Sunday School lecture 11/16/03 continued
Colossians 2:8-23
Recall to Realities
2:16-19 In religion, we must never mistake the shadows for the substance. Religious faith must consist not of theories, questionable visions and manmade disciplines but of real events and substantiated facts. Paul therefore moves from an examination of religious experiences to the expression of those experiences in realistic, religious practices.
“Let no one pass judgment on you” show Paul’s awareness that the errorists were likely using guilt on the members of the church in order to sway them. The elements of sabbaths, food and drink, festivals and new moons may reflect the Judaistic element of the Colossian heresy. The Mosaic Laws were but a shadow of the things to come. Christ is the substance. Paul does not say not to observe these things if you feel convicted. His thrust is that we not judge each other, nor allow ourselves to be judged, according to these things as the standard. The essence of Paul’s intent here may be phrased, “Let no one rob you of your prize.”
We now see four characteristics of the errorist judges:
1. They insisted on self-abasement (asceticism) and the worship of angels. If we concede that the Colossian heresy was an embryo of full blown Gnosticism, the asceticism was due to their view of the evilness of matter, including flesh. Angel worship naturally flowed in the false belief of the aeons that emanated from God.
2. They took firm doctrinal stands on their visions. Paul does not deny that the errorists had visions but the reliance upon these private emotional experiences was born in conceit and in the flesh.
3. That they were puffed up in their minds. They were arrogant, and proud of their intellect. Instead of the humility inherent in the Christian’s character, they were self-absorbed and governed by the very flesh they claimed to detest.
4. They are described as not holding fast to the Head, which is Christ.Through the use of their divisiveness they themselves were severed from the Body, the corporate Christ.
Recall to Consistency
2:20-23 Paul sums up this part of his argument with a final appeal to hold fast to the Christ they first experienced. How could the Colossians let someone dictate to them a self-serving religion when they had died with Christ? This death was to sin, law, self, flesh, world, and all elemental powers. Christ’s death and Resurrection had abolished all regulations. It was this Resurrection that had set the Colossians to liberty from the Law and from sin. To follow the errorist’s regulations, which were inconsistent with the New Covenant, was to allow themselves to be led once again into bondage.
By submitting to such regulations they were showing themselves to be concerned with trivialities. Rather than obeying Christ as their Master, they were being led into the far more inferior and non-salvific works of men. This Passage closely resembles Mark 7:5-8 and some scholars feel that Paul must have had this Passage in mind while writing.
Paul states plainly that the heresy fails what it claims it will accomplish - it will not liberate the spirit from the flesh. The positive attributes of the Christian experience, reality and consistency contrast plainly with the dismal hypocrisy and lack of logic of the heresy.
