Colossians 2

Colossians 2:8-3

V HUMAN VERSUS THE GOSPEL OF CHRISTColossians 2:8-3:17. This chapter continues the exposition of Colossians. While on broad general lines, the main teaching part of the letter has already been considered, we need to examine somewhat in detail certain words and phrases in the long paragraph commencing Colossians 2:8 and ending Colossians 3:17. In Colossians 2:8 “spoil” has the sense of captives – “make you a spoil,” and in the same verse, on the word “philosophy,” note –

1. The derivation of the word – literally “a love of wisdom,” i.e., human wisdom, or reasonings, in accounting for things, as opposed to divine revelation in accounting for things.

2. The province of philosophy. Certain matters come legitimately within the realm of human philosophy upon which its reasonings and even its working suppositions may be heard tentatively, its conclusions, or hypotheses, continually subject to modification as investigation affords new light.

But certain other matters are entirely outside its realm, e.g., whatever is supernatural cannot be settled by natural reasonings.

Whatever touches ultimate origin and destiny lies entirely outside the realm of human science, and hence when human philosophy attempts to settle matters beyond the reach of human science it becomes mere speculation. Its dogmatic claims are, as the apostle here puts it, “vain deceit.” All its voluminous, varied, and contradictory literature upon these subjects from the beginning of time till this hour is as valueless as the “airy nothings” of a dream. If every book of it were burned today in one huge bonfire, as were the magical books of the Ephesians, the world would be better off.

The only light in it all is the light of its burning. See 1 Corinthians Colossians 1:18; Colossians 2:16.

Do not understand me to deny all legitimate scope to human philosophy. Within bounds it has a great place, but even in that place its value may be greatly overestimated. I am quite sure that more than half of the matter in the textbooks on philosophy in all our schools, colleges, and universities is the most worthless rubbish, and some of it rank poison.

I am not talking of science. A man who denies the value of science – real science – rails at God’s appointed method by which man is commanded to subdue the earth and lay under tribute all nature’s potentialities. The predicate for all schools of human learning is God’s dower of authority to man over land and sea and sky, and his commission to subdue the earth. Here in the natural world human philosophy is the avant-courier and handmaid of science. It supposes, it experiments, it makes myriads of tentative explorations and flights, shedding off the failures, utilizing and improving the successes, and thus ever contributing to the enlargement of science.

Philosophy becomes a fool only when it invades the realm of ultimate origins, destinies, and the supernatural. Here it is vainer than a peacock, and blinder than a mole, which, burrowing under the earth, is a fine judge of earthworms, but utterly incompetent to become a critic of landscapes, sky views, and ocean wonders.

“Ne sutor ultra crepidam.” On these matters all God’s treasures of wisdom and knowledge are stored up in Christ, who is the only revelator of God’s hidden things. A human philosophy which, leaving out God (deifying instead, Chance or Fate), leaving out man’s highest nature and highest relations, leaving out distinction between matter and spirit, attempts a scheme of the universe and the related human life – perpetrates a folly unworthy of preservation in human literature. Observe next in Colossians 2:8,

3. “After the tradition of men.” “Tradition,” that which is handed down – transmitted from father to son, or from one generation to another – may be either good or bad according to its origin or subject matter. In the New Testament the word is accordingly used sometimes in a good sense, sometimes in a bad sense. Paul commands Timothy to pass on to other good men the deposit of good doctrine which he had received from Paul. If the original matter be a revelation from God, it does not cease to be good because, “handed down,” provided only it be held sacredly intact and transmitted unimpaired. The supreme test of an oral “tradition” is its conformity with the word written. The Pharisees made void the written word of God with rabbinical traditions. And so tradition in the early Christian centuries began that undermining of the simplicity of the written gospel which culminates in our day into that which is another gospel or no gospel.

