Colossians 2

Colossians — Steve Gregg

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Colossians 2

ColossiansSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg offers insights on the book of Colossians, highlighting the complex concept of Christ indwelling believers and the need for a full understanding of the mystery of God. He emphasizes that the New Age movement's pursuit of hidden spiritual knowledge falls short of the true revelation found in Christ. Gregg explores the metaphors of Christians as plants and buildings, encouraging believers to walk in the Spirit and maintain a vibrant relationship with God. He addresses the danger of being influenced by rituals and ceremonial practices, emphasizing that true growth comes from a deepening connection with Jesus.

Transcript

Let's turn to the second chapter of the book of Colossians. In the first chapter, which has taken us many sections to get through, it's a lot like the first chapter of Ephesians. Even as the whole book of Colossians has many resemblances to the book of Ephesians, the first chapter has this in common with the first chapter of Ephesians in that both of them take me forever to get through when I'm teaching.

Because they are thick with theological nuances and things that I just cannot resist the temptation to go off on, you know, and that's what I do. Now, we're getting perhaps a hope beyond that section so that we won't get bogged down quite so much in the chapters that remain. And in chapter 2, Paul gets a little more personal.

He wants the Colossians not just to know this theological stuff, he wants them to know where his heart sat with reference to his concern for them. Now, these are Christians that he doesn't know personally. Most of Paul's epistles are written to churches that he personally established by his own preaching and where he did some ministry and where he had personal friends.

In fact, where everyone in the church were his personal friends. But on occasion, only rarely do we have an epistle that Paul writes to Christians that he has only heard about. The book, the Epistle to the Romans is one of those.

He had never been to Rome when he wrote the Epistle to the Roman Church. And he had never, as far as we know, been to Colossae when he wrote this epistle. And he said, for I want you to know what a great conflict or concern I have for you and those in Laodicea and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.

Now, the way that's worded, there could be three different categories of people he's talking about. Those in Colossae, those in Laodicea, and a third category, those who've never seen him. If that's how that sentence is constructed, then it would suggest that those in Colossae and those in Laodicea were not among those who had not seen him.

But that was a third category. And there are some commentators who've understood it that way, that the people in Laodicea had seen Paul, the people in Colossae had seen Paul, but there's another category, those who have never seen his face in the flesh. But the vast majority of commentators feel that the sentence is structured and the other evidence in the epistle leans toward the conclusion that the people of Laodicea and Colossae are those who, and others like them, had never seen Paul.

That seems to be implied in chapter 1, verse 7, when he's talking to them about what he knows about their spiritual lives. And he says, as you also learned from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and who declared to us your love in the spirit. That could just mean that he received his most recent awareness of their activities through Epaphras, but commentators generally lean toward the view that he's saying that he only knows about these people by reputation because his associate Epaphras had been there, had evangelized the city, had established the church, and had now come back to where Paul was imprisoned in Rome and given him a report about them.

So, all I can say is the vast majority of scholars have felt that this is a church Paul never visited, and verses like chapter 1, verse 8, and chapter 2, verse 1 are the verses they base it on. As you can see, they don't quite say that that clearly, but that is the general sense that students of this book have generally gotten, whether accurate or not. Now, he says that he has a conflict in himself, that is, there's a churning, a concern in his heart.

He's not completely at ease about this church. Now, all he's told us about the church before this is very positive. Nothing bad has been said.

As a matter of fact, he says in verse 4 of chapter 1, he heard of their faith in Christ and their love for all the saints. In verse 8, he says that that love was love in the spirit, it wasn't fleshly love, it was a spiritual fruit. He says that in verse 6, that as the gospel had come to them, it was bringing forth fruit in them, and he gave thanks for that.

So, I mean, good things were happening in this church, but he still has a bit of a... he's ill at ease about them. There's a conflict going on in them, in him, about them. And the reason is because he's never had direct contact with them, he doesn't feel like he completely has, I think, his finger on the pulse of exactly how things are in their environment, spiritually speaking.

The things he goes on to talk about in this chapter suggest that he is aware of dangers to the church of a theological sort. We'll see what those are as we read on in the chapter. But they are the dangers of false teaching, which could spoil them.

As he says later on in verse 8, beware lest anyone cheat you. I think the King James says spoil. He says, beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit.

And later on in the chapter, he names some of the things that they should watch out for. So, this is probably the basis for the conflict inside him. On one hand, he's rejoicing that they're doing well.

On the other hand, he sees wolves surrounding the flock and ready to close in. And he wants to warn them and forearm them against this danger of heresy. Now, he says his conflict is that their hearts, verse 2, may be encouraged, be knit together in love and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ.

Now, he has been talking to them about the mystery in the previous chapter. In fact, just a few verses earlier at the end of chapter 1, in verse 26, he says, the mystery, which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints, to them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among you Gentiles, which is, that is, the mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, what does that mean, Christ in you, the hope of glory? Well, that's not something all that easily grasped.

Now, you might say, I got no problem. When I was a little kid, they said Jesus was knocking at the door of my house, my heart, and I opened my door and Jesus came in and Jesus in me. That's easy to understand.

Only problem is that's probably not what Paul had in mind since that's not taught in scripture. The Bible nowhere talks about Jesus knocking on the door of anyone's heart or of anyone asking Jesus into their heart. These are terms not found in scripture, nor as far as I know is the concept found in scripture.

Jesus said in John chapter 14, verse 21, he that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me and I will love him, my father will love him, and we will come and make our home with him. Nothing there about asking Jesus into your heart is a matter of knowing what he commanded and doing it. And if you do that, you show that you love him, and if you love him, he'll come and he'll feel at home in you.

So the Bible does teach that Christ dwells in us, but the concept of Christ indwelling us is not at all one that is easily grasped with the natural mind so that Paul is concerned that they may come to a full assurance of understanding and to the knowledge of this mystery of God. Paul actually prays over in Ephesians chapter one that this, that God will have to give them revelation of this thing that is our experience in Christ. Over in Ephesians chapter one, among the things that he prays for them is that they will, that they'll receive revelation, the spirit of revelation in the knowledge of him.

He says in verse 17 that he prays in Ephesians 1, 17, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe. These are things that Paul figures that you can't grasp them with the mind entirely. I mean, you can learn the theology about, you can learn the doctrine of the power of God, or you can learn the doctrine of the hope of the Christian, or you can learn the doctrine about the glory of the inheritance.

But apparently Paul, if he thought that that was enough, he'd just kind of lay it out and spell it out and say, there you go. Instead, he prays that God will open the eyes of their understanding, that he'll give them the spirit of revelation in the knowledge of him, apparently because he considers those things necessary to really grasp these concepts. These are spiritual concepts.

