INTRODUCTION
Please turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2. We’ll read verses 16-23 this morning as we continue in the letter to the Colossians.
READ COLOSSIANS 2:16-23 / PRAY
At the beginning of this chapter, Paul said that he had a great struggle for the Colossian believers (and for us). His struggle, his intense labor on their behalf and ours was that we may reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:2-3).
In other words, he would have us know that everything we need for fullness of life is in the person of Jesus Christ. Because the whole fullness of God is in Christ (vs. 9), and we are joined to Christ, therefore we need look nowhere else outside of Christ for deep satisfaction in an intimate relationship with God. In Christ we have God’s forgiveness & acceptance, God’s favor, & God’s provision for our needs & for our eternal happiness.
But it requires struggle to reach and maintain this assurance because these are realities that we can’t see, and assurance requires our ongoing meditation on and pursuit of Christ. Without doing that, it’s easy to put our hope for God’s acceptance and our hope for fullness of life in something we can see, or something we can do. Sincere believers who are struggling with doubt and discouragement can be attracted to a message that says, “I’ve found the secret. I know how you can really get into God’s highest favor. I know how you can get into the inner circle with God.”
That’s an attractive message. But when that ‘secret’ puts our hope in what we can do, rather than in Christ, it’s a deadly lie and a denial of the gospel.
Paul is addressing a message like that in this text. There was a person trying to sway the Colossian believers about how to relate to God and find fullness of life, but it was not according to Christ. His teaching can be described with one word: legalism.
Legalism is the belief that God’s favor can be earned by what we do. It’s the belief that God’s approval and acceptance depend on one’s own power to do what’s pleasing to him. And when a fallen sinner like me thinks that way, it usually bears a particular fruit. That is the creation of regulations for ourselves and for others that go beyond the teaching of Scripture and come from our own minds. Paul deals with legalism and its fruit in this passage.
And through his teaching, we are going to be helped to identify legalism and its fruit. And by God’s grace this will help us to retain our freedom in Christ, and our freedom to follow Christ to the glory of God.
We’re going to go about this in 4 parts. First, we’ll describe the teaching that was disturbing the Colossian church and show that it is legalism at its root. Then we’ll make 3 observations about legalism, and make application along the way. Let’s start with…
THE FALSE TEACHING
There are three main parts to the message that someone was trying to persuade the Colossian believers to accept.
The first and major part of it is what is described as asceticism. Verse 18 says they insist on asceticism. Asceticism is the belief that self-denial is inherently more spiritual than enjoying the things of the world. It’s a belief that abstinence is inherently better than participation, that if moderation is good, then abstinence is even better. And in the text the primary examples regard the use of food and drink.
That’s what’s behind the regulations of verse 21. The teachers were saying, “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.” In other words “Don’t handle this item here! Don’t taste that food or drink there! In fact, don’t even touch these things. Don’t even go near them.” It’s all about complete abstinence of certain kinds of food and drink or other created things as harmful to your spirituality.
The Greek word translated asceticism is actually the word for humility or to embrace lowliness. That would be a good thing in most circumstances. But since Paul speaks of it negatively here, we are to understand it to be a false humility, a show of pious devotion to God in self-denial and self-sacrifice that is thought to make you more spiritual than other people who don’t do the same.
This is the first part of the message of the false teachers—asceticism, seeking superior spirituality through strict self-denial. The second part is this, the observance of Old Testament holy days. In verse 16 it says the teachers pass judgment on you …with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. This is a reference to yearly, monthly and weekly holy days on Israel’s calendar—things like the Passover, or the Feast of Booths. You see almost the same wording in 2 Chronicles 23:31, which says that the sons of Levi were to offer burnt offerings …to the LORD on Sabbaths, new moons, and feast days, according to the number required of them, regularly before the LORD.
So what the false teachers are saying is that to be truly spiritual, you must observe these holy days and all the regulations attending them; it isn’t optional. This defines true spirituality. This is required if you would be in God’s favor and reach a higher level of spiritual fulfillment.
