Colossians 2
GodbeyColossians 2:6-10
9 AS 6. “Therefore as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him.” You received him by faith and by faith alone when a poor sinner, and he converted your soul. Now do not plunge into the heresy of the popular pulpits, and conclude that you are to be sanctified by growth or by—i.e., works—but remember that you are sanctified precisely as you are converted; i.e. by faith, and by faith alone.7. “Having been rooted and grounded in Him, and confirmed in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” The Bible contains but a few primal truths, which are enforced by a vast diversity of imagery deduced by the Holy Ghost from every ramification of human life and employment and every department of the material world. The great truth revealed in the Bible is the compound problem of sin and its remedy. Here Paul gives us a grand double metaphor, illustrating entire sanctification by a tree and a house. The lateral roots of the tree represent the justified experience, while the long, powerful, trunky tap-root penetrating far down into the deep interior of the earth, coiling around the eternal strata and holding the tree steadfast amid the storms of centuries, beautifully symbolizes entire sanctification. The tree without a tap-root flourishes amid calm and sunshine, but is ruthlessly torn out by the roots when caught in the Briarean arms of the cyclone.
So the unsanctified Christian is all right when skies are clear and seas are calm, but hopelessly wrecked in the raging storm. The other metaphor is that of the house whose foundation is laid deep down on the everlasting foundation of the earth, and solidly built up into a magnificent superstructure.
The winds blow and the floods come down, but it stands unshaken like a rock in midocean, defiant of every storm. Conversion is a real experience, but it is superficial, neither descending down to the bottom rock nor ascending up to Pisgah’s delectable summit.8. “See that no one shall be leading you through philosophy and empty delusion, according to the—commandment of men, according to learning of the world, and not according to Christ.” Paul’s prophetic eye is wide open in all of this epistle, contemplating in vivid panorama the delusive humanisms of the present day. The Bible is the only authority in this world, and the only guide to heaven. How few people are free! Spiritual and mental chains and slavery everywhere abound. Science and philosophy out of harmony with the Bible are all false.9. “Because in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” In the body of Christ on earth and in heaven actually dwelleth the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Hence, we have in our Jesus all of the divinity and humanity, all salvation, authority, and power in the whole universe, temporal and spiritual. O what a wonderful Savior we have!
We need nothing else. In him we have everything pertaining to this life and that which is to come. Away with all humanisms! When they come, the devil always avails himself of the door ajar.10. “Ye are complete in him who is the head of all government and authority.” Give up all of your human delusions, and take Jesus only for everything you need in time and eternity.
Colossians 2:11-12
10 , BAPTISM, AND 11. As physical birth in Judaism emblematized regeneration, circumcision, following quickly, typified sanctification. (Deuteronomy 30:6.) Here we know it is spiritual, as it is “made without hands;”12. As the baptism here mentioned is in grammatical and logical apposition to circumcision, and only separated by a comma, it is synonymous with it. The resurrection mentioned is by the Spirit, as it is by the same power that raised the body of Christ from the dead; i.e., the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit. It is parallel with Romans 6:4-6, where the crucifixion of the old man, his burial into the death of Christ, and the resurrection of the new man, are all imputed to baptism. It is none other than the one baptism (Ephesians 4:5) in the glorious plan of salvation.
Is that baptism a burial? Not so revealed. We are buried by baptism; i.e., the burial of the old body of sin is one of the effects of baptism, like the crucifixion; but the baptism is the agent, while the crucifixion and burial are the wonderful work wrought by the baptism of the Holy Ghost.
Colossians 2:13-15
11 THE CROSS IS VICTORY 13. “—Quickened along with him.” “Quickened” is zoopoiese, from zoe, life, and poieo, to create. Hence, to create life in the dead soul. Regeneration is a stupendous work—a de novo creation—as literal as the creation of a world. The great trouble with the Churches is at this point. All regenerated people long for holiness. Others do not want more, because they have never had a taste.
A dead man does not want his dinner.14. “Having blotted out the handwriting which was against us in creeds, which was detrimental to us, and took it from the midst, nailing it to the cross.” “Ordinances” in E. V., here does not mean Divine ordinances like baptism and the Eucharist, but human ordinances; i.e., human creeds, decrees, opinions, and authorities, which in all ages have enslaved the mind, conscience, soul, and spirit of generations.