And it says in, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14, I believe it is, he says, the natural man cannot receive the things of the spirit of God, their foolishness to him because they are spiritually discerned. I think we've labored under the assumption too much that the things of God can simply be grasped and understood to the mind if we simply have clear enough teaching on the subject. But Paul was certainly capable of giving clear teaching, but he was not confident that his words alone could convey this enlightenment, this awareness, this revelation.

You know, when Peter first heard about Jesus, do you recall when that was? That was in John chapter one. His brother Andrew encountered Jesus first and ran off to find Peter, his brother, and said, we have found him of whom the prophets spoke. We found Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Messiah.

And so Peter heard from his brother that Jesus was the Messiah and the hope of Israel and all that. Later, much later, years later, Jesus, after Peter had become one of the apostles, Jesus said to the disciples that says, who do men say that I am? And Peter said, you're the Messiah. You're the son of the living God.

Actually, the same things that Andrew had said to him years earlier before he even met Jesus. But Jesus said, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. That's an interesting thing to say.

His brother was flesh and blood. His brother had told him these very things years ago. But Jesus said, you didn't get this revealed to you by flesh and blood.

This is revealed to you by my father. Which means that additional to hearing it from a man, he had to get it from God. It had to be revealed to him by the father.

In other words, Christianity doesn't just boil down to learning theological concepts so that we can regurgitate them like a parrot and say, I understand this now. I know this now. What Paul assumed is that the spiritual reality of Christianity requires spiritual revelation to appreciate.

Even this mystery of Christ in you, the hope of glory, he's concerned that they would come to a full assurance of understanding to the knowledge of this mystery of God. He was not at all convinced that his simply mentioning it or explaining it would do the whole job. You can hear, you can sit in a room full of people and all hear the same things and some people can get it and other people don't get it.

Why? Well, there may be many factors. You might be asleep for one thing and you didn't get it. But if you're awake, you still might not get it.

And it may be because the Holy Spirit hasn't enlivened it to you, quickened it is the old English word. The Holy Spirit hasn't revealed it to you. But we need that.

Paul's prayers for the church is that God would reveal these things to him. Paul obviously had it revealed to him. It was the mystery that was revealed to him as one of the apostles and prophets, which was not revealed to the sons of men of earlier times.

And it revolutionized his whole life. It changed his whole perception of religion. And he was a religious man before he knew Jesus.

He was as religious as any Jew he ever knew. But that wasn't good enough. He had to have the revelation from Jesus.

And that's what he desired. That's what he prayed for. That's what he labored toward.

That's what he urged the believers that he wrote to, to seek and to obtain. And I would tell you, I spent the first 12 years of my Christian life when I was a kid and up until I was about 16, knowing Christian theology better than most. As a matter of fact, I preached.

I was leader of the youth group in my junior high and teenage, in high school years in the church I was in. Conservative, you know, Orthodox Christian. And I was better educated in the Bible than almost anyone else in our youth group.

I think they would, they said the same thing. They knew it. That's why they always made me the leader.

But I didn't know God. Not in the sense that I talk about knowing God today. I can remember distinctly when I passed into that other dimension.

I'm not talking about some spooky mystical thing. I'm just saying the very thing that's normative to Christianity. I assumed my experience before that time was normative.

Because I was taught you believe these things, you confess these things, you adhere to these things and you're a Christian. And something that took me years to ever discover was maybe so. Maybe I was a Christian.

I don't really know how to evaluate those years. I mean, I certainly was a believer, but I didn't know God as I came to. In the sense that there was a revelation to my heart spiritually that the presence of God in my life was not simply a theological proposition that I agreed with.

It was a reality that I knew. And so, I mean, when I hear Paul talking about, I hope you people will get the revelation. In my own experience, I feel like, boy, that's a frustrating thing to a preacher.

To know that he's telling them all the things, the hearing of which could bring them into the reality, but might not. Because there's limits to what a preacher can do with words. And the Holy Spirit has to give the revelation of the spiritual life, of the reality, Christ in you.

And you in Christ. That's a spiritual concept too. And the natural man can't receive things.

They have to be spiritually discerned. That's a work of the Holy Spirit. So, all Paul can do is say it and pray that they'll get it.

And hopefully they did. What else? Verse 3. In whom, meaning in Christ, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now, if Paul's concern was about the Gnostic heresy, which we know there are some elements of that he alludes to in this book, then this reference to all the riches of wisdom and knowledge would be particularly poignant because the Gnostic heresy was about knowledge.

It comes from the word gnosko, knowledge, to know. And they were called the Gnostics because they claimed to know, in fact, they claimed to have revelation of spiritual mysteries. The Gnostics are still here.

We just call it the New Age movement. But they have, like some of the things going on in Colossians, there's other elements. There's elements of Judeo-Christianity.

There's elements of Greek philosophy. There's elements of Oriental mysticism and occultism, all kind of mixed up into one pot. And we call it the New Age movement.

I don't know what they called it back then, but it was there in Colossians too. And it's the Gnostic aspect especially. A lot of people are vaguely New Age in their general approach to things, but people who are really into it get into the spiritual aspects of getting enlightened, really, having awakening, making the quantum leap into another spiritual plane.

And this is exactly what the Gnostics taught. And they taught that it was done through spiritual knowledge. And Paul says, wait a minute, in Christ are hidden all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom.

You don't need to go through these Gnostic disciplines or get these special revelations from there. All I care about is that the Holy Spirit will reveal to you that Jesus is all of that. And that Christ in you is what you will get a fuller, as he says, a fuller knowledge and a fuller understanding of, in verse 2. Now, in Christ are hidden all the riches of wisdom and knowledge.

When he says they're hidden, this doesn't mean that they're inaccessible, like you hide something so people won't find it. The word that's used there is more like the word for gems hidden in a mine. It's not so much they're hidden, it's just that they're not laying on the surface and they're worth mining for, they're worth digging for.

It's not as if they're hidden so well you won't find them. It's just that all of God's wisdom and knowledge is found when looked for in Christ. And it's there that they're hidden.

And those who don't look in Christ won't find them because they're hidden there. If you hide something... I have at home a little, it's a can of a product that you buy at the market, but it's not really a can of that product, if you know what I mean. Someone modified it into a safe.

You screw off the bottom and you can put things in there and screw back on it. Someone thinks it's a can of Cruex for Jock itch on there, and no one's going to steal that. And yet you've got all your goods in there, all your riches and so forth.

