Grace Greeley Teaching

Colossians 2:11

Please turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2 and we are coming to some rich doctrines of salvation formerly studied under the heading of Soteriology, soteria referring to salvation and ology, the study of; so it’s the study of the doctrines of salvation, the teaching of the Bible on salvation. Paul has, as we saw last time, he has warned against Christless philosophy, Colossians 2:8, and that leads to a profound and rather dense passage of doctrine that really teaches us what happened to us at salvation.

Something happened to us when we were saved and it takes really the rest of our Christian life and I would say into our eternal life to figure out what happened exactly and it is a great joy for us to figure that out. The key concept in this section on salvation is the believer’s union with Christ.

You don’t find the word union in this text per se, but you do find the concept that’s repeated in the expressions there in verses 9 to 15, in him, in whom, or with him. And all of those concepts really teach the concept of union with Christ, which is at the heart of this whole section from verses 9 to 15. One mark of Christian maturity is an abiding awareness of and a meaningful reflection on our union with Jesus Christ.

This union God was pleased to picture for us in baptism, the initiatory ritual of the Christian Church. We call it the entrance ordinance into the Christian Church, Christian baptism, water baptism. In fact, that’s why I asked that this morning, that they were planning on a different section from the London Baptist Confession of Faith, I asked that they would do that one on baptism, so that we could confess that together and put it in our minds the meaning of baptism for us as Christians.

Our baptism is our confession. Our baptism is a public testimony, and it is not something that we are to leave behind once we pass through the front door of the church, never to be thought of again. Our baptism is to be a living, abiding picture for us. It’s a testimony, a continual testimony, and a means of divine grace.

Christ gave baptism to us to instruct us and guide us and encourage us and sanctify us, not only at the point of baptism, but for the rest of our lives. So before we read our text this morning, I’d like you to listen to this brief description of baptism by the commentator JB Lightfoot. He says this, “baptism is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new. As he sinks beneath baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life. This it is because it is not only the crowning act of his own faith, but also the seal of God’s adoption and the earnest of God’s Spirit. Thus, baptism is an image of his participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.”

 Now JB Lightfoot was an Anglican minister, Anglican theologian, so his language on baptism is more strongly stated than what Scripture warrants. A bit of that spoke of baptismal regeneration, which is not biblical. We don’t rise from baptismal waters, regenerate, as the biblical doctrine of regeneration makes very plain to us.

And yet, since baptism pictures what truly happened at our salvation, regeneration, conversion by virtue of union, by faith in Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. The reality that is pictured in baptism is powerful and very true. Baptism is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new.

Baptism is an image of our participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ and so I wonder, dear Christian, how often you think back to your baptism, and how often you draw from the divine grace that’s conveyed to you whenever you reflect in, an ever more deeply instructed faith on the doctrines that are involved in your salvation and pictured in your baptism.

Paul commends such a practice by virtue of what our text this morning teaches, as one of the ways that God edifies us by his grace and encourages our hearts and strengthens our faith, and as we see most immediately here, protects us from false teaching, if we would reflect daily on our union with Christ. One way to do that is to ponder the meaning of baptism, to meditate in faith on the realities that are portrayed in that baptism, right, that ritual. And I believe we would be more strengthened and encouraged and therefore more deeply satisfied and more fully contented in Christ.

Now, right here at the front, I’ve given you some application, right up front, so that you can understand why this section we’re about to go through is so, so important for us as Christians. So with that, let’s read the full text together and we’ll start back in verse 8. Colossians 2:8 through 15 says this, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells bodily, and in Him you have been filled, who is the head over all rule and authority; in whom you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

“And you being dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having graciously forgiven us all our transgressions. Having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of the decrees against us which was hostile to us, He’s also taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. And having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in him.”

We’re going to focus our study this week on Colossians 2:11. There is enough in these verses to occupy the theological student for a semester of Soteriology or even a yearlong study. It’s just packed with soul stirring, mind stretching, heart strengthening doctrine. It’s so, so good. And as it is with many truths of Scripture, the riches here don’t really lie on the surface. They’re discovered by mining, by exegesis, by diligent digging, careful searching, careful sorting.

For example, look at that expression in verse 11. “Circumcision made without hands.” Is this the removal of the body of flesh saying something about us? Or is it saying something about what happened to Christ on the cross? And you say, well, isn’t that obvious? Well, maybe it is, but it has to do with what parallels may or may not be in the text, or how you interpret the next genitive phrase, “the circumcision of Christ.”

Of Christ, what kind of a genitive is that? I know you’ve pondered that as you’ve done your daily devotions. What kind of a genitive is that? Good for you, for asking that question. Is, of Christ, an objective genitive or a subjective genitive? Both of those, by the way, are supposed, as being potential options of the kind of genitive, because, of Christ, is connected to a verbal noun, could be a possessive genitive, could be an exegetical genitive explaining something more.

But all my point in saying, all that is to say this, the decision you make there on this point kind of affects the previous question about whether the removal of the body of flesh is about us or about him; about his death or ours. Paul joins the thoughts of verse 11, of those of verse 12, and here we see circumcision comes into contact with baptism. But what’s the relationship between the two of them? Are they two separate things or is it the same thing pictured twice?

As for baptism, is Paul referring to water baptism here? That is the baptism ordinance in the church, or is this a baptism that is a metaphor to signify a deeper spiritual reality? If he is talking about the ordinance and in such close proximity to circumcision, are we going to see that baptism replaces circumcision as the sign and the seal of the covenant, as some people like to put it?

So you can see there’s a lot here. If you’ll stick with me and if God is gracious to grant his Spirit to help us, which I believe he’s always faithful to do, we will discover the rich assurance of our salvation in this text. Because that’s really the point, is to deepen our assurance in the salvation that God accomplished for us in Christ. To protect us as a prophylactic against false teaching, the influence of false teachers and speculation and philosophy, which runs rife through the world in their day and in ours.

Christ gave baptism to us to instruct us and guide us and encourage us and sanctify us, not only at the point of baptism, but for the rest of our lives.” Travis Allen

Many people drift away from Christ because of these very truths that are being dealt with right here, so stick with me. The better we understand this, the more steadfast and immovable we’ll be, the more faithful, fruitful, joyful, grateful we’ll become and this has been my prayer for you as I’ve been studying through the text.

Now, the way I intend to work through this section, we’re going to start in verse 11, seeing that, in Christ, we have a brand-new heart. And then in verses 12 to 15, that, in Christ, we have a brand-new life. So new heart today, new life for next time, that’s the big picture. But now, for today, we’re going to dial in our focus on verse 11. So I could make a few introductory points before we get into the outline. Just to help you understand this.

Paul in verse 11 starts with a relative pronoun. It’s the word, in whom. Whom, there, being a relative pronoun and that relative pronoun points back to Christ, who is the subject of verses 9 and 10, “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and in Him you have been filled.”

And now verse 11, in whom, that’s the same, him, as before, “in Whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ.” Now, as uncomfortable as the subject may seem to be, to talk about this in public, we have got to come to some clarity on the meaning of circumcision. After all, Paul refers to it three times in one verse, so it’s obviously quite important.

And I would guess sitting around your dinner table, the meaning of circumcision is not something that comes up. It’s not something you talk about, think about too often, in polite company. If you do stop to think about it, you may wonder why it is that God chose this ritual of all things, which is so very private, which feels so terribly uncomfortable to talk about in public, as I’m doing right now.

So why is this a covenant sign? And how does this picture some spiritual good done to us? The verb peritemno, literally means, to cut around in. And everyone, ancient to modern, east to west, north to South, everyone seems to intuitively know what it is that is being cut around.

Circumcision refers to the cutting around of the male genitalia in a surgery to remove the foreskin. Why did God choose this to be the sign of the covenant that he made with Abraham? And for that matter, why is Paul bringing it up now? What does this have to do with us?

The procedure itself is bloody and painful and private, even an embarrassing thing to have to mention. And when we come to think about it, mutilating the body, doesn’t that seem rather barbaric? Isn’t circumcision a relic of an ancient past that we’d just as soon forget, or maybe relegated to like an artifact of history; happened back then after all.

If we consider today, the female genital mutilation that some cultures still practice, we all rightly consider it to be cruel and barbaric. If we judge the modern transgender cult to be returning to the same kind of thing, albeit with more sterile modern methods, chemically, surgically, rearranging the body parts. Look, it’s still mutilating the human body, which we oppose.

So why are we for it, when it comes to Abraham and his descendants? Why do we accept circumcision almost without thinking about it, when it comes to Israel? How is it that circumcision becomes something that we now celebrate? Here as it pictures, a brand-new heart in Christ. We can answer those questions if we take time to go back to the start and read the story of circumcision, discover its origin, and then learn about the rich meaning of circumcision.

 So now I’ll get into my outline. All that was introduction, but I’ve got several points for you this morning starting with this, number one: The sign, the sign, a physical circumcision. Number one: The sign a physical circumcision. We start with the sign of circumcision, or you could say the covenantal sign of circumcision, because the very first mention of circumcision in Scripture, Genesis 17:10, is given when God gave Abraham a sign of the covenant that he made with him.

It’s a covenantal context. So you will want to warm up your fingers, get your hands ready, go back to Genesis chapter 17. Genesis chapter 17, God gives the Abrahamic covenant several times and he kind of progressively reveals and gives more fullness and more description. Genesis 12 is the first mention of it; Genesis 15, more elaboration, that’s when “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

 That’s where righteousness was imputed to him on the basis of faith. Then Genesis 17, he recapitulates the covenant, explains it again, and gives the sign of circumcision. So we see the sign of circumcision didn’t come before he had faith, but after he had faith. But Genesis 17, let’s look at this giving of the sign starting in verse 9, Genesis 17:9 and following.

“God said further to Abraham,” he says further to Abraham, because I’ve already been talking to Abraham, giving him a recapitulation, a reexplanation of the covenant that he’s making with him. But, “God says further to Abraham,” in verse 9, “‘Now as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your seed after you, every male among you shall be circumcised.

“And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you. And every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations, one who is born in the house, or one who is bought with money from any foreigner, who is not of your seed. A servant who is born in your house or who is bought with your money shall be surely be circumcised; thus shall My covenant be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”

 Okay. For Israel, from this point on, circumcision is a thing, and it’s a very important thing, signifies the covenant that God made with Abraham and his seed after him. So serious, it is that all who would be identified as children of Abraham must be circumcised and any who were not circumcised are going to be cut off from the people, cast out, treated as heathen, treated as foreigners, no longer part of the people.

 May surprise you to find out that circumcision is not distinctive to Abraham and to Israel. Circumcision was actually practiced throughout the ancient world in a vast number of societies and cultures in different parts of the world. That’s why this text, this sign, the mention of circumcision kind of elicits no surprise or explanation from God. He knows exactly what it is. Abraham understands what God is getting at.

 Earliest evidence of circumcision is from Egypt. It was at a time that was contemporaneous with Abraham. Probably predates Abraham, but in Egypt and there is not a lot of remaining evidence for this, but there is evidence, seemed to be a mark of sacred distinction upon the males in Egypt. It was exclusive to priests and the higher castes of society. They granted them mystical access to all those who are initiated by this right into sacred mysteries of the divine.

But again, there’s evidence of circumcision not just in Egypt, but from all over the world, in both hemispheres, in the Middle East, in Africa, Asia, the Americas, even Australia, according to one source, even among the Fiji Islanders. Where did circumcision come from? I mean like who in their right mind?

Many theories there are about the origin of this practice, everything from a coming-of-age ritual to marking tribal belonging, like a really extreme tattoo or a severe form of body piercing. All kinds of theories. Fourth century BC Greek historian Herodotus. And since Herodotus, many throughout history, and to this day, believe that circumcision was, kind of like, a sanitary practice; you had hygienic concerns, maybe a prophylactic caution against spreading disease, especially venereal disease or sexually transmitted diseases.

This continues to this day to be a modern medical debate as to whether that’s effective or not. But the most honest consideration of the evidence is that the practice did originate as a religious right. Not because of sanitary reasons or rite of passage into manhood. Nothing like that.

But according to some, circumcision became kind of like a vicarious substitute for full blown human sacrifice, kind of like consecrating a part of the body and giving that over to the divine to signify consecrating the whole body. And yet still there was pain. Still there was a blood sacrifice offered to the deity. The evidence seems scanty on that point, as far as I can tell, but this view is coming closer to the point that this is originating as a religious right.

More to the point, we have to ask the question, so why the male genitalia? According to one source, it says, “We must look for the significance of this right. In this, the corruption of sin manifests itself with peculiar energy in the sexual life and the sanctification of the life was symbolized by purifying the organ by which life is reproduced. As spiritual purity was demanded of God’s chosen people, circumcision became the external token of the covenant between God and his people. End Quote.

Is that the reason God gave Abraham the sign of circumcision there, to signify the covenant? Was it about just sexual purity? Some people have thought that maybe it’s because for every Israelite who gets that done to him, every time he’s thinking about going into a woman of another nation, he has to think about the covenant as he engages in that act. Is that what’s going on?

Is it about purity? Why not, in the words of Jesus, why not gouge out the eye? The eye is a vehicle for all kinds of sin, is it not? Maybe that could be the mark of God’s chosen people. Seems to me that while it’s an interesting explanation, I think it’s still arbitrary. When we go back to Abraham in Genesis 17, we can’t help but notice that God gave the sign of circumcision to signify his covenant right after Genesis 16.

But what happened in 16? What was going on there? That’s the record of the fiasco of Abraham and Sarah trying to fulfill God’s promises by means of the flesh. Sarah, you remember, sent her husband into the arms of her slave Hagar, and Ishmael was born. Abraham and Sarah were in full agreement on this little plan, but their thinking was according to the flesh.

They thought that they possessed the power to fulfill the promise of God, and they sought to bring about God’s will by means of their own prerogative and their own progenitive procreative power exercised according to their own will, on their own time, in their own way, according to natural thinking. And they were wrong. They were so wrong about that.

And the world has lived and died, we could say, from the consequences that arose from that error ever since. Because the people of the slave woman and the people of the free woman are at odds, are they not? Does not the Middle East still draw the attention of the entire world, as the sons of Ishmael and the sons of Isaac are at war?

