“Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day— 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. 20 If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, 21 “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” 22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? 23 These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.”
When I was very young and my father was a Methodist minister we lived for a time in a small town in central California, where there was a woman named Girdy Ruth. She was not young and I have no doubt that she has passed on long ago. I don’t think she had any family living; at least, not in or near that town.
She lived alone…very alone…and would occasionally come to church after the service was well under way and sit in the very back of the sanctuary, and would leave as soon as it was done without talking to anyone.
Everyone knew when Girdy came in, without turning around to look, because once Girdy opened the door it only took seconds for the strong odor of garlic to reach the choir loft.
Girdy wore garlic on a string around her neck. Girdy ate garlic with every meal. Girdy…and this is what she once told my father in probably the only conversation they ever had…put garlic in her bath water.
You see, for Girdy the wearing of garlic and the ritualistic application of it to every area of her life was a religious exercise. Garlic kept the demons away.
Now, Girdy, who we kids all called Girdy Garlic, was an extreme case and it goes without saying that she was not well mentally. But Girdy, as absurd as she was, serves as an example of something that many people in the church are prisoners of and although we would not call them mentally ill, their devotion to religious exercise and ritual is equally ridiculous and useless and contrary to the gospel message.
LET US NAME THE JUDGES
Now Paul tells the Colossian believers to reject the efforts of anyone desiring to judge them for their actions and their religious behavior and keep them under a weight of obligation and guilt.
Let’s talk about who some of these ‘judges’ would be.
First on the list would be the Judaizers, burdening believers with the weight of the Law of Moses as the means of salvation in addition to believing in Christ. These were not just well-meaning but misinformed men, they were deceivers seeking gain at the expense of the church.
Their modern day equivalent would be the charlatans who do not preach a true gospel, but prey upon the natural tendency in people to think they can and must work to be right with God, but spread their message in such a way as to make people obligated and loyal to them in the process of working for salvation.
There are a few mainline denominations that teach works as part of salvation, but they would not put it in those terms. One church clearly states that salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ’s atoning sacrifice alone. Yet they say about baptism that it is necessary for salvation and they apparently do not recognize any inconsistency there. There are others who say that the salvation process begins with adopting faith in the atoning work of Christ and ends with living a holy life. Only at the end will it be revealed whether they lived well enough to enter Heaven.
There are numerous ways to express a salvation that includes some sort of work or good deed to be complete. The common denominator of them all is that they produce legalism and judgmentalism.
Do not let anyone be your judge in regard to food or drink or what festivals and holy days you will keep. Do not let them tell you what day to set aside for worship, or condemn you for the one that you choose.
Here is something I discovered in my research that I hadn’t realized before and perhaps you have not either. The commandment concerning the keeping of the Sabbath day is the only one of the Ten Commandments not mentioned in the New Testament.
Like I say, I hadn’t realized that detail, but it makes a great deal of sense, since the Lord of Sabbath indwells every believer and calls for worship as a lifestyle.
As Joy Davidman said in her commentary on the Ten Commandments,
“Let the church members behave like Christians seven days a week, and it is likely that the Sabbath will take care of itself. For how do you make a day holy? By seeing that it is holy already; and behaving accordingly.” “Smoke On The Mountain” – Joy Davidman, 1953 The Westminster Press, Philadelphia
Christ has triumphed and wields authority over all, meaning ‘all’, and it is He alone who died and rose again, no other. He is the only Judge and it is He who said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. It is He who said that all who were weary and burdened down could come to Him for rest. It is He in whom all of these Laws and festivals and special holy days are fulfilled. The Light has come, the shadows are banished.
Next there are the false teachers – and you may think right away that we’ve already been talking about false teachers and you are right but not in the sense that we will now.
There are those who are themselves misled and taken away in error and they think they have the truth but they lead their listeners away down the wayward path with them.
Getting right to the point once more, whatever the message is, if it has deviated even the slightest from the true gospel of Jesus Christ then it is a false teaching, and any and every false teaching, either right away or somewhere down the road of its line of thinking, leads to legalism and judgmentalism. It must, for the only message of absolute freedom and deliverance is the true good news of Christ alone, for salvation and its completion.
Anything based to any degree on man’s efforts or merit, any gospel that includes man’s cooperation in any way for salvation, will produce judgment because it is in the fallen nature of man to second-guess his neighbor’s motives and intentions and find things to correct. We are basely selfish and jealous for control and must find fault in others because our sin won’t abide our finding fault with ourselves.
If we have a religion that is in part our making, of necessity we must make rules to protect it and rules get broken and rule breakers must be judged.
