Colossians 2:13-23

11/18/10
Colossians 2:13-23
Expository Preaching

In our passage from last week, we explored the absolutely central place that Christ is to have in our faith. Any attempt to try to “get behind” Christ, to try to find a different or a presumably “better” way to God that somehow bypasses Christ, is harmful to our Christian lives. We saw that, in the Colossian church, this took a Jewish and a Gentile form, which were equally problematic. The big focus was on the fact that Jesus is the answer, completely and in every way.

The question that might have arisen in your mind is, “How does this fact, that it is Jesus, and not the other things we try to put in his place, that is the answer, impact our daily lives?” The reason why the answer to that question was not the main emphasis of the sermon last time is because it is the dominant concern in the second half of chapter two.

There seems to have been something of a revival of ancient Jewish practices in Colossae, where the people took on distinctively Jewish lifestyles, including a particular diet and observing the Jewish festivals. It is not hard to imagine that, while a portion of the Colossian Christian community was insisting on this way of life and another portion was not, tensions arose in their midst. One side would condemn the other for insisting on such distinctively Jewish practices while second group would condemn the first for not following those practices.

Paul’s advice is that they drop the whole argument. “Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths.” This rejection of condemnation is not directed against just one of the two factions, but against both of them. If you only eat or drink certain things and observe the Jewish festivals, do not let someone else condemn you for doing so. It is important that we notice, though, that by saying this, Paul is not aligning himself with one side or the other, because he is also saying that, if you do not keep kosher or keep the Jewish festivals, do not let someone else condemn you for it.

In our increasingly polarized culture, it may be hard for us to understand how Paul could look at these two options, which seem to be the only real alternatives and refuse to take align himself with either of them. And yet, this is precisely what he does. The reason he can do so is because he does not believe that either of them really strikes to the core of our existence as Christians. “These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” Once again, reinforcing what he has just said, Paul insists that, at the end of the day, Jesus is what matters, so everything else must be marginalized. Scottish theologian Thomas F. Torrance put it so well. “In the great hierarchy of truths, to be absolutely related to what is of permanent and paramount importance in the center, carries with it a requirement for us to be only relatively related to everything else” (Reality and Scientific Theology, 157).

Paul continues on and spends two verses giving some more examples of ways that people need to resist the condemnation of others and persist in clinging to Christ and Christ alone. “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.” Again, Paul’s point here is that Christ is at the center and, because that is the case, we must not allow ourselves to be disqualified by others because of peripheral things. However, let us go on and consider Paul’s pointed conclusion to this argument.

“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, 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?’ All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.”

I have to imagine that these words would probably have elicited an uproar among many people. Is it really true that regulations that restrict what we touch and eat are of no value for checking self-indulgence? Is not one of the reasons why we set restrictions on ourselves to make us constantly aware of what we do and, thus, help prevent us from engaging in self-indulging behavior? Paul asserts that these regulations are not intrinsically helpful. At best, they are “human commands and teachings” that refer to things that are passing away.

Paul will grant that these regulations have “an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body.” Indeed, it is precisely this appearance of usefulness that makes them all the more dangerous. Just like Paul said earlier in this chapter, the danger is not that we would do things that are clearly foolish, but that we would substitute something for Christ that seems good; that’s why he said that he was concerned that the Colossians would be deceived “with plausible arguments.” In spite of the fact that these kinds of regulations seem to be good, in spite of the fact that they have a tradition of being useful, independent of Christ, they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.

Are there any parallels in our contemporary world to the issues in Colossae that Paul points out here? Paul is speaking out against any tendency to substitute another set of ideas or practices for Christ. Surely we do not have to look very far to find things that people have substituted for Christ. In the conservative direction, we see that there are those who place the Bible as a text in the central place in their lives instead of Christ. The argument is, “The Bible is how we learn about Jesus, so it must be good.” In the liberal direction, we see that there are those who substitute social justice and acts of mercy for Christ. Their argument is, “Jesus showed us that we ought to care for the poor and love one another, so it must be good.”

As shocking as it may sound, I believe that these, too, are things that “have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.” How is that, you might ask. In the first case, the passion for the written form of God’s word can very easily become collapsed into the following of rules for rules’ sake. We place the Bible as our authority, not because it bears witness to the greater authority of Christ, but because we have simply decided that this ancient text that has been authoritative over so many should be authoritative over us, too. It is easy to try and reduce everything that God has done into explicit statements and lose sight of the powerful, dynamic and personal nature of God’s work among us and in us . Christ can have nothing to say about how we interpret the Bible because we only care about Christ because he is one of the things taught about in the Bible. However, we must always remember that it is with Christ that we died to the ways of the world, not with a book, even one so unique as the Bible.

In the second case, it is very easy to place our trust, not in what Christ has done independently of us, but in our ability to do the same kinds of things that Jesus did. Immediately, when our acts of justice take the central place, Christ becomes nothing more than the example of good behavior. Good deeds become virtuous in themselves and we quickly begin to wonder, “Why is Jesus special? After all, many people have done good deeds and cared for people. If it is the good deeds that count, why be dogmatic about faith in Christ?” By what standard can we decide what qualifies as social justice or good deeds? Christ can no longer be our criterion because we only care about Christ because he was so good at being good, not because he is truly the controlling center of all our thoughts and actions.

The ultimate lesson to learn from Paul’s critique is that it is very easy to trust in something, anything other than Christ; it is easy to forget that by making anything other than Christ the basis of our decisions is to make Christ not that basis, in spite of all our best intentions.

When we think about all the ways that we can go wrong and indeed, of all the ways that we have gone wrong at one point or another in our lives, it can be tempting to become depressed. After all, if the arguments that distract us are plausible and if the practices that we are tempted to engage in have the appearance of wisdom in promoting all kinds of good things, how can we be set on the right foundation? Here, once again, Paul reminds the Colossians of their history with God. They did not just subscribe to a particular set of views and values; they did not simply have an emotional experience, but they have “died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the universe.” Their life as they know it has changed, they are no longer a part of the world in the same way that they used to be.

Let us, at this point, remember the very first words of this passage. “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, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.” The grace of God does not come to any of us after we have changed our lives or after we have gotten our act together, or even after we have allowed Christ to be the center of our lives. No, God’s grace always comes before; God always moves first.

So, in spite of our past failures and our tendency to take our eyes off Christ, let us trust that God is fully revealed to us in Christ and nowhere else. Just as we do not have to look behind Christ’s back to find God but see God when we see Christ, we do not need to substitute an ideology of our own making, but can trust that following Christ and Christ alone will keep us from presumption. As Paul said to the Romans, “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.