Of course I don't have any riches, but I've got a nice Cruex can that's empty, but it could accommodate some riches if I ever get any. The point is, if I have something hidden in that can, it's hard to find if someone doesn't look in the can. Because it's hidden in that can.

If anywhere else they look, they won't find it. If they however know that it's in the can, they will find it quite easily. All the treasures and riches of God's knowledge and wisdom are hidden in Christ.

Look anywhere else, you won't find them. Look in him, they're not hard to find. They're all there.

It's like the question of whether you're going to the right mine or not. Go into that mine and there's treasures laying around in there. You don't go in there, they'll remain hidden from you.

So what he's saying is don't be looking through these other religious ideas that are imposing themselves and suggesting themselves and presenting themselves to the Christians as if these ideas added to Christianity will present a superior form of Christianity. And that's, frankly, that's how a lot of people still feel of the New Age sort. It's fine to be a Christian, but realize there's another plane beyond that.

I mean, it's fine to recognize that Jesus is the Messiah, but wait till you find out that you're the Messiah. Wait to find out that you're Christ too. It's the next plane of revelation you need to get.

No, you don't need to get beyond the one. Jesus is the Messiah. That's all the truth you need.

Anything else gets away from truth. But all things that are added to Christ of a religious sort are not real knowledge and they're not real wisdom. They're just falsely so-called knowledge.

All real knowledge and wisdom is in Christ. And how do you find that? You have to be in Christ. Go in there and they're all over the place.

If you live in Christ, you will gain all the knowledge there and all the wisdom there from God that he cares for you to have. By the way, there are some things in the categories of wisdom and knowledge that God hasn't always found it profitable for people to have. Do you remember what the first sin was? What the first law was? Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It's not as if all knowledge is helpful to us. There's some knowledge, Solomon said, with much knowledge is much grief. We need to realize that whatever knowledge God wants us to have is readily available in Christ.

Are there other things that can be known? Maybe, but who cares? If it's not in Christ, it's not for me. It's not necessary. Is there life on other planets? I don't know.

I don't even care. That's not one of the things I learned in Christ. It's not one of the things that will profit me spiritually to know or not to know.

So it doesn't matter. People get all curious about esoteric issues. And apparently the Colossians either were or were in danger of getting curious about those things.

There were people alluring them in that direction to worshipping angels, he says a little later. Boy, is that timely. But, you know, but he says you don't need that.

It's all found in Jesus. And if you're in Jesus, you're in the place where it's all found. You don't need to go anywhere else and you don't need to import anything.

Verse four. Now this I say, anyone should deceive you with persuasive words. So here he gets down to business here.

You know, I mean, he hasn't said anything about this yet. He kind of says, now I'll tell you why I'm writing the letter. This is really why I'm saying all this stuff, because I'm concerned that someone might deceive you.

This I say, all this I've been talking about, I'm writing to you because I'm concerned about the danger of you being deceived. After all, deceivers sometimes have persuasive words. And persuasive arguments and attractive words.

For though I am absent in the flesh, as he's physically not there, yet I am with you in spirit. Now, Paul says this same kind of thing, for example, over in first Corinthians five, where he talks about the need to discipline an unrepentant, incestuous fornicator in the church. And he tells them what to do.

He says, now when you gather together and I'm there in spirit, I want you to do this in the name of the Lord. I don't really know what Paul means. I'll just confess.

I don't know what he means when he says, I'm with you in spirit. Now we say that in modern times. It's part of the vernacular of modern English.

We say, I'm with you in spirit. And all that really means is my sympathies are with you. Or, you know, I miss you.

And I'm, you know, I'm, I can, I can imagine myself, you know, uh, with you or whatever, but, but I mean, we're not really saying anything more than that. And that may be all that Paul's saying. When I find, um, a saying in the Bible that also is a saying in our modern English, I'm immediately suspicious of any, of any presupposition that it means the same thing in ancient Greek that it means, you know, 2000 years later in modern English.

I mean, we might have the same phrase. It means something entirely different, but I don't know what it meant there. I certainly don't believe that Paul was talking about, you know, uh, soul transport, you know, he'd be like, you know, he's having an out of body experience.

And while he's really in jail in Rome, physically, his spirit is transported to Colossae. And so I can't give you any enlightenment about this. I'm going to have to assume that saying I'm with you in spirit may mean very much like what we mean.

You know, there's my heart's with you. You know, I'd like to be with you. Can't be my heart's there, but I'm here.

I'm stuck. I'm behind these bars. But anyway, though I am absent in the flesh, I'm with you in spirit rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

Steadfastness means that they're not moved. Not yet. Anyway, he's concerned that the persuasive words of deceivers might, uh, might modify that situation, but he's rejoicing right now to see that they're firm in their belief and they're, they're in good order as you have therefore received Christ Jesus, the Lord.

So walk in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith as you have been taught abounding in it with thanksgiving. Now, this is really kind of similar to what he said back in verse 23 of the previous chapter. If indeed you continue in the faith grounded and steadfast and are not moved away from the hope, both places talk about the need to be grounded or in this case rooted in Christ and built up and steadfast or established.

The idea is the bottom line is I want you to be firm and immovable. And the means toward that is to make sure you are grounded as it says in Colossians 1 23 or rooted in Colossians 2 7 rooted and grounded in Jesus. Now grounded, as I said, when we were talking about chapter one is the Greek word actually means founded like on a foundation.

So he's using two metaphors here. One is that of a building which rests on a foundation and the other is of a plant or a tree or something that has roots. And it's quite obvious that a foundation to a building really serves in some respects the same purpose as roots in a plant.

Now roots actually serve more purposes to a plant than a foundation does to a building. But in one sense they're the same. It's the presence of roots that keep the tree from blowing away in a storm.

It's the presence of a foundation that prevents the building from washing away in a flood. As Jesus made clear when he talked about building your house on the rock instead of on the sand. The idea here is that as a building has a foundation to keep it from moving and as a tree has a root system that holds it in place so it doesn't easily move, you need to be grounded or founded in Jesus, he says in chapter one verse 23 and in chapter two verse seven, a similar idea, rooted in him and built up.

He's got these mixed in the metaphors of a plant and a building. Now the idea that Christians are plants and buildings are not uncommon in Paul's writing. In fact there's one passage where he calls them both in the same place and extends the metaphor even further over in 1 Corinthians chapter three.

He is talking about the establishment of the church in Corinth by himself and the follow-up efforts of teaching there by Apollos after Paul the left. Unfortunately some of the Corinthians, immature as they were, tended to take sides and some said I'm loyal to Paul and others say I'm loyal to Apollos and Paul's trying to straighten things out there in their attitude saying that really Apollos and Paul are not rivals. And in that context he says this in 1 Corinthians 3 verse 5, who then is Paul and who is Apollos but servants, that's what ministers means, servants through whom you believed as the Lord gave each one.