All these—i.e., all human authorities—Christ nailed to the cross when he died to redeem us from chains of sin, bound on us by men or devils in all ages. Why don’t you claim your perfect enfranchisement, and go to shouting, since Christ has snapped every chain and smashed every fetter, and made you free as an angel; i.e., free to do everything good and nothing bad? When human authority corroborates the Divine, you incidentally obey; when there is a conflict, your perfect freedom puts you on God’s side.15. “Having spoiled governments and authorities, he publicly exposed them, triumphing over them on it;” i.e., on the cross. Unutterable and transcendent victory! When Christ died on the cross he publicly exhibited to a gazing world the utter ruin of all human governments and authorities, political and ecclesiastical. This victory is to be verified in the fulfillment of the Father’s promise, “I will make thine enemies thy footstool.” O the chains of slavery with which Babylon has bound the consciences and blinded the minds of earth’s millions the last fifteen hundred years!
How many people this day enjoy the wondrous freedom which Jesus purchased with his blood? He said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Yet to this day the world is in bondage to the devil and the priest.
Even the Protestant Churches en masse are in legal bondage, new institutions unheard of in the Bible being constantly invented to tighten the yoke and add to the burden, prejudicing the world against the very name of religion.
Colossians 2:16-23
12 VISIBLE : CARNAL AND 16. “Let no one judge you in meat or in drink, or in participation of a feast, or of the new moon or of Sabbaths.” The old law of restriction on meats was nailed to the cross, universal liberty peculiar to the gospel dispensation, the typical significations of “clean” and “unclean” superseded in the spiritual dispensation of entire sanctification; meanwhile we are to live hygienically and harmonically with the endless diversity of variant constitutions and climates. On the drink problem we should all be Nazarites unto the Lord, as they were the holiness people of the old dispensation, and most radical teetotalers relative to all intoxicants. Coffee and tea are admissible under hygienical restrictions. I much enjoy the privilege of abstinence from all nervines. As to festivals, be sure that you follow the Lord. Do not hold them in the house of God. (1 Corinthians 11:22.) “Sabbaths,” in the original, is in the plural number, having prophetic reference doubtless to the controversy now prevailing on that subject.
In Matthew 18:1, the Greek reads, “At the dawn toward the first of the Sabbaths,” confirming the conclusion that both days were recognized at the time of the writing; i.e., the Jewish Sabbath, which was the last day of the week, and the Christian Sabbath; the first day of the week, so memorialized by our Lord’s resurrection as ever afterward to be denominated the Lord’s day. The Christian Church began all Jews, in a century eliminating the Jewish element and becoming Gentiles.
Of course the apostles and pentecostal converts kept the Jewish Sabbath as well as the Lord’s day, till the Jewish element evanesced after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, A.D. 73. There are fundamental reasons arising out of the genius of the gracious economy, which justify the change from the last to the first day. The law says, “Work first, and then rest,” and if you do not finish your work, you shall not rest. Hence, the pertinency of the last day under the law dispensation. The gospel says, “Rest first, and then you will be in good fix to do your work,” as a well rested man will do about ten times as much work as a tired man. Besides, we have clear and positive proof of the change, and the observance of the first day by the primitive Christians.
The bloody persecution inaugurated by Nero, in which Paul lost his head and Peter was crucified, lasted three hundred years, during which martyrs’ blood flowed like rivers. When a student in college, I read the Roman historians, Sallust, Pliny, and Seutonius, who lived and wrote during those bloody centuries.
As they were heathens, having no sympathy with Christianity, they are certainly impartial witnesses to the current events of the times. In their simplicity and candor they chronicle their historic sketches of the Christians, describing them as a strange, bigoted, fanatical sect, the followers of one Jesus, who was crucified under the reign of Tiberius and the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate at Jerusalem, whom they certify to have risen from the dead, and they worship him as a God, though the good emperors had done their utmost to reconcile these fanatical people, even proposing to confer the apotheosis upon Jesus Christ, thus adopting him as one of their own gods, to be worshipped along with Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, Minerva, and Diana. But these incorrigible fanatics treat with utter contempt all of the good old Roman gods, obstinately refusing to worship any god except Jesus Christ. In their simplicity they described the persistent efforts of the emperors to correct and loyalize this disturbing element in the empire.Then they proceed to describe the arraignment, trial, and martyrdom of the Christians. When persons were suspected of being Christians, they were arrested and arraigned before a civil magistrate. Then they asked them the question, “Dominicum servasti?” “Have you kept the Lord’s day?” The answer came promptly, “Christianus sum,” “I am a Christian,” “Intermittere non possum,” “I am not able to omit it.” This is positive and unequivocal proof that they kept the first day of the week, which, from the apostles, was called the Lord’s day.
If Saturday had been the day, they would have asked them, “Sabbaticum servasti,” “Have you kept the Sabbath day?” The very fact that they never asked them if they had kept the Sabbath day, but always, “Have you kept the Lord’s day?” is unequivocal proof that they kept the first day of the week. While we have this clear and unequivocal assurance of the change from the seventh to the first day, simultaneously with the change from the Jewish to the Christian dispensation, we would subjoin,“If you have any conscientious scruples that you ought to keep Saturday as a holy Sabbath, we exhort you to satisfy those convictions in the observance of that day.
