In chapter three of Jesus and the Powers, N. T. Wright and Michael Bird explain how they understand the “powers” of the book’s title. They are “what we would call ‘earthly’ or ‘political’ rulers and what we might call any ‘non-human’ or ‘supernatural’ quasi-personal ‘forces’ that stand behind the ‘earthly’ rulers” (51).

They focus, appropriately, on the “great poem” about Christ in Colossians 1:15-20, because it makes reference to the “powers”—“visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities”—and leads to the final defeat of the “rulers and authorities” through the cross (2:14-15).