I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, that means Paul and Apollos aren't anything, but God is everything who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one.

They're on the same project, they're not rivals. And each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor for we are God's fellow workers. That means Apollos and I, Paul, are fellow workers with God in his field.

We're on the same project. I'm not a foreman, God's the foreman, Apollos and I are both servants out in the field here. We are fellow workers and you, he says, are God's field, which is of course where plants grow, and he says you are God's building.

Now up to this point he's been talking, using the metaphor of plants. Paul planted the seeds, Apollos watered the seeds, God made the seeds grow. This is a field growing.

He says you are God's field. But now he introduces another metaphor, you're also God's building. And having introduced that at verse 9, he goes off with that one a bit.

In verse 10, according to the grace of God, which was given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation. They're a building, they've got a foundation. He, just like he planted the seeds in the field, shipped the metaphor.

He laid the foundation of the building. And he says, and another builds on it. In Apollos and others afterwards who came and taught there.

Verse 11, for no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. So the building is founded on Jesus, or change the metaphor, the plants are rooted in Jesus. Now Paul talks about the church corporately as a field of grain that he planted in other water.

The church corporately is a building. To be more precise in Paul's, in Ephesians 2 and in 1 Peter 2, it's a building which is a particular kind of building, a temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit. But Paul did the initial groundwork, planted the seed, laid the foundation, whichever metaphor you prefer, another comes and builds on it.

Now this is what's true of the church corporately. The church is the building, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the church is God's field. It's also true individually.

Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and you are like a plant that has been planted. And it's that sense in which Paul tells you to continue and be grounded or be founded on the foundation and be rooted in Christ. Now roots do more for a plant than a foundation does for a building, because roots not only hold the plant in place, but they're the means by which nourishment is drawn from its environment.

I mean, it actually has many ways of drawing nourishment. Through photosynthesis it draws a form of nourishment from light. But certainly the minerals and so forth that nourish the plant are drawn through the root system.

And when Paul says we need to be rooted in him and built up in him, I believe he's not just saying we need to be attached like a tree is attached to the ground with roots, but we need to be drawing all of our life from Jesus. Christ is in you. He's the hope of glory.

And you need to be drawing upon his resources, drawing on the nourishment for your spiritual life from him, not from outside sources and other religious ideas and experiences and disciplines and so forth, but Jesus himself is everything you need to draw upon. Now this, I've been talking about verse 7, but really verse 6 is the first part of that sentence. He says, as you have therefore received Christ Jesus as the Lord, so walk in him.

Now there's a comparison made to how you receive Christ and how you walk. Some people make this more and some less specific. The less specific way to take this is he's just saying, well, you've started, you know, you've received Jesus, you might as well continue to be Christian, might as well continue to walk with him.

Others try to be more specific and say, the way in which you receive Christ is the way in which you ought to walk in him. In the non-specific sense, taking it in a non-specific sense, it's just saying that the fact that you receive Christ is an argument for also walking in him, continuing in him. You've started, why not finish? But the more specific way of taking it is saying something about the way we walk in him is the same way that we receive him.

What is that? How do you receive him? By faith. So how do you walk? By faith. As you received him by faith, so continue to walk with him by faith or in him.

And so I don't know how specifically Paul intends that, but Paul does mention here, I believe for the first time in Colossians, this metaphor of walking. It is so common in the Bible that we almost forget that it's a metaphor. When we talk about somebody's walk, we mean of course the way they're living.

We mean the quality of their relationship with God and how they're progressing with God. But walking of course is a metaphor and Paul uses it in many, many ways. Later in Colossians, he'll have more to say about it.

In Ephesians, he talks a great deal about our walk, which is as I say, a metaphor for living. We're told in Galatians to walk in the spirit. If we do, we won't fill the rest of the flesh.

In other places, let me give you sort of a rundown of some of the things that the Bible says about our walk. In Psalm 1.1, it says, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. In Micah 6.8, it says that one of the things most important to God is that we would walk humbly with our God.

We're supposed to love mercy and to do justly and to walk humbly with our God, Micah 6.8 says. In 1 John 2.6, it says that we should walk even as he walked, as Jesus walked. In Galatians 5.16, it says walk in the spirit.

And in both Ephesians and Colossians, in Ephesians 4.1 and Colossians 1.10, it says that we need to walk worthy of the Lord. So I'm wrong, chapter 2 is not the first time he mentioned the walk, it's just, he did mention it in chapter 1, that's right. In 1 Thessalonians 2.12, he says we need to walk worthy of God.

And there's more, there's a lot of places. Walk in the newness of life, he says in Romans 6.4. It's a spiritual walk, and many things are said about how we are to walk. In Ephesians 4.1, he says walk worthy of the calling.

In Ephesians 4.17, it says no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk. In chapter 5 of Ephesians, verse 2, walk in love. In chapter 5 of Ephesians, verse 8, walk as children of light.

In the same chapter, Ephesians 5, verse 15, it says walk circumspectly, which means looking around, you know, being diligent and aware of the dangers around you. So there's, Paul is frequently, and other writers of scripture frequently talk about the Christian life as a walk, and the reason is because a walk consists of individual steps. I've made this point, of course, we've talked about Ephesians and other places where we encounter this metaphor of walking, but we never read in the Bible flow in the spirit.

We read walk in the spirit. And there's a world of difference. You'll hear among Christian circles, you need to flow with the spirit.

One of the reasons that probably Paul chose to speak of walking in the spirit instead of flowing in the spirit is that walking is divisible into increments called steps. Flowing is not divisible into anything. It's just kind of, you get into, you get, the way some people talk, I've known, it's as if you just kind of dive in and the spirit just carries you along, you know, and you know, once you're in, you know, the rest is history.

But as a matter of fact, the Christian life is a succession of steps. We're to walk with God. Walk humbly with your God.

Well, that means I have to take a step. And if I can still be walking, I need to take another step. After I've done that, I'm not automatically still walking until I take another step.

I have to keep taking individual steps. If I take a step with God and another step with God, another step with God, I'm still walking with God. What if I take other steps that aren't with God? I'm not walking with God anymore.

You see, the Christian life is made up of moments, just like regular life is. It's made up of individual decisions. It's not just, you know, sign on to the membership role and you're in.

Christian life is a continuing walk with God. And this walk is, needs to be refined in the ways that the Bible talks about. Walk in love.

