The setting is the front of a small church. The pastor says from the pulpit, ‘I’ve misplaced my sermon notes, so I’m just going to read from this devotional—if I can find it here. While I look, maybe the choir can lead us in a hymn’. He glances at the choir which has one person.
The choir director says, ‘We thought the service started at noon, so only Mrs. Marsden is here right now’. A parishioner leans over and whispers to a pew mate, ‘I love this church. I’ve never been much into organized religion’.
We live in a highly, unorganised religious society. The modern quest to replace ‘reason’ with ‘religion’ has failed. This side of modernity, new religion isn’t called ‘religion’, its called ‘spirituality’. The social researcher, Hugh MacKay, makes an distinction between these two terms. While ‘spirituality’ is the personal quest for a higher and more self-fulfilling existence, ‘religion’ is the old ‘institutional’ and ‘mainstream’ religion with its too frequent quest to exercise power and its immoral desire to control others. As Lord Acton said in 1887, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Napoleon once said that ‘religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich’.
The new word is ‘spirituality’ which is the personal, postmodern quest for meaning in a vacuous world. And what sort of spirituality? Well, life is about having choices, whether it be at the supermarket, the next partner, the next job, or the next system of beliefs. And when an Australian becomes tired of one belief, he simply moves onto the next because we must be constantly morphing ourselves in order to stay relevant in a changing world. Be Buddhist, be New Age, be scientific, be a strange mix of everything when it suits. There’s no shortage of beliefs and different types of spirituality in the market place of ideas.
But the one thing which cannot be done is speak in absolutes. We are all at sea and no-one can say they have the right to be the captain of the ship. Our world is suspicious of all life-guiding stories that claim to have ultimate authority over us—including the biblical story from creation to new creation. There are only opinions and points of view in a shifting and shifty world.
As Christians, we live in this market place of ideas. The Colossian Christians also lived in a world full of new ideas and seductive spirituality. And so we have very much in common. For in a cosmopolitan and complex world we are tempted to consider spirituality beyond Christ.
The quest for a re-invigorated spirituality usually arises from an ongoing dissatisfaction with life and with relationships at church. When the pastor does something stupid. When life becomes dry and dull. When things at church become difficult or when someone close to you dies. It might happen if a relationship fails or if you lose your job. When low points come and God seems and far away, we are vulnerable as we struggle to get our life back together again.
The sect pressuring the Colossian Church was promising a full and more satisfying Christian life. So Paul’s warning in verse 8 is timely, ‘See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ’. But aren’t we confident in our faith? We know Christ and we know who we are in Christ and we appreciate the majestic splendour of the gospel. So do we need such a warning?
At some time or another we will all get caught short. We need correction as well as encouragement. We need carrots as well as sticks. We need fences as well as fields. So Paul reminds us what pasture we should be grazing in and it is where the grass is greenest, for it is where Christ is Lord. In verses 16 to 23, Paul holds up the new spirituality and he systematically dismantles it. ‘Freedom’, the apostle says. ‘This new teaching offers no freedom. It’s an allusion, it’s a shadow’, Paul says in verses 16 and 17.
‘Fullness’, the apostle says. ‘This new teaching offers no fullness, no completeness. Its hot air, it’s unspiritual and its proud’, Paul says in verses 18 and 19. ‘It attacks the fullness we have in Christ and it attacks the freedom we have in Christ’. Fullness and freedom arise from the victory at the cross. From the triumph of the resurrection. ‘When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ’ (Col 2:13). At the cross, powers and authorities were rendered impotent and Christ was raised to sit at the right-hand of the Father and rule the world.
‘Therefore’—verse 16—‘do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day’. The false teachers take us back into the Old Testament with its with food laws and religious festivals and celebrations. It’s sounds good. It’s familiar ground. These teachers are speaking our language! They know how much festivals and celebrations and the observance of the Sabbath day mean. This is good, Old Testament material. Now the false teachers were taking this material and pressing it very hard.
