Fullness of Life in Christ, Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)

Fullness of Life in Christ, Colossians 2:6-19 (2:6-15 [17-19])

Sermon for Hillcrest UMC, July 25, 2010

Hear the Word of the Lord, from Colossians 2:6-19:

6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Warning against False Teaching (the so-called “Colossian Heresy”)

8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; 12 when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14 erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

16 Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. 17 These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.

The Word of the LORD!

Thanks Be to God!

Today’s topic is “Fullness of Life in Christ,” a subheading printed here—between Colossians 2:5 and 6—in some Bibles (NRSV in The HarperCollins Study Bible, rev. ed., 2006, and The Greek New Testament, 3^rd ed., United Bible Societies, 1975). “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord,” says Paul, “continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Col. 2:6-7).This call to live in the fullness of life in Christ comes in contrast to Paul’s warning about false teaching, the so-called “Colossian Heresy.”

Earlier in Colossians, Paul described Christ as

The image of the invisible God, the firstborn (prwtovtokoV, prōtotokos)[1] of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness (plhvrwma, plērōma) of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Col. 1:15-20)

F. F. Bruce has called this passage “one of the great Christological passages of the New Testament (The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, NICNT, 1984, p. 55, on Col. 1:15-20), that is, an important statement about Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. “Here, then,” says Bruce, Christ is presented as the agent of God in the whole range of his gracious purpose toward the human race, from the primeval work of creation, through the redemption accomplished at history’s midpoint, on to the new creation in which the divine purpose will be consummated” (ibid., p. 57).

- - - - - - -

Barbara and I live on a street in the south part of Houston, in a developed subdivision where there are houses next door, so to speak up and down the street on both sides. Sometimes, a street like that will draw door-to-door sales representatives, and sometimes people come wanting to sell certain religious perspectives. We call some of those groups “cults” or “sects.” You perhaps know of some such groups. When I was a student in a Bible College, many years ago, I was enrolled in a class called “Cults.” The class was about several religious groups, some of which were labeled cults and some not. The teacher defined a “cult” as a group whose belief system—their theology—was not correct in their belief about Jesus Christ. By that definition, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were considered a cult, but the Seventh Day Adventists were not. You may know some very fine people who are Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m not condemning them—I would leave any judgment about that to God. I’m merely repeating the example from the class. In another setting, where professors of religious studies were gathering for a professional meeting, I found myself in conversation with professors from different universities. For some reason, I referred to a certain group as a “cult.” I was surprised by the reaction. Ignoring me, they talked with one another about the meaning of “cult.” One of them said, “We prefer to use the term, “marginal religious groups.” Perhaps I misunderstood, but I assumed they meant they would not condemn the views of the “marginal religious groups,” whether followers of Sun Yun Moon, the Branch Davidian followers of David Koresh—Do you remember their camp near Waco, and the confrontation with government authorities in which many died? They would seek to understand them, not condemn them. In spite of that conversation, I still believe correct theology—especially correct Christology, that is, understanding Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, is very important.

The word “cult” comes from a Latin word meaning “worship,” and doesn’t always mean bad or incorrect worship. Biblical scholars sometimes describe the worship and sacrificial system of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, as the Hebrew cult. But, in the modern usage referring to “marginal religious groups,” it’s a good word for what Paul describes in his Letter to the Colossians. “See to it,” he says, “that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). What Paul calls “philosophy” here is not the sort of academic philosophy that is taught in modern universities. That isn’t always good, or correct, either. But what Paul calls a “philosophy” here, he characterizes with a series of instructions.

The reference to rules about food and drink and to observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths sounds very Jewish. But the reference to self-abasement and worship of angels is not Jewish at all. Paul is referring here to a religious movement that has been called the “Colossian Heresy.” It is understood to be a mixture of religious views from different sources, some of the non-Christian mystery religions that flourished in the Greco-Roman world of Paul’s times.

