Colossians 2

Colossians 2:1

I mention these my earnest endeavours to present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, to make you sensible of my great care and fervent prayers for you and your neighbours of Laodicea, and others who never had an opportunity of attending on, or being profited by, my ministrations

Colossians 2:2

That their hearts may be abundantly filled with divine consolation, as believers who are closely and firmly cemented together in the most cordial affection to Christ and to one another, and are thoroughly united in their endeavours for attaining a distinct, clear, and complete, acquaintance with the gospel plan of salvation, in all its riches of spiritual and eternal blessings; unto the entire satisfaction of their souls, and their making an honourable, steady, and public, profession of those deep things of it, which were from all eternity designed and prepared in the gracious counsels of God the Father, and are purchased, revealed, and bestowed, by our Lord Jesus Christ, as the great Mediator between God and man

Colossians 2:3

In which mystery of the gospel, and especially in which Christ, are secretly, safely, and incomprehensibly, laid up and contained all the inexhaustible treasures of wisdom and knowledge, for managing all the affairs of providence and grace, and for manifesting the whole will of God as to our salvation, and seasonably supplying our wants, enlightening our minds, and safely directing our steps to the heavenly glory

Colossians 2:4

And I would lead you to consider this inexhaustible fulness of wisdom and knowledge, laid up for you in Christ and the gospel, in order to prevent your being seduced from him and his truths by pretenders to Heathen philosophy and Jewish learning

Colossians 2:5

For though in bodily presence I am, and always have been, absent from you, yet my heart is with you, delightfully reflecting on what I have heard of your faith, love, and hope; and, through the suggestions of God’s Spirit, I have a view of your rich attainments and diversified trials; and am affected as if I were present among you, rejoicing in your orderly behaviour and regular discipline, and in your firm, solid, and steady, adherence of faith to the person, mediation, and doctrines, of Christ, notwithstanding all the artifices which have been used to corrupt your minds and draw you off from him

Colossians 2:6

As therefore ye have, by faith, received the Lord Jesus Christ in his person and offices, as your Prophet, to instruct you;—your Priest, to make atonement and intercede for you;—and your King, to defend, rule, and govern, you;—be careful, by virtue of union to and gracious influence from him, to cleave to him with full purpose of heart, and to walk in a daily exercise of faith on him, and in a constant observation of all his ordinances and commandments, answerably to your profession of and relation to him, 7. As trees of righteousness, being rooted in and fastening on him, to keep you fixed and immoveable, and drawing nourishment from him for your spiritual growth;—and as a spiritual house, being built upon him, and closely united to him, as the only foundation of your faith and hope, security, and salvation;—that ye may be confirmed in the doctrine and grace of faith in him, as ye have heard by the ministry of Epaphras; and may exceedingly abound in the daily increase of knowledge, faith, and every other grace, with enlarged thankfulness and praise to the author and finisher of all that concerns you

Colossians 2:8

Take heed, lest seducers make a prey of you, and draw you off from Christ and his pure gospel, and rob you of its privileges and blessings, through the subtitities and corruptions of Heathen philosophy, Jewish traditions, or the observation of Mosaic ceremonies; none of which things are, according to the mind and will of Christ, revealed in the gospel, nor do any of them, as now urged and observed, lead your soul to him only for salvation, who alone hath an all-sufficiency for it in himself

Colossians 2:9

For all the perfections of the Godhead, in their utmost fulness, for ever and substantially abide and dwell in his incarnate person, or temple of his manhood, in a personal and infinitely more glorious manner than ever JERONAH dwelt in the Jewish tabernacle or temple

Colossians 2:10

And ye, who have received him by faith, and are united to him as members of his mystical body, have all your defects made up, and all your securities or blessings completed in him as your Head, made of God to you wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; who, answerably to the infinite dignity of his divine person, is, in his office capacity, exalted to be the sovereign Ruler of all ranks of angels or men, good or bad

Colossians 2:11

In him therefore ye are so complete as to have no need of ceremonial circumcision, as Judaizing teachers pretend, being spiritually circumcised by the Holy Ghost, who hath renewed your heart, and cu 4 off your whole system of inward corruption, removing the guilt, power, and defilement, of it, not by any human influences, but merely by the cleansing and sanctifying operation of Jesus Christ: 12. And in that baptism, which Christ hath instituted in the room of circumcision, ye have received the sign of, and obligation to, that holiness which is, or ought to be, in you as God’s covenant people; and have had represented, sealed, and applied to you a certain and continued death to sin and a quickening and resurrection to a life of holiness, in conformity to, and by virtue derived from, his death and resurrection, through that faith which has been wrought in your hearts by the same almighty influence by which God raised up Christ from the dead, and will, by virtue of his resurrection, at last raise you up to eternal life