But back in Genesis 16, after God graciously provided for Hagar and the child Ishmael, God went back to Abraham in Genesis 17 to recapitulate his covenant and to give him what is, get this, the most fitting sign of this covenant. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, Genesis 17:11. The sign is fitting, appropriate in light of what had just happened.

The sign provided a tremendously important lesson about the nature of covenant fulfillment, about the nature of promise fulfillment that Abraham and his offspring needed to learn and remember and remember in perpetuity. God’s promise is fulfilled by his grace through faith. Even after this when God gives the sign to Abraham, Abraham protested, he still is not getting what god is laying down here.

Listen to this starting in verse 15, after giving him the sign, “God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. And then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.’”

 Sarah incorporates the hayah verb, which is the verb, to live, for life. So she’s going to be the mother of nations. She’s going to be life bearing. “Abraham fell on his face and he laughed and he said in his heart, ‘Will a son be born to,’ me, ‘a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who’s ninety years old, bear a son?’ Abraham said to God, ‘Oh, that Ishmael might live before you!’”

Oh God, please accept a child of my works. “God said, ‘No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, you should call his name Isaac; and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him. As for Ishmael, I’ve heard you; behold, I will bless him and I will make him fruitful and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become a father of twelve Princes, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this season next year.’ And so He finished talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.”

 And then there’s the record of Abraham circumcising his whole household, all the males himself included, at ninety-nine years old, Ishmael at thirteen. Imagine trying to take your teenager, explain that, tough. What’s God saying there? Believe me Abraham, trust me, I will do exactly as I’ve said. My word is my promise. Believe me.

This is how this all started in Genesis 15:6, when God originally cut the covenant with him. “He believed in Yahweh and Yahweh accounted it to Him as righteousness.” There’s the doctrine of imputation right there. A reckoning, an accounting to and so the sign of circumcision is a most fitting sign, most appropriate to signify that God will fulfill all his promises to Abraham, not by means of his works, not by means of even of his understanding and what he can imagine to be possible, but God will fulfill his promises to Abraham by his grace and by means of his faith.

God will fulfill that promise through the righteousness Abraham had by faith, giving to Abraham and Sarah the child that he had promised them, Isaac the child of faith, not Ishmael the child of works, born of the will of the flesh. So this is a most fitting sign, as I said, to cut into the tender flesh of Abraham’s procreative instrument, and to him and all of his seed; all of his offspring, would be a perpetual reminder that the promise of grace would be fulfilled through faith, apart from works; by faith, not by flesh, by God, not by man.

In Genesis 15, God cut a covenant with Abraham and he cut a covenant with Abraham; to ratify the covenant in the ancient world, required the shedding of blood and so there was the shedding of blood. God told Abraham in Genesis 15:9 to take several three-year-old animals and cut them in half: A heifer, female goat, a ram.

So take two birds, turtle dove, a young pigeon, not cut them in half. I mean, that’s just a bloody mess with feathers and blood and all that. They were to be sacrificed, but not cut in half. And Abraham did his sacrifices, sacrificed the animals. He cut the heifer, the goat, the ram in half, killed the birds, and he separated the pieces. And then he fell into a deep sleep in Genesis 15.

You remember in Genesis 15, God came, he showed up and predicted to Abraham the sojourn of all Abraham’s descendants in Egypt. They would be there 400 years, and then God passed through the pieces of the sacrificed animals by himself. Usually in cutting a covenant, the two parties of the covenant would pass through the pieces together to signify, thus be it to you and to me, should we not uphold the agreement of this covenant. That is, let me be cut in half.

God passes through, he passes through the pieces as a smoking oven and a flaming torch, kind of a mini picture of what would later happen at Sinai and he passed through alone. Genesis 15:17, says by this God is demonstrating his intent to fulfill the covenant promises by himself. Thus God cut the covenant with Abraham and was, by the shedding of blood, God’s part in the covenant, to fulfil the promises.

Abraham’s part in the covenant believe, trust God, believe his word, take him at his word and that is why in Genesis 16, when Abraham tried to fulfil the covenant promise to bring about a child of his own, on his own, God restates the covenant in Genesis 17:1 through 8. Then he gives the sign and blood is shed and a cut is made in his own flesh.

The covenant is cut into his own procreative member, literally and painfully, which is to be a perpetual reminder that God will fulfill his gracious covenant and our part, have faith, believe him, trust him. So did that do the trick? Did Abraham who received the sign of circumcision, as Romans 4:11 says, he received it as a seal of the righteousness of faith, the faith that he had in Genesis 15:6 before he was circumcised in Genesis 17:23 to 27.

 So did all Abraham’s posterity understand the sign? Did they follow Abraham in his faith? I think you know the answer to that question. And this brings us to a second point in our outline number two: the need. Number two: the need, a spiritual circumcision. The need is a spiritual circumcision. Though they were marked, though they were marked as a circumcised people, circumcision, after the sojourn in Egypt, fell into disuse among Israel during the wilderness wanderings.

In fact, when God sent Moses back to be the redeemer, to be the one who would be the mediator and the redeemer, and to affect the exodus from Egypt and lead God’s people out, you remember that his wife, Zipporah, she basically saved Moses life. God was going to put him to death because he had not circumcised his own sons.

He was not faithful even in his own family, to honor this sign of solidarity with Abraham’s faith. And so God was going to put Moses to death, as Zipporah comes in, takes a flint knife and circumcised her sons. And she threw the foreskins at his feet and said, you’re a husband of blood to me. She’s revolted by it. It’s a painful thing to do to her own children.

Why didn’t he do it? Now she has to do it. Why does she have to be faithful and he’s not? Husbands, take note. Don’t put your wife into the position of being the spiritual head of the home. You be the man, you lead. You lead out. You say what goes spiritually for the family and lead your family in righteousness. Do what’s right, lead your family and bless them.

Nonetheless, you can see a hint there, in Moses, that he was not faithful even after the Exodus and during the wilderness wanderings. We see evidence that Joshua, in Joshua 5:2 through 9, he had to stop before he entered into Canaan with the people and before God started fulfilling those promises, they had to have the sign. He stopped and circumcised all the males and Yahweh said in verse 9.

 “Yahweh said to Joshua, ‘today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.’ So the name of that place is Gilgal to this day.” Gilgal means a rolling away. So in restoring the covenant sign and, by the way, I should say this and add, that during the wilderness wanderings, with circumcision falling out of disuse, isn’t it interesting that all those who left Egypt in the Exodus, they didn’t fulfill the sign.

 They didn’t circumcise their children, and God let their bodies lay strewn all over the wilderness. He takes these things seriously. He wants obedience from the heart. So he didn’t punish the children, he punished the parents. Joshua, he circumcised the males according to God’s command, before he goes in. Before any of those promises are fulfilled, before God fulfills his promises by grace, they need to have the mark, of by faith, in the foreskin of their flesh.

 in restoring the covenant sign of the faith of Abraham, in cutting the covenant, by shedding blood in this new generation, in marking the most tender part of a man’s body, which ironically is his procreative power, God reminds Israel, how would it be, that he fulfills his promises again, by grace through faith.

So God removes their reproach by means of circumcision. So did that do the trick? is that it? did that last? Again, we know that it did not. Moses knew it wouldn’t, in recapitulating the law in Deuteronomy chapter 10. In Deuteronomy, it means second law; it doesn’t mean God-given additional law. It’s just a recapitulation of the first law at Sinai.

But basically, Deuteronomy is like one long sermon and he’s basically preaching the law to them. He’s preaching the covenant to them. In fact, if you would go to Deuteronomy chapter 10 and in recapitulating the law to the people of Israel before they go into the promised land of Canaan as they’re standing in the plains of Moab, Moses knew that Israel did not learn their lesson, that they’d have to learn it yet again.

So he draws Israel’s attention, before they enter into Canaan, to their true need for an internal inward spiritual circumcision, so that they would remain within God’s blessing, so they’d receive his favor. Look at Deuteronomy 10, starting in verse 12, “So now, Israel, what does Yahweh your God ask from you?” Is it works of the flesh, or is it the attitude of faith? It’s the latter.

What does he ask from you? “But to fear Yahweh your God, and to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of Yahweh and His statutes which I’m commanding you today for your good? Behold, to Yahweh your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, and the earth and all that is in it. Yet on your fathers did Yahweh set His affection to love them. He chose their seed after them, even you above all peoples, as it is this day. So circumcised your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer.”

 Skip down to verse 20, “Yahweh your God, you shall fear; Him, you shall serve, and to Him, you shall cling, and by His name you shall swear. He’s your praise and He is your God who has done these great and fearsome things for you which your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy persons in all, and now Yahweh your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

What’s he saying? He saying believe him, Israel. Just like you said to Abraham, believe God; Abraham believed God, Israel. It’s not about doing God’s will in the flesh, it’s not about gaining favor by your works, it’s not about accomplishing his will in your works, it’s about faith. And so trust him, believe him, Israel, and he will reckon you righteous, and then all of his blessing will flow upon you.

Moses, as he preaches this sermon, he speaks with sadness in his heart. He knows that only a few of these people, Joshua and Caleb among them, only a few of these people in this second generation after the Exodus, were men and women of Abraham’s faith. There was a remnant there, but not many. And Moses predicted in Deuteronomy 28 and 29, that Israel would fall away, that Israel would fall under God’s judgement yet again, and at this time they would be banished out of the good land that God promised to give them.

And as time went by and through the time of the banishment and the exile, and then after they returned, isn’t it interesting that the sign that signified the need for grace through faith, they turned into the works of the law. Isn’t it interesting that what was intended to promote humility in them, they turned into an occasion for pride.

They looked at the sign that God gave them by grace through faith. They took pride in it, and they looked down on, on the rest of the world. Don’t men, in their sin, always do that to God’s goodness and God’s word. Don’t they subvert all of his good intentions and all of his good works? Even so, and turn over to Deuteronomy 30 to look at this.

Moses looked ahead to a time of restoration. He looks far beyond the conquest of Canaan and far beyond the division of the land, far beyond the days of the judges and the kings. And he looks to a time when God would become fed up with the faithlessness. He’d send them as prophets. He’d send men of God to go and preach to them and teach them and call them back to covenant faithfulness and call them back to the law.

They’d stiffen their necks, harden their hearts, indicating yet again they don’t have circumcised hearts. They have circumcised flesh only. And so God would banish them from the land and here in Deuteronomy 30, Moses is looking ahead to that time prophetically, by God’s revelation. And he says this starting in verse 6, “Moreover,” and he’s saying, moreover, in the sense of God will return you to the land. He’s going to restore you even after he judges you and exiles you. He’s going to bring you back Israel.

And “moreover,” get this, “Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. And Yahweh your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you. And you shall return and listen to the voice of Yahweh, and you shall do all His commandments which I’m commanding you today. Then Yahweh your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand, in the offspring of your body.”

 You know where the procreative power is? In God, not in them. He’ll prosper “the offspring of your body, the offspring of your cattle and in the produce of your ground.” And “Yahweh will return to rejoice over you for good, just as He rejoiced over your fathers, when you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the Law, when you return to Yahweh your God with all your heart and all your soul.

“For this commandment which I’m commanding you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it far from you. It’s not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us and make us hear it, that we may do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us and get it for us and make us hear it, that we may do it?’ The word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart that you may do it.’”

 What is that word? According to the apostle Paul in Romans 10:8, citing this very text, it is “the Word of Faith which we are preaching,” namely this, “If you confess with your mouth, Jesus as Lord, if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” right? Familiar words to us. “With the heart a person believes,” verse 10 of Romans 10, “resulting in righteousness and with the mouth, a person confesses resulting in salvation.”

Now, did the Colossians make that good confession? You bet they did, Colossians 2:6. We’ve covered this. Paul says you received, here’s the confession, Christ Jesus the Lord. That’s the confession. Moses predicted it; they confessed it. So how does all of this answer the questions that we were asking about Colossians?

Let’s go back to Colossians 2:11 and find out. Colossians 2:11., “In him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands and the removal of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ.” In Speaking of a circumcision made without hands, he’s obviously not talking about literal circumcision. He’s not talking about ethnic Jewish ritual of circumcision, though that is the background that sets the theological soteriological foundation to help us understand Paul’s point.

Paul himself was a Jew, very familiar with the history of the failures of his people, Israel, to keep the covenant of God. Though they had been circumcised in the flesh, all their failures could be summed up in this: failed to believe God. Paul himself was a Pharisee familiar with the historic human tendency to put confidence in the flesh and regard the flesh and trust in the flesh rather than trust wholly in God.

So Paul knows from history, he knows from personal experience what these Colossians are being tempted to do; to trust in the flesh, not to walk by faith in Christ, but to trust in themselves and trust in their own intuition, to believe in speculation. They’re being summoned by the siren song of the false teachers to follow what are very familiar ways of the flesh. And they dressed up their faithless teaching and sophisticated packaging philosophy, the love of wisdom.

 But at its core and in its heart, it is nothing but empty feudal speculation and a poisonous, toxic departure from Christ. But it’s in Christ that God’s promises to Abraham are fully realized. It’s in Christ that Moses hoped. It is in Christ that Paul believed. It is in Christ the Colossians believed. And by faith in Christ, they were made.

Watch this. It’s by faith they proved to be Abraham’s true children, his legitimate issue, his true spiritual offspring. So it’s by faith they were circumcised, as the text says, by God. Passive voice in verse 11, “you were circumcised.” This happened to you and the hidden subject, the implied subject of the verb there performing the circumcision. Who is it? God.

So it’s by faith that the Colossians, it’s by faith, that all Christians are made partakers of the circumcision Moses said had to happen and that that he pointed to was revealed later in the new covenant. What Israel needed was not a new start, but a new heart. And God knows it’s what we all need. Not a new start, not a do over, we need a new heart.

Jeremiah 31:33, “This is the covenant which I will cut with the House of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh. I’ll put my law within them and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying know Yahweh. They’ll all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares Yahweh.”

The prophet Ezekiel, his version is in Ezekiel 36:26, “I’ll give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I’ll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, one that trusts, one that believes.” One is alive, living. Paul writes here in Colossians 2:11 of a Christian circumcision.

That’s what he means by the circumcision of Christ. It’s talking about a Christian circumcision, which is a spiritual circumcision, which is promised in the New Covenant, fulfilled in the inauguration of the New Covenant, accomplished by the Word of God in the work of Christ.