Colossae was about 110 miles east of Ephesus, in the Lycus River valley, one of three towns, including Laodicea and Hierapolis, where Christian churches were established in the first century. One of Paul’s coworkers, Epaphras (Col. 1:7), founded the church in Colossae. Paul himself had not been there. He was in prison when he wrote to the Colossians, probably about A.D. 60. Soon after he wrote—or perhaps before he wrote, but unknown to him—the city was destroyed by an earthquake. But clearly, his letter reached people of that region. Christianity survived in Laodicea and Hierapolis.

As in many parts of the Roman Empire, there were Jewish settlers in that region. Apparently a religious movement developed in that region as a mixture of Jewish and of pagan religious elements. So Paul warns his readers against the so-called “Colossian heresy,” not heretical beliefs of the Colossian Christians themselves, but a kind of religious movement or teaching to which they were exposed. “See to it,” says Paul, “that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8). As we said earlier, what he calls “philosophy” here, would be better described as a “cult.” Commenting on the term “philosophy” here, Jennifer K Berenson Maclean says it “includes ethical and religious teachings” (NOAB, 3rd ed., augmented, 2007, on Col. 2:8). But the reference to “elemental spirits” of the universe, she adds, refers to “spiritual entities or perhaps the four primal elements” [earth, air, fire and water], which she says are “associated with the Jewish law (Gal. 4:1-5, 9-10)” (ibid.). Various forms of “sophistry” and misuses of “philosophy” were prevalent at the time, and may well have been an aspect of the views Paul warns against. He emphasizes the complete adequacy of Christ, “in [whom] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (v. 9). According to J. Paul Sampley, the “fullness of God that dwells in Christ (reaffirmed in 2:9; see also Eph. 1:23; 4:10; cf. Jn. 1:16) is available in him for all believers (see 2:10 [where this is cross referenced])” (HarperCollins Study Bible, rev. ed., 2006, on Col. 1:19). “You [Colossian believers] have come to fullness in him [i.e., in Christ],” says Paul, “who is the head of every ruler and authority” (v. 10). The Colossian believers “were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ” (v. 11). This happened, he says, because “when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead” (v. 12). In Romans, Paul says,

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4).

Because their salvation in Christ is thus definitive and complete, the Colossians are not to submit to any superfluous regulations. “Therefore,” says Paul, “do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths” (v. 16). The religious movement against which Paul warns, apparently had regulations and requirements about these things. While regulations about food and references to “festivals, new moons, or sabbaths” might remind us of Judaism, the ascetic practice of “self-abasement” and the “worship of angels” does not; rather, these things suggest a religious movement that combined aspects of Judaism with other religious views. These,” says Paul, referring to the regulations, “are only a shadow (skiav, skia) of what is to come, but the substance (sw:ma, sÇma) belongs to Christ” (v. 17; cf. Heb. 10:1). While sw:ma (sÇma), “body” has such extended meanings as “corpse” or, plural, even “slaves,” Danker defines it here as “the real thing in contrast to shadow” (op. cit., s.v. sw:ma, sÇma). “Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God” (vv. 18-19)

The chapter closes with a further warning not to associate with the religious movement–the “Colossian heresy”–that Paul has been describing. “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe,” asks Paul, “why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’?” (vv. 20-21).

AMEN

RETURN

[1] According to Bruce, “Christ, in addition to being the image of God, is the ‘firstborn of all creation’—or, as it is rendered above, ‘firstborn before all creation.’. . . This cannot be construed as though he himself were the first of all beings to be created. On the contrary , it is emphasized immediately that he is the one by whom the whole creation came into being. What is meant is that the Son of God, existing as he did ‘before all things’ (v. 17), exercises the privilege of primogeniture as Lord of creation, the divinely appointed ‘heir of all things’ (Heb. 1:2). He was there when creation’s work began, and it was for him as well as through him that it was completed” (ibid., pp. 58-59, on Col. 1:15).