Okay, I need to make sure that when I'm taking each individual step in my life, I'm doing it in love. Walk circumspectly. Okay, as I continue life, I need to be aware every step that I take, you know, of whether I'm under attack from this angle or from that angle.

It's every day is a succession of individual decisions and moments, metaphorically of steps. Walking in the spirit. When I'm walking in the spirit, I don't fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Do Christians ever fulfill the lust of the flesh? I'm afraid so. What's that tell you? They must not have been walking in the spirit when they did that, because if you walk in the spirit, you won't. Does that mean they're not spiritual people? I can't say that.

They may have been taking steps, walking in the spirit every moment up to that last one, and that last one wasn't in the spirit, and they fulfilled the lust of the flesh. The Christian life is a walk, and each step is an individual project. It's an individual accomplishment.

It's God's accomplishment, but it's accomplished through you walking with Him. Taking another step. Do Christians ever fall? I believe they do, but like a baby when it's learning to walk, it takes a few successful steps, then it's down, but it doesn't stay down.

It gets up again, tries it again, gets better at it, falls again, keeps getting better at it, till pretty much second nature to walk successfully. I believe the Christian life tends to be that way a lot of times, too, is that it's a learned behavior, learning to walk with God. You need to learn not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly.

We did that all the rest of our time before we were Christians, and unfortunately a lot of Christians still do that way too much, but the fact is we need to learn to walk in the steps that He showed us to walk in. Remember it says in Ephesians 2.10 that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which He has foreordained, that we should walk in them. In what? Good works that He's foreordained for us to walk in.

We need to learn how to do that. We need to develop a walk with God. This walk is from beginning to end a walk of faith, and we received Christ by faith.

We should not think that we're going to walk with Him by legalism or something else. That's what Paul said in another place over in Galatians. He was amazed that the Galatian Christians who had started out in a relation with God through faith were now modifying the nature of their relation with God to something that was based upon and maintained by an observance of rules and regulations, and the entire book of Galatians is written to express Paul's chagrin and shock at this development.

In fact, in the normal place in his epistles where he normally says to all his readers, I thank God for you, in the book of Galatians he doesn't bother. He doesn't say I thank God for you, in that position he says I'm shocked. I'm amazed at you, he says.

And when he speaks to them in Galatians 3, he says this in the opening of Galatians 3, O foolish Galatians who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. This only I want to learn from you. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? That's the same sentiment Paul's talking about here.

As you received Christ, so walk in him. How did you receive the spirit? Was it not by faith or was it by the hearing of the works of the law? Well, it was by faith. Well, you started that way, you're going to finish a different way altogether, now lapsed into legalism, now lapsed into oriental mysticism, now lapsed into Greek philosophy.

I mean, this is what the Colossians were in danger of. They had had a legitimate start as Christians. They knew how they had received Christ, by faith.

But now people are suggesting, you know, the path to perfection is, yeah, it's fine, you've started out well, you've got Jesus, but now there's a whole bunch of stuff Jesus never said, but we have discovered. We've had our revelations and this is the path you need to follow. I think what Paul's saying here is, you started out with a simple faith in Jesus, keep that way.

Walk that way. You started out, you received him that way, and as you received him, continue walking the same way. Now, verse 8, beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power. Now, once again, the same idea is here. You are already complete in Jesus.

You don't need to add worldly philosophies dreamed up by men to somehow come to a point of greater spiritual standing. And there are many people, there were in Colossae apparently, and there are here, there are now. There are even in the church, people who say, okay, you're fine up to this point, but there's another threshold to cross.

Now, there are other thresholds to cross. I want to make this very clear. There are plenty of thresholds to cross in your Christian life.

There are new victories to gain. There are new things to learn. I'm not diminishing that.

My whole life so far in Christ has been of crossing many thresholds. And once I've crossed them, I'm glad to be there. It's a new advance in the spiritual life.

But all of them are in the same realm. They're in the realm of Jesus. It's not as if Christianity is something you master all the Christian truths first, and then the next thing you have to learn is somewhere outside of Christianity, coming from mysticism, coming from philosophy, coming from whatever.

And what he's saying is you are complete in Christ. You don't need to add other things. They're extraneous and unnecessary.

You are already full. You are already complete in him. And who is he? Well, it says in verse 9, in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

And the word Godhead means deity, divinity. That is, all of who God is dwelt in a bodily container in Jesus. Now, I'm not going to move real quickly away from this point because there's too much there.

I don't want to spend the rest of the evening on it either. Do you think I will? Everyone taking bets on that? What does it mean, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in Jesus? Well, it really raises questions about some of my notions I grew up with. It certainly doesn't challenge the issue of the deity of Christ.

If anything, it's one of the strongest affirmations of it I know of. It certainly raises questions about at least my perception as a younger Christian of the Trinity, which is not to say that I've changed my view about the Trinity. I still believe in the Trinity.

But my perception of the Trinity when I was younger was this. The Trinity was three guys, like sort of a committee. You've got the Father, or maybe like a family.

You've got a father and a son. And the Holy Spirit wasn't quite clear to me what role in the family he played. But there were three.

They're all separate individuals who are all part of this committee called God. Now, I'm just saying this how I understood. I don't think I was right.

But then when Jesus came to earth, he was one of the three. Left heaven, the other two stayed there, and he came down and took on a bodily form. So that my perception was that in that body there dwelt a third of God.

One of the three was in Jesus. The other two were still somewhere else. Now, there's much to support this idea.

Jesus definitely spoke of himself as having been sent down by the Father, who was clearly still in heaven. You know, my Father who is in heaven. I came down from heaven.

He sent me. Obviously, Jesus and the Father are separate individuals. And he talked about his Father as someone different than himself, someone who was still in heaven.

And he talks about the Holy Spirit that way, too. If I don't go away, the Holy Spirit won't come. And so, I mean, there's much in the language of Jesus and of the Scriptures to encourage the kind of notions I had.

But then I run across a passage like this, which does not say, in Christ dwelt one third of the Godhead in bodily form. And then you run across something like Isaiah 9, 6, where it says, And his name, that is the Messiah's name, shall be called Wonderful Counselor of the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father. Now, talk about confusion here.

I mean, if we're supposed to understand Jesus is one of three persons in the Godhead and the Father is a different person than him, he's the Son. There's the Father, there's the Son, the Holy Spirit. And he's the Son.

Let's get that straight. Let's keep these categories discreet. You know, we got the Son here in the flesh and the Father's up there.

And then the Scriptures, now his name is also the Everlasting Father. Well, what about the Holy Spirit? What's his relationship with Jesus? Well, depending on where you look, the second Corinthians is one place that certainly muddies the waters a little bit in terms of the neat package of what I used to think it all was like in the Godhead. We have Paul saying this in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 17.