 So what makes this circumcision successful, where all other past attempts by all others in history have failed? Why should this one succeed? Because it does what only God can do. He surgically removes what he can only surgically remove. The removal of the body of the flesh and the word, removal, there means to strip off, as with clothing, to strip away.

Some quite mistakenly see a parallel in the phrase the body of flesh, and they join it to the similar expression in Colossians 1:22, the body of the flesh which refers to Jesus’ flesh, his flesh which died on the cross. So they see Colossians 1:22 as really interpreting the same expression used in Colossians 2:11.

So they say this means the circumcision of Christ refers to his own body of flesh being stripped off at the cross. Not only does that have a strange way to express what happened at the cross, if that were the expression, that would be the only place in Scripture that that’s ever described that way.

God stripped away the fleshly body of Christ or removed it like clothing. Is that what happened? That kind of opens the door for dualistic heresies that would later plague the church throughout the first five centuries of the church. It’s not how Paul describes it. Paul’s not talking about removing, stripping, taking off the body that clothes Christ.

But more to the point, the circumcision that he speaks of here in Colossians 2:11 is different than what he spoke of in Colossians 1:22, the body of the flesh. Circumcision here is performed on us, not on him. It’s performed spiritually, without hands, dealing with something that’s internal to us. So what is Paul’s meaning then?

They looked at the sign that God gave them by grace through faith. They took pride in it, and they looked down on the rest of the world.” Travis Allen

What is this body of the flesh that God removes and strips off of us, in Christ? This is another synonym. Paul’s talking about the sin nature, that concept. He has several ways of referring to it in his writing. He uses different metaphors to describe it. Romans 6:6, it is our old man, and then in the same verse, our body of sin. In Ephesians 4:22, it is again the old man, but then it’s the old man that is corrupt in the lusts of deceit.

 Colossians 3:9 it’s the old man with its evil practices. Paul expands the language in Romans 7:17 and 20, calling it the sin which dwells in my members, and he describes it there as a principle of evil within him, verse 21. He describes it as a law of sin in verse 23, having lawlike tendencies, where the law promises good to those who keep it and harm to those who do not keep it.

Sin entices and deceives us in the same way as it entices us. It promises good to us if we’ll just follow its bidding, and it promises harm if we don’t give in to that impulse. So it’s a law of sin. It has law like principal and tendency. Romans 7:23 uses a really strong metaphor. In Romans 7:24, he calls it the body of this death, picturing there, when murderers were called to account for murdering their victim. They would take the body of the victim, sometimes strap it to the murder, and let him walk around for a while.

All these metaphors are Paul’s way of explaining the sin nature, which he is here to assure us God removed it in Christ. Cut it away. God sets believers free from their sin nature once and for all by virtue of spiritual regeneration, spiritual circumcision, stripping off, casting away. It’s like a vile piece of dead skin after a surgical procedure.

The corrupting power of the old self, the dead nature, God takes that, casts it away, cuts it off, throws it in the trash. He burns it in a wretched pile of medical waste. God, in Christ, has spiritually circumcised us all. He’s cut off and removed the body, stripped it off, cast it away and the body is a body of flesh, not a literal reference to a physical body of flesh, it’s a figurative expression that portrays our sin nature.

In concrete terms, this is a thing. It’s a thing that we can’t get to, but God can, and in Christ he did. By the Spirit he did. This thing got surgically removed, this body of the flesh, as one put it, “with all its corrupt and carnal affections.” Another describes this circumcision, “as a divesture of the old man, the removal of the enveloping, enervating power of our fleshly nature or propensity.”

 That’s what happens in circumcision, the poetic language of Charles Wesley, ‘Love divine, all loves excelling.’ He says this take away our love of sinning. Alpha and Omega be, end of faith as its beginning. Set our hearts at liberty.” He’s praying there in that song, in that verse for what God has already accomplished in the circumcision of Christ.

It’s exactly what God has done and you say, but how did God do that? What tools did he use in the surgical process? What were the steps of the procedure? Frankly, this is where our human knowledge bumps into human limitation. It’s where we have to accept by faith, what we really can’t comprehend. May as well ask how God created the heavens and the earth. What were the steps? What were the procedures?

How did the incarnation happen? God and man join together. How could Christ possess a human and divine nature and yet without confusion, change, division, or separation? We might, as well, ask to understand the ineffable. So if we can’t answer that question, we have to accept our limitation. Then we can ask this, How does spiritual circumcision relate to baptism? Very closely indeed. But make no mistake, in respectful but very firm disagreement with our Presbyterian friends, baptism is not the counterpart to circumcision.

Christian baptism does not replace physical circumcision in a one to one correspondence. They are two different things. The sign of circumcision, we’ll see this more next time, we come back in to talk about baptism in detail. But the sign of circumcision which God gave to Abraham has been fulfilled in Christ, in the inauguration of the new Covenant and giving us a brand-new heart that has been affected. That has happened.

So the true counterpart to physical circumcision, what Paul calls in verse 11, “a circumcision made without hands.” Spiritual circumcision: Theologically, the counterpart is regeneration, to be born again, giving us a brand-new heart in Christ. Never is regeneration described as baptism in Scripture.

Regeneration, being born again or born from above, so vital, it’s what Jesus said to Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel. He said, “you must be born again.” Don’t go back to Genesis 16 and keep acting that way, Nicodemus. You can’t affect the promises of God by your works, by your ingenuity, by your learning even; you need a new heart.

You need circumcision of the heart, a brand-new heart from God. And the really new good news is this, after God performed that procedure on us in Christ, the body of flesh has no more power over us. It is dead, cut off, castaway, never to be reattached.

So a final point, give you some implications here, number three: the heart a true conversion, the heart a true conversion. Just a few points and I’m done. This brand-new heart which we received by spiritual circumcision, which is by God’s initiative, which gives us a heart that believes, a heart that understands, a heart that embraces the promises of God in faith; it accrues to our good in several ways.

I’ve got five points for you and I, I really could have just kept going on this list, but we’re out of time and number one: A brand-new heart means our old heart is dead and gone. Our old heart is dead and gone and for this we can encroach into Colossians 2:12. Having been buried with him in baptism, dead and gone. The old man is dead. It’s buried in a locked tomb, sealed never to be revived, that old man never getting out.

Therefore, we’re separated or cut off from our former corruption. We’re no longer to be identified with our past sins. We’re no longer defiled, no longer degraded by our former corruption. Practically speaking, there’s no longer any true hook the devil can latch onto. There’s no longer any true leverage that false teachers and false teaching has over us, not really. Not if this spiritual circumcision has happened.

What we were has been stripped away, cast off, castaway forever, and we’re no longer defined by what we were. And isn’t that good news? Some of you were saved very young, by God’s grace you didn’t have the opportunity to defile yourself so thoroughly and completely as some others have. But it is good news that you’re not defined by your sins. You’re not defined by them; no longer defines you.

You’re no longer identified in them. God has cut it off, removed it, thrown it away, never to be reattached. Number two, a brand-new heart means that the old affections are dead. They’re rendered powerless, ineffective, unable to hold on to us. With our old heart, the body of the flesh, with that cut off, stripped away, we’re set free from the influence of the flesh. And that means we’re no longer enslaved to do the deeds of the flesh.

We’re no longer bound to do its bidding. We’re no longer enslaved to its corruption. We don’t look to the flesh as Abraham mistakenly did to accomplish the will of God. We know what to expect from self-made religion and self-abasement, severe treatment of the body. Colossians 2:23, “put no confidence in the flesh.” Number three, instead a brand-new heart means we have brand new affections.

Number three, a brand-new heart means we have brand new affections, the old ones are gone. They’re replaced by new affections of a new heart, new will, new understanding. We now love and hate things we’d never loved and hated. What we love and what we hate and what we like and what we no longer like, it’s all new and as we progress in holiness, we keep on discovering how new and how good it is.

We are regenerated, Deuteronomy 30, verse 6, now with hearts that are bent to love God wholly and fully, with all of our souls satisfied and content, our hearts are joyful and grateful. We cheerfully worship, and we love and serve God in Christ by the Spirit. This is not driven by works, it’s driven by faith. And now with brand new hearts, we discover a whole new set of affections, affections that aim far higher, appetites that are only and always nourished and satisfied by what God feeds us.

And so number four: a brand-new heart means, we possess what the sign signified, a believing heart of genuine faith. Physical circumcision, to which the record of history of Israel attests. Physical circumcision did not hold God’s people to God. They had the sign of circumcision, but it didn’t seal them, as faith is the substance, faith is the same thing signified.

 Faith is thus the true seal of God’s people. Faith is what holds us fast. Sealed by God through spiritual circumcision, equipped now as we are with believing hearts of genuine faith, or sealed by the Spirit of God himself; adopted into the family of God, joined to Christ in baptism, which he’s about to get into. That’ll be the subject of our study for next time.

With this invisible seal, believing heart of genuine faith, we always hold fast now to God, because he has done the internal work of spiritual circumcision, and what God does, he does not undo. So we know, that by his grace and through our faith, we will continue in him, sealed and guarded by the Spirit of God, protected by the good shepherd, and thus untouchable and invincible, guaranteed the good of God’s promises. We’re now able to walk in holiness and in purity and in dignity of the king.

Which brings us the one more implication, number five, a brand-new heart means a new life that’s full of fruitfulness. Here’s with the procreative progenitive work, power of God by the Spirit and his grace, bears fruit, it’s not a fruit of our own doing; fruits of our own doing, produce Ishmael’s, not Isaac’s.

So what did Abraham discover about the procreative power of God? How productive was his faith? Remember God had brought him outside and said, hey, look up to the heavens, go ahead, number the stars, if you’re able to number them. And God said, “Abraham, so shall are your offspring be. Abraham believed in Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

 Here we are today, beloved. Here we are, four millennia later, on the other side of the world. We come from a vastly different culture. We speak a very foreign language. By faith so shall your offspring be. That’s us, we are them. And like Abraham, we too continue that procreative spiritual work as God bears the fruit of his promises through the exercise of our faith, which is of the same kind as Abraham’s.

We now grow by holding fast to the head of the body of the church, which is Christ Jesus our Lord. And by holding fast to the head, we’re closely connected to him and his body, supplied as verse 19 says in Colossians 2, “supplied, held together by the joints and the ligaments.” We grow with a growth which is from God, procreative, fecundity, fruitfulness, all coming by God’s grace in the exercise of our faith.

Well, I know that was only one verse, but it was enough for today. Amen. Listen, may God strengthen you in his grace and especially on this, as you meditate on what you’ve come to understand today, maybe in a fuller way than ever before, and as you read ahead for next week and you think and pray about this matter of baptism and how God edifies you and encourages you by the truths that are portrayed and pictured in your baptism.

It’s always with you as a picture of new life by Gods’ saving grace. You can always draw on that imagery and always draw on the reality of what God has done for you in Christ by meditating on these truths. It’ll edify, encourage, strengthen you, make your heart nourished in the truth. Let it abound with thanksgiving, and you will walk with joy as God produces fruit through your life. Let’s pray.

 Our Father, we pause to give thanks to you with hearts that are full of, maybe today, a better understanding of your truth than we had before. We’ve been talking about what’s happened to us. When we come back tonight at 5:00, we’re going to talk about what, what Christ has intended and what he wants to accomplish, how he came to save and to sanctify, to save and serve his brothers. That’s us, we being the true children of Abraham by faith.

We thank you so much that you now belong to us and we belong to you. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and his perfect atoning work on the cross, his propitiatory work to satisfy your wrath that was due to us rightly. We thank you that you have cut off the old man, that body of flesh that really was tying us to this fallen world, that’s been castaway and we’re no longer held fast by it. We’re now held fast by your love. Thank you for your love for us. Thank you in Christ. Amen.

Hebrews 2:14-15

Colossians 2:8-10

Turn in your Bibles to Colossians 2:8. Colossians 2:8, here in this text, Paul is really kind of turning a corner as he issues a warning and he expresses a serious concern, but even after he issues this warning, expresses a serious concern, he goes right back to Christ, his glory, his greatest treasure and that is what we want to see in the text before us today.

Paul has reminded the Colossians of their confession, Christ Jesus the Lord, he is the substance of their confession. Their confession is not about a what per se, but about who, about Christ, as Colossians 2:6 says. Paul has then reminded the Colossians in verse 7 of their part and where they are, why they are where they are, because of God’s sovereign work, that he is rooted and built them up in Christ and he is showing to them how to be established in the faith. And it’s by the teaching of the Word that they’re established in the faith.

Paul is simplifying their expectations and so they know what they should look for coming out of their life. It’s simplified that the outcome of the rootedness in Christ and the being built up in Christ and the steadfastness in the faith in the truth, he simplifies their expectations, tells them what to look for, that true Christian maturity is expressed in abounding gratitude, ever flowing gratitude, coming out of the heart, through the lips, out of the mouth, so that others around you hear of your thankfulness in Christ.

But Paul wants them to know there’s a predator out there, always threatening, always prowling around, praying upon the weak and the vulnerable, always slithering through the grass to snatch the proud and the self-assured and the lazy and the unwatchful.

The predator seeks its prey like a snake praying upon its victim, devouring its victim bit by bit. The first bite injects the deadly poison, immediately affecting gratitude, seriously diminishing thankfulness in the life of the victim. Concerns are insinuated into the heart, which really, they take shape. They are complaints in disguise, a very clear sign that the poison has reached the heart.

Further evidence follows in grumbling and gossip and slander and divisiveness and fear and anger and anxiety and a host of other foul sins that come out of the heart and rise to the surface in one that is being preyed upon by this predator and if Christ, the antidote, is not applied very soon, in very short order, Colossians 2:7, kind of erodes, and in reverse order.

The victim is no longer established in the faith. The Word of God is no longer sufficient. The authority of the Word of God is no longer weighty. The building project comes to an abrupt halt. Activity at the construction site ceases all together. What seemed to be deeply rooted is being dug up, roots exposed, starved of nutrients and life-giving water. The plant is there, withering and drying and dying.

For the victim’s part, what does the victim think? In many cases, the victim feels just fine because the poison of the serpent is anesthetizing, and so this condition, at least for the victim, it seems to be imperceptible. In fact, it’s even a bit intoxicating. Instead of noticing danger, the victim feels emboldened, feels it brave, exhilarated in venturing out into a new direction.