Here’s the third component of their message: an overemphasis on angels and spiritual experiences. In verse 18 we read “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on … worship of angels, going on in detail about visions…” It’s not clear exactly what this looked like, but it seems to have come from the pagan culture of the times. There was a belief among the mystery religions of the time that you could call on angels to protect you from evil spirits, & that special insight into God’s mind could be had through mystical visions.
Whatever the case, this too was seen as a mark of superior spirituality. If you were in touch with the unseen spirit world, then you had insight into things that most others never find out. You were moving into God’s inner circle of privilege, getting in on the good stuff as it were. So the false teaching at Colossae was a mixed bag: a little bit of asceticism, a little bit of Judaism and a little bit of mysticism. This formed the religious worldview of that false teacher.
It’s not unlike how many people form their opinions today about God and how we should live. A person takes a little bit of the Sunday preaching, a little bit of Oprah, and a little bit of a book from the religion section of Barnes & Noble, mixes it all together and this shapes their hodgepodge religious worldview. But an accurate view of God and how we relate to him comes from what the Scriptures teach.
Now I said before that this teaching is legalism. Why do I say that? It’s because legalism is seeking God’s acceptance and favor through what we do rather than through Christ. A legalistic person believes that because they have done or not done this, that or the other thing, their actions have merited God’s favor. The actions are so inherently noble and good and superior that God would be unjust not to reward them. They actually qualify a person to receive from God the fullness that he has to offer.
And the false teaching at Colossae was legalism because that’s what it said. “Do you want to be in God’s inner circle? Do you want to be God’s favored disciple? Do you want to have fullness of life? Here’s how you do it: follow a strict diet that abstains from eating or drinking anything really tasty and enjoyable; observe all the Old Testament holy days; call on the angels for protection and pursue mystical encounters with the spiritual world.”
But what’s missing from that equation? Christ is missing. This is a path around Christ, a path without Christ. It says that everything we need for life and godliness can be had through our own efforts. And that’s legalism. And it denies the truth of the gospel.
Paul tells us the true gospel path to the fullness of God. Back in verse 9 he said “in him [that is, in Christ] all the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him.” In other words, by faith in Christ, you have become united to Christ in an invisible but real way that connects you to all the fullness of God.
We learned in verses13-15 that this fullness includes the forgiveness of sin and a right relationship with God. Through Christ we’ve had our sin debt paid in full, and the payment of that debt disarmed the devil and his angels as rulers over us because it took away their right to condemn us as sinners. Through Christ we are in God’s inner circle of friends, we’re already in on the good stuff; we’re connected to the source of life. We lack nothing that is necessary for life and godliness in Christ.
Does any of this come by way of self-denial, or by religious observance, or by mystical encounters? Not at all. Any non-believer can do those things. The world has many self-denying, religious, and ‘spiritual’ people in it, who are outside the kingdom of God. There is no inherent power in any of that to bring us into God’s favor and acceptance. The power and the fullness of life is in Christ, and him crucified for us.
The biblical answer to legalism is to do what the Colossian legalist did not do. Verse 19 says of that person that he was not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body is nourished and knit together. The head is Christ. And we are to hold fast to him and be nourished by him. That means we seek to know Christ, to fellowship with Christ, to learn from him and find rest in him. And out of that discipline emerges a life that seeks to honor him in all things—a life of obedience to Christ.
But we don’t do that to get into God’s inner circle. We do it because we know we’re now in his inner circle; his beloved friends and children adopted through faith in Christ.
Now, we’ve considered the Colossian legalism and the opposite gospel truth. But if we left it there I think we would not necessarily see how this connects to our lives. Probably no one has approached you recently, saying that if you want to be spiritual you need to cut cookies out of your life, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths and join them in an angelic worship ceremony (well, you may have been told to lay off the cookies, but probably not as a sign of spirituality!) And you’ve probably not approached anyone else to do those things either.
