Saved By Christ. Not By You.

Colossians 2:16-23

16 Therefore 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. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. 18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. 19 They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

20 Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. 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.

I visited a different church a couple of weeks ago. For communion they served cranberry juice and gluten free bread. Heretics! Cast them out! They are not real Christians! Let’s not associate ourselves with these blasphemers!

Am I being fair?

In Israel, they have Sabbath Elevators. These elevators are programmed to work differently on the Sabbath days. They will automatically go to every single floor and open the doors to let people on and off. This is so nobody has to push a button and so avoids doing any work on the Sabbath day, in honour of the 3rd of the 10 Commandments.

As you can imagine the queues for lifts on Sabbath days can get pretty long, so many Jews will jump aboard a normal elevator and ask a Gentile to push a button for them.

And this is an example of how following the law to the letter might be a bit silly, when you should really be following the spirit of the law.

Verse 16 says “Do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink”.

The letter to the Colossians was written in about 56 or 57AD while Paul was imprisoned in Rome.

So this was roughly a decade after the Jerusalem council in 48/49AD where it had been decided that all old food laws didn’t apply except food sacrificed to idols, from blood, and from the meat of strangled animals.

That was in turn about 15 years after Peter had eaten with Cornelius and had the vision where God told him that he made all food clean in Acts 10.

And that event was only a couple of years after Jesus himself had said that it is not what goes into the body that makes someone unclean, but what comes out. Which would have been close to the time that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, and in doing so annoyed some Pharisees.

But this is what this passage in Colossians is reminding us. We, as well as the ancient Jews, are well aware of the 600 and something laws in the Old Testament. Well, we may not know what they all are, but we know that they are there.

What those Pharisees failed to see was that a lot of the practices given to them were symbolic. Things like not wearing clothes made from two kinds of fabric, and so on, may seem quite petty in the grand scheme of things. Why would almighty God, in all his wisdom, who cares about goodness and perfection, be bothered by mixing fabrics? Why would he say it’s ok to eat lamb, but not ok to eat pork?

Like Paul says: “These are a shadow of the things to come”. Of course there are plenty of laws that guide morality and ethics and really are about what we as followers of Christ are supposed to do, but the type of things that Paul is referring to here are laws which point to Jesus. The sacrifices made on the altars were pictures of Jesus before he became the one true sacrifice that actually made a difference. The Passover is a picture of Jesus saving those who put their trust in him, and his judgement on those who are against him.

Some of the laws given to the Hebrews were laid out specifically for those people at that time. God set the Israelite nation apart to be his people. Some came to believe that this meant they had been chosen to be special. They had privilege. They were better than the non-Jews. But God’s intention was not to play favourites.