If our salvation is all the work of the Holy Trinity however and nothing of ourselves, then Christ has taken the very judgment of God on Himself, and as the risen One He is the Judge of all, and as Judge He has declared those who are His to be holy and right before Him, and there is nothing left to judge.
There is therefore nothing about our religion that provides us a reason to judge one another, so if we find ourselves doing that we must conclude that our religion is faulty and must be corrected.
I quoted Joy Davidman, now I quote her husband, C.S. Lewis:
“To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
Christ has fulfilled the Law and has left nothing unfulfilled; nothing left to judge for the believer.
The next type of judge we find in the church is what I have dubbed, ‘Law-bound’ believers. These are Christians who are immature and have not learned the meaning of grace. Their Christianity is a long list of rules and if they are not keeping the rules they go along under a weight of self-condemnation, and if they see you breaking the rules they condemn you. This makes for a lot of joyless church folks and unfortunately it is often the only ‘church’ that those outside the church witness.
Quoting Joy Davidman once more;
“In the end, a man will love a scolding church no better than a nagging wife, and may very well desert both.”
The next sort of judges of the church I would put on the list are ourselves. And by that I simply mean that sometimes we fit into one or more of the previous categories, and that is usually because we have neglected prayer and personal Bible study and the enemy has got his claws into our minds and hearts, and we need refreshing. We need the gentle reminder of the Holy Spirit that apart from Him we can do nothing, and we need to be re-humbled and refocused.
But the final type of judges we find in the church are the worst and behind all the others; they are demonic influences.
1 Timothy 4:1-2
“But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron,”
Paul goes on, there in 1 Timothy, talking about what these hypocritical liars are doing, and they are doing what these folks in Colossians are doing. They are deceiving believers with their judging and their insistence on certain rules and restrictions. Paul says these are deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons – or, demonic doctrines.
They don’t come from Christ, so ultimately they are demonic and lead away from Christ.
THE TRUE JUDGE IS OUR HEAD
Paul began verse 16 warning them of those who would judge them, now he begins verse 18 warning about those who would ‘defraud’ them of their prize.
The word used there is an athletic term that refers to an umpire disqualifying a contestant for some infraction.
Only a couple of Bible translations employ the word ‘disqualify’, but Paul is saying, “These people among you have no authority to disqualify you in terms of your relationship to God through Christ. Don’t listen to them!”
Here is a brief illustration of what they were up against. I know a young woman who was in Bible College. One day between classes she was in the school parking lot talking to a friend. He was not a boy friend, just a male friend. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car and she was outside the passenger side, with her head stuck in the open window in order to talk with him.
A student neither of them were acquainted with pulled up in his own car next to her friend’s and proceeded to lecture them about the appearance of evil and how they were not setting a proper example for younger students of the college.
What he was really saying was, “I believe you are doing something that is wrong, and I would never do that, therefore I am better than you”.
When the girl told me about this she said it made her feel small and dirty. She was confused because she was innocent but this tongue lashing made her wonder if she was simply ignorant and spiritually immature and missing something she should know.
This is what Paul was addressing to the Colossians. These defrauders were putting on a show of humility and self-debasement, making themselves sound ultra-spiritual with stories of having been in the presence of angels and having had visions and making the Colossian believers feel inadequate, stealing their joy and putting them in confusion about their relationship with Christ.
Think about this. If a young believer who is just going along trying to learn the Bible and what is pleasing to his or her Lord and working on developing spiritual disciplines such as prayer and occasional fasting and being open for opportunities to witness and so forth, is frequently being accosted by someone who has been longer in the church perhaps, or has come from another place and is giving the impression they have been a Christian for a long time, and they are openly displaying acts of piety and saying “The Lord showed me this or that”, or “I was awakened early in the morning by an angel in my room and he told me such and such”, if there is not someone wiser to intervene that young Christian may begin to wonder why they are not visited and why they do not get visions, and they will probably conclude that what they must do is copy this older Christian and perform the acts of piety he has set forth as necessary for the true believer.
Paul is telling them, Christ is the head of the body, not these turkeys! All those things you were doing all those things they are doing, they were shadows, the substance of which is in Christ. Why go back to them when you are now part of the body of Christ?
These guys, like the guy in the parking lot in my story a minute ago, are puffed up by their fleshly mind, and notice in the end of verse 18 that Paul adds, “without cause”. They are inflated without cause.
You’ve heard the sarcastic line; ‘he’s a legend in his own mind’. That’s it!
They have no reason to feel self-important because there’s nothing in them that justifies feeling that way about themselves. So don’t let them shake you. What did Jude say about these guys?