The conscience calluses over, neck stiffens as a rigor mortis sets in, the heart hardens, and the roots sink deeply into death. What I’ve just described has been happening ever since Genesis chapter 3. It’s the same pattern ever since the very beginning. It takes maybe different shape and different form, but it is the same process of apostasy, the same process of falling, the same process of temptation and departure.

It’s been continuing for thousands of years of human history all the way up to the present day. And it’s what Paul warns the Colossians about in this section. In Colossians 2:8 through 23. Our study for today will be in just three of those verses, the first three, Colossians 2:8 through 10. But let’s start by reading the entire section so you can just get the scope of Paul’s critique of the false teaching that’s infecting and encroaching upon the Colossian church.

Paul writes in Colossians 2:8 and following, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells bodily, and in Him you have been filled. Who is the head over all rule and authority. In whom you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism.

“In which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you being dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him. Having graciously forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of death consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us. He’s also taken it out of the way having nailed it to the cross, having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in Him.

“Therefore no one is to judge you in food and drink, or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are only a shadow of what is to come. But the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels. Going into detail about visions, he’s seen being puffed up for nothing by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with the growth that is from God.

“If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why as though you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, which deal with everything designed to perish with use, which are in accordance with the commands and teachings of men, which are matters having to be sure, a word of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but of no value against fleshly indulgence.”

 He’s introduced the threat in verse 8, And after introducing the threat in verses 9 to 15, Paul goes on to show what’s at stake in a philosophy that is not according to Christ. He shows what we lose if we depart from Christ: Heart circumcision, union with Christ in baptism, immersion in his death and in his life. The certificate of debt of sins and offenses against God remains in place. It’s still in force and that puts us in subjection to the rulers and authorities hovering around invisibly.

But then in verse 16 to 23, Paul turns to critique, having shown us what we stand to lose if we depart from the philosophy that’s grounded in Christ and depart to another philosophy. Now in verses 16 to 23, Paul turns to this critique. He exposes the false and the fraudulent nature of false doctrine and false practice.

He shows its intimidation, its coercion in bad religion, but he starts here in verses 8 to 10, this is what we’re going to talk about today. He starts with the promotion of false doctrine, which comes packaged as a sophisticated and rather intriguing philosophy, one that captivates, and then, like a boa constrictor, it captures, squeezes, suffocates, and kills.

So Paul tells the Colossians in verse 8 what to watch out for, and in verses 9 to 10 what protects them. So what to watch out for and what protects them. First, number one: watch out for Christless philosophy. Watch out for Christless philosophy. “See to it, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception.”

The verb translated, see to it, blepo and it’s kind of a weak translation. See to it, but it is emphasizing the watchfulness. See to it, be watchful, but it does mean stronger in this context. It means to watch out for, be on guard against, be on the lookout for. And the present tense of the verb here is calling for a constant watchfulness, continual vigilance, kind of like walking through your life in this world.

 Consider yourselves as special forces soldiers who are operating deep in enemy territory. Think of yourselves as patrolling through a thick jungle that is crawling with snakes, everything vile, poisonous and your eyes are open, watching every step, looking in every tree, wondering what is going to drop on you next.

The kind of watchfulness Paul is calling for here, it’s very interesting the way he’s constructed the warning. He says, maybe I can put this in a more literal expression to clarify it for you. He says, “See to it that someone will not be the one who takes you captive.” Interesting, isn’t it? “See to it that someone will not be the one who takes you captive.” In other words, there’s a someone out there who can easily become more proximate to you.

There’s a someone maybe in here who is very near, like Paul warned the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:29, “I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you.” And he’s referring to the eldership of the Ephesian church. He says that they’ll creep in among you and they’ll find their way into leadership, and they’re not going to spare the flock. He’s telling them to be on your guard.

So Paul is trying to make this warning not conceptual only, but personal. Realize this deception, this trickery, this philosophy, it comes in the form of a person, a face. There’s a familiarity, if I put it this way, there’s a relationship there. You know how many people are deceived by means of a close personal friendship and relationship?

We can’t see each other’s hearts, can we? We only see what the life produces. We only hear what comes out of the mouth. And so Paul is calling us to be vigilant, listening to words, watching lifestyle, seeing what is good and bad, and making judgments and discernments. That someone, his intent, her intent, as the case may be, the intent of that someone is to take you captive.

 “To take you captive,” vivid term here. It’s a rare term as well, used only here in the New Testament, very rarely outside the New Testament. But it means to carry off as plunder, carry off as spoil, booty, plunder, spoils of war. What’s the prize? You are. False teachers, it’s true, okay, they can be motivated by money.

Many are, but there are also false teachers who are motivated by influence, attention, affirmation, some psychological benefit of having a lot of fans, or a lot of followers, or a lot of seats in pews. Whatever’s driving them, they intend to make merchandise of you, to get it or to keep it. Maybe for that false teacher or that hireling in a pulpit, he’s just there to keep his life comfortable. Maybe he’s there to make a big noise, build his brand, draw attention. Whatever the case, you’re the merchandise.

But Paul’s language here is more dire than making merchandise. The consequences he has in his mind are, are far graver, he he uses the verb that means to carry off as captive, to take in battle as plunder. So think in terms of a modern day, think of being taken prisoner by by a group like the Taliban or ISIS or Boko Haram or Al Shabaab. Some terrorist group that comes in and grabs you and takes you to their hide. Become a captive one of these groups and they are there to get your face on camera, to terrorize, to show videos to your loved ones, to extort money from friends and family, coerce outcomes. Whatever it is, you’re objectified in the process.

You just become a means to an end; as the spoils of war, you’re used to fund future causes, fight wars, plan and execute terror campaigns, whatever it is and there were plenty of people like this in Paul’s day, raiders, marauders, bandits, thugs, terrorist groups, very dangerous, very violent men who provided ample example to the imagination for the Colossian believers as they heard and read this warning, what it means to be taken captive.

The Colossians knew about the threat and how he was conveying the seriousness and the gravity of the threat. And I wonder, do we? Because sometimes we don’t act like it. We can live our lives blithely unaware, unafraid, unwatchful, just accepting all of our relations in our lives as, A-Okay, because they’re family, because they’re friends, because they’re neighbors. They’re not going to lead us astray. They wouldn’t do that.

We place upon others that we know an assumption of our own heart; our own heart would never lead anybody astray. In our own heart, our own mind, we love people, we care for them, we want their best. And so the people that seem to echo the same things, speak the same way, we make the same assumptions about them.

Now, I’m not calling for every single one of you to look to your right, look to your left and say what? What are you doing to me? I’m not trying to turn you against each other, but I am calling you to be fruit inspectors, to be watchful. It’s what Paul’s saying. It’s not me, it’s what Paul’s saying; be thoughtful Christians, be discerning Christians, because the error and the philosophy and the trickery comes by means of people. It’s not a concept. It comes to you in the mail. It’s not something you trip over in the park.

It’s something that comes in the form of a friend. The battle space is in the heart and the attack is an appeal to the flesh. It’s deceptive because it takes captive, starting at the intellect, as it says there in verse 8, “through philosophy and empty deception. It’s according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ.”

 Now we’re going to analyze the threat that Paul gives us here by considering four things: Its nature, its source, its subject, and its radical deficiency. Its nature, its source, its subject, and its deficiency. First, its nature, it’s packaged as a philosophy and I want you to notice here that Paul is not condemning wholesale all philosophy here. He’s condemning all non-Christian philosophy.

He is calling us to look out for and listen for all that does not comport with or submit to or support true Christian philosophy. Yes, Christianity is a philosophy. It is the only true philosophy. Every other philosophy is false. Anything that submits to true Christianity and supports and feeds and helps us with Christian philosophy and articulation of the truth and articulation of theology, it’s supportive of and comports with and submissive too.

And so we can find in the world of mathematics and deductive logic, philosophical ideas and terms and abstractions that that help us to explain issues like the doctrine of the Trinity or the incarnation, talking about substance and essence and things like that, that you don’t find in terms, in the Bible. Even the word Trinity you don’t find in the Bible, and we borrow from the world of maybe some Aristotelian logic to help us to explain those terms.

So not all is suspect, but we have to be watchful, discerning. The word philosophy itself, it joins two words, as many of you know, philia, which is love, and sophia which is wisdom. So philosophy, literally the love of wisdom, it has to do with what is known, what’s learned, what’s understood by the mind, but then it goes deeper into the heart.

It’s not only what’s understood by the mind, but it’s what’s loved by the affections and then pursued, driving the will. This philosophy comes organized in a system of thought. It answers metaphysical questions, offers a cosmology to explain where we came from, how we got here, what happened to ruin everything, how it is that we rectify the problems that we face and where we are heading and where we’re going in the end.

So it has a cosmology, it has a beginning and an end. It has an explanation of sin and human suffering and has an explanation of how to rectify human sin and suffering. All that is packaged in philosophy and Christianity is that, at the very least. But there are also many non-Christian forms of philosophy. False wisdom, Paul identifies it in 1 Timothy 6:20, as “what is falsely called knowledge.”

 King James Version, I like that translation: Science falsely so-called. What is known, what is discoverable by observation, what we call the scientific method. What that produces for us is a set of brute facts, but as with all facts, facts require interpretation, and interpretation requires the right presuppositions, the right spiritual lens, or another way to put it, right interpretation requires the right heart.

For example, how is it the two different journalists can listen to the same political speech and come away from that and sit in their office behind their computer and write diametrically opposed articles. One decries the speech as a harbinger of doom and the other describes as nothing short of messianic. How does that happen? Same speech given by the same guy, because brute facts don’t interpret themselves.

All facts require interpretation, a human interpreter. Each interpreter comes to the exact same set of facts, but with his own set of presuppositions. He or she sees the world through different lenses, makes judgments by different values. How can some analyze artificial intelligence in the prospect of tomorrow’s artificial intelligence and general intelligence and come away with a warning about human extinction? It’s dire. The world’s coming to an end. The sky is going to cloud over, and we’re all going to die.

Others look at artificial intelligence and they are intoxicated with this unlimited human potential. Everything that’s going to be fixed and solved, technology as our savior. It’ll eradicate poverty and disease. It’ll do away with all menial labor and provide an endless supply of food.

Imagine you and really your children, your grandchildren, they don’t go to work anymore. What do they do instead? Do they pursue their dreams? They want to do art, they do art. If they want to go sailing, they go sailing, because the world is working by robots and artificial intelligence, endless supply of food, endless supply of luxury.

Between those two things and both of those things may be having warning and promise, and artificial intelligence, by the way, probably somewhere in the middle of that is truth of what’s going to happen. We know that the world will not come to an end till God says, it’s time, he sends the Messiah back to judge the world. Technology itself promises to be the perfect savior. They can often turn into a nightmare of a Lord, can’t it?

God in his grace takes away our sins. He silences our accusing consciences not through works-based rituals and observances, but by forgiveness.” Travis Allen

All that to say, those without a right heart, those who have no spiritual sight, eyes to see, those who are unable to perceive spiritual truth, they have no ears to hear. Those who are unable to understand what they see and hear and discern, they have no heart to believe. They’re prone to error. They will be deluded by persuasive words, and they’ll be prone to empty deception.

By the construction of the Greek grammar here, Paul shows a very close connection between those two words, philosophy and deception, empty deception here, but the words interpret one another. This kind of philosophy is really nothing more than vanity, emptiness, leads to futility. This kind of philosophy is fruitless, since it’s nothing but an empty deception. And on the other hand, this kind of deception has the appearance of validity. It’s organized as a fully packaged philosophy, and then it’s peddled as a sophisticated system of of thought. And although the philosophy seems legitimate, although it convinces many, many people verse 4, by means of a persuasive argument in the end and amounts to nothing.

And sadly, I found in the life, my short life of pastoral ministry, many who are quick to swallow some new faddish philosophy, it can take decades to realize that they’ve been chasing an empty delusion. It’s so sad to see. They find out way too late that they made shipwreck of their life and they’ve led their family through it. They come to a dead end. They find out that they’ve been chasing nothing but an empty futility and fruitlessness and they wake up one day to say what have I done?

Paul describes in verse 23, its matters having to be sure in LSB the word, but it’s an appearance of wisdom. These are matters that have an appearance of wisdom in this self-made religion, self-abasement, severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value of fleshly indulgence.

So much out there right now, all over the world is offering what is of no value. It seems valuable. It seems sophisticated. It seems to make sense on its face. There’s no value against fleshly indulgence. In the end, you’re left with your same heart, the same sin, the same trouble, and you’ve got no answers because you’ve chased a dead end. It’s utterly empty. That’s its nature.

It’s a philosophy, seems sophisticated, but it’s really empty deception. There’s nothing there and it’s deceptive. Second: Its source, it’s according to the tradition of men, opposite of the tradition that they had received. Verse 6, he says, “as you received Christ Jesus the Lord.” Remember we talked about that as receiving tradition.

They had received an oral tradition, according to Christian witness, according to Apostolic preaching, according to the spirits revelation of the historic person and work of Jesus Christ, they had received a tradition; the only true tradition. Here, though, is an alternative source of tradition, and Paul rightly criticizes and ultimately condemns this as arising from the tradition of men. The genitive there, of men, refers to that which is man made. It emanates from human beings, comes from the human mind and the heart handed down by men to men, generation after generation, until it runs its course and another one starts up.

Listen, every single one of these, every religion in the world, every philosophy in the world apart from biblical Christianity, which is revealed in scripture, every non-Christian religion philosophy in the world has several things in common. They’re man centered, not God centered. They’re gospels of human achievement, not of divine accomplishment.

They promise that merit will be found by human works and they have very little to do with divine grace. They promote man by minimizing man’s sin and then maximizing man’s righteousness, his potential. You hear it a lot in the phrase, be the best you, you can be. Fulfill your full potential and that kind of thinking ignores the sin and the original sin of which we’re guilty, and the sin resident within the flesh.

Its overly optimistic view of man and man’s potential, completely ignoring the vertical relationship we have with God. That’s true of every man centered religion. In the end they demote God by minimizing the holiness of God, the perfection of his righteousness, the inflexibility of his justice, the severity of breaking his law. They refuse his grace, deny his goodness, and on and on it goes.

 Only a philosophy that is not according to the tradition of men will save us. If it is generated from the heart of man, from the mind of man, it’s earthbound, it’s dead-on arrival, it has nothing to offer. We want the philosophy of which no eye has seen, nor has ear heard, nor has ever entered into the heart of man, or the only philosophy that saves is the one revealed by God in Scripture in his son. That is true. It’s saving and it was not originating in the heart of man. It originates with God.