But I think we can relate to this legalism more than it appears at first glance. Whenever a person bases their acceptance before God on doing or not doing certain things it bears a predictable fruit. The fruit of legalism is the creation of regulations for ourselves and for others that go beyond the teaching of Scripture in an attempt to make sure we are right with God.
For the Colossian legalist, that looked like self-denial and abstinence as inherently virtuous, it looked like the keeping of Old Testament holy days unchanged since the advent of Christ, and it looked like a preoccupation with angels and visions. For us it may look different, but essentially be the same thing. We can erect standards of conduct outside the teaching of Scripture, and make compliance with those standards mandatory for not only ourselves, but also for others if they would be approved by God, and also by us.
With the remainder of our time, we’ll make three observations about legalism and its fruit of creating standards for conduct beyond the teaching of Scripture. Our goal is to identify this in ourselves and turn away from it with fresh motivation to hold fast to the Head, Jesus Christ. These observations all come from the passage. Here’s the first one.
1. Legalism leads to sinful judgment of others.
In verses 16 and 19 Paul reveals the attitude of the legalist toward others who aren’t doing what he was doing. Paul says, “Let no one pass judgment on you…let no one disqualify you.” To pass judgment means to take to task, to unfavorably rate a person and charge them with wrongdoing. To disqualify you means to declare you disqualified like a cyclist being thrown out of the Tour de France for suspicion of steroid use.
That’s what the Colossian teacher was doing. He was taking to task the Colossian believers for not practicing the self-denial and religious practices he was, though they were not required in the Scriptures. He declared them to be second-class followers of God and therefore unworthy of the fullness and favor of God. And that is a sinful judgment because acceptance comes through Christ and not by performance, and also because the standards themselves were man-made and not from God.
And this is a temptation common to man, certainly a temptation I experience. We may each have our own self-made standards that go beyond what Scripture says and by which we may judge others as second-class Christians because they don’t do the same things we do.
I’ll give some examples. And just a comment before I do that. I’m going to mention practices that there is a range of opinion about, both in the Christian church at large and probably within our church. My goal is not to get you to change your practice if you are following your convictions and are growing to be more like Jesus by your practice. My goal is rather to encourage charity toward those who don’t share your practice on areas where the Bible does not command your practice as a rule for all believers.
I’ll start with the question of drinking alcoholic beverages. Is that OK for a Christian to do or not? Well I can think of situations where he should not drink. He may be the kind of person who can’t drink at all without drinking too much, so he shouldn’t do it. Or he may be with people who are inclined to drunkenness so he doesn’t want to put a temptation before them by drinking. Or he may choose not to because his conscience bothers him and he can’t do it without feeling like he’s doing something wrong. In those cases, then the Lord bless him in abstaining.
But does the Bible say everyone should abstain from drinking wine or a beer or a margarita? No, it doesn’t say that. It says you shouldn’t get drunk, for that is debauchery (Ephesians 5:18), but it does not command abstinence. In fact, there is biblical evidence that it can be enjoyed without sin. I’ll just give two examples.
In Deuteronomy 14, we read God’s commands to the person who was to bring his tithe of grain to the temple year by year. He might be a long ways away from where the temple is, and the sacks are pretty heavy, so God made this provision, beginning in verse 24: … if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe … then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the LORD your God chooses and spend the money for whatever you desire--oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household.
Wine and strong drink were acceptable in that setting without shame before the Lord. That’s one example. The other example is the Lord himself at the wedding at Cana in John chapter 2. The wine ran out at the wedding and Jesus’ mother told the servants to ask Jesus what to do. He had them fill the water jars with water, and then he turned it into wine, in fact better wine than the kind they ran out of. If Jesus was for abstinence then he certainly didn’t show it.
I don’t give those examples to encourage anyone to drink who doesn’t feel the freedom to do that, but simply to prevent passing judgment on someone for practicing something the Scriptures don’t condemn. It’s to expose legalistic thinking.