“These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.” 12-13
Isn’t that the kind of preaching we need in our churches these days? Might lose a few people when they realize the preacher is talking about them, huh? No big loss! No loss at all!
THE PERISHABLE VS THE ETERNAL
Here’s what this all comes down to, Christians. We get in trouble when we get our priorities out of order, and that happens when we listen to the wrong voices and Christ and the Cross are moved out of the center of our theology and our worship.
A very good example of this is the so-called religious television programming, where a team of so-called ministers on a flamboyantly decorated stage go on the air almost every day of the week and deceive the people with tales of their own spirituality and their own spiritual experiences which are false and have to be false because the Bible says they are false…
…and they wear their expensive jewelry and clothes and tell people that God wants to make them wealthy if they just give into the ministry so that God can give back by pouring out from His great abundance… and on and on and round and round it goes; but what they are doing is the same thing the false teachers of Colossae were doing. They are appealing to the flesh, they are drawing people to put their desire in that which is perishing, and turning them completely away from Christ.
And I have to tell you, true Christ-follower, that even in the legitimate church that is serving Christ and not men, the individual can be enticed off the right track when he succumbs to the temptation to feed the flesh, trust the flesh, cater to the flesh, because he will without fail begin adhering to the doctrines that appeal to the flesh; doctrines of demons, and he will be in for a hard fall.
It happens to individuals and it happens to churches, and in recent years it has happened to entire denominations that once began on the true course, but over time have drifted off into error and turned away from their Head.
Paul reminds his readers and us here that we have died with Christ, and that is really the bottom line, isn’t it?
This is not a doctrine isolated to this Colossian letter.
F.F. Bruce makes comparisons from New Testament teaching that make this principle clear.
“As death severs the bond which binds a slave to his master, so their death with Christ has severed the bond which bound them to sin.
As death severs the bond which binds a wife to her husband, so their death with Christ has severed the bond which bound them to the ordinances of the Jewish law. Here the argument which is presented to the Colossian Christians is that, as death severs the bond which binds a subject to his ruler, so their death with Christ has severed the bond which bound them to the service of the principalities and powers. Why should they then go on submitting to the rules imposed by these powers? All these rules and regulations belong to the sphere of the ‘flesh’ – the old life – and only in that sphere have they binding validity. Those who live ‘not after the flesh, but after the Spirit’ are under no obligation to obey them.” “Colossians” F.F. Bruce, 1957 Eerdman’s Pub
People ignorant about the Bible often say it is a book of ‘do’s and don’ts’, and I think probably until they begin to learn and understand even a lot of Christians think that of it also. But it is a book of freedom, Christ-follower.
You through fear of death were subject to the slavery of sin and of the enemy of your soul. You were slave to your flesh, you were enslaved to your desires, you were enslaved to all the rules and regulations that are required to keep your flesh under some semblance of submission.
You were even enslaved to the spiritual principalities and authorities that rule this world because you were powerless against them.
But you were set free from all of that. You were not freed by a new found awareness that empowered you to make better choices, you were not freed by philosophy that helped you understand and therefore avoid their influence.
You were freed by death. Christ’s death for you, and then your own death in Him. Your burial with Him was signified by your baptism and with Him you were raised to new life.
In that passing you were forever severed from the power and influence of the flesh and all that is passing away – what Paul calls the elementary principles of the world; the do’s and don’ts, the commandments and traditions that did not come down from God but came from fallen men to enslave you. You are cut free from all of that forever, and while all that is passing away you are everlasting.
Where are your priorities, believer in Christ? Isn’t it silly of us, sinful of us, to set as our priorities things from a previous existence that we died to?
We once knew Christ according to the flesh but we know Him thus no longer. He is glorified and in His glory which He had with the Father before the world began, and you have died with Him and now live in Him, and He is the Head over the body which is His church, and all your priorities now must be the things of an eternal value that are in accordance with the Christ-life you now live.
This is not empty talk, Christian. I’m not trying to be flowery here; not trying to pump you up with impressive words and some eloquent story.
These are the facts that we tend to forget so easily. Our heads are turned so easily. Our affections are drawn away so easily.
Face front. Turn a deaf ear to the world, the flesh and the devil. You died. You were buried. You rose. Your life is now hidden in Christ who disarmed the rulers and authorities, making public display of them as defeated foes and triumphed over them completely.
He is the One who said to His Apostles, “All authority has been given to Me in Heaven and on earth” and His is not a kingdom of do’s and don’ts, but of freedom and joy and victory and everlasting life, and my words to you today are words of absolute and eternal truth, not some myth, not some feel-good story to send you out all warm and fuzzy.
The shadows are fulfilled. Christ is the substance. Where are your priorities?
