The Resurrection Completes the Powers' Defeat

"Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power... The last enemy that will be abolished is death" (1 Corinthians 15:24,26). Colossians 2:15 is not an isolated passage standing alone in Paul's thought — it connects directly to his fullest resurrection theology.
In 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, Paul describes Christ's resurrection, in language echoing the enthronement of Psalm 110 ("Yahweh says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet,'" Psalm 110:1), as the progressive destruction of "every ruler and every authority and power" until death itself, the last enemy, is abolished and the Son hands the completed kingdom to the Father. Christ's present reign is deliberately described as ongoing and unfinished — "he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet" — a process, not a single completed event. In pre-Christian Jewish interpretation, Psalm 110 was already read alongside Psalm 82's judgment of the corrupt "gods" of the divine council — two passages converging on the same expectation: the illegitimate spiritual rulers currently exercising authority over the nations would be progressively stripped of that authority by God's own judging, enthroned figure.
Colossians 2:15's disarming at the cross and 1 Corinthians 15's resurrection victory are therefore two movements of a single act, not two separate ideas. The cross strips the powers of their legal standing; the resurrection begins the process of stripping them of everything else, ruler by ruler, until the last enemy — death, their final weapon — is abolished for good, and the nations once allotted to them can rightly be told they are free.