Colossians 2

1. For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, 2 and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts might be comfort- ed, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, 3 to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom 4 are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And this I say, lest any man should 5 beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ. 6 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built 7 up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with 8 thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after 9 the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him 10 dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the 11 head of all principality and power: in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision 12 of Christ: buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith 13 of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, hav- 14 ing forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against 15 us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and hav- ing spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over 16 them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy- 17 day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. 18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly 19 mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having 20 nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Where- fore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in 21 the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to 22 perish with the using:) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things 23 have indeed a shew of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him,” might be taken as the solemn superscription of every Epistle. In all places where they are planted, the young churches are addressed as being made up of persons in whom a certain movement of divine life has been begun, but not matured, with a great deal yet to do, and a great deal to undo; graces to be gained, and faults to be fought down; knowledge to be patiently acquired, and active force to be indefinitely enlarged; Christians to be fed, that they may grow—ministered to, that they may be built up—“called to be saints,” indeed, because they believe, and because their relationships and aims are holy, but with a saintship inchoate, as it were; sure in its root, magnificent in its anticipations, and yet beholding the greater glory to be re- vealed only through a perspective of greater self-denials to be borne, and greater toils to be accom- plished. F. D. H.

The imitation of Jesus signifies that we should walk as he walked, tread in his steps, with our hand upon the Guide, and our eye upon his Rule; that we should do glory to him as he did to his Father; and account these to be the integral part of our duty, which are imitations of his actions or his spirit, of his rule or of his life. We lead Jesus into the recesses of our hearts by holy meditations; and we enter into his heart when we express him in our actions; for so the apostle says, He that is in Christ walks as he also walked. J. T.

1-23. With their mystic philosophy, the Colos- sian errorists set a high value on sacred rights, es- pecially circumcision (to which Paul opposes the spiritual circumcision of Christ, v. 11), and scru- pulously observed the Jewish laws respecting food and yearly, monthly, and weekly feasts—shadows of the true body which had appeared in Christ (v. 16). But with these Judaistic views and practices they associated a rigid asceticism, a mortification of the body. This in all probability sprang from a pagan view, which made matter and body in themselves evil, and redemption a gradual destruction of the bodily nature. The conception of the body as the work of the devil we find in all the Gnostic and Manichean sects. The Scriptures, on the contrary, make the clearest distinction between body and flesh, representing the former as the work of God and the temple of the Holy Ghost, but the latter as the perversion of a nature in itself originally good, as the selfish, sinful principle. Finally, these Colossian errorists practiced under the garb of humility the worship of angels (v. 18), instead of holding to Christ, the Creator of angels, the revealed Head of the Church, and communing with God through Him. This Judaizing Gnosticism the apostle meets with a positive refutation, setting forth briefly but comprehensively the doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ and his redeeming work. Christ is presented as the center of the whole spiritual world, raised above all created beings; as the mediator, by whom the world was made and is upheld; as the embodiment of all the fullness of the Godhead; as the head of the Church and the source of all wisdom and knowledge. The redemption wrought by him embraces heaven and earth, releases believers from outward statutes, from this perishable world, and leads them on gradually to the true perfection. P. S.

The enlighteners of that day and the enlighteners of this are brethren. Both alike would sacrifice to the received wisdom of the time that “everlasting gospel” which is of no time, or rather of all times, because it addresses itself to a nature unchanged in its wants and its weakness from the hour of the fall to the hour of “the new heaven and the new earth.”

3. In whom are hid.** The Christ whose gospel was invested with the simplicity of infancy was yet, it seems, the fountain of a wisdom deep as eternity; the preaching of his truth was to be, like himself, at once lowly and divine. It was to be a light which “the darkness comprehendeth not,” valued not; and yet a “marvelous light,” on which angels shrank as they gazed. Through all its earthly fortunes it was to meet an irreconcilable antagonist in that spurious wisdom it deposed. “The foolishness of God” was indeed far “wiser than men”; but to the mass of men it was to be “foolishness” still. The “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” were to be in Christ; but, as the text emphatically has it, they were to be “hid” there. W. A. B.

4,5. Not being able to transport himself to the Colossians, and appear to them as a living epistle of Jesus Christ, Paul seeks to supply the want by the earnestness and heartfelt warmth of what he writes. He does all he can to make himself present by the power of his love; the impulses of his heart annihilate space; he brings the Colossians near to him by thoughts full of tenderness; he says he is with them in spirit. He has not only heard of the battle array (for this seems to be the idea) which the Colossians oppose to the enemy of their faith, he sees all this, and rejoices at it. He is at their head, or rather in their ranks; and, if they here engage in a struggle or combat, he, an invisible companion in arms, toils and combats by their side. A. V.