The context (Colossians 2:11-18) indicates that “the traditions of men” here rebuked by the apostle is a Jewish element of Gnosticism rather than heathen, because these traditions are in the same verse said to be “after the rudiments of the world” and not “after Christ.” But what is meant here by “rudiments”? In a general way “rudiments” means what is elemental – the first principles. Of course, “rudiments of the world” may mean worldly first principles, referring to mere human origin, but this hardly accords with the New Testament usage of the word “rudiments” or with the immediate context. The rudiments of revelation were the types, shadows and ritual of the Old Testament. It was characteristic of the Jew in the time of our Lord, and is so even now that he went not beyond these rudiments. He would not see in Christ the substance of these shadows, so he never went on to maturity.

Moreover, by their traditions they corrupted and distorted even the shadows. This corruption might appear in stressing the letter which killeth against the Spirit which maketh alive. Or by their endless elaborations, interpretations, emendations, infinite trifling details they might convert the law into a burdensome yoke impossible to be borne. Or by merely human speculation on the fact that the law was given by “the disposition of angels” they might merge Jewish speculation into the heathen element of Gnosticism, a creation by eons – graded emanations from God. To meet which Paul presents Jesus as having in himself “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Let the reader particularly note the force of this expression, perhaps the strongest in the New Testament.

Observe (1) “Godhead.” The Greek theotes means “deity” – not the weaker word “divinity” the natural force of which may be evaded, or shaded down. The expression is even stronger than John’s “The Word was God (Theos).”

Observe (2) “fulness,” not in part nor in certain directions, but “all the fulness of Deity.”

Observe (3) “bodily” (somatikos), i.e., “bodily-wise.” The word is carefully chosen. Here Lightfoot speaks to the point: “It is not ‘in a body’ for Deity cannot be so confined. It is not ‘in the form of a body’ for this might suggest the unreality of Christ’s human body, but ‘bodily,’ i. e., bodily-wise, or with a bodily manifestation.”

Observe (4) “dwells” (katoikei): “In him dwells all the fulness (pleroma) of Deity bodily,” as just before, in contrast with their vain deceit, their philosophy, he has affirmed that in Christ “all the treasures of wisdom [sop/no] and of knowledge (gnosis) are stored” (Colossians 2:3).

Observe (5) “And ye, in him, are complete,” i.e., filled full (pepleromenoi). Being in union with Christ, there is no need to seek from human sources a wisdom, a knowledge, a philosophy, on the matters stated.

Observe (6) Instead of Christ being a low grade eon, or emanation from God – a subordinate angel – “He is the head of all principality and authority” – Kreek, he Kephale pases arches hai exousias. He then goes on to show that in being united to Christ they received the real, or spiritual circumcision, and their baptism was in a figure both a burial and a resurrection with Christ. In other words, the antitype of circumcision is regeneration, and baptism symbolizes Christ’s burial and resurrection and pledges our own. He then reaches his true climax in a double direction:

1. That in his death on the cross he fulfilled, cancelled, and abrogated all the Old Testament economy – took it entirely out of the way – took it forever away.

2. That on the cross he not only conquered, but made an open show of Satan and all his demons. Here he follows the imagery of a Roman triumphal procession, accorded to their conquering generals, dragging captive princes in their train. (See the author’s sermon on the “Three Hours of Darkness.”) He came in triumph, by resurrection and ascension, after the battle on the cross, not to imperial Rome, but to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God, shouting, Lift up your heads, O ye gates, And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, And let the King of Glory come in.

“When he ascended up on high he led captivity captive,” i.e., he broke all the chains of bondage which Satan had bound on men, redeeming the captives of the terrible one, and he gave as largess the outpoured Holy Spirit with all his varied gifts to men. Truly that was “the crisis of this world.”

Let not the reader fail to note the apostle’s conclusions from this victory on the cross:

1. Let no man judge you in meat and drink according to the Mosaic distinctions between the clean and unclean. That distinction is abrogated.