Let me move to another example that I know many of us can relate to. Homeschooling. We homeschool our kids and I have no problem commending it to others. But is that commanded in the Scriptures? Well, if by homeschooling you mean bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord in your home, then yes, it is commanded in Ephesians 6:4. If by homeschooling you mean teaching God’s words diligently to your children, and talking about them when you sit in your house, then yes, that’s commanded in Deuteronomy 6:7.
But if by homeschooling you mean that your kids have to learn math from mom or dad, or piano, or how to read or how to build a birdhouse, then no, that’s not commanded in the Scriptures. If they can learn those things someplace else like private or public school and you are still bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of Lord as they’re doing that, then you aren’t violating any Scripture. You’re not a second-class Christian who’s out of God’s favor because you’re doing that.
Here’s another example of something we probably have opinions on. What about body piercing? Is that OK? I saw an interesting Christian T-shirt that had a portrait of the cross on it, and above the cross it said “Body piercing saved my life.” I appreciate the dependence on the gospel that’s represented in that statement, though I don’t think that’s a defense for the practice of body-piercing.
But if a young woman has a stud through her eyebrow, does she need to get rid of it if she joins the church? Well, maybe she should depending on why it’s there. If it’s there because of a sinful motive wanting to rebel against the cultural norm, or as a sign of insecurity and needing attention, then it should probably come out. Or if it does harm to her body it should probably come out.
But if it was put there because that’s just a cultural way of adorning oneself, then it’s in the same category as wearing an earring. Women wore earrings and even nose rings in Old Testament days. In Ezekiel 16:12 God was describing how he loved his people Israel and claimed them as his bride. He said, “I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head.” That was considered beautiful adornment in that culture. It’s a cultural thing. Where you pierce yourself isn’t mandated in Scripture, though we always have to check our motives for why we would do that or anything else we do.
And we could go onto other examples of unwritten standards that we might have which go beyond what Scripture says—whether we should eat homemade bread or store bought bread, watch movies or not watch movies, and things like that.
The point is that when we create requirements for behavior that are outside of Scripture and use them as tests for who is approved by God and who isn’t, we’ve fallen into legalism. We’ve bought into the lie that our acceptance by God is conditioned on our performance, and specifically on performance that is man’s standard and not God’s.
C.S. Lewis wrote about this in Mere Christianity. He said, “One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”
There is of course a potential for abuse in areas where we have liberty. There is no question that we must evaluate our practices in light of Scripture, including at the level of our motives for doing it. But here in Colossians, though Paul is aware that these abuses can occur, his primary concern is not the potential for abuse. His primary concern is the legalism, the performance based thinking that is behind the man-made regulations. And that brings me to the second observation about legalism, which is this…
2. Legalism looks like wisdom.
Paul, in commenting on the regulations of “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”, has this to say about them in verse 23. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body.
These man-made requirements, these extra-biblical standards of spirituality, have an appearance of wisdom. The self-made restrictions for conduct that don’t come from the Bible look wise, they look spiritual. They look like an attempt to take holiness one step farther, to really be radical, and to be zealous in one’s commitment to pursuing God. And these regulations for conduct result in people who appear moral, who don’t step out of line, who seem to be obedient to God, and who condemn sin as they see it. And that’s what makes legalism so deadly, and why it can grow in our hearts and in our
churches. Legalism and its fruit of additional standards of conduct beyond the teaching of Scripture have the appearance of wisdom.
For an example of this, we don’t need to look any further than the scribes and Pharisees. They were the experts in the law who sought to put the law into practice as closely and carefully as possible.
So if the Lord said “you shall not do any work on the Sabbath” they set out to carefully define all the things that could qualify as work on the Sabbath. This resulted in about 600 extra commandments about what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath. That seemed like wisdom. “Let’s put fences around the commands so that we don’t even get close to breaking them. Let’s make sure that we are in God’s favor by making it more clear what is and isn’t acceptable.” So these 600 plus extra commands became tradition, and eventually they took on the same authority as the Scriptures themselves.