In that case, you will keep both days, as you must keep Sunday, conservatively of the conscience of Christendom.” (1 Corinthians 8:12.)Thus you will keep both days, the former pursuant to your own conscience and the latter the conscience of the Lord’s people. An easy way to settle the whole matter, and sweep controversy from the field, is for you to get sanctified wholly, and walk with Jesus in the beauty of holiness. Then you will have seven Sabbaths in the week, instead of one. The history of the apostolic Church during the early centuries utterly upsets the allegation that the Emperor Constantine, who was not converted till the fourth century, made the change from the seventh to the first day; while the fiction that the popes did it is still more at random, as there never was a pope till the seventh century. Doubtless, Constantine and the popes, like all other ecclesiastical leaders, frequently sent out edicts exhorting the people to keep the Christian Sabbath. There is no more reason why we should Judaize on the Sabbath dogma than that we should go back to the Jewish dispensation on other things.
God wants holy hearts. In that case, all days will be holy.
It is the wildest fanaticisrn to magnify holy days, instead of holy hearts.17. “Which things are a shadow of the things to come.” These Old Testament institutions all symbolize the glorious spiritual experiences of the pentecostal dispensation. Sabbath is a Hebrew word, and means rest. It symbolizes the perfect repose of the sanctified soul in Jesus. It is an awful mistake to keep the eye always on the shadow and miss the substance, like Aesop’s dog in the fable, walking through the creek with a piece of meat in his mouth, and, seeing his shadow in the water, thinking it was another dog carrying a piece of meat, leaped at the shadow, dropping his meat to get the other, and, losing all, came out of the water meatless and hungry. If you have perfect rest in Jesus, you have an everlasting Sabbath in your soul. If you have not got the soul-Sabbath, the devil will get after all of your zeal about days.“But the body is of Christ”— that is the thing for you to settle—is that you are a bona fide member of the New Testament Church; i.e., the Divine Ecclesia, who, responsive to the call of the Holy Ghost, have come out of the world, and separated themselves unto God.
This blood-washed Church of the First-born is called the body of Christ. If you are saved and sanctified, and thus a bona fide member of the body of Christ, the day problem, along with all other symbolisms, will take care of itself.18. “Let no one, pursuant to his own will, rob you of your crown in humiliation and worship of the angels.” Then the Church, which had been kept pure by martyr blood and fire three hundred years, during which she pushed her conquest to the ends of the earth, and soon would have prepared the world for her Lord’s return, received the sudden uplift into power and riches through the conversion of Constantine, the Roman Emperor, she soon plunged headlong into the darkness and secularism of Roman Catholicism, and set up the worship of angels, to which Paul alludes: “Thrusting in those things which he has seen, being vainly puffed by the mind of his depravity.” Here we see a sweeping condemnation against all visible religions as consequently carnal, the true being invisible and spiritual.
Not a solitary apostle ever preached in a church edifice, the Jews and pagans throughout the world making a great pomp and show with fine buildings. One hundred and fifty years rolled away before the Christians erected a house of worship. I sometimes feel that they made a mistake in ever building a house, and localizing the worship of God. Solomon’s temple signified the sanctified heart. Jesus certifies that neither at Jerusalem nor in Samaria is the true worship, but in the humble, sanctified heart. The first trend into apostasy and idolatry is always through a materialistic religion.
Christendom is this day flooded with the idolatry of materialism, spirituality being more and more superseded by materiality, as the Churches, like Judaism and Romanism, go deeper into apostasy. All the paganistic Churches of the present day, with a thousand millions of souls, are the apostasy of the patriarchal dispensation; Jews and Mohammedans, two hundred and fifty millions; of the modern Roman Catholics two hundred and sixty millions; while one hundred and fifty millions of Protestants are following them at racehorse speed on the downward way to idolatry and diabolism.
They all traveled the same way, originally deflecting from a purely spiritual and invisible into material and visible forms, ceremonies, temples, shrines, musical instruments, etc.19. “Not holding the head.” Here the prophetic eye of Paul sees a great man at the head of the Church, leading the people in the pompous rites and ceremonies of a visible worship, with fine house, splendid choir, pipe- organ, and Official Board, and utterly destitute of salvation. “Not holding the head;” i.e., has no connection with Christ, and utterly ignorant of his saving power. Ecclesiastical leaders on this line are too many to be counted. Their name is legion. O how the present age is flooded with the fulfillment of these wonderful latter-day prophecies, which flashed continually from Paul’s inspired pen! How deplorable to see myriads of preachers blindly and ignorantly fulfilling these prophecies! “From which the whole body, through joints and ligaments supplied and cemented together, increaseth the increase of God.” Here we have a beautiful affirmation of the universal oneness of the Lord’s Church. There is no harmony in Satan’s kingdom.