6. The principles which must guide us in the prosecution of saintliness are the very same which must guide us at its commencement. So that the beginning is not a beginning merely, but a beginning which has a development wrapped up in it; it is a seed which has only to burst and shoot up in order to become a blade, and then consecutively an ear, and the full corn in the ear. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him,” says the apostle, showing clearly that Christian progress proceeds in the very same method as the commencement of Christian life. E. M. G.

—Receiving Christ, as Christ himself explains the act, even under the strong figure of “eating his flesh and drinking his blood,” is believing on him; being “drawn” to him, “coming to him,” and “seeing” him with that spiritual discernment which results from being “taught of God,” and from having “learned of him.” It is relying on his sacrifice and righteousness, loving him, and obeying his word. J. S. S.

Walk in him. Is it not in accordance with reason, and all the deeper feelings of the human heart, that, having found our one Master and Love, and having entered in by the strait gate on our journey to the pearly gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, we should now wish our life to be of one piece, real, sincere, harmonious, where everything is pervaded by the same spirit, so that, wherever our Lord finds us, in meditation, in our daily work, or in social converse, he may find us in loyal and obedient affection? A. S.—We want a Christ entirely one with all that is joyous, pure, healthy, sensitive, aspiring, and even what seems to us commonplace in daily life. We wish Him to share in our anxieties about our children; to come and hallow our early love, and bless with a further nobleness all its passion; to move us to quietude and hope within the temple of the past where our old age wanders and meditates; to be with us when our heart swells with the beauty of the world, and to give his sympathy to us in that peculiar passion; to whisper of aspiration in our depression, of calm in our excitement, to be, in fine, a universal friendly presence in the whole of our common life. Out of that will spring no diminution of reverence to Him, but rather that deepening of awe, that solemnity of love which arise toward one whom we have lived with daily, and never known to fail in the power of giving us the sense of greatness in things which seem the smallest, of making life delightful with the feeling that we are being educated through its slightest details into children of the divine Holiness. S. A. B.

8-23. There is scarcely a single topic in the Ephesian Epistle which is not also to be found in the Epistle to the Colossians; but, on the other hand, this important section has no parallel in Ephesians. The following paraphrase of this part of the Epistle is given by Neander: “How can you still fear evil spirits, when the Father himself has delivered you from the kingdom of darkness and transplanted you into the kingdom of his dear Son, who has victoriously ascended to heaven to share the divine might of his Father, with whom he now works in man; when, moreover, he by his sufferings has united you with the Father, and freed you from the dominion of all the powers of darkness, whom he exhibits as captives in his triumphal pomp, and shows their impotence to harm his kingdom established among men? How can you still let the doubts and fears of your conscience bring you into slavery to superstition, when Christ has nailed to his cross and blotted out the record of guilt which testified against you in your conscience, and has assured to you the forgiveness of all your sins? Again, how can you fear to be polluted by outward things, how can you suffer yourselves to be in captivity to outward ordinances, when you have died with Christ to all earthly things, and are risen with Christ, and live (according to your true, inward life) with Christ in heaven? Your faith must be fixed on things above, where Christ is, at the right hand of God. Your life is hid with Christ in God, and belongs no more to earth.” C.

8. Paul speaks of a vain philosophy and a human tradition. The former is natural reason proceeding without rule, and working on incomplete or false data; the latter is stupid prejudice, which, in estimating any opinion, throws in the dead weights of number and time. Paul wishes to guard the Colossians, and us also, against sophistry in the garb of philosophy, and against custom claiming the authority of proof. At Colosse heresy had this double character; it was a compound of subtle reasonings and unauthorized traditions. The effect of tradition in this discussion was directed not so much against the divine nature of Jesus Christ as against the all-sufficient and perfect virtue of his work as Redeemer. Tradition labored to bring back the Colossians toward the law, not certainly toward that spiritual law which, like a sage preceptor, would have brought them to Jesus Christ, but toward that law of works and observances which was far more fitted than any other thing to replace the idol of self-righteousness upon its pedestal. A. V.