So that’s its source. We’ve seen its nature, its source and then third, its subject, its subject. Buckle up because this point is longer. Okay? Just wanting you to get comfortable. Its subject, it’s according to the elementary principles of the world.

 According to the elementary principles of the world. Some translations say elementary spirits of the world, and there you see a difference of interpretation. This portion right here has a very long and complex history of interpretation. I’m going to spare you the full details, but I hope to give you enough to provide clarity of the meaning that I think is here in the text.

The elementary principles of the world. World, kosmos; we know the world, kosmos, cosmetic or cosmology, it refers to the orderly world that God created, formed, filled, in the beginning. He set the boundaries of things. He defined things, and then he filled what he set the boundaries for. That’s orderliness, that’s the kosmos.

Heaven and earth is ordered in such a way, visible and invisible. Ordered in such a way, that’s the kosmos and that is very clear to us and understandable. But the other term ta stoicheia, elementary, prita, is the definite article stoicheo or stoicheiron in the singular elementary principles. This requires a little bit of explanation.

You see in some translations, number of the English translations, modern English translations, the term stoicheia is elementary forces or even spirits. The New International Version has the elementary spiritual forces of this world and so they, they think there, in that translation, that Paul is talking about angelic beings. They can justify that view actually contextually by looking down at verse 10, where Paul says that Christ is the head over all rule and authority.

 Those are certainly terms that refer to the unseen angelic spiritual forces, whether good or evil. We see that in Colossians 1:15 to 20, where says Paul says that Christ created all those. So this is the most popular view today, it’s reflected in many modern Bible translations, but lexical evidence doesn’t support that.

The earliest interpreters, who were much closer to the New Testament Greek than we are, they didn’t see stoicheia as referring to spiritual beings, angels, or demons. That view actually doesn’t arrive on the scene until the third century, and then it’s actually been passed over for a number of years and then picked up again.

But the most basic sense, going back to the kind of the rudimentary idea, the most basic sense of the Greek word stoicheion to a small upright post. You might think in terms of like a mile marker on the side of the road. The related term stoichos, shorter word stoichos refers to a series or a row. So this word stoicheion came to mean a part of a complex whole or a first beginning, first element, first principle.

One lexical source puts it this way, that’s ta stoicheia refers to the rudimentary elements of anything, what belongs to the basic series in any field of knowledge. So for example, in grammar it’s the ABCs, in speech, basic sounds, in physics, the four basic elements, earth, air, fire, water. In geometry, the axioms. In philosophy, the givens.

When you think about music, stoicheion would refer to the notes of the musical scale. In the physical world, it’s the material elements of the world or the elements that are on the periodic table. In religion, it’s the fundamental doctrines, it’s the basic precepts, the basic teachings. That is the basic meaning of the word and that is how Paul used this term, ta stoicheia, and it is how the Colossians would have understood this word. This is what they would have heard.

 Paul means the basic stuff of the created world, the elements that make up the kosmos. So if that’s the case, the question then becomes for us, how did they design a persuasive philosophy using the elements of the periodic table? How does chemistry turn into life philosophy? Puzzling? If you’ve ever taken chemistry.

In the first century, in all the centuries before the first century and for many centuries afterward, the material elements of the physical world were associated with beings or gods in the spiritual world. The one in the physical world attached to the other in the nonphysical world. Ancient thinkers believed in the spiritual reality that was behind, above and beneath the physical world.

And we might pause for a minute and say, you know what, us departing from that has not been an improvement. To see that there is a spiritual reality behind, above, beneath, the physical world, it’s actually true, biblical. Now it’s the tendency of idolatry in the heart to pervert everything, right? So that’s what they did with it.

But at least that basic concept of immaterial and material reality, that there is a spirit and a body, there’s physical, nonphysical, metaphysical that they had, right? And in our time, we do not have that right. We’ve drifted far from it. Does that make us more sophisticated? I think not. It’s Philo of Alexandria, Jewish apologists, lived, right, during the same period as the time of Christ. But he was a Jew, not a Christian.

He wrote on the Decalogue seeking to show the superiority of the Law of Moses by critiquing Gentile superstition. He was an apologist to the Greeks and trying to persuade the Greeks of the, the reasonableness and the superiority really of the Law of Moses and its wisdom. He critiqued Gentile superstition which was rife in the ancient world.

And Philo writes this, he says, “Some nations have made divinities of the four elements, earth and water and air and fire, others of the sun and the moon and other planets and fixed stars, others again of the whole world. They call the earth Proserpine, Ceres and Pluto, the sea they call Neptune, inventing a number of marine deities as subservient to him; vast companies of attendance, both male and female. The air they called Juno, fire, Vulcan, the sun, Apollo, the moon, Diana, and the evening star, Venus. Lucifer they call Mercury.

 Philo is there criticizing the common thinking of his day. Nearly universal tendency of all the Gentile nations to invent fables, weaving together, as he puts it in his words, “cleverly contrived imaginations to deceive the ear” and then he goes on to say, “they congratulate themselves for their ingenuity.” Look how smart we are.

Well, there’s a lot of that going on today. All these, Philo says, “are nothing but myths, a whole host of false gods invented by men,” that he says, “put out of sight that most supreme and most ancient of all, the Creator.” He’s not wrong. This was the thinking in the background of every single Gentile city that Paul visited. It’s the same thing for us today.

You got to think about it, in virtually every conversation that you have with an unbeliever, you have to assume the intellectual foundation for that conversation has been set and established by evolutionary ideology. Everything from nothing. All that exists is matter, all that exists is atoms, all that exists is stuff. Life comes from non-life, simple to complex. Man is nothing more than a complex animal. It’s survival of the fittest. And on and on it goes.

You know these little maxims of evolutionary ideology, but it’s not just in rudimentary biology, either. Evolutionary ideology has burst the bounds of its origination in biology to set presuppositions for every kind of science and philosophy and thought today, right? Hard sciences and soft sciences alike and we know it’s not based on evidence.

After all, who was there to see all this stuff come into being? Nobody, but God. They reject him, so they don’t build their ideology and set their presuppositions based on evidence, but on assumptions, or what Philo in his day quite accurately critiqued as inventions and as cleverly contrived imaginations to deceive the ear. We have ours just as they had theirs. And they present well, don’t they?

They present as a philosophy. They are nothing but empty deception. They are sourced in the imagination of men. They’re handed down generation to generation as a tradition, and they have a powerful shaping force on the mind, on the culture. They seem to be inviolable, but it’s all based on a false cosmology and a rejection of theology, a rejection of true biblical metaphysics. They deny God, in other words, and in so doing kill themselves.

In our day, modern cosmology is framed by the dominant myth of the modern age, which is evolutionary ideology. But in Paul’s day, ancient cosmology was framed by polytheism. Philo of Alexandria, as I said, was a Jewish apologist who critiqued Pagan polytheism. Paul provided the first of the Christian critiques over in Galatians chapter 4, verse 3. He provides this critique in our text in Colossians 2:8.

The second century Christian apologist took what Paul wrote in scripture and they continued their critique against polytheism and they exposed polytheism as nothing but pure myth. Often, they were killed for it. People hold on to their ideologies with great passion, don’t they? And now, today in our day, we see polytheism as nonsense, as kind of a relic of Pagan superstition, we’ve adopted, just as ridiculous of the one, in evolutionary ideology.

But Paul fired the first Christian shot, first at the Galatians in the corrective of Galatians 4 verse 3, we, “while we were children, we’re held in bondage under the elemental things of the world.” Notice that same word, ta stoicheia is used there. He uses it again, same word in verse 9 as he continues his critique.

Look down at Galatians 4, verse 8, “However, at that time when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now, having been known by God,” how is it, “how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things?” There it is again, “to which you want to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you that perhaps I’ve labored over you for nothing.”

There in verse 8, Galatians 4, you can see the polytheistic connection between ta stoicheia, the basic stuff of the world, and those things which by nature are no gods. He uses the term theos there. It’s the same error in Galatians that he’s addressing in Colossae. This background of polytheism. False teachers are trying to tell Christian believers to add to Christ the religious observances and the practices are supposedly appease the pantheon that appease their polytheistic neighbors, that don’t trouble polytheistic neighbors.

Just as in our day, Christians are pressured into caving into the evolutionary worldview, to speak as if it’s true, not make a protest. Don’t trouble the waters, don’t stir things up, don’t rock the boat, just go with the flow. So its nature. You can go back to Colossians 2. Its nature comes as a philosophy, its source, it comes from the mind of man, it’s man centered.

Now we see its subject is a false cosmology and sets the foundation for a false worldview informed in their time by the ideology of polytheism and in our time by the ideology of evolution. Whether polytheism or evolution, in either case there’s a biblical word for it; it’s called idolatry. Lastly, we come to its fundamental flaw and it’s the fundamental flaw of every non-Christian ideology, every idolatry.

Fourth: its deficiency. This is Christless philosophy, as he says at the end of verse 8, boiling it all down, given one bottom line, it’s not according to Christ. It’s not according to Christ. Why is that a problem? It should be obvious by now, but in case we need reminding, look back at Colossians 1:15, he, Christ, “is the image of the invisible God.” He is making visible what is invisible. He’s the first born of all creation, preeminent above all creation, outside of all creation. And so he is in the distinctive category, a unique category of creator. And then there’s everything else.

In him, verse 16, “all things were created.” So when it says all things, that means he’s outside of that all things category. He is not a created being as he was purported to be in the first century by non-Christians, by apostates, by false teachers. “In Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions.” And there it is, “or rulers or authorities,” angels, demons. “All things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

 He sustains things, he holds them together. Every atom stays intact because he wills it to be so. The planets continue in their orbits, the solar system continue in their patterns, the galaxies in theirs, and the subatomic particles in their orbits, in their patterns. DNA strands hold together because he wills it.

He’s the head of the body, the Church. That is to say, you Colossians, that is to say, you Christians of Greeley, he’s your head, he is your authority. He’s the beginning, he’s the first born from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything.

The tradition that these Colossians had received, which is summarized in the confession that they made in verse 6, Christ, the Christ Jesus of the Lord. It creates an irreversible breach with the polytheism of the culture or with any iteration, that passes itself off as new. Such as what they’re seeing in the Lycus Valley and coming into the Colossian church. Some kind of synchronistic blend of proto-Gnosticism and Christless Judaism and a provincial Phrygian mystery religions, all mixed up and put into the blender and served in cups.

Whether it’s the polytheism of their day or the evolutionism of our day, the fundamental error about God, the most basic problem of bad theology is suppressing the truth of God as Paul says in Romans chapter 1. And when we do that, it means we’re relegated to worshipping and serving the creature. The creation results in the abasement of mankind and the debasing of the image of God in us and demeaning us and leading into all other manner of degradation.

So to break away from all that, for the Colossians to break away from polytheism, and for us to break away with the myths of the modern cosmology framed by evolutionary ideology, that’s freedom. It’s total freedom. It’s a liberation of the mind. It’s the ennoblement of humanity. It restores us to understand we’re the image of God and we have great things to do to glorify God that doesn’t degrade us, but actually uplifts us by addressing the matters of the heart and idolatrous worship, rejecting God our creator by exposing and confronting our idolatry, that’s been perpetuated by the traditions and the myths of our culture.

God in his grace takes away our sins. He silences our accusing consciences not through works-based rituals and observances, but by forgiveness. Forgiveness in the gospel, by the perfect work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Commentator Douglas Moos says, “In direct contrast, dance the gospel. Where the philosophy deceives people, the gospel is true, reliable. Where the philosophy is empty, devoid of spiritual value, the gospel based on Christ, the fullness is powerful and transforming.”

 You feel that, don’t you? You know that to be true. You see it in your own life. You’re a changed person ever since salvation. All this leads naturally to our second point number two: Protect from Christless philosophy. Protect from Christless philosophy. And how do we do that? Well, the protection is Christ himself, as we see in verses 9 and 10, “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and in Him you have been filled. Who is the head over all rule and authority.”

The protection against all Christless philosophy, then and now, and our future protection as well, until Christ returns, is to know and live according to who he is, what he is, and why that matters for us. So if you’re jotting down notes in point two, you can put: The Who, the What, and the So What.

First, the Who, we need to know and live according to the truth that Jesus Christ is God and man, verse 9, “For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” It’s basic Christology, right? It’s Christology 101, doctrine of the incarnation, putting equal emphasis on his deity and his humanity as well. He’s in possession of a divine nature and a human nature. He is God and man, and he is the only one of his kind.

The God man, in him, in this verse is, in emphatic position, placed at the head of the sentence and then the statement, “All the fullness.” That’s what we would call pleonastic, which is to say redundant. The word, all, is implied, in full, isn’t it? Fullness is implied, in all. Paul could have written this more simply, saying for in him deity dwells bodily, and he would have made the same point.

But clearly, he’s being emphatic. “In him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.” He’s being emphatic, and in view of the false teaching, he’s being polemical. He’s getting at something there, something the Colossians understand because of the false teaching that’s very apparent to them that they’re hearing on the streets. That is to say, this is not the gradual fullness that’s promoted by the false teachers in their day; Gnostic doctrine about Christ being the greatest and best human form of fullness.

But even he needed to elevate fully and finally into all fullness found in shedding his fleshly body to be assumed into pure spirit, so the teaching went. It’s nonsense. Paul says, “In Christ is all the fullness of deity,” by which, we understand that to be, a layered redundancy. Since deity by definition, clarified in the doctrine of divine simplicity, cannot be separated into component parts, it’s not divided; it’s an inseparable eternal essence.

So by definition, deity is all and deity is fullness. Further, by the incarnation, this deity dwells bodily in him. I’m going to pass over technical aspects of the Greek language, but just know that Paul’s language here is airtight, bomb proof. He leaves no room for error whatsoever, no room for mistaking. In fact, he’s loading up future pastors and teachers and apologists and theologians of the church. He’s given them ammunition in this section for all future heresy.

 Apologists, teachers, theologians, Christian philosophers have used this language to fight off every form of heresy about Christ. One letter of difference in the abstract noun that he uses there. He uses theos rather than theios. There’s just an iota, a one letter, smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. But the difference is the difference between the word deity, which he uses here, and the word divine, the difference between an essence, deity and a quality, divine.