The miseries of the damned are constantly augmented and awfully intensified by the universal disharmony, perturbation, and bitter conflicts in hell. It is equally true on earth; war, bloodshed, strife, and disharmony universally characterize the kingdom of Satan.
The world is belted with sectarian Churches, rivaling each other in visible pomp and pageantry, and material power and aggrandizement, amid universal rivalry, competition, and disharmony; while the Church of God is an invisible spiritual entity, consisting of blood-washed souls dispersed in all the earth and millions in heaven, all not only perfectly harmonious but identical in spirit, each individual identified with Christ as the branch in the vine, and all receiving the same life-blood flowing out from the heart of Jesus. Union there can never be, unless that we be one in Jesus,—one as he is one in God, in spirit, and in disposition. This the Holy Scriptures teach. It is plain without an exposition.20. “If you are dead along with Christ from the institutions of the world, why are you dogmatized as living in the world?” There is no reference here to Church ordinances, as you might conclude from E.V., but to human institutions indiscriminately and independently of Divine authority. So fast as Churches lose the Holy Spirit and backslide, they always depart from New Testament simplicity, and go off into human institutions, laying heavy burdens on the people, and depending on their own works instead of the Holy Ghost. Jesus came to break all of these yokes off our necks, and make us free as angels.
For this he died, nailing all human creeds, institutions, and authorities to the cross. How inconsistent for people whom God has made free, to still live encumbered by these human burdens!
If you are a Christian, you have come out of the world. Then, why do you live like the people of the world, still wearing the yokes of worldly people? How few people, who claim to be the Lord’s, really enjoy the glorious freedom which Jesus purchased on the cross?21. “Touch not, taste not, handle not.” What is here referred to under this sweeping prohibition? Why, all human institutions, inventions, customs, and laws, laying on you a thousand heavy burdens. You have come out of the world. Then how inconsistent that you be enslaved, contaminated, and encumbered like people of the world!22. “All which are for destruction by the use, according to the commandments and teachings of men.” Every age has had its methods, institutions, and customs, by which the people were burdened and enslaved.
They have all vanished away with the revolving centuries, leaving not a trace. Our life in Christ is invisible, spiritual, and immortal.
Is it possible we can not rise above transitory things, and even here live the life of God and eternity, remembering that all these human fashions, customs, laws, and usages perish with the fleeting moment?23. “Whatsoever things are indeed having a manifestation of wisdom in will worship, humiliation, and deprivation of the body, are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.” The heathen in all ages have tortured the body to get rid of sin. The Roman Catholics have long preached the doctrine of remedial suffering in this life and in purgatory. The apostatizing Protestant Churches are fast going away in the track of their predecessors, losing sight of the great Bible truth of justification and sanctification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone. It takes a preacher on Sunday morning nearly as long to announce his appointments as to preach his little sermonette. These appointments are a concatenation of work for all of his members every day, in cooperation with a great catalogue of human institutions, which give no relief to the heart aching for purity, and to the immortal soul longing for victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil. The week is spent in toil and drudgery, and no victory for Jesus.
A little filthy lucre is gathered up, which is of no value, for our God is infinitely rich. John Wesley was a great man for institutions, establishing the class meeting, for the conversion of penitents; the holiness band, for the sanctification of Christians; and the select societies, for the establishment of the sanctified; all these being strictly the institutions of the Holy Ghost.
Let us still have them, instead of wearing ourselves out in “will worship;” i.e., worshipping the will of preachers and leaders, and perhaps our own will, instead of worshipping the sweet will of God. In a Western town I met a young man from Kentucky, who, when a boy, had been converted in my meeting. Fearing that he was on a downward trend spiritually, I requested his pastor to look after him. “Yes, that I will; I must hunt up some work for Joe to do.” The poor fellow was about to starve to death. He needed a Benjamin’s mess, instead of a job. But that is the way the blind pastors are doing. They starve and work their members to death.
Paul says that “all this is of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.”You may torture, toil, pay your money, and suffer bodily privation till the judgment-day, and find old Adam in you big as a rhinoceros, gripping you by the throat and dragging you into hell. Salvation does not come in this way.
It is not by works, but by faith. Stay at the feet of Jesus till you get saved to the uttermost, and filled with the Holy Ghost. Then go and work for God and souls, with victory in your heart and heaven in your life.