Genius and erudition have made, of late years as of old, prodigious efforts to create systems of philosophy and ethics without the aid of wisdom from on high; and of late years, as of old, genius and erudition have signally failed in the attempt. A succession of men endowed with mighty powers, but voluntarily placing themselves eighteen centuries after Christ in the intellectual position of heathen sages, have, after all, only brought the thinking world to something worse than the hopeless skepticism in which ended the wondrous wisdom of Greece. System after system of philosophy has proved the impotence of man to discover the highest truths without divine guidance. Bp. Jeune.—Philosophy may expand our ideas of creation, but it neither inspires a love to the moral character of the Creator nor a well-grounded hope of eternal life. Philosophy at most can only place us upon the top of Pisgah; there, like Moses, we must die. It is the province of Christianity to add, “All is yours!” A. Fuller.

9. This is the endearing peculiarity of the gospel covenant, that all the blessings of it are secured against forfeiture in the hands of him who hath already fulfilled the terms of the grant, and finished the work which was given him to do; who, as he died to purchase those blessings, so he ever liveth to dispense them; One who by nature is God as well as man; and in whom, as the word incarnate and Mediator of the covenant, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells, for enriching, to the utmost capacity of created beings, all the members of that body whereof he is the head. R. W.

10. We are complete in Christ. We receive in Jesus, once and for ever, all things pertaining to life and godliness. We are by faith one with him whom God has made for us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. As our righteousness is in heaven, so is our perfection Christ at the right hand of God. And our hope is that we shall be like him; that when Jesus comes again we shall be in body, soul, and spirit conformed to the image of God’s Son, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself. A. S.—Man’s nature, need, and destiny are, so to speak, wrapped up in Christ. The secrets of our inmost being, the enigmas of our destiny, are revealed to us in Christ, and in him alone. Life is a maze; and we do not find the clew to guide us safely out until we find Christ. Life is an enigma; and the word that solves the enigma is Christ, the Word of God. When we know Christ, we know what we are, and are made to be; and out of him we grope in darkness and conjectures. On the other hand, when Christ is revealed to us, we are also revealed to ourselves. We do not know ourselves until we know Christ. Only in him can we unveil the secrets and scan the end of our destiny. We are complete in him. As an old proverb says, with a profound prophetic wisdom, “The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah.” He stands alone majestic, yet full of love, with one hand reaching to the very heavens, with the other laying hold of our fallen humanity and raising it from the depths of despair to the beatitudes of redemption. And men in every age have scouted every other deliverer; and men in every age have received him, and him alone, as the Lord of their souls. H. B. S.

The head of all principality and power. So that, when his vicarious function shall have reached its completion, the union of the Divine and human natures shall continue to bear a relation to the social economy of the great immortal family in the heavens, and shall for ever subsist as the principle or the reason of communication and harmony among all ranks. The mystery of redemption has fairly brought all suppositions within our range; for the most amazing facts must still be inferior to this. We may say then that, when the eternal Word took upon him the nature of man, he embraced in one bond of love all intermediate orders. Without annulling real and native inequalities, without degrading the high for the sake of the low, he brought in a law of relationship which at once obliges the highest to recognize a dignity in the lower, without presumption to take the place assigned them. Of Him it is said, that “the fullness of Deity dwells in him”; that “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in him”; so that He, standing incomparably above the highest created minds, and yet condescending to maintain familiar intercourse with the feeblest, shall hold all extremes in amity. Unison is the word which at once characterizes true religion and describes the upper world. And of this unison Christ is the principle, both in heaven and on earth. Because in heaven “all things are subject to the Son,” heaven is happy; and on earth man is not happy, because this is not the fact. I. T.

Specialists as to the relation of an incarnate God to the other innumerable regions of the universe need give us no real alarm. In the present state of our knowledge of the immensity of creation, it is almost impossible but they must arise; and more especially in reflecting on the great mystery which obliges us to contemplate Christ as at once the enthroned Monarch of the whole infinity of being, of suns and systems, and at the same time a Man, bound by ties intimate and everlasting to one little island in the ocean of immensity, one little speck, small in its own system and invisible beyond it. We can well afford to admit Him, not only by right of creation the natural, but even by right of Redemption the spiritual King of this multitude of peopled worlds. Our property in the affections of this infinite heart is in no respect limited by any supposition of this kind. Enough it is that the infinite and eternal God is on the stage of this earth manifested as our Redeemer; that, in the consummation of that redemption, he has assumed our nature into his own, and thus identified us with all his acts—enough is this to fix us with anxiety upon all he has done and still does. W. A. B.