2. Let no man judge you on any part of the sabbatic cycle, either the seventh-day sabbath, the lunar sabbath, the three great annual sabbaths, the land sabbath or the Jubilee sabbath. They were all shadows; the body is of Christ. The whole old covenant with its sacrifices, types, ritual, and priesthood, has passed away. This passage is the death blow to all sects which observe the seventh day sabbath. They are either Jews on this point or merely keepers of a sabbath which commemorates creation. Yet when we come to consider the more elaborate arguments in the letter to the Hebrews, written a little later, we will find that “there remaineth to the people of God a sabbath-keeping” (Sabbatismos) which commemorates not rest from creation nor deliverance from Egypt, but our Lord’s rest after his greater work of redemption.

3. Let no man seek to impose on you circumcision of the flesh. Ye are regenerated, having the spiritual circumcision.

4. Let him not judge as one of the Essenes, trying to kill sin by afflicting the body, saying, “handle not, taste not, touch not” this or that. All their minute rules, all their asceticism, all their adjournment of marriage, all their retirement from the world into caves, nunneries, or monasteries, all their regimen of diet and scourging of the body is mere will worship and availeth nothing toward shutting out temptations. Allurement, lust, passion, envy, jealousy, malice, and covetousness, that run riot in the world, will find a man in his seclusion. Walls of brick and stone cannot shut out human passion. God meant for us to live in the world, but not to be of the world. “I pray not that they may be taken out of the world, but that they may be kept from the evil one,” says our Lord.

The true remedy is to set our affections on things above, where our citizenship is. Let the expulsive power of new affections drive the old loves out of the heart. Put off the old man and put on the new man, which, after God, is re-created unto knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. Let the reader note that chapter Colossians 3:11 of this letter and Ephesians 4:24, both allude to man’s original creation in the image of God, and this image involved “knowledge” (epignosis), “righteousness” (dikaiosune) and “holiness of truth” (hosioteti tes aletheias).

5. Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondmen, freemen, but Christ is all and in all.

These five conclusions from Christ’s work on the cross constitute a priceless heritage, ever to be most jealously guarded. They are summed up as follows:

1. The distinctions between clean and unclean meats and drinks is forever obliterated.

2. The creation sabbath and all the cycle of Jewish sabbaths are superseded.

3. Circumcision of the flesh, distinguishing Jew from Gentile, is abrogated.

4. Asceticism and seclusion from the world as a preventive of temptation and passion is valueless.

5. Distinction of race, caste, society – slavery and freedom, civilization and barbarism, culture and ignorance – are all impossible in Christ. He died for man, as man. Regeneration, or the new creation, ignores all artificial distinctions. There will never be a kingdom of Jesus over Jews, as Jews. There will never be a restoration of the Jewish polity. It would be a horrible anticlimax.

Christ was crucified because he would not restore the national Jewish polity, but established a spiritual kingdom.

Seventh Day Adventism and all premillennial adventism representing Christ as coming to reign for a thousand years in a restored earthly Jerusalem over a restored Jewish nation, with the Gentile world in subjugation, nullify the cross and seek to rebuild what he there forever cast down.

Since the cross, and forever since the cross, it will be true – “Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondmen, freemen; but Christ is all and in all.”

There will be a Jerusalem, the capital of this world. But it will be the heavenly Jerusalem – coming down from God out of heaven – after the general judgment. The Holy Spirit will infill it, according to John’s vision (Revelation 21:10-14). “The twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the several gates was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof. And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of the Lord did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof: and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no night there): and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it: and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are written in the Lamb’s book of life,” (Revelation 21:10-14; Revelation 21:22-27).

There never will be a reversion to Moses. The great central truth of the cross and what it abrogates, set forth in Colossians, enlarged in Ephesians and elaborated in every detail in the letter to the Hebrews, makes an eternal break with Judaism, as is fitly followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple and the eternal cessation of its sacrifices and priesthood. Therefore the author cannot bear the thought that anyone should fail to learn the lesson of Col 2:14-15. As the Crusaders failed, so will the Jewish Zionists. The tomb is empty. The sanctity is forever gone from the earthly Jerusalem and the land.

