Colossians
2
New
American Standard Bible (NASB)
You
Are Built Up in Christ
2
For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those
who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, 2
that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and
attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding,
resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, 3 in
whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this so that
no one will delude you with persuasive argument. 5 For even though I am absent
in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good
discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.
6
Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 having
been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith,
just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
8
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception,
according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of
the world, rather than according to Christ. 9 For in Him all the fullness of
Deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He
is the head over all rule and authority; 11 and in Him you were also
circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body
of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with Him in
baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working
of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your
transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together
with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 having cancelled out
the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to
us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 When
He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them,
having triumphed over them through Him.
16
Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in
respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day— 17 things which are a
mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no
one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the
worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated
without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from
whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and
ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.
20
If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as
if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, 21
“Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” 22 (which all refer to things
destined to perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings
of men? 23 These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom
in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but
are of no value against fleshly indulgence.
IVP
New Testament Commentary Series
Colossians
2:3ff
Simply
put, spiritual maturity results from knowing Christ. The distinctive emphasis
in this letter on wisdom (1:9, 28; 2:3, 23; 3:16; 4:5), knowledge (1:9-10, 27;
2:2-3; 3:10; 4:7-9) and knowing (1:6; 2:1; 3:24; 4:1, 6, 8), especially linked
to Paul's proclamation of Christ, is no doubt made with Paul's Colossian
opponents in mind. They too are concerned with ideas, but their
"philosophy" is not centered by the teaching of and about Christ
(2:8) and therefore is "hollow and deceptive," incapable of forming
the spiritual life of the Christian congregation (2:6-7).
The
Greek word for live (peripateo) literally means to "walk about."
According to Paul, our trust in the received gospel of God's grace through
Christ results in a "walk about" in him; we become familiar with him
and a part of him. The apostle often sets indicative statements about God's
salvation next to imperative statements about our response to God in order to
show their close, even logical relationship. To embrace the truth about God's
Christ is to live in him.
Our
passage into Christ transforms the way we live. The four participles that
follow in verse 7 express four characteristics of the Christian's "walk
about." Each is stated in the passive voice because each is given by God's
grace rather than acquired by human effort. The first two, rooted and built,
are metaphors of growth, envisaging the dynamic character of Christian nurture,
while the second two, strengthened . . . and overflowing, are metaphors of
worship, envisaging the spiritual results of devotion to God. The two couplets
are naturally related, since the nurture of Christ's community is facilitated
by corporate acts of worship, when it is taught the faith it has received and
offers its thanksgiving to God.
The
verb take captive (sylagogeo) is found only here in the New Testament and
suggests an illegal kidnapping. The word sounds very much like synagogue, and
Wright suggests that Paul intentionally chose this rare word as a
"contemptuous pun" to warn believers not to be taken in by a
philosophy with roots in the esoterica of Colossian Judaism (1987:100). In
addition, Paul may use this verb to recall the conversion motif of 1:13, where
he spoke of salvation as God's rescue operation. The peril of the Colossian
error is thereby highlighted: believers, who are rescued by God's saving grace
from darkness and brought into the light, are now threatened by an enemy that
seeks to recapture them and enslave them once again to the darkness of false
teaching. In fact, the word darkness is used elsewhere as a metaphor of false
teaching that closes the mind to the gospel truth (see Jn 1:5).
To
be taken captive by a philosophy need not mean to accept a form of truth (that
is, "philosophy") that is inherently flawed. Rabbis, for example,
spoke of biblical teaching as "philosophy," because philosophy helped
them organize biblical teaching into coherent and meaningful systems of truth.
Paul himself has nothing against "love of wisdom," which is what
philosophy literally means (compare 1 Cor 1:30). In this letter's opening
thanksgiving, Paul agreed with other ancient philosophers in contending that
"the word of truth" will produce good fruit (1:5-6). Yet now he uses
the word more precisely to denote a system of integrated ideas that is promoted
as gospel truth but whose result is hollow and deceptive—that is, spiritually
useless
Whenever
Christ's lordship over all things pertaining to life and faith is diminished,
the result is stunted spiritual growth that can even imperil one's salvation
(see 1:23). In fact, the practical results of a religious philosophy like that
found at Colosse are a moral asceticism (2:20-23) that actually rejects God's
creation as bad, and a visionary mysticism that replaces life in Christ with
visionary experiences of angel worship (2:18). Such a spirituality makes the
experience of God's liberating grace a real impossibility.
IVP
New Testament Commentaries are made available by the generosity of InterVarsity
Press.