11. In him they have the true circumcision, “that of the heart,” which is effected by “putting off the body of the sins of the flesh,” even “by the circumcision of Christ, i. e., the circumcision which Christ requires.” 12. All this is most strikingly represented in their baptism, wherein they are symbolically (for literally they can not be) “buried and raised with Christ.” And their death unto sin, their rising to a new life, as here symbolized, are effected “through their belief of that mighty working of God, which raised up Christ from the dead.” 13. “And thus it is that, having been once dead in sin, in the uncircumcised carnality of their nature, God hath quickened them together with Christ, and freely forgiven them all their trespasses.” This passage, besides implying the symbolical nature of baptism, distinctly favors the doctrine that, under the gospel, baptism holds the same place as a seal of the covenant of grace, with circumcision under the law. J. S. S.

12. Buried with him in baptism. An allusion to the ancient method of administering baptism. The immersion in water of the bodies of those who were baptized is an emblem of that death unto sin by which the conversion of Christians is generally expressed; this rising out of the water—the breathing the air again after having been for some time in another element—is an emblem of that new life which Christians by their profession are bound, and by the power of their religion are enenabled, to lead. The time during which they remained under water is a kind of temporary death, after the image of the death of Christ; when they emerged from the water they rose, after the image of his resurrection, to a life of righteousness here, and of glory hereafter. G. Hill.

14,15. In verse 14, “took” should be “hath taken”; and “his cross” “the cross.” The translators fancied that the subject of the whole sentence was Christ, whereas it is God the Father. In verse 15, “having spoiled” should be “stripping off from himself,” “divesting himself of,” i. e., in the cross of Christ God put off from himself the ministration of angels, by which the law was given, subjecting them all to Christ, whose triumph they grace, as we also are said to do (2 Cor. 2: 14). Therefore, angels were no more to be regarded as mediators between God and man, nor the law which they ministered as binding. A.

14. His nails have fastened the handwriting which was against us to the cross; it no longer stands against us, but is a receipted bill, an evidence of satisfaction rendered. In old paintings divine Justice paints the first nail, divine Mercy the second, divine Peace the third. In Christ’s wounds righteousness and peace kiss each other, and peace streams forth upon poor sinners. Through his wounds we are healed. Besser.—Sinners now need only come to him, and they receive the forgiveness of sins from him. The Son of man, in that he hath paid the debt of sin, hath now free power to forgive sins. The handwriting which was against us is now blotted out and torn; and there lie, duly sealed and ready for poor sinners, many hundred thousand charters and letters of grace. God can condemn no repentant sinner now; he can refuse forgiveness of sins to no poor sinner beseeching for mercy. Hollaz.

16-23. If they died to the world with Christ, why did they allow themselves to be debarred from the use of those things which Christ has cleansed for us, as though they were living in the world? Why did they tamely submit to commands not to touch, not to taste, not to handle? Why did they submit to prohibitions against marriage and commands to abstain from meats? Such things are not of the essence of our spiritual life, but belong merely to this perishable condition, and will vanish with it; and these meddling and petty ordinances about them serve to exalt pretended doctors and teachers into a repute for wisdom and heroism, because of their volunteering more than is required, and appearing to be humble and self-denying, but are not God’s appointed way of honoring our bodies, the instruments of his glory, nay, are all so many feedings of carnal vanity, under the guise of carnal mortification. Such is the fervid and outspoken denunciation with which the great Apostle meets the ascetics and the ritualists in the Colossian Church. Such is his protest on behalf of the life of Christian liberty and Christian loftiness of aim and spirit. We can hardly conceive a more direct declaration of the apostolic mind on the controversies which in these our times agitate the Church of Christ. A.

18. “Let no man (though he wishes it) defraud you of your prize, persuading you to self-humiliation and worship of angels.”

20-23. “If, then, when you died with Christ, you put away the childish lessons of outward things, why, as though you still lived in outward things, do you submit yourself to decrees (hold not, taste not,

touch not’—forbidding the use of things which are all made to be consumed in the using) founded on the precepts and doctrines of men? For these precepts, though they have a show of wisdom, in a self-chosen worship, and in humiliation, and chastening of the body, are of no value to check the indulgence of fleshly passions." C.

are all things, to him be the glory." And no one will say that a life in which everything directly or indirectly leads toward this great aim, can be very narrow, anxious, or monotonous. On the contrary, the path indicated by Paul is at once the way of true liberty and the most exalted happiness. Nothing is permitted through which his rule of life would be obliterated; but, on the other hand, all is

free, in due time and measure, which really can be done in the name of Christ, and to the glory of God, so far as it is not forbidden by some higher duty. Thus this prescription breathes a spirit of liberality and gladness, by which all incongruity between God’s worship and every-day life finally disappears, and even the meanest occupation is stamped with the ennobling impress of glory to God. Van O.