The Gnostics of the first century were no different than those of similar beliefs throughout history; including today. The names get changed, but the belief system remains basically the same, because the same demons are being worshipped and the same falsehoods are being perpetrated by the same Devil.
You would be more familiar with some of the more modern terms. “New Age”. “Spirit Guides”...etc.
But the spirits behind the beliefs and practices of the New Age are much, much older than any human who serves them. New Age beliefs and practices are traceable back to Nimrod.
Now, I have not personally spent a great deal of time studying the beliefs of the New Age movement; I direct my efforts more in the opposite direction. So I don’t want to say too much more about them here and take a chance on saying things about them that are not true.
There are books written by notable Christian authors who expose these demonic beliefs and practices, and for anyone who is interested I would encourage you to go find those books and read them.
Let me just say what I need to say about the connection between the Gnostic/New Age beliefs and our verses of focus today.
This demonic belief system held a very strong sphere of influence in the Greek world then, and although it has always existed and flourished in certain areas of the world, it grows strong again in our culture, in these last days.
In light of that, isn’t it interesting that our modern culture parallels the Ancient Greek culture in so many ways. The strong emphasis on science and the arts, sexual permissiveness and tolerance of sin under the pretense of being ‘open minded’ and accepting of differences, the rampant, unhindered, state-blessed murder of babies...
These things and more, were present throughout the Greek world, and threatened to permeate the infant church; just as they are slowly seeping their poison into the church today.
It therefore falls to every thinking Christian, and true preachers of the faith, to expose these things as they crop up and combat them with the truth of Scripture.
One writer, in reference to the word ‘fullness’ in verse 19 of Colossians 1, said that the word was probably “...employed in a technical sense by the heretical teachers at Colossae to denote the totality of divine emanations or agencies, those supernatural powers under whose control men were supposed to live. “
He was talking about the Gnostic belief that spirits fill the space between God and the world, and any communication (either from man to God or from God to man) must pass through the ‘spheres in which they exercised rule’.
In short, don’t do anything to upset the rulers and authorities in the heavens, or your Christmas wish list won’t get through before December 25th.
So perhaps Paul’s use of the word in 1:19 served a double purpose; to say that Christ transcends the power and authority of those ‘divine emanations or agencies’, and the teaching that is more apparent to us...that He was fully God, while being fully Man.
So believers, listen carefully today. Because even though Paul’s primary focus here may not have been to combat the Gnostic heresies, the information he gives quite adequately serves that purpose, nonetheless. And whether you’ve been previously aware of it or not, our culture has come to such a place that the New Age movement is one of our greatest hurdles in the spreading of the gospel and the growth of the church.
More and more, I see it creep into television shows, the movies, women and girls (sometimes ignorantly) wearing New Age symbols in their jewelry, (such as crystals, Ying/Yang symbols, triangles, rainbows, etc), its in the school system in the form of meditation, ecology (earth day), political correctness in speech, exhortations to look deep within one’s self for the answers to life’s challenges, and the list is endless.
We in the church therefore, must be knowledgeable of these things, steeped in the scriptures, fortified by prayer, and ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us, without mixing New Age mysticism into our message.
We need to know exactly who Jesus is, exactly what He has done, exactly how that information applies to our lives and how it can apply to the seeker of truth.
These things are taught in the whole of the scriptures, of course, but the basics are taught in these two verses, Colossians 1:19,20, so we’ll spend the rest of our time there.
Who is Jesus?
According to verse 19, He is the fullness of Deity, dwelling in a man.
That word translated ‘dwell’ means to inhabit; to reside.
John 1:1-14 is a perfect apologetic outline for the teaching of this truth.
John begins by establishing who the Word of God is:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Then he refers to the Word of God as ‘He’. “He was in the beginning with God”,
and as his next step he declares that this Word of God who is a “He”, and actually is God, is also the Creator of all that is, and emphasizes his point by saying that nothing has come into being apart from this Person, the Word of God.
He goes on to describe this Word, this Person, as the One having life itself in Him, and talking about the fact that although He was light, men rejected the light and rejected Him.
But I want to skip to verse 14.
Having established that this One he is talking about is eternal, Creator, Origin of all life, and Himself God, he now says,
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us...”
John also was addressing the Gnostics of his day, only here we know it is deliberate. John is establishing for his Gnostic critics that Jesus was not just spirit; and He was not just one of the many spirits in the spiritual realm. He was very God, who was also very Man.
The Word became flesh.
And He dwelt, (or tabernacled) among us. He inhabited flesh and ‘tented’ among us.
Going back now to Colossians 1:19;
It was the Father’s ‘good pleasure’ for all the fullness to dwell in Him.
Now I am not a master of the languages, by any means. But my research of the words that finally make their way into the translation of “good pleasure”, seem to denote absolute approval. An opinion that some act or accomplishment requires a declaration of ‘well done’.
As I looked these words up I got a picture of the days of creation, when at the end of each one He “...saw that it was good”.
Who is Jesus? He is the fullness of deity in bodily form (Col. 2:9).
He could not have been less than God nor less than Man and still accomplished His atoning work.