There is a part of human nature which delights in religious duties. Somehow, adhering to religious routines inflates the ego and makes a person content in their own self-righteousness. The false thinkers in Colossae were taking Christians—and especially the Jewish Christians—back into the Old Testament and enslaving them with the very system designed to show them the way to freedom. It’s called ‘legalism’. It comes when you divorce the rules from the loving ruler. This sect was saying that Christ is insufficient—he offers a limited freedom but you must do something to earn your freedom—something that Christ has not done.
These legalistic regulations had to do with food and with eating and drinking—or not eating and drinking. In the Old Testament system, foods were either ‘clean’ or ‘unclean’. But in Mark 7, Jesus comes along and says that this distinction is no longer important. Is it not true that food ends up in the sewer? A very undignified end! Paul says in 1 Cor 8:8, ‘But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do’. The apostle clarifies the principle in Rom 8:1, ‘Therefore there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death’ (Rom 8:1–2).
The law has its place: it reveals sin and warns us of the consequences of sin. But it has no power to prevent sin or redeem the sinner. Only grace can do that. In my worst moments I am convinced there are Christians who rarely attend church but make sure they always attend the Lord’s Supper. For, they believe, there is something about the Lord’s Supper that pleases God beyond the work of Christ. More needs to be done for this is the path to true spirituality. Here is the ‘law of communion’: it must be once a month forever more, white table clothes, and elders choreographed like a dancers in a school play’.
And in our down times, when Christ seems inadequate, we can do the most bizarre of things. A young man asked, ‘I am in earnest about forsaking the world and following Christ. But I am puzzled about worldly things. What must I forsake’? Came the reply, ‘Coloured clothes for one thing. Get rid of everything in your wardrobe that is not white. Stop sleeping on a soft pillow. Sell your musical instruments and don’t eat any more white bread. You cannot, if you are sincere about obeying Christ, take warm baths or shave your beard. To shave is to lie against him who created us, it is an attempt to improve on his work’.
The 19th century Scottish theologian John Brown says, ‘Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervours, or uncommanded austerities; it consists in thinking as God thinks, and willing as God wills’. This is freedom: thinking as God thinks and willing as God wills. So Paul says to us in verse 16, ‘Because freedom is found in Christ, do not let anyone judge you’. Once we add to Christ we take away what Christ has given us. Everything you need for salvation and freedom from a sinful world, and freedom to be holy, in fact every freedom is found in Christ. Therefore do not let anyone sit in judgment of you’.
One of the features of cults is that they are convincing and seductive. They appeal to our desire to rule ourselves and save ourselves. They are as old as the crafty serpent himself, ‘Did God really say’? The Father of Lies grabs our moments of weakness and offers us shadows instead of reality. The Old Testament laws were fleeting and transitory, they were shadowS reflected from a greater substance. These laws, verse 17, were ‘a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’.
See how Paul sums up the regulations and festivals in the Old Testament, ‘these are shadows of the things that were to come’. They were symbols, they represented something that was real but were not themselves the reality. They pointed people to the reality of Christ.
When an ambassador goes to another country he is not the king, he represents the king. And so he is dealt with as though he were the king because he has all the authority and power of the king. But when the real king comes, you leave the ambassador and you speak with the king. To ignore the king and stay with the ambassador means that you’ve misunderstood both the ambassador and the king. You’ve insulted both of them.
The food laws and holy days in the Old Testament are like an ambassador who points to the king. And Paul is saying ‘the king has come. It is Jesus’. Leave the shadows and engage the reality’. And so to stick with food laws and holy days when the king is here shows that you haven’t understood what’s happening. Why go back into the shadows when we have the reality of Jesus Christ?
Warren Wiersbe says, ‘People who religiously observe diets and days give an outward semblance of spirituality, but these practices can change their hearts’. I saw this in Hay every Good Friday when fish sales went through the roof but few were interested in coming to church and hearing the Easter Message. Anyway, Wiersbe goes onto say, ‘Legalism is a popular thing because you can “measure” you Christian life—and even brag about it! But this is a far cry from measuring up to Christ’ (Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary. Vol 2, p. 129).