He says, Now the Lord, which Paul usually means Jesus when he says the Lord, the Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. So the Lord, Jesus, is the Spirit, and he's also the Everlasting Father.

And in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And I must confess, I don't find it so easy to picture how this works as I used to. And that's why people who ask me about the Trinity often don't get much satisfaction out of me, because I don't understand the Trinity.

But I will not make it simpler so that I can understand it and sacrifice what the Bible actually says on the subject. The concept I used to have is that in Jesus dwelt one third of the Godhead. As it were, one third of the committee, one of the three came down.

And there's, as I say, there's some things in the Bible that sound like that's the right way to see it. And then we find this kind of a statement, all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in him. Now, I can't resolve the problem completely.

I have theories and images that come to my mind, but I don't know that they're any better than the ones I've abandoned. All I can say is I do believe the Bible teaches that Jesus is God. That's fairly clear.

Everyone knows the Bible teaches the Father is God. Everyone knows, I hope, that there are Christians and not Jehovah's Witnesses, that the Holy Spirit is God. And that there's only one God.

So, I mean, you've still got some kind of a Trinitarian concept, but there are differences too. Jesus made a distinction between himself and the Spirit, a distinction between himself and the Father, a distinction between the Father and the Spirit. And yet there's some kind of mixture going on there in the person of Jesus.

You know, I hesitate to share this because it's only... I mean, Paul says, don't let anyone just cheat you by human philosophy and ideas of men. And I must confess what I'm about to share is simply an idea of a man, me. My ideas aren't any better than any other man's.

I mean, not inately, anyway. But I wondered if the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not so much like the relationship of three people in a committee, but more like three substances mixed together into one substance. Not that God is a substance, but remember, he's a spirit.

Who knows how spirit... Who knows the qualities of spirit? If an analogy can be made to liquid, which I'm not saying God is liquid, we know that you can mix three liquids into one liquid and you still have the three... I mean, I think of lemonade, which almost sounds like a kind of a silly illustration to use of God, to use lemonade. But I mean, to me, it's an idea. You've got three things.

You've got water, you've got lemon juice, you've got sugar. They're all distinctly different from each other, but you mix them together and you've got them all. I suppose if you had the right kind of extraction process, you could still separate them from each other, but why? You know, much better all together than separate.

And if you would have a big punch bowl full of that and scoop one glass out of it, that glass would only be a part of the lemonade, but all the fullness of the lemonade would dwell in that glass, would it not? I mean, it seems to me it would be a true sampling. You know, you wouldn't scoop out just the lemon juice or just the sugar or just the water, you'd scoop out a true sampling. And I wonder, I don't know, I'm not trying to present this as theology.

You work it out yourself if you don't like what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is I wonder if my concept of the Trinity was more a human tradition because it didn't fit really very well the statements of Scripture on it. And maybe my view was not orthodox before.

I just thought it was. But it seems to me that God, the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit could be intermixed in a way much more like liquids intermixed than three people in a room. After all, when when when Philip said, Lord, show us the Father and that'll suffice us, he said, have I been so long with you, Philip, you don't know me.

Do you not know that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? And if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Did that ever confuse you? I'm in the Father and the Father's in me. I mean, I've wrestled that since I was a kid.

How can how I know what it's like to take a large I know what it's like to take a large container and put a smaller container in it. So the smaller container is in the larger container, but the large container is not in the small container at the same time. How can one thing be in something else? And yet that how does that work? Well, I don't know.

But it works much better if we're talking more about the kind of intermingling of liquids. Then they are in each other. So I don't know.

Forgive me if I've led you into confusion more than you already were about the nature of the Godhead, because I'm not claiming to know. I'm not claiming some higher gnosis here. I'm just saying when I find Paul saying this in Christ, but all the fullness of divinity of the Godhead bodily.

It doesn't make as much sense to have the view that I used to have, which might not have been orthodox in the first place, but it might have. It seems more like Jesus is a sampling of the totality of of God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And you take that sampling and it truly has a separate a separate it's in a separate place from the larger body.

And Jesus, as the man who was indeed the container of God or the God had dwelt fully in him bodily, that he could talk about God as someone out there, too. The same way as if I would take a scoop out some ocean water and bring it inland, say this in here, the ocean is in here. You know what the ocean is like.

Check this out. Right. Put that under my scope.

You'll find out what the ocean is like. Not a third of it. The whole thing.

It's all there. But I could also talk about the ocean way over there that it came from. It's huge.

You know, this glass is one thing. This is sampling out there. There's much more where that came from.

See? And when Jesus says the father is greater than I. But if you've seen me, you've seen the father. You know, I don't know if that works for me. I don't know if it works for you.

I'd probably get branded. I hope the hand canograph doesn't hear about this. Anyway, maybe I'll send him the tape.

But the point is that here we have certainly one of the highest Christology of any portion of Scripture where Christ is made clearly not he's not a creation of God that's been made clear earlier in chapter one. He's not even, you know, you know, a third of God. The fullness of all that God is is found in him, in a body, in a container called a body.

You know, the way it was put by John in John chapter one, he said the word was God. Right. And it was with God.

And he says, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory and he tabernacled with us. Another image that has helped me is the image that John seems to be using the tabernacle in John 1.14. He says the word was made flesh and tabernacled with us using the image of the tabernacle in the Old Testament. What was the tabernacle is the house of God is where God dwelt.

Remember Jesus, how he spoke about his body, destroy this temple. And in three days, I'll raise it up. His body was the house, the habitation of God.

Now that he's gone to heaven, we are because we're his body. Now we're the temple of God. But the image of the Old Testament temple and tabernacle was this.

The glory of God. Came there, resided there, met with man there. God said to Moses, I will commune with you over the whole over the mercy seat there in the Holy of Holies.

That was God's place of contact with man. And when God was there, it was, you know, there was a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire, you know, demonstrating that he was there. He was what we'd say manifestly present there.

But we could also say with, without fear of contradiction, God was in addition to being manifestly present at the tabernacle, he was also universally present in the universe. Theologians have always made a distinction between God's universal presence and his manifest presence. When it's, when it says, uh, I think it's in Luke, uh, I forget which chapter in Luke, it's talking about one of the times when Jesus was in the house and, and, uh, crowds were there.

And it says, and it says in the power of God was present to heal them. It sounds as if, I mean, God isn't God's power always present to heal where, where isn't God. And yet it seems to be indicated that in this particular room at this particular time, God was his manifest presence of his power was here for the purpose of healing, which isn't always happening.