It was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness of Deity to take up residence in bodily form, because it was the Father’s good pleasure “...to crush Him; putting Him to grief;....”
To the human mind, and left by itself, that phrase from Isaiah sounds terrible. It repulses us. The human nature screams out to reject the thought of a loving, merciful God, taking pleasure in the suffering and death of His own Son.
But this is taking us into the next point, and we must get a fuller picture by looking at Isaiah 53.
What did Jesus do?
Let’s read verses 10-12 of Isaiah 53
“But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief;
If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.
As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.”
It was not the pain of His Son that pleased the Father. It was not some twisted, divine power ‘thing’, that it pleased Him to have the authority to decree that His Son would suffer. The Father’s ‘pleasure’, or ‘absolute approval’ was in what would be accomplished by the obedience of His Son, in taking the form of a bondservant and submitting Himself to the ignoble death of the cross.
Peter tells us that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and be saved.
In the unbeliever it is a total ignorance of God; but in the believer it is sinful neglect of drawing near to Him, that keeps the human mind thinking of God the Father as some muscular, long-bearded white-haired, fiery-eyed Monarch on His throne, holding a judgment book in one hand and lightening bolts in the other, looking for someone to zap over the tiniest indiscretion.
We do Him the great disservice of suspecting that He, rather than Satan, ‘prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour”. At least, that is how we often treat Him and/or react to Him.
But look at the words of blessing and promise in Isaiah’s prophecy!
“...the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.”
“By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.”
“Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great,”
The Bible is so chock-full of praise from the Father for His Anointed One; His Messiah; that I hardly know where to begin!
More than that, His words of praise and approval are always in connection with what the shedding of His Son’s blood has accomplished (are you ready?) for us!
Hear just a few select phrases from Psalm 103:
“Who pardons all your iniquities;
Who heals all your diseases,
Who redeems your life from the pit;
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
He has not dealt with us according to our sins;
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
Go in your own time and read the entire Psalm in a spirit of worship and rejoicing.
We’ve been quoting the 53rd chapter of Isaiah; read that in full, and before you stop, go on to read the 54th and 55th chapters as well. What you will read there are promises for a redeemed Israel in the final day; but they are promises for the nations now, as a result of Christ’s atoning work, having made propitiation for the sins of all men on Calvary’s cross.
We serve a God, who in His infinite wisdom and His Omniscience can see from eternity’s perspective the suffering and death of His only Son, and take pleasure in it; call it ‘good’; because through the blood of that cross He has made peace with all who believe, and has brought all things in Heaven and on earth back into subjection to Him.
What is the application for us?
First of all, that there is “...one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony borne at the proper time.”
The Gnostics, and now the New Agers really do communicate with and submit to the authority of real spiritual entities. In their ignorance, they are worshiping demons, who disguise themselves, sometimes as deceased family, or historic figures, or little furry animals, or whatever the practitioner in his or her foolish fantasy wants the thing to be.
But these spirits cannot answer prayer. They cannot and do not honestly desire to meet the needs (whether physical or spiritual) of the seeker. They are demonic. They are utterly selfish and evil. They are dangerous. They are doomed.
And whether they like it or not, they have been ‘reconciled’, that is, subjected to the authority of the One whose shed blood has made peace between creation and creation’s God.
The peace that His shed blood has made, to the one who accepts means peace with God and eternal bliss in His blessed presence. But that same work, for the one who rejects, and indeed, for the doomed of the spirit world who have rejected Him from the beginning, means subjection to an irresistible power that in the end will abolish them altogether.
Listen.
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.
But each in his own order; Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.
For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.
The last enemy that will be abolished is death.”
I Corinthians 15:22-26
and
“When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.”
Colossians 2:15
and
“Therefore also God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Philippians 2:9-11
And we understand that ‘every knee’ and ‘every tongue’ will include the knees that heretofore had refused to bow, and the tongues that heretofore had cursed rather than confessed.
So there is no ‘divine emanation or agency’ that determines whether you will hear God, or whether He will hear you.
There is one God, and one mediator between men and God, the man Christ Jesus.
If you have confessed your sins and believed on the shed blood of Christ to make peace between you and God, then you stand before Him justified; declared right.
You are thereby invited...even commanded...to come into His presence with all your cares, all your petitions, all your praise and worship, and receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
You are indwelt by His Holy Spirit who helps you to pray, and who points you to Christ.
He is the fullness of Deity in bodily form, who now intercedes for you at the Father’s throne, and nothing can separate you from His love.
If you are one who has never recognized your need for a Savior; if you have never repented of your sin and confessed Christ as the One who has purchased you back to God by the shedding of His blood, then I want you to consider these words carefully:
“THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART - that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.
For the scripture says, WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”
(Romans 10:8-11)
It really is as simple as that, and it is all you need to know to be born again. I strongly encourage you to not let another day...no...not another moment go by, without bowing your heart to Him and submitting your tongue to Him, and appropriating to yourself the peace He has made with God for you through the shedding of His blood. You will one day confess that He is Lord. Why not willingly? Why not now?
Believer, I want to close with these words of encouragement and blessing for you:
“And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach - if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven...”
Colossians 1:21-23
His name be forever praised!