Let Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic have their quarrels over the empty tomb and vacant temple site, regulated by Moslem police. Our Lord is not there; he is risen. The Jerusalem that now is answereth to Mount Sinai and is in bondage with her children. The Jerusalem that is above is our mother, and regeneration is our certificate of citizenship. Heaven is our Holy Land. Let us by illumination, faith, hope, and love make tours to that holy land.

I am far from denying that God overruled the Crusades to much reflexive good. But the Crusades themselves, so far as their immediate purpose and hope are concerned, have no rivals in the history of folly.

I have no desire – To climb where Moses stood And view that landscape o’er – but would prefer to be caught up with Paul into the third heaven, into the paradise of God. “And view THAT landscape o’er.”

I continually rejoice that I am not coming unto the dark, thunder-rocked, fire-crested, smoke-shrouded, trumpet-riven Mountain of the Law, there to quake and tremble, but unto Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, unto God the judge, unto the general assembly and church of the first-born, unto the spirits of just men made perfect, unto Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, unto the blood of sprinkling in the true holy of holies whose atoning efficacy speaks better things for us than the blood of Abel’s typical animal sacrifice. Oh! when, thou city of my God, Shall I thy courts ascend?

I have not the temperament of the archaeologist. I could never potter with Old Mortality among the tombs of men once heroes, but seek the company of living heroes. I could not be a Chinese with his back to the future, worshiping his ancestors, and am entirely without desire to go East except “by way of the West.” Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope is a greater book than Rogers’ Pleasures of Memory. I lift my hat when I hear Paul shouting: “Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out to the things that are before I press on toward the goal of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

I have been scornfully asked, why the waste of the letters to the Colossians, Ephesians, and Hebrews, since Titus in less than a decade would obviate their necessity by the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish polity?

My answer was, because he foresaw the great apostasy which, under the guise of Christianity, would revert to the Old Testament type and revive its hierarchy, its priesthood, its human mediators, its ritual, its anointings, its genuflexions commanding to abstain from meats and forbidding to marry and which would foist on half the world a blended Jewish and heathen system of superstition, tyrannizing over the cradle, the grave and the spirit world, and over governments, while drunk with the blood of the saints.

1. What is the meaning of “spoil” in Colossians 2:8?

2. What is the derivation of the word “philosophy”?

3. What is the province of human philosophy and its value there?

4. Into what realm may it not intrude, and what the value of its literature when intruding there?

5. Into this realm beyond the scope of human philosophy, what, according to Colossians 2:3 of this letter, is the position of our Lord, and how does he make known its secrets?

6. What is the meaning of “tradition” in Colossians 2:8, and how is the word used in the New Testament?

7. What is the meaning of “rudiments” in Colossians 2:8, and to what does the New Testament usage of the word usually refer?

8. Show from the context that a Jewish element of Gnosticism is under consideration here.

9. At what point in the argument does the Jewish element blend With the heathen?

10. In what great, declaration concerning Christ does Paul meet the false philosophy? (Colossians 2:9.)

11. Meaning of “Godhead” in Colossians 2:9, and how often elsewhere in the New Testament does the word occur, and compare its force with John’s “the Word was God.”

12. Meaning of “bodily,” and quote Lightfoot on the choice of the word?

13. Meaning of “complete in him”?

14. What is the antitype of circumcision, and the relation of baptism thereto?

15. State the great climax of Paul in two directions.

16. State the five conclusions from his argument.

17. What is the value of the conclusions as a heritage?

18. What is the effect as to Judaism of the central truth of the cross as argued in Colossians, Ephesians, and Hebrews?

19. Wherein the great error of Seventh-Day Adventism, and most premillennial teaching?

20. What is the folly of the Crusades?

21. Will there ever be a restored earthly Jerusalem, with Christ as King over the Jews, and Gentiles in subjection?

22. What is the Jerusalem before the saints?

23. Why, in view of the destruction of Jerusalem in less than a decade, did Paul write these prison letters to make a final break with Judaism?