Bible Study from July 20, 2020 - Colossians 2:16-23 Part 4

This week’s study begins with a reminder that the freedom we have under the New Covenant does not forbid having traditions and seasons and festivals and worship days. We certainly have those in the Lutheran church because we feel they are helpful in teaching about the life and work of Christ our Savior, in the first half of the church year from late November to early June. Jesus is at the center of our faith, and we want to keep learning of Him and His Word and then, in the second half of the church year, in the Trinity/Pentecost season, thinking about how we can respond in faith and in service to others by God’s grace. We see real value in this time tested way of worship, based on God’s Word. At the same time, we cannot insist that everyone must follow our ways and patterns about this; nor should others condemn our way of worship. See Colossians 2:16-17.

 

We then moved on to Colossians 2:18, where Paul tells us not to let others “disqualify” us by insisting that we follow other ways and rules that pull us away from Christ. We have heard in Colossians 1:12-14 that God the Father has already “qualified” us for our eternal inheritance through what Jesus has done for us. In Colossians 2:18, Paul uses a word that refers to athletic events or contests, where an umpire or referee could disqualify people who were breaking the rules of the game or sport. Paul does not want us to think we can be spiritually disqualified by failing to keep an additional set of man-made rules being pushed by the false teachers at Colossae or by others. Note that the list Paul gives has to do with what some say we need to be doing to make ourselves acceptable and worthy in God’s eyes. Paul emphasizes what Jesus already has done for us - not what we do. Certainly God has clear Biblical standards for us - the Law of God. We try to follow the Law; but keeping the Law  is never what saves us. We fall short of God’s will. and it only the grace and mercy of God, in Christ, that saves us (Romans 3:20-24).

 

Paul first mentions the insistence by some that we must live an ascetic life. Literally, Paul calls it a lowly, humble life - but he means a false humility that focuses on self-denial and even being harsh to one’s own body, by beating or harming our bodies. See what Paul says in Colossians 2:20-23. Such things may look impressive, because of their harshness and rigid rules; but they do not help us in our life with God and are human ideas, not God’s. Martin Luther tried such things as a monk and found they did not work in drawing him closer to God. Neither do they work in groups like the Catholic Opus Dei and many others, who often include in self-denial, all kinds of man-made rules about what we can’t eat or drink, etc.

 

Paul then mentions “worship of angels” (Colossians 2:18). Angels are simply beings created by God to serve Him and help others. Some angels rebelled against God, not happy to be His servants. They are the devil and all the evil spirits we hear about in the Bible. The proper work and relationship of the good angels to God is described in Hebrews 1, in passages like 1:4-7 and especially 1:13-14, where angels serve us, on behalf of God. Only God is to be worshipped, though, as Jesus makes clear in Matthew 4:9-10, when the evil angel, the devil, tried to get Jesus to worship him. Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6:13-14. This is still a temptation today, as Satan still tries to get us to follow him instead of God; and some have a fascination with angels, and have ideas about them that are far from Scripture - for example, the idea that people become angels when they die. Here again is also where some go wrong in worrying about so-called spirits of the dead and trying to contact them to get information or appease them and keep them happy, so that we are not harmed.

 

There was also a false religious philosophy that was probably already around in Paul’s day and developed more fully in the second century, called Gnosticism. It was the idea that “God” was so great and distant and far away that no one could reach him directly. You could only reach God indirectly through intermediary beings like angels; and you needed special secret knowledge (Gnostic ideas) to be able to make these contacts. Angels were almost like semi-gods, coming out from God, in this false view. It may be that Paul is warning about this sort of false thinking, too. (We know, of course, that we can reach God directly in prayer and can know what we need to know through Jesus and the Word of God, the Scriptures.)

Paul also warns about people who claim to have special visions and messages from God and may be very “puffed up” in their own minds about this special knowledge. There are many warnings, in both the Old and New Testaments, about such claims. See Jeremiah 23:25-28, Ezekiel 13:11, and 1 Timothy 1: 5-11, as examples. We should compare any such claims with what we know is a message from God - the Scriptures. Paul uses the same Greek word for being “puffed up” a number of times in 1 Corinthians, too, where it is often translated as being “arrogant." See 1 Corinthians 4:6,11,19; 5:2; 8:1; and 13:4. In all this, Paul is warning us not to follow people who are focused on their own ideas and “sensuous minds” - literally, a mind of the (sinful) flesh.

 

All of these false ideas pull us away from Christ, the Head of His body, the church. Only Christ and His Word can help us grow as we should (Colossians 1:19). That is why we keep studying the Scriptures and are having this study today, too!