Paul’s second warning comes to us in verse 18 and it relates to religious experience, ‘Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions’.
The false teachers, it seems, were having religious experiences that the Colossians weren’t having. They were having visions the Colossians weren’t having. They looked so complete and so satisfied and smug with their spirituality. It’s not very encouraging when your Christian life is in the pits and you look around and everyone else’s seems near perfect. Especially when the church up the road looks so alive and ‘on fire for the Lord’. And in the Colossian situation these people come to your church and tell you about their wonderful visions and how they worship of angels. ‘Man, how spiritual is that! Worshipping angels’! And don’t you ask yourself, ‘where have I gone wrong? Why am I running on empty?’
I don’t know if you’ve ever been judged by another Christian simply because you haven’t experienced the same things they have. Maybe you’ve been judged because you don’t speak in tongues or have special visions or amazing healings. There is nothing wrong with these things in themselves. But as soon as someone who does have these experiences seeks to disqualify you from the Christian life …. well, that’s exactly what the false teachers were doing to the Colossians and Paul says, ‘that’s when you’ve got a really big problem’. ‘Don’t let this happen’, says Paul, ‘don’t let their false humility and unspiritual minds disqualify you for salvation’.
The ‘ordinary’ Christian life is an ‘extraordinary’ life. Again Warren Wiersbe says:
Sad to say, there are many Christians who actually believe that some person, religious system, or discipline can add something to their spiritual experience. But they already have everything they ever will need in the person and work of Jesus Christ (Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary. Vol 2, p. 105).
Things aren’t what they seem. People who boast about their religious experiences may look and sound impressive. But when they seek to disqualify us from our heavenly prize then they are not what they seem. Those who peddle religious experiences outside Christ are described in verse 19 as having ‘has lost connection with the Head, from which the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow’. Here’s some very harsh words from Paul! These people have actually lost connection with the Head and do not belong to the body of Christ and so are particularly unspiritual and are to be avoided.
Therefore the challenge in verse 20 is sobering, ‘Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belong to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings’.
Paul is inviting us to ask ourselves whether or not we have really died with Christ. Is that the cold, hard reality of your life? Have you died with Christ and are you risen with him into a life of freedom and fullness? Douglas Moo says, ‘Believers no longer count the world as their true home or as the place that dictates who they are or how they are to live. By dying with Christ, we have been set free from the elements of this world […] How foolish, then, to continue to submit to the [religious] rules of this world’ (Moo, Colossians and Philemon, 234).
The folly of legalism. Rules like, ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch’, verse 21. As if these rules offer life? Are we so foolish to as think that this is the way to freedom and fullness? The apostle nails it in verse 23, ‘Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence’.
Are you struggling with sin at the moment? Only Jesus death and resurrection will help you and your participation in these events by faith in him. This is the only way to deal with your sinful nature, take it to the throne of grace, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness’ (1 Jn 1:9). Dick Lucas says, ‘The Christian is set free from ‘religion’ as this world understands it, to have ‘the new nature’ whose life is described in chapter 3 (of Colossians). To seek a more “religious” life is not according to the spiritual wisdom of the apostle’.
Take a good look again at what you have in Christ and be very thankful. I had a lady in a shop recently ask me during the last big lotto draw, ‘Do you buy a Lotto ticket’? She was surprised when I said, ‘I wasn’t really interested. Look what all that money did to Michael Jackson’. I am thankful for what I have in Christ.
Short conclusion. Someone has said, ‘Some people have just enough religion to make themselves miserable’ (Harry Emerson Fosdick). The promise of freedom through harsh rules leads to misery and decay. The promise of fullness through experiences beyond Christ leads to mysticism and pride.
Now there will be struggles in our Christian lives that don’t easily fall into any category we’ve spoken about today. What does Colossians say to us then? We need to go back to verse 6 and remember the big picture, ‘So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him’. False teachers will always come and go—there’s nothing new under the sun. But the salvation we have in Christ never changes.
