Colossians 2

Colossians 2:1-23

Division 3. (Colossians 2:1-23.)Filled up in Him in whom all the fulness dwells. Christ then, is He in whom all the fulness dwells. We are now to have distinctly the part which is given us in this fulness. We are to be filled up in it, and that practically for our blessing now, not at some time to come; but that this may be manifested in us here by the way.

1. The apostle tells us, therefore, of the conflict that he was in with regard to them, but specially as to those whose face he had not yet seen in the flesh, his responsibility towards whom was not altered by this fact. He is in conflict also, as knowing what the world is in which the saints are found. The greater the blessing. the greater incentive to the enemy, if possible, to take it from them; and alas, with this, the surer, if we think of men as such, that they will demonstrate their incapacity of themselves to hold it. But Paul’s purpose is the encouragement of those to whom he writes, -not discouragement. The warnings of what man as man is, of the flesh that dwells in us all, the practical warnings which result from the outbreak of this also, alas, in Christians, are still only to discourage self-confidence, never to move one from the assurance that he should have in God. He seeks, therefore, to encourage their hearts, and that they may be united together in love, the true binding principle, in the possession of all that was their own, the riches that God would give them in full assurance of understanding. How much is implied in this! There is to be no failure with us as to the distinct, definite, assured apprehension of all this blessing which God has given us, the full knowledge of the mystery of God of which be has spoken, in which are hid for us now “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” This may seem a strange thing to say that, in that which is only revealed at the present time, all treasures of this kind should be found; but it is manifest that in speaking to Christians, everything depends upon their being in possession of that which makes them distinctly Christian. Except as in this Christian place ourselves, we have not even the right knowledge of other things. For instance, if we do not realize the difference between the Church and Israel, how can we know even Israel aright? How can we know the Old Testament without being in possession of what is specifically ours in the New? He says here, as so constantly with him, “wisdom” as well as “knowledge,” putting indeed wisdom first; for without the power to apply, what right gain could there be in the knowledge which is to be applied? He goes on to intimate his knowledge of the power of the enemy which was abroad, and which would, by persuasive speech, seek to take from them the blessing; but he rejoiced, absent indeed in the flesh, yet with them in spirit, as seeing their order and the firmness of their faith in Christ. It is plain therefore that he does not, as some think, realize in them the beginning of any special form of evil, but that the warnings which we find here and there through the epistle are necessary to the character of it, as having to do with their walk in the world, a place in which every danger would necessarily beset them. He has, as we can see also, not merely those in mind whom he is addressing now Colosse, but us also, for whom the Spirit of God is caring, through him, and who are in the midst of evils of which they are warned here. There could not but be the foresight of such things, and provision made for them, in the love that manifests itself towards all the people of God to the last generation.
2. He proceeds at once, therefore, to bid us, as having received Christ Jesus the Lord, to walk in Him. The place of identification with Him which God has given us is to be carried out in practice here. We are to walk as identified with Him. We are to walk as in this new place and new creation, separated, therefore, from the world and under the authority, as Lord, of Him whom the world has rejected. We have received Him as our Lord, not simply as our Saviour, although these two things will necessarily go together; but we have received Him as One who has rightful title over us and One in whom we have found all that enables us to be independent of the world around.

Thus we are rooted and built up in Him. It is from Him that we draw subsistence as the plant through its root, and we are thus built up in Him as the plant builds itself up through the nourishment which it thus receives. How perfectly then are we provided! Christ is our one Sufficiency; and “the faith” is that which has, so to speak, given us Christ Himself, for it is by faith that we know Him. We are to abound in it, says the apostle, with thanksgiving, -an immense point, for if our hearts are not making joy over the truth which God has given us, what shall we have to keep us from the evil around? or to produce in us the fruits which are acceptable to God? Here he adds one of his warnings, not to be led away, therefore through philosophy and vain deceit; that is, through the working of man’s mind apart from revelation.

Christ is the subject of revelation, plainly. No human thought could have discovered Him: none can add to Him. All mere human teaching has upon it the essential marks of the world itself, a world into which He came in love, but which had no heart for Him. 3. Thus we are shut up to Christ, who is indeed, as has been declared, the Centre and Reason of the universe. The knowledge of Him is, therefore, the only key to the right apprehension of all things. These are the manifestations, each in its measure, of God; and Christ it is in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. That word, “bodily,” makes Him our own, He has come out from the invisible to be among us; and not simply for display: He has pledged Himself to service in it, whatever the need may be, as when He showed them His hands and His side. And still “we are complete” -filled full. “in Him,” who is -notice how these things are brought together -“Head of all principality and power.” To Him the circumstances of the way are absolutely obedient.