Colossians 2:13

And you—who, in your sinful unregenerate state, were dead in law, laying under a just sentence of condemnation—and dead to God and every thing spiritually good, lying under the power and filth of your inward corruptions, which circumcision anciently signified—hath God now raised up to a new life of grace and holiness, in order to a heavenly life of glory and blessedness together with Christ as your Pattern and Head of influence,—having, on account of his righteousness imputed, freely pardoned to each of you all your iniquities, original and actual, lesser or greater, and given you a full and irrevocable title to eternal life

Colossians 2:14

Blotting out, as it were, all our transgressions by the blood of his Son, and thereby disannulling that federal or ceremonial obligation to punishment on account of them, which testified that we were transgressors, and which separated the Gentiles from the church and privileges of the Jews, and was the cause of much enmity between them,—and by his death entirely removing and utterly destroying it, that it might never be produced in judgment against us

Colossians 2:15

And having, by his full satisfaction to law and justice, disarmed Satan and all his subordinate ranks of apostate angels of their power, which arises from the curse of the law, he exposed them to open contempt in the view of all the holy angels, and triumphed over them as his conquered foes

Colossians 2:16

Since therefore believing Gentiles as well as Jews are complete in Christ, and the handwriting of ordinances, contrary to both, is cancelled, let none pretend that the non-observance of ceremonial ordinances, relating to meats and drinks, or to their annual or monthly festivals, or even the Jewish seventh day sabbath, can hinder your spiritual or eternal happiness; or, if they do, regard them not: 17. For the whole of these observances, required by the ceremonial law, were but merely shadows and figures of the good things which were to come under the gospel; but the truth, reality, or substance, represented by them, is brought in by Christ, and to be found in him

Colossians 2:18

And since he, in whom ye are complete, is the Head of all principality and power, let no one, whether Jewish zealot or Gentile philosopher, deprive you of your spiritual comfort or eternal glory, or lead you out of the way to it, seducing you to adopt human inventions in the worship of God, or to worship angels good or bad as mediators between God and men,—through the pride of their corrupt hearts, pretending uncommon insight into the things of God, and attempting to pry into what he never revealed

Colossians 2:19

Adopting these corruptions of worship, to the great dishonour of Jesus Christ, and rejecting, instead of laying hold on, adhering to, and by faith trusting in, him alone, as the only and all-sufficient Mediator and Advocate, to recommend them and their prayers to the acceptance of God,—and joining creatures in honour with him, who is the Head of angels, good or bad, and of every other creature, and who is the Representative, and the vital as well as governing Head of his church, from whom all her true members, deriving spiritual nourishment, are united to him, and to one another, by his Spirit, and by faith, love, and religious ordinances,—and do, by virtue derived from God, increase in light and grace, comfort, holiness, and strength, and in good works, according to his will, and for his glory

Colossians 2:20-23

If then, according to the meaning of your baptism, ye, by virtue of union with Christ, and by communion with him in his death, are fully discharged from the moral law as a covenant, and from the obligations of the ceremonial law, why, as if ye were merely carnal men, and lived under a carnal dispensation, do ye, from regard to human imposition, submit yourselves to any of the legal ordinances, which prohibit the touching or eating of meats, once ceremonially unclean, but now allowed for men’s perishing provision, as things that cannot defile their soul?—These human injunctions, relative to the service of God or mortification of our body, beyond what he has prescribed, have nothing worthy in themselves, or honourable to him, but are a mere shadow of wisdom or humility, and are really calculated to cultivate and please the false taste of men of corrupt minds

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. II.—It is God’s will, and his ministers care, that the saints be united, comforted, and daily increase, in knowledge, faith, and holy order; and that, having received Jesus Christ in all his offices as an all-supplying fountain, they should walk in him with the most steady faith, love, holy obedience, and cordial thanksgiving. Christians have need to beware of carnal wisdom and plausible errors. And it is absurd to forsake Christ or his gospel for any thing else, when he has such fulness of Godhead and of new covenant blessings, and renders us complete in himself. Thrice happy are they who, being quickened by his Spirit, renewed in their hearts, delivered from the broken law, reconciled to God, and made triumphant over devils, derive all necessary and nourishing influences from him as their Representative, vital Head, and gracious Governor. Rich is the mercy that, through his incarnation, obedience, and death, we are delivered from sin, from curses, from devils, from death and hell, and from all the dark and burdensome rites of the Jewish dispensation. And it is absurd for such as the Lord has thus freed to retain those rites, or add others, in the worship of God, as if such things could render us acceptable in his sight