proceeds particularly to mention the Colossians, as also being instances of this grace, good will, and pleasure of God by Christ."
A. T. Robertson also makes an argument similar to Barnes, and Pil's explanation sounded like William Hendriksen's. Now we know where Hendriksen got all his info!