An Angel has the quality of divineness, doesn’t it? It’s spiritual like God is spiritual. It’s not what Paul’s saying. He’s saying he’s not just God-like, he’s saying he’s God. He also uses an adverb here, sōmatikōs, bodily, corporally instead of sōmati, ensomati, which he could have used, in a body. But that’s the difference between saying God confined himself in the space and limitations of a body, and the vastly different biblical truth that God made his invisible attributes manifest visibly in the incarnation, “for He is the image of the invisible God.”

It’s very precise in his language, in the present tense of the verb here about dwelling, indicates timelessness. There’s a permanent indwelling of deity bodily in Christ Jesus. God dwells, continues to dwell in him. Since the advent of the incarnation, something new has been revealed, something new has entered into time and space, from our perspective, that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself. So that’s, The Who.

Second, The What. We need to know and live according to the truth that Jesus Christ is our fullness. That’s the what? Jesus Christ is our fullness. So we need to know that and to live according to it. For in him you have been filled.

False teachers have tried to tell the Colossians they lacked something. They needed to find all fullness, and they could find all fullness if they only submitted to their doctrines, kind of adding their doctrines to what they already knew to be true, but just add a little more. Join our rituals, join our observances.

Again, Paul says nonsense. In him, you have been filled already, it’s perfect tense. Construction emphasizes the fact that God caused them to be filled in Christ and that has never waned, never abated, never changed one iota. In fact, they continue in that same state of fullness. What is the Christian life, except to expand and understand that fullness, to go deeper into it, to understand it with greater clarity, greater depth, greater breadth.

They don’t obey his word, but they do their own thing, but they call themselves Christians.” Travis Allen

 That’s what teaching in the church is all about, is to help you to explore and understand that fullness in Christ. This is the same kind of temple language we find over in Ephesians, which is to say that now that God dwells in Christ and he unites us to Christ, he is joining us. This is kind of the project of the church. He’s joining us with mortar by the Holy Spirit as bricks, breaking us into the temple sanctuary that houses him, that puts his deity on display.

God is glorifying himself in Christ through us, his living temple. So that’s The Who, that’s The What, thirdly, the So What. We need to know and to live according to the truth, that Jesus Christ is the authority, He’s the authority, he is the head over all rule and authority. In other words, isn’t it a completely different class and category than all other rule and authority? Then all created rule and authority?

In one category, is Christ the image of the invisible God, Colossians 1:15. “The firstborn over all creation,” he is therefore the head of all things. Everything else that he created, including rulers and authorities, including invisible beings like angels, another category, created category. He’s the head of all things. The word, kephalē, it means one of superior rank. It means the chief authority above all, over all rule and authority. And those are the same terms that Paul uses in Colossians 1:16 to describe the angels.

So Christ created them, created all things both in the heavens and on earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones or dominions, here it is, or rulers or authorities, all things created by him. Therefore, contrary to what the false teachers were saying, therefore there are no mediating authorities between God and the Colossians, only Christ.

They’re complete in him, as are all Christians, as are we. That means no polytheistic system. There’s no ranking structure that they need to pass through and appease and please and propitiate in order to get to God, only Christ, and Christ has brought them directly into the throne room and set them on the father’s lap, calling him father.

There’s no evolutionary system either that has authority over us. Ultimately, it’s only Christ and Christ alone. Ultimately, there’s no collective authority and no individual authority either that has authority over us, Christ and Christ alone. Here’s the, So what, of this reality for us, the major conflict with our own culture, the many individual authorities of our time.

The Christ and Christ alone, he is the head and the supreme and the only authority over all and that means all the little gods that walk around you, that work with you, that are in your neighborhood, that are in your family, them vying for your attention, demanding your time, commanding your conscience, coercing you, manipulating you. They have no authority over you, Christ and Christ alone.

Let me ask you, dear Christian, is Christ the authority over you? Does he command your conscience? Does he govern your heart, your thinking, your feelings, your affections, your priorities, your will, your ambitions, your plans, your use of time, your use of resources? Does he command your heart? Is he your authority? Is he your head? If you’re in Christ, you have to say absolutely he is. My problem, Travis, is that I always live that way. Yeah. That’s why we start every service with confession of sin.

We’re all in the same boat. We need to be reminded he’s the head over all rule and authority, angelic and human, collective and individual, including you as an individual. Do you live as if his authority is your only authority, absolute, supreme, and you are obedient to him? In the words of 1 Peter 3:15, have you “sanctified Christ as Lord in your heart?” There’s always room for us to repent and renew our commitment to him as our authority. He’s so gracious to us.

If he is not only God, but he’s your God, and if it’s true not only that he’s the fullness for Christians, but he’s the fullness for you yourself. If he’s not merely the head over all rule and authority, as an abstract concept, but is personally actually the one who governs your heart, commanded by his Word, he commands you by his word. Well then Christ is truly your protection against all Christless philosophy. You don’t need to worry, you’re safe.

Every iteration we face today of personal Christless philosophies, where many call him Lord, Lord, but they actually live for themselves and they do not, what he says to do. They don’t obey his word, but they do their own thing, but they call themselves Christians. Christ protects you from that too, because there’s no salvation in that kind of a Christ, who affirms your autonomy.

As we’re going to see in the weeks to come, The Who and the What and the So What of Colossians 2:9 and 10, they become the basis and the foundation of all of Paul’s positive instruction that comes about Christ’s work, which comes in verses 9 through 15; shows us why it is that we’re complete in him, why it is we’re satisfied and contented in him, why it is that we’re safe in him.

But with that, we come to our time around the Lord’s table. Would you bow with me as we ask the Lord to bless the elements? Father, we do come before you in the name of Jesus Christ and in consideration of His passive and active obedience. His passive obedience by which He suffered and died, a substitutionary death. He being a substitute for us, an atoning death, a covering provided for sinners who take refuge in him. He representing us before you.

He came to die in our place, in our stead, to die on that cross, to be buried in a tomb. You demonstrated your approval of that sacrifice by raising him from the dead. So we come, acknowledging that the bread and the cup symbolize his perfect work. The cup ratifying the New Covenant. His blood poured out to ratify that new covenant, and that New Covenant is about living an obedient life unto him. That obedient life was perfected in his perfect, his act of obedience as he fulfilled all the law of God and he did it on our behalf.

So that whatever fault and whatever error we find in ourselves, we we look to him once again and see that he is the full satisfaction of obedience before you. He is the perfect righteousness, not a righteousness of our own, the one that’s found by faith in Christ. So as we partake of these elements, the bread and the cup, please minister your grace to us through these elements and the, are, partaking of them, our mindfulness of the truth symbolizing these elements.

Minister your grace in Christ by the Spirit to us. Let us reflect on his sacrifice on the cross, his body offered up for our sins. Let us consider the cost of ratifying the new covenants, his bloodshed for us. And let us thank you for including us in the New Covenant. By Your grace, let us thank you for regenerating us by the Holy Spirit, giving us eyes to see, ears to hear, heart to believe, and understand, and trust. We pray that you would satisfy us completely, make our hearts content and happy in him as we partake of this spiritual food. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Hebrews 2:10-13

Colossians 2:6-7

Grab your Bibles, please, and turn to Paul’s letter to the Colossians. We’ve come to the heart of the letter in Colossians 2:6 and 7. Colossians 2:6 and 7, that’ll be our text for today. And in our study of Colossians so far, we’ve worked our way through Paul’s rather long introduction. It started in chapter 1, verse 1, and has gone all the way to chapter 2, verse 5. He’s addressing this church, in his introduction with Apostolic affection, love, demonstrating his Apostolic care for this church, even though he’s never been to the Lycus Valley, to Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis, three churches there.

He’s never been there, and yet these churches are under his Apostolic care. They were planted by an extension of his Apostolic ministry while he was in Ephesus. The Colossians had been evangelized subsequently, very well taught, very well served by Epaphras. Epaphras who had met Paul in Ephesus and then gone back to the Lycus Valley. He’s a very significant leader in that region. Three important churches planted there, one in Laodicea, one in Hierapolis, and then this one in Colossae, and under his leadership and under his influence, they were planted.

They were growing strong, but now, about ten years later, after the planting of those churches, Epaphras has detected a growing and pernicious threat. A subtle, but influential, we might call it, a mood was sweeping through the valley. There was a mood, that was kind of shifting attention and focus from Christ, and creating discontentment and some dissatisfaction in Christians, in their contentment in Christ.

False teachers came in, not only creating discontentment and stirring up any dissatisfaction, but they offered to then solve the problem that they created; offering to augment Christ, supplement his simple rituals with better ones, more fulfilling ones. They offered some better conversations outside the local church than they could find inside the church. They offered that they could mix with more interesting people who kind of were in the know, saw the things the way they saw things, shared the same philosophies, the same outlook on life, the same criticisms of the culture.

They offered a fuller experience, a deeper communion in the theology that they were teaching. So Epaphras, who is a discerning evangelist, he senses this subtle threat to detract from simplicity of faith in Christ. He’s a wise pastor who loves his church, and yet he sees the need for sound counsel to help them. So he heads to Rome to pay a visit to his spiritual father, his ministry mentor, the authoritative apostle and friend of his, Paul.

Paul’s in prison in Rome and so Epaphras knows he’s not going to have to chase a moving target because Paul is obviously constantly on the move. But now being imprisoned, he’s going to be there a while. So Epaphras knows he can secure some undistracted time with Paul, find benefit in his teaching, his counsel, and benefit from his wisdom so he can go back to the Lycos Valley to protect and strengthen those churches.

So here’s Epaphras visiting Paul under house arrest. Paul hears this report from Epaphras about what’s going on and he hears the report not only about the threats that are facing the church, but also he hears mixed in, in Epaphras’ joy over his church and over all those churches, he hears about their good order, their stability in Christ of the majority. And so Paul delays Epaphras’s return, gets a little bit more time with him, and in lieu of sending Epaphras immediately back, he fires off this letter to the church to help them address their immediate concern.

So in this long introduction that we’ve studied, we’ve been through together, we’ve seen that Paul is preparing the church before he even addresses the threat. He starts by telling them how he thanks God for them. That’s a good start. He starts by telling them how he’s praying for them, what he’s, what is in his heart for them; he wants to make known to them.

He reminds them, after that, about the security of their salvation in Christ and as he speaks of Christ, he can’t help but go further to unveil Christ to them, in chapter 1, verses 15 to 20. Paul is confident for them, about them confident in Christ and they should be too. And if they’re going to be as confident as Paul is about their condition, about their situation, about their stability, they must continue in the faith, go deeper.

Chapter 1, verses 21 to 23, calls them to this steadfastness, to continue to be grounded and steadfast, not to be moved away from the hope of the gospel that they’ve heard, the one that Epaphras preached to them; the gospel that Paul now currently serves as a minister for. He’s an apostle of it. He’s, in fact, in prison because of it. So he would have them remain steadfast, grounded, not moved away from that hope.

There’s not a better gospel out there. There’s not a better message. This is the only message; the only way, walk ye in it, is what he’s saying. So in the final section of his introduction, which is chapter 1, verse 24 to chapter 2, verse 5, Paul is setting about to strengthen their confidence as he tells them about himself, about his ministry. He’s assuring them by telling him about himself. He’s assuring them of God’s care and concern because God, after all, gave them Christ.

 And Christ after all, sent Paul as an apostle to proclaim Christ, the one who indwells each and every one of them, the one in whom they are complete. They have full access to all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in him. They don’t need to go looking anywhere else, and then this, take a look at verses 4 and 5 of chapter 2. “I’m saying this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. For even though I’m absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the stability of your faith in Christ.”

 This letter is about confronting a controversy. It’s about confronting a threat, a false theology, false teaching, but notice how Paul doesn’t see the need to generate or gin up any fearful feelings for these people that are really facing a very serious and pernicious threat. He doesn’t trouble them. He actually engenders confidence in them, in what he says to them and about them.

Paul is confident that true Christians in this church will not be deluded. They won’t be deceived by the false teaching and  yes they need to be wary, yes, they need to be watchful, but without being alarmed, without being anxious, and this is what brings us to the heart of this letter. The thesis is right there in verses 6 and 7. This is kind of like Paul’s propositional statement for the whole letter, and it’s going to be unpacked.

This proposition, this thesis is going to be unpacked through the rest of the epistle. So we want to take today to focus on his thesis. Let’s get that under our belt so we can make sure we know what’s going to be happening later. What he’s saying later and why? Look at Colossians 2:6 and 7, having spoken of their good order, the stability of their faith in Christ, Paul then says this, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and being built up in Him, and having been established in your faith just as you were instructed, and abounding with thanksgiving.”

You can think of those two verses sort of as the seed from which the rest of the letter is going to grow, a seed that is going to produce abundant fruit among this church and the churches of the Lycus Valley. In fact, it’s been bearing fruit among churches ever since he wrote it, including in our church. You can think of those two verses as like the blueprint drawn by an Apostolic architect or maybe a master builder of churches under Christ. We might say in today’s vernacular, those sources are like the source code. They command the operating system, so the machine runs at its maximum efficiency and its optimum performance.

Pick your analogy, but in the most basic lines of code, at the foundation of the blueprint, the power at the heart of the seed are those two words that are repeated in each verse, “in Him.” In him, note the protective power and the productive power of this concept of, in him, in Christ. Go back to Colossians 1:27 where he says his whole goal as an apostle of Christ is to preach the mystery of God, which is Colossians 1:27, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

 Now we want to take that small yet very powerful kernel of truth, Christ in you, and these two verses really are expanding that concept, Christ in you, to give us a pattern and direct the habits of the practice of the Christian life; facing theological doctrinal threats, well go back to the source code, Christ in you. You’re struggling to respond to social change, cultural pressures, challenges, workplace issues, go back to the blueprint, Christ in you. You’re dealing with marital problems, perplexed by parenting issues, raising children in a hostile world. What’s the answer? Christ in you. You take that seed and water it, and you feed the heart around it with the truth, and it will produce abundant fruit, because the power is in, the truth of Christ in you, the hope of glory.

So we’ll have two points for this morning built around that concept, one per verse. Together these verses unpack Christ in you, focusing on Christ in verse 6 and on, you in verse 7. So first point number one: The one in whom you walk. The one in whom you walk, again verse 6, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” It’s a present tense imperative. So we can read it this way, walk in him, you can read it, in him continue walking.