I haven't noticed anyone getting healed at these meetings recently. Maybe we should pray that the power of God be present to heal here. I don't know, but the fact is God is everywhere, but he's not manifest everywhere.

Manifest means revealed. He exists everywhere, but he's manifested from time to time and place to place in some place, the tabernacle, for example. Now, when God was in the tabernacle, same God, the real God, it wasn't a third of God.

It was God himself come down to commune with man. The rest of the universe also couldn't contain him heaven in the heaven of heaven. Solomon said can't contain God, but the tabernacle did in one sense.

The universe cannot, cannot even contain the universal presence of God, but the tabernacle or even a human body can contain the manifest presence of God. And that manifest, manifest presence of God is simply God manifesting himself in a place, in a way. He's no less in other places.

He's just less manifest in other places. So my understanding is that Jesus was the manifest presence of God in a human body. The word was made flesh and tabernacled like the glory, she kind of glory tabernacled in the tabernacle.

The she kind of glory also tabernacled in Jesus. In his body, another tabernacle of another kind. And therefore, although God was everywhere, if you wanted to contact him, you had to go to Jesus because that's where he was manifested to man.

Still, this true only now he's manifested in his body, the church, but, um, and Jesus being the head of that. Anyway, I must confess I'm out of my depth on a statement like this in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And some of you may say, yes, you're floundering miserably out of your depth.

Others may say, well, I think you're starting to make some strides here, some strokes that are keeping you above water. I don't know. Maybe I'm treading water.

At any rate, one of the most comforting things I have come to realize in just the last few years is that I don't have to understand this. I have been so set free in recent years when I realized I don't have to understand this. I mean, I always knew I didn't understand the tree, but I thought I at least understood how to say it because then I seen Creed said how to say it right.

I mean, I could repeat the creed and I could say it right. I mean, I always would confess I don't understand it, but I can say it now. I realize that I don't even have to know how to say it necessarily because the Bible nowhere tells me that I have to know how to say this particular thing without controversy.

It's a great mystery. Paul said, I'm willing to let there be mysteries. And this is one.

And you might think that I've been doing everything I can to unmystify it by giving them ridiculous illustrations of lemonade and things like that. But actually, even if those illustrations have some semblance of reality, they still are mysterious to me. What I'm saying is knowing Jesus does not require that I fully understand all these things.

But if I if I think of Jesus as anything less than God in a human body, I'm not thinking of Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible. I've got another Jesus. I've got a lesser Jesus.

If I think of Jesus as anything less than the completeness and the fullness of God, then I've got a Jesus that's too small and one that keeps me looking for additions. One that doesn't really, I'm not complete in him because I've got Jesus, but I need, you know, he's not everything. And yet he has to be everything.

Christianity is a Christocentric life. Jesus has to be the center and he has to be a center that pervades all, just like the sun is the center of our solar system and its light pervades the whole solar system. And the solar system, of course, gets a little bit of light from the stars and so forth.

But obviously the sun is everything to the solar system. It keeps it together. All things consist in it, hold together.

The gravitational pull of the sun keeps the solar system a solar system and enlightens it, gives life to it, at least our planet. And so Jesus has to be central to us. And once he is, we find that he's not just at the middle.

He expands his influence to everything in the sphere that he is central in. And that should be our lives so that we are complete in him, which means we don't have to import other ideas and revelations and things that are outside of Christianity, mystical experiences and occultic breakthroughs and things like that. We don't need another Messiah or a series of them.

We are complete in Jesus. And if you're complete, there's nothing more that you need to be seeking, but more of him. Now, to say you are complete in him doesn't mean you don't need to seek him more.

The whole Christian life is a life of pressing deeper into Jesus, into God. And this is made clear in scripture that we are to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Second Peter 3, 18 says, got to grow in the knowledge of him.

And yet that's the only growth we need to seek is in the knowledge of him, not in a whole bunch of other curiosities of a spiritual sort. Now, Paul gets into that because he begins to identify in the next verses just what kinds of curiosities and spiritual extraneous debris is trying to find its way into pollute the pure and simple faith in Christ in these people's lives. He says in him, you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he has made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Now, what is all of that? It's a long sentence for one thing.

Actually, it's two sentences. But what's he saying? He said that we have experienced the only circumcision that matters, and his reason for saying that must certainly be that someone was trying to influence them to seek another. And we know for a fact, as we read Galatians, that there were persons who tried to persuade Gentile Christians to become Jewish in their practices of Jewish rituals.

They wanted them to adopt Jewish laws of cleanliness and get circumcised and so forth. And that would apparently be something that was beginning to intrude to you are complete in Christ. You don't need Jesus plus circumcision, Jesus plus ritual laws of purification, Jesus plus legalism.

You don't need that. You're complete in him and you need nothing more than him, because if someone wants to tell you, you need to be circumcised, he says, you can say, thank you, I have been with the circumcision made without hands. Now, the circumcision made with hands, that's no big deal.

That's just cutting off a bit of flesh. But the circumcision made without hands, that's what the Old Testament rituals all look forward or foreshadow some spiritual reality. And the law of circumcision, which was a ritual, looked forward to a spiritual reality, which is circumcision of the heart.

Now, the idea of circumcision of the heart is actually found in the Old Testament. It starts out with, I think, Jeremiah 4.4, if I'm not mistaken. Jeremiah says, circumcise your hearts and not your foreskins.

The Jews to whom he was writing already were physically circumcised, but their hearts were not. So it's not as if Jesus introduced from scratch the idea of a circumcised heart. It was already known in the Old Testament.

It's just not experienced much. But Paul says in Philippians 3 and verse 3, we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, who rejoice in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh, including fleshly things like cutting your flesh, like circumcision. In other words, true circumcision is of the heart.

Paul said it another way in Romans 2, 28 and 29, he says, he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and that is not circumcision which is outward of the flesh, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly. And that circumcision is the circumcision of the heart. That's Romans 2, 28 and 29.

So Paul made it clear that physical circumcision doesn't matter, but circumcision certainly does. You know, when God instituted circumcision in Genesis 17, he said to Abraham, this is going to be the sign of the covenant between me and you for all generations forever. In other words, it's permanent circumcision.

It's the mark of relationship with God is circumcision. Forever. Well, no wonder there were people telling the Christians, you've got to get physically circumcised if you're not already.

It's forever. Paul says, you're right. It is forever, but it's not forever in the Jewish ritual form.

There is the temporary mode of circumcision, which was the ritual, and there's the eternal mode, which has come in the fulfillment in Christ. Christ has fulfilled the law. We'll see that.