The Pharisees set out to practice every one of those 600 commands. They seemed very moral, very wise, very committed in their pursuit of God. And yet it was these very same ‘moral’ and committed religious people who brought Jesus before Pilate and said, “Crucify him.” They rejected Christ and established their own righteousness. That’s what legalism is. And that’s why Paul does not want the Colossians or us to submit to it. It’s a rejection of the gospel, and that’s not wisdom.
Whenever we add to the teaching of Scripture, and create rules for conduct that the Bible does not command, even out of an attempt to be obedient to God, we do as the Pharisees did. We put our trust in our own strength to be in God’s favor. And we reject the gospel that says forgiveness and acceptance with God come through faith in Christ and not by works.
Now, at this point, someone might be wondering if Paul or I am saying we should be OK with whatever people want to do; that we shouldn’t pass judgment on any behavior, that because we’re approved by God through faith in Jesus, it doesn’t really matter what we do.
But it does matter what we do. God has given us standards for conduct. There is a way to live that is pleasing to him. But legalism doesn’t produce it. And that brings us to the last observation about legalism, which is that…
3. Legalism does not produce godliness.
Let me reread verse 23 in its entirety to find out more about Paul’s assessment of legalistic regulations.
These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
Legalism is of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Paul is not pro-indulgence of the flesh. He is not unconcerned about how people live. On the contrary, he is very much concerned that we don’t indulge our flesh, that we don’t give into sinful practices and be careless and carefree about what we do with our lives.
One of his reasons for not depending on self-made religion and self-denial & moralistic extrabiblical requirements is because it doesn’t stop the indulgence of the flesh. It doesn’t produce godliness and holiness.
The Pharisees were champions at creating more rules to keep; professionals in self-made religion, and yet Jesus said of them in Matthew 23:27 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.”
We might think that the way to ensure godliness is to spell out and force compliance with lots of rules so that a person has no opportunity to do anything bad. That sounds like wisdom. There is a place for boundaries. God give us boundaries—his commands. But we go astray when we feel like we have to add additional fences to Scripture to guide and protect us. When we do that we say that we don’t trust the sufficiency of God’s word, that we don’t trust the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
And ultimately we’re saying that the power for holiness is in our own will and our own rules, rather than in God who is working in us to conform us to the image of Christ.
CONCLUSION
So legalism leads to sinful judgment, it looks like wisdom but it isn’t, and it doesn’t lead to godliness. Those are all reasons to avoid it.
So what’s the alternative to legalism? What doesn’t lead to sinful judgment of others? What is real wisdom? What does have the power to stop the indulgence of the flesh and bring about godliness in us?
Well, that’s the subject of the next message from chapter 3. But we can sum it up in something we referred to earlier, what Paul said in verse 19 – we hold fast to the Head, who is Christ. We seek to know Christ, to fellowship with Christ, and to believe all that his cross says about our sinfulness and about our acceptance before God.
It is to cling to Christ, to love Christ and to say to him you are my acceptance before God, you are my holiness and sanctification; you are my fullness of life.
And when we have that assurance, we won’t pass judgment on someone else for doing something Christ does not condemn. And we won’t have a mere shell of morality that hides an unclean heart. And we’ll gladly resist the sins of the flesh that required our Savior to be crushed on the cross for us.
It’s holding fast to the person and work of Christ that will stop the indulgence of the flesh, just as it’s the person and work of Christ that grants our acceptance with God.
Octavius Winslow said it this way. “One moment’s believing, close contact with the cross will do more to break the heart for sin, deepen the conviction of its exceeding sinfulness, and disenthrall the soul from all its bondage and its fears, bringing it into a sense of pardon and acceptance and assured hope, than a lifetime of the most rigid legal duties that ever riveted their iron chain upon the soul.”
By God’s grace, may we continue to have close contact with the cross to defeat legalism and fuel our joyful obedience to God.
PRAY