In him, keep on walking, and in the original and as we can see here, the command comes at the end of the verse, as if Paul is drawing our attention really to the first part and saving the command until later. So it’s, therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, is the emphasis and the focus in verse 6. He wants our singular focus to be on Christ and again, that goes back to the entire point in Colossians, from start to finish, it’s all focused on Christ.

For the sake of time, I cut out of my sermon a huge chunk, which is a beautiful chunk, that I would probably use later on so it won’t be wasted. But if you go through Colossians for yourself and see what is predicated of Christ, you see every time he’s mentioned, what is said about him or what the command is related to him, it’s Christ in you through and through.

 The focal point of this entire letter is Christ and so we don’t want to rush past the emphasis here in the verse 6, so that we can get to verse 7, which seems to be all about what we need to do. We really, like as Americans, we’re action oriented. We want to get things done. We’re very pragmatic people. We want to rush to the commands, rush to what we can do. But Paul says, no, I want you to linger here.

I want you to consider carefully what I mean by, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord. The verb for received paralambano, it can mean to take or to receive. So, take, is kind of aggressive, active, receive is kind of passive receptive. It can mean that, with a personal object, which is what we see here, it means to receive to one side in the sense of, as one source has put it, denoting a a close fellowship and agreement, to accept, to receive to oneself.

 So as you received and then, personal object, receive to yourself, accept Christ Jesus the Lord. This is what some new converts mean when you hear them say I’ve accepted Jesus or I’ve received Jesus and there will always be some older wiser Christian lurking around, offer a corrective, you accept Jesus? Don’t you mean that he accepts you? Isn’t that the point? Okay, you got me, nailed. Well done. Based on this, there is room to say we have accepted Christ.

We have received Christ, it’s written there. We can describe our conversion in those terms. You have, after all, accepted Christ, haven’t you? You’ve received him. But the real question, isn’t it, what do we mean by that? What do we mean by that? I know that many today denying the lordship of Christ, they want to take Christ as their Savior. They want his benefits. They don’t really want him telling them what to do. They don’t really want him to challenge them to change their priorities, to mess with their calendar, mess with their pocketbook, and so they prefer, I accept Jesus.

They prefer to be in charge and to, to sit on the throne of their lives and add Christ to their already busy schedule, and they’ll get around to him if they can, but they’ll hold the insurance of his salvation in their back pocket so they can pull it out when they stand before God one day and say, I accepted Christ.

So if that’s what’s meant when a new convert says I’ve accepted Jesus, okay, we have reason to correct, teach, instruct, challenge. But what does Paul mean by what he says here? The verb paralambano, as I said, means to take or to receive, but really what Paul is doing here is he’s kind of introducing us. This is new to us, it’s not new to the Colossians, but this is introducing us to an ancient practice, a common practice that’s called receiving tradition.

Receiving tradition, fondness for tradition, kind of strikes American ears as quite strange. After all, we pride ourselves in breaking with traditions. It’s kind of how our country was founded, by breaking with jolly old England and jolly old King George and all the stuffy things in English Parliament and royalty and all that stuff.

We Americans don’t like any of that stuff, do we? We forge ahead as masters of our own fates and captains of our own souls. To quote that insidious poem, Invictus, all about prideful self-sufficiency. No Christian should champion Invictus. And from the judgement of history really, the sentiment of Invictus is not courageous, but quite stupid and foolish, because true wisdom throughout human history has never been about becoming innovators, advancing on our own, doing our own thing, making our own way, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

True wisdom is about advancing forward from a foundation that’s been received, advancing forward from tested experience received by us, from those who are older, from the aged; receiving traditions of the elders, heeding the wisdom of the fathers. Now could these traditions handed down from generation to generation become distorted and corrupted and perverted.

Absolutely they can, most certainly, which is what Jesus condemned in his own day in the Pharisees and the scribes, what Paul condemns in verse 8, philosophy, that is according to the tradition of men. So what prevented traditions from this distortion and perversion and corruption? What preventative maintenance would act as a corrective to traditions, that tended stray and to drift? Only one thing will prevent it, an authoritative source of absolute truth.

 Without a source to go back to, like all the non-Christian religions of the world, like every other person in the world, they don’t have an authoritative source to go back to, though they make one up. It’s not truly authoritative, it’s arbitrary at its core, it’s unjustifiable and leads to irrationality.

 But without an authoritative source to go back to like the non-revealed religions of the world. So Judaism before Christ, and then Christ and Christianity now, or by deviating from or ignoring an authoritative source of truth, that’s exactly what happened to the Jews of Jesus day. That’s what’s threatening this Colossian church. That’s what continues to this day. The deviation, deviating from the truth that makes distortion and corruption inevitable.

True wisdom is about advancing forward from a foundation that’s been received, advancing forward from tested experience received by us, from those who are older, from the aged.” Travis Allen

FF Bruce in his commentary, traces the transmission of authoritative tradition among the Jews. It’s a good illustration of how deviation occurs over time. He quotes a quite a well-known summary, the Jewish handing down of tradition in the ages before AD 70. This is what Bruce says, providing an outline. He says, “Moses received the Torah from Sinai. He delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets delivered it to the men of the great Synagogue.”

 Now he’s referring to the one traditionally set up in the time of Ezra. “From one of the last survivors of the Great Synagogue, Simon the Just, the Torah was received by Antigonus of Soko in the 2nd century BC. He was delivered into successive pairs of scholars, generation by generation until Hillel and Shammai circa 10 BC.” This brings us up to the time of Christ.

Going on, he says, “This was the tradition of the elders, which Jesus denounced because in practice it nullified certain basic principles of the divine law which it was intended to safeguard and apply. You leave the commandments of God, Jesus said, and hold fast the tradition of men. End Quote.

When Jesus came preaching, take as the example of him preaching in the Sermon on the Mount. You remember what he said repeatedly in chapter 5, “You’ve heard it said.” What’s he referring to? He’s referring to the teaching of the scribes, the traditions of the elders. “You’ve heard it said, but I say to you,” what did he do? Give new teaching? Did he upset and thwart their traditions and insert his own? No, he corrected their traditions by taking them back to Moses, to interpret Moses rightly, correctly, to give them an accurate exegetical summary of the teaching of whatever they were addressing, so that they can understand revealed truth, authoritative, absolute source of truth.

The Jews of his day had deviated from that one true authoritative source of absolute truth, which is the revealed Word of God, and since they had departed from Scripture, they misconstrued the truth. Then they misrepresented God, misunderstood his will, and they absolutely failed to recognize the Messiah when he came. Instead of bowing in worship, they elevated him and hung him on a cross. As John 1:17 says, “The law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Two revealers, two sources you could say or conduits of absolute truth, Moses, Jesus Christ. The written record of commandments and precepts of history and instruction, the revelation of God and his righteousness that came through Moses. But it had no power to save, the power to save in grace and truth that came through Jesus Christ. And when that grace and truth came in Jesus Christ, it was not stenciled by the hand of God into tablets of stone. He arrived on the scene as God Incarnate, not with a book, but is the living Word.

He’s the living, breathing man of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ and the prophetic writing about him came after the life that he lived; after he died on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins; after he was buried in the tomb; after rising from the grave in a resurrected body; after he ascended into heaven; after he sent forth the promise of the Holy Spirit from the father to indwell his people, to empower his apostles, and to fill his apostles and the prophets and the New Testament, Ephesians 3:5, Ephesians 2:20, with truth to be written.

But first, before any of the words of the New Testament were written, the apostles preached, early disciples preached, their converts preached, and what they preached was received, just as Paul describes it here, and accepted as the authoritative oral tradition. They received Christ Jesus the Lord. What these early converts heard in the proclamation of Christ Jesus the Lord and then unpacking the meaning and the significance of those life-giving words of grace and truth. That is the tradition they received.

We see this same word used, in tradition, same word used in 1 Thessalonians 2:13. Paul told the Thessalonians, when you received the word of God, paralambanō, again, same as in Colossians 2:6, you received the Word, which you heard from us, and you accepted it, not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God which works in you who believe.

 These early Christians, they were able to distinguish the word of God from the words of men in their own time. In the preaching, they received the tradition of the authoritative absolute truth. They were able to distinguish that tradition from all the traditions of men, which all those traditions of men amount to nothing more than deceptive philosophies, as Colossians 2:8 says.

 So how could they discern so clearly? Were they smarter than we? Were they more adept at listening? Better skills in a pre-Internet age, a prebook age, where books are everywhere and they’re just better listeners. How did they do it? Well, it’s by the invisible work of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. It’s by his individual internal ministry of teaching, of revealing, of opening hearts and minds, so that when they heard the Apostolic preaching, it cut through all the clutter of the world and every other philosophy.

They were able to receive this tradition and they were able to make this confession, which Paul writes here, Christ Jesus the Lord, they believed it and they obeyed it. The tradition we have received, the tradition that Paul reminds the Colossians of, is summarized really in this confession of faith, Christ Jesus the Lord, because that’s what it is. It’s a confession.

This is the tradition that we’ve received and heard and believed and obeyed and notice, it’s not merely about a what, it’s about a who. Yes, New Testament is the authoritative historical record of his life and ministry. Yes, the New Testament is the only right interpretation of Jesus Christ and his life and his ministry. Without it, we’re ignorant, in the dark.

Apart from it, we too will drift into distortion and corruption, as happened to the Jews of Jesus day, as happened to the false teachers in Paul’s day, and some of the people that they peeled away from faithful churches. But the Apostolic preaching, the oral tradition that was handed down, the record in the New Testament is fundamentally about a person.

Paul conveys it here in Colossians 2:6 in a saying that was familiar to the Colossians, one that was taught to them by Epaphras. This is really the good confession of the early church: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord, it’s in other letters as well. If you look around the New Testament, you’ll find it. We can read this in 2 Corinthians 4:5, “We do not preach ourselves,” Paul says, “but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as slaves for the sake of Jesus.”

 We read it again in Philippians 2:11, “Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.” And what is it they confess? “That Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” This early confession is, is a formulaic summary of doctrine that acts kind of like a bona fide, to validate true Christians from any false professors of Christianity.

For no one can say, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” You say, now anybody can say Jesus is Lord. It doesn’t mean, no you can’t say it; you can’t confess it, you can’t live according to your confession except by the Holy Spirit. You can’t know the meaning of those words, Jesus and Lord and the equative, is, you can’t know that, apart from the Holy Spirit. You can’t understand it; you can’t apply it. You can’t live out the implications of that in your lives without the Holy Spirit. What he says is true.

Colossians 2:6, this is unique, this statement of the confession, it’s the only place in the New Testament, that kind of, puts the confession of faith in exactly this way and it kind of presents the tradition of the early church and the confession of the early church in such definiteness.

Literally stated here: it’s you received the Christ comma, Jesus comma, the Lord. Now there are no commas in the original. I inserted that, but you get the point. You received the Christ, Jesus, the Lord. This is no cliche, mindlessly recited like some kind of a religious mantra. This tradition that we have received is about a person, and those words inform us about the person. And those words, when they’re unpacked, they are deep, with infinite depth of substance and glory and power and salvation and honor.

This person is someone who has loved us from all eternity. This person is someone who became incarnate to love us sacrificially, dying to save us, and he lives now in resurrection life, at God’s right hand, in a state of exaltation, and he ministers to us from that vantage point forever. So we’ve received the tradition, preached, passed on orally, recorded in the authoritative record, the New Testament Scripture.

We’ve received this about this particular person, the Christ, Jesus, the Lord. He is the Christ of God, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the one who came as the second and greater Adam to fulfill the perfect will of God and to be the perfect and only mediator between God and man. He’s the one who ministers to God’s people as the perfect prophet, the great High Priest, and the Davidic King.

Christ is Jesus, which refers to Jesus of Nazareth, a particular person of history. He was conceived by the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, born from the Virgin Mary in a natural way, as a true human being, in a normal human way, and raised in a home, grew into maturity in the way of all humanity.

He fulfilled all the law of God to become the perfect atoning sacrifice for all sins by substituting himself for sinners when he died on the cross and then rising from the dead. And now he represents the first of a new race of a resurrected humanity. Because he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on the cross, as Philippians 2:9 through 11 says, “God highly exalted him, and God bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, that EVERY TONGUE WILL CONFESS that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the Father.”

 This is the one that we’ve received by tradition. This is the Christ. He is Jesus, and as Paul tells us here, this Jesus is the Lord. Notably, when the Septuagint translates the divine name from Hebrew into Greek, the divine name being Yahweh in Hebrew. When it goes into Greek, instead of finding some Greek transliteration for Yahweh, the Septuagint translators shied away from using the divine name, and taking it out of Hebrew. It’s kind of pristine ground.

They didn’t want to sully the divine name with barbaric speech like Greek, and so they found an alternate, the word Adonai. They used Adonai, which comes from the Hebrew, which translate directly into Greek as Lord, and that’s where we get the name Jehovah. So don’t let the Jehovah’s Witnesses tell you, you don’t have the true God because you don’t know his true name, which is Jehovah.

Jehovah is the consonants that come from Yahweh. Inserted into those consonants are the vowels from Adonai, Yahuva. And so whenever they would see the word Yahweh, the Greeks would translate it and say the word Adonai. That was like the kind of little mnemonic device. So they didn’t pronounce it, but it just came into, kind of this bastardized form into, you know, American time, to Charles Taze Russell to say, Jehovah’s the true divine name and the church has lost it for all these centuries, and we’ve discovered it. Come follow our cult. Kurios, Lord, for the Greeks, when referred to a divine person, took their minds back to Yahweh. The readers of the Septuagint understood, Lord means Yahweh.

Paul’s asserting in this confession that the Christ of God, who’s revealed by the incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth, he’s none other than Yahweh himself. So as Paul has unpacked in his introduction and as Doug Moo puts it, “Jesus Christ is Lord, is a succinct way of saying he is the image of the invisible God, the first-born over-all creation, the head of the body, the church, the mystery of God, the repository of all wisdom and knowledge.”