Here we have the perfect ministry to us, therefore of everything around us, as well as the perfect means of apprehension of it all, as knowing Him. The apostle goes on now to show us how thoroughly we have been cut off from other things. If the Jew was separated from the nations by the fact of his circumcision we, he says, have been circumcised, not with that circumcision indeed, not by something with the hand, but by something infinitely more and deeper, “the putting off of the body of the flesh,” the flesh in its totality, “by the circumcision of Christ,” that is, by the Christian circumcision. His cross has accomplished this for us. We are privileged to turn away from all that we find thus in ourselves, to give up self in fact altogether, as having any confidence in it, as the apostle tells us in Philippians: “We are the true circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” Notice that there is nothing there of self to have confidence in. It is Christ in whom we boast or glory, and that in contrast with all fleshly confidence whatever. Slow we may be indeed, to realize that every atom of self-confidence is confidence in the flesh. We would fain draw a distinction. We would say that there is a Christian self; that, after all, there must be something in us which is the fruit of God’s work but the cross has not set aside self in one fashion to allow it to be brought forward again in another. If we build again the things which we destroyed, we make ourselves transgressors in this sense also, and the apostle adds here what is the complete assertion of this: “We are buried with Him,” he says, “in baptism.” God has privileged us, thus, to put away ourselves as completely as a dead man is put away amongst the dead when he is buried. This truth as to baptism is one of those which we derive from Romans, but we are “raised up” also, he adds; and here it is important to get clearly what the apostle really says. The common version makes it to be baptism in which also we are raised up, but what is connected with this makes it impossible to accept it. We are “raised up with Him,” he says, “through the faith of the operation of God who raised Him from among the dead.” We are not raised up then in an ordinance, but “through faith.” The “wherein” may be, and should surely be “in whom;” and we cannot simply take this as what baptism. typifies for us, because the moment we speak of type, it does not require faith to make a type to be such. We could not be raised up typically by faith. One could not say a type was a type through faith. Baptism in itself speaks of immersion, burial.

The word would not convey that of resurrection. The force of the baptism is in the burial and nothing else. The resurrection which is to follow is in Christ and from Him alone. It is thus that we are set free from the thought of deliverance by an ordinance, which so many hold today. We are “raised up through the faith of the operation of God who raised Him from among the dead.” Here we see distinctly what is meant. Resurrection is the opposite of burial. In burial a dead man is put among the dead. In resurrection a now living man is given his place among the living; and it is seen that Christ identified with us through grace in His death has been raised up of God; that we might find, therefore, our own title and ability to take our place amongst those truly alive. But then all depends upon this identification of ourselves with Him.

Our eyes are now, therefore, to be upon Christ. He is in this character our true self; and our confidence, therefore, is to be in Him. As we have had it in Galatians, we live, yet no more we, but Christ liveth in us. It is the One who is before God for us who is before us now in faith and whom we accept as now our true self, a self in whom we can have confidence, a self that we can contemplate with joy and satisfaction, and without the least tendency to such pride of heart as results naturally from what we call. self-occupation. Here is One who will draw us away from self, who will, as a heavenly Object draw us completely out of the world, and accomplish our deliverance in both senses at the same time. But he has another side now to present to us; and here we touch Ephesian truth, as before, that of Romans. “You,” he says, “being dead in offences and in the uncircumcision of your flesh,” not as living then, but as dead for God, having absolutely nothing that He could accept, nothing that is towards Him in your natural condition, “He has quickened together with Him.” Here is a change of condition as well as the change of position spoken of before, We have got life, a new life, a life which has come to us through Christ’s death, and which is the result of divine power working towards us in Him. With this, therefore, we have the forgiveness of all offences. Nothing could be allowed to mar the perfection of that work for us or of its fruit in us. There could be no quickening without forgiveness, as its necessary accompaniment. As a consequence, therefore, the “handwriting in ordinances” which stood against us, which was contrary to us, He has taken out of the way. It is not the law itself of which he is speaking, but of our obligation to it. This is what the “handwriting” means, and. this is what is effaced for us, it being nailed to the cross.

The law is not dead, as we have seen in Romans, but we have died to it. It is stated here in another way, but the same thing in effect. With this power of condemnation cancelled for us, authorities and powers, (all the power of Satan which could work in sinful men,) are also set aside. Christ has made a show of them openly, leading captivity captive, triumphing over them by His cross. 4. The apostle warns them now that they must hold fast the Head, and for this give up the ordinances of the law and all else which would prevent their drawing absolutely out of the fulness which they had in Christ. No one was to be judged with regard to meat or drink, feasts, new moons or sabbaths. All these things necessarily went with the obligation to ordinances. They were in themselves simply a shadow of the things to come. The body, that is, the substance of them, was in Christ.

Christians were not to do their own will in that which looked indeed like humility, as in the worship of angels, but which was, after all, an intrusion into things unseen, and the result of pride instead of humility, while it forfeited the blessing which was to be enjoyed alone through Christ; from whom all the body ministered to and joined together by joints and bands increases with the increase of God. Christians are themselves to be as Christ Himself was, like “a root out of a dry ground,” maintained by sustenance from heaven, divine sustenance alone, as he says here. They have died with Christ out of the world and therefore out of that which belongs to it. To subject themselves to ordinances, was to take a position contradictory of this. Like the legal institutions themselves, they could only deal with things from the outside, prohibit touch and taste and what not, things which appear, as we know, wise enough, but which ignore altogether that which is God’s only remedy for the evil in man, which is a new creation. Such will-worship will indeed always have an appearance of wisdom and of humility too; and an ascetic treatment of the body will be held as a proof of zeal and devotedness.

God has no pleasure in such things. The body, indwelt of the Holy Spirit, is to be held on that account in a certain honor, while the pride of man could be satisfied with that which, if it disregarded the body, built up the flesh.