When you read, Christ Jesus the Lord, that’s what you think of. So if you’ve ever heard it said, oh, Christianity is not about a religion, but about a relationship, we understand that sentiment, but that’s really a false dichotomy. Better said, Christianity is about a reality, about a relationship with God in Christ and the redemption that he won. Therefore, the practice of our religion, in contrast to every man-made religion, the practice of our religion is about growing deeper in the reality of a relationship with God’s Christ, who is my redeemer, who’s revealed in the historic person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, who is known to be none other than the Yahweh of old, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anyone who comes peddling any other message, teaching any other philosophy, adding any addition or subtracting in any way from this tradition, from this Christ, is deluded and deceived and on a sure and certain path to destruction, intending to pull you right down with them. Listen, there is no other valid tradition. There is no other authority that is true, no other reality. This is it, Christ and Christ alone.

Just as God revealed his righteousness in the law of Moses, and there is no other righteousness, just as he revealed his standard in his code, and there is no other standard, there is no other law, there is no other code. And all the prophets point back to that law and guide from it and remind people about it and exhort them from it and admonish them from it.

So also has God revealed his grace and the righteousness that comes by faith, in no other name than the name of Jesus. There’s no other way, there’s no other path, there’s no other savior, it’s Christ and Christ alone. Now, what’s the point of verse 6? Just this, the fact that they received this tradition, the fact that they are able to make this good confession, the Christ, Jesus, the Lord, this is evidence, proof positive of the work of God in them.

This is what Paul wants them to see very clearly and to know with certainty, so they can walk ahead in full confidence even as they walk out into the world and face false teaching, people who are skilled at deception. He wants them to be confident that they make this good confession and they know this person of this tradition because God’s changed them.

God’s done the work and that takes us to a second point number two: The way in which you walk, the way in which you walk. Paul gives the command at the end of verse 6, present tense imperative, walk in him. And as I said, present tense. It means keep on walking in him, continue that way. It assumes though a start, that you have started walking in him and now you’re to keep on, keep on keeping on. It encourages continuing.

 When we unpack the command, Paul wants us to see here in verse 7, the divine provision for our walk so that we know that God is for us and God is with us and God is doing the work within us. We’re not left as orphans. We’re not stuck on some desert island without resources, without food, without drinking water. No, we have God in, for, with, us.

Look at the text, “Walk in Him,” verse 7, “having been firmly rooted and being built up in Him, and having been established in your faith- just as you were instructed-and abounding with thanksgiving.” You can note several metaphors are used there to describe Christian growth, which kind of shift rapidly.

Lightfoot points it out saying, “from the path to the tree to the building.” You notice that. So there’s a journey metaphor, and then there are horticultural and architectural metaphors used there. We see that plainly, and that’s very helpful for us to grab word pictures and kind of apply this to our lives.

Verb tenses are important here. We’ll note those along the way, but what I want to point out right here from the front is that all but one of the verbs in this verse are in the passive voice. So what does that mean? Just to draw it to the bottom line here, Paul is assuring us by the use of the passive voice in these verbs, that God is the one who is invisibly at work. God is working within us. Very important to know.

Paul wants the Colossians to know this. He’d have all Christians know it, including us, that for all who receive Christ Jesus the Lord will walk this way. This is what our lives will look like. Why? Because God is doing the work. He’s the one causing us to walk this way. He ultimately is the one who keeps us out of the clutches of false teachers.

And how does He do it? By keeping us on the straight and level path, not deviating to the right or to the left. He keeps us on path, on track, on task. The more thoughtful, the more intentional we are about walking in this way, the more cognizant, the more knowledgeable, the more we have understanding and wisdom about walking in this way. Listen, the safer we will be, the more secure we’ll be, the stronger we will be. Never diluted by any persuasive argument, never taken captive by philosophy and empty deception, but always walking steadfast in Christ; we’ll live the most fruitful, joyful lives. Be ready to give a good account to him in the end, be a blessing to many around us as we teach and instruct and help and counsel.

So we start here first with the horticultural metaphor, like trees rooted, having been firmly rooted in him. Several things to notice here, and they’re super encouraging. The passive voice, as I said, it indicates what has been done to us. And again, this points back to God’s initiative. He is the one who has done, the rooting. In other words, we have been planted by God.

Paul’s going to go on to explain how it is that God planted us in the coming verses in Colossians 2:11 to 15. He does a deep, deep work to plant us in Christ. But notice next, notice where he planted us, it’s in him. That, in him, at the end of those first two participles, applied to both participles. So it’s rooted in him and then built up in him.

So this is Christological, which means our vitality is from him, and the shape of our growth will make us look like him, and the fruit that we bear from our tree will be exactly like the fruit born from the tree and the produce of his life. Another thing worth noting is that this is a perfect tense verb, having been rooted. So it’s God’s act, planting us in him, and it happened at some point in the past.

The results of being planted, firmly rooted deeply in him, those results continue through the present moment. So it’s God’s doing, God’s work, and it started at a point and it continues on. Now if this first metaphor doesn’t ring any cross referencing bells for you, let me remind you of this one. Jesus, use the same metaphor, not a tree, but a vine. Remember that John 15, “I am the true vine. My Father is the vine-grower.” He says, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.”

And what’s he saying there? False branches, fake branches just hanging on strapped to the outside, he removes those and burns them up. But every branch that bears fruit, proving to be an actual branch, the father prunes that branch, takes off the straggling little things growing out of it that aren’t productive and fruitful, cuts them off, prunes it. What’s that called? Trials, afflictions, pressures, difficulties, changes that we don’t like, people that are difficult, he prunes it.

Various ways of pruning it, different kinds of shears. But why does he prune it? Why does he hurt the branch like that? That it may bear more fruit. Because what has been done to us by God, planting us in Christ, rooting us firmly in him, we’re now able to contribute to the acceleration of our growth, which we come to in a moment.

They didn’t want to sully the divine name with barbaric speech like Greek, and so they found an alternate, the word Adonai. ” Travis Allen

Next metaphor, second, the architectural metaphor, like a building, or maybe even more specific, like a sacred temple, is how the New Testament describes Christians. We are being built up in him. These first two metaphors are connected. They’re tied together in the syntax here, but the first guarantees the second, the rootedness guarantees the building rises.

But the tense now has changed, from the perfect tense having been rooted, we go to the present tense being built up. Still the passive voice, it’s still God doing the building. But the emphasis here now is not on past action with continuing results; now it’s the continuousness of the work, the ongoing nature of the building up.

This is no static project, kind of like buildings, we build that. Once the building is finished, we fill it with stuff and people go and use it. What God is building is a dynamic thing, a dynamic project, sort of this organic living building always being added to, always rising higher and higher. That’s what Peter described in 1 Peter 2:5, We are, “living stones” and we’re, “being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

So we’re a living breathing building, a living organic sacred temple, ever growing, ever expanding. Paul’s going to develop this point in Colossians 3:1 through 15, which we’re going to come to in due course in our study. But how does the growth happen? With what material do we contribute? How do we join in the building? After all, the passive voice means God is doing it. And yet there’s a command at the head of these metaphors that means we do something, namely walk in him.

 So if God is the one who has rooted us, and God is the one doing the building, well, then what’s our part? Paul comes to this in his third verb, and here he leaves metaphors behind to emphasize the need for sound doctrine. He says, “Having been established in your faith just as you were instructed,” still God’s work, the passive voice is still in play here.

But Paul indicates the part that we play so that we’re sure to remain deeply rooted in him, so that we ensure the building up in him continues on schedule, so that we continue to secure our lives established in the faith and firm in the truth. It’s actually a better way to interpret Paul’s use of the word faith here. So it’s not your faith, as I read in my translation here, as if it’s a subjective sense of believing, and that is certainly involved.

Make no mistake, we have to believe what we study and learn. But the emphasis here is on the need for sound doctrine to establish us. So this is the objective use of the word, faith, and that’s indicated in the original by the use of the definite article. It’s established in the faith.

The faith referring to the doctrinal content that we believe, that we learn, that we understand. It’s also indicated in the next phrase, “just as you were instructed.” They had to be instructed with content so they could believe it. So Paul’s going to develop the point further in the letter, and he does that starting in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

 There’s our part, “with all wisdom, teaching, and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” and on and on it goes. There’s our part, “let the word of Christ dwell in you,” and it’s a plural command, so it’s all of us in the church. Let it dwell among you and through you and out from you. Let it live here richly.

As the elders were praying this morning for the service, we were just kind of connecting with the different teaching that’s gone on in the first hour and just rejoicing in God giving us truth and God giving us faithful teachers of the Word of God here in this church to keep us all on track. So we don’t make the mistake of drifting from our own confession, from distorting our tradition, from misunderstanding God and misleading people.

We just spent time in prayer, not only praying for the service, in just giving thanks to God for that. We’re so thankful because truth is a gift; it’s a grace of God. Depth of truth and teaching is a gift of God and a grace of God. Hear the word of Christ in Colossians 3:16. It’s a word about Christ. It’s what Paul really laid out in Colossians 1:15 to 20. It’s the word of Christ, a word about Christ.

The more we learn, the more we understand; greater clarity comes from greater depth. It’s not true when you go diving. Going deeper doesn’t bring more clarity, brings more darkness. The way of the spiritual realm is inverted. It’s not like the physical, material world where greater depth leads to greater pressure, depth, darkness, lack of clarity, muddy.

In the spiritual realm that’s flipped over, so the greater depth you have, the greater understanding you have, the greater light. The more you see, the more you understand, the firmer you believe. The greater our depth, the deeper our faith, the stronger, more resilient, firm, steadfast established, we will be. When you read on from Colossians 3:16 and forward and all the way through chapter 4, verse 1, you come to see how useful and productive sound doctrine is, how fruitful it is in the church, in the home, in the workplace.

It’s the truth, divine truth, quite literally, that changes the world. Now, knowing God has rooted you deeply in Christ Jesus the Lord, you cannot be uprooted because it’s him who’s doing it. Knowing that God is building you up in him and always working to establish you firmly in him, I ask you, what do these truths do for your soul? Do they not fill you with confidence and joy?

Let me use a word that’s right here, gratitude, because that’s what comes next. Fourth we see a doxological output, which is evidence that we’re in him. Notice the last phrase in verse 7, “abounding with Thanksgiving.” Paul at this point dropped the divine passive. He switches back here to the active voice and present tense because an ongoing life of gratitude, coming from us, is what characterizes the true believer.

We are, as Paul says, “abounding with thanksgiving.” This is a verb here that indicates a superfluity of gratitude, an ever-flowing stream of gratitude, which may seem like a bit much until you keep on reading and you see all that God has accomplished for us, in and through Christ Jesus. From Colossians 2:11 all the way through the end of that section, verse 15, and when you see what he’s done, your hearts are filled to overflowing. You can’t stop giving thanks.

The thankful heart is a contented heart. The thankful heart is a satisfied heart; a happy and delighted heart which is complacent in Christ, complacent, meaning, at ease, living in peace, at rest, ultimately at rest. This is the believing heart. This is the mind of every true Christian.

And in fact, when you hear someone who is characterized by constant complaining, by routine grumbling, you know that truth teller who’s always telling you what’s the problem with you or the world or your family or church or whatever. It is the person who never seems to be content, never satisfied. You know what they’re saying to you, really, in all the complaining and all the grumbling, they’re begging you, examine me, please, for I may not be a Christian.

Listen to the symptoms of that heart and ask deeper questions about the cause because there is something not right in the one who was never happy in Christ, always bearing a grudge, has a long list of gripes, complaints, and unresolved issues. A heart of unforgiveness. The Christian heart is a contented, satisfied heart. Happy in Christ, delighted in Jesus, complacent in all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that have been granted to us by God in Christ.

 When I say complacent, I don’t mean lazy and indolent. I mean in all the best sense of the word. It’s so satisfied, so at ease we are. There’s not even a hint of discontentment, not a whisper of grumbling or complaint. There’s no itch to look elsewhere. There’s no wandering eyes, no hearts adrift, idolatrous, covetous, bowing at strange altars. There’s no feet that wander into worldly places, no hands that do what non-Christian hands do and build what non-Christian neighbors build. No tongues talking like they talk, rehearsing the same banal trivia. Meaningless chitchat. No.

Why is that? Because we are constantly looking to our planting and how it is that we have become in this state and in this condition. How it is that we were firmly rooted in him. We’re constantly attending to the work of erecting this building, this temple. We’re constantly feeding our souls with truth established in the faith.

We’re filling out all that we were taught with this ever deepening, ever expanding, ever widening degree of apprehension and comprehension of the truth, because of this life that we now get to live in Christ. Can you believe it, beloved? Our hearts are filled to overflowing with gratitude and our mouths are filled with songs of praise to God.

The Word of Christ dwells in us so richly that our hearts are filled with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We sing with gratefulness in our hearts to God. And when we engage with others, our words are always filled with grace, always seasoned with salt, so that we will know how to answer each person. Why? Because we’ve been studying, learning, growing, deepening.

We will become increasingly like our teacher, Paul. From start to finish in this epistle, has modeled the very heart of gratitude and utters words of thanksgiving in ink on paper. So as Paul prepares to address this threat of false teaching, he really starts at the heart of it all, Christ in you. I like how Douglas Moo puts it, “The way forward is not through addition, but through deepening.” That’s exactly right.

The deeper you go, the more you come to understand him, know him, see him, the more clearly you understand and apprehend him and comprehend him and love him and worship him. You know what flows out of your life and heart? Gratitude. It’s not put on, it’s not fake, it’s true, it’s real, and the people around you can hear it and know it.

Deeper and deeper we go into the truth, so we can be more deeply and firmly rooted in Christ, so that our building can ascend higher and higher to the glory of Christ, so we can be firmly and strongly established in Christ. So our hearts are filled with contentment and satisfaction and joy, and we are overflowing with gratitude to God for Christ. A person like that, you think they can ever be tempted with any false doctrine, arbitrary philosophy, other influences, influencers, distractions, temptations, lusts? No, you’re safe when you stick to Christ and “Christ in you who is the hope of glory.” Let’s pray.

 Our Father, what can we say, but thank you. We do give thanks to you in Christ, our Savior. We thank you for what you have done as our Father, as the one who chose us before the foundation of the world to be in Christ. The one who has loved us, given us eternal hope in Christ. We thank you, we worship you in the name of Christ, give our lives to you wholly, because of Christ. And Lord Jesus, thank you for all you’ve done for us. It’s in your name we pray. Amen.

John 10:27-30

Deuteronomy 6:4-6

Jude 24-25

Colossians 2:1-5

The post A Ministry of Love to the Heart appeared first on Grace Church Greeley.

Hebrews 2:5-9

The post What We Know, See, and Believe appeared first on Grace Church Greeley.