Paul says it more clearly in verse 17 of the same chapter. But the idea is, yes, circumcision is a permanent requirement. The only problem is physical circumcision was just an emblem of the permanent and spiritual and eternal requirement of circumcision, which is a spiritual thing.

And that spiritual thing we have, we don't need the emblem. See a little later. I don't want to jump too far ahead here, but in verses 16 and 17, Paul mentioned some other ceremonial things of Judaism and says that was a shadow.

Christ is the reality and the reality having come, we don't need shadows anymore. The shadows served when there was no light. That's what the shadow is, is the absence of light.

Now, he also talks about being baptized. We were circumcised with the spiritual circumcision, which is the circumcision of Christ. He says in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh.

I won't try to sort that one out. The body of the sins of the flesh, I suspect, certainly is not my physical body. I haven't put that off.

You haven't put off your physical body. So he's not talking about your physical body. What then does he mean by the body of the sins of the flesh? Well, some people would say he's speaking about a spiritual entity, which you could call your sinful nature.

And your sinful nature you have put off. Well, that could be true. That could be true.

But it's not even clear in what sense that would be said, that you put off your sinful nature. Does it mean you don't have it anymore? Well, you know, interesting thing. Paul talks about in later in Colossians chapter three and also in Ephesians, talking about putting off the old man.

Does he not? Well, it's interesting. He says in Colossians that you have put off the old man. But in Ephesians, he says you must put off the old man.

Now, have I done it or have I not done it? Did it happen or does it have to happen? Putting off the old man. How about both? When I become a Christian, I put off the old man and the rest of my life I keep putting off the old man. It's interesting, you see, you'll find that in Colossians three, getting ahead of ourselves, but this may have something to do with putting off the body of the sins of the flesh to the same sense we've put it off.

He says in verse nine, Colossians three, nine, do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds. You have done it. But over in Ephesians chapter four, he says by way of exhortation in Ephesians 4.22 that you should put off concerning the former conduct, the old man.

So you need to put off the old man because you have put off the old man. Sounds to me like this putting off the old man is an ongoing thing. You have and you need to.

And when Paul says, therefore, in Colossians two, that you have been circumcised by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, well, you have done that, but it's possible you may need to keep doing that. Just like you have to keep putting off the old man, though you have done it. You have to.

In fact, the body of the sins of the flesh may be just another way of saying the old man. Maybe another term for that. All I can say is Paul's terminology here is ambiguous.

Some people feel quite certain they know what he meant and maybe they do. Unfortunately, there's other people who feel equally strongly that they know what he meant, and maybe they do. And yet it's different.

It seems clear to me that Paul is saying that just as physical circumcision puts off flesh, physical flesh, you cut it off and put it off. It's gone. You separate yourself from it.

So spiritual circumcision has some kind of a spiritual sense in which you separate yourself from the sinful aspect of your flesh, which may well mean your sinful nature. Whether this is a one-time deal like physical circumcision is, or an ongoing walk, is not made clear in this particular passage. But the point is, the circumcision that matters has to do with putting away that flesh, not putting away a piece of skin.

And the next part, after talking about circumcision, he says that we've been buried with him in baptism, in which, that is, in baptism you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised Christ from the dead. Now, this reference to being buried with Christ in baptism and raised with Christ in baptism seems to allude to the whole idea of immersing in water. You know there are three different ideas that Christians hold about baptism.

Some believe you should sprinkle, some believe that you should pour water, and some believe you should immerse people. I am of the third persuasion. But those who hold the other persuasions have reasons.

Those who believe you should sprinkle think that baptism is to be a picture of the cleansing from sin of which Ezekiel writes in Ezekiel 36, verses 25 and 26, where he says, I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be cleansed. And that is a prophecy about regeneration. It's a prophecy about the new covenant, about what Jesus will do.

He says, I will sprinkle clean water and you will be cleansed. And many people think, well, that water baptism is an image of this sprinkling of cleansing that God spoke of, and so they feel it's appropriate to use sprinkling. And that would make sense.

If that's the correct way of understanding baptism, that would make a good argument for sprinkling. Others feel that the baptism in water is supposed to be a picture of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And when the baptism of the Holy Spirit is spoken of, both in Acts and in Joel, it says, I will pour out my spirit upon you.

I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And if water baptism is an emblem depicting this baptism of the Holy Spirit, then it figures that as the Holy Spirit is said to be poured out, perhaps water should be poured out. And so that is the argument for pouring.

But those who are immersed say, well, what baptism is there to depict is not the cleansing of the sprinkling of Ezekiel chapter 36. It's not the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of Joel. It is the burial of the individual with Christ and the resurrection of Christ, in which case immersion is much more the picture of that.

You submerge them and they come back up again. Now, actually, of those three options, although all of them have some basis that is, let's say, reasonable, the only one that has a biblical reference in its favor is this last idea. The Bible nowhere says that baptism is a sprinkling for cleansing of sin.

It nowhere says that baptism is a picture of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But it does say we were buried with him in baptism and raised with him in baptism. And it doesn't say it only once.

Colossians 2 says it, but also Romans chapter 6 says almost in the same words the same thing. Just so we'll see that this is a fairly consistent teaching of Paul. In Romans 6 and verse 4, Paul says, therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life.

So we were buried with him in baptism, both Colossians 2, 12 and Romans 6, 4 say that. Now, he said that our baptism, therefore, was an emblem of having died with Christ. You don't bury living people.

Notice baptism isn't a picture of dying with Christ. It's a picture of being buried with him. It presupposes that death has already happened.

You don't take a living person and bury them. You do that to someone who's already died. Therefore, baptism is not given to people so that they might die.

You could bury a living person and surely you'd die, but that's not what baptism is for. You don't baptize someone so that they'll die to their self and so that they'll be a newborn person. Baptism doesn't make that happen.

Baptism is just the appropriate thing to do after that's already happened. Burying people is not a method of killing people. Burying people is a method of dispensing with someone after they've died, disposing of the body, and it's a very appropriate thing to do.

Likewise, baptism isn't a means of dying and resurrecting. It's a means of showing that that has happened. And Paul develops this idea in verse 13, and you being dead or having died, no, but before you died, you were dead in another sense, in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your heart, and he has made you alive together with him, having forgiven you of all your trespasses.

This is what coming out of the water baptism apparently means. You've come alive from your dead state, having wiped out the handwriting, verse 14, of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, and he has taken that out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Apparently the handwriting that was against us was the law.

That seems to be the context. He's talking about circumcision. In verse 16, he's going to talk about Sabbath keeping and food and drink ordinances.

Apparently that's what he has in mind when he talks about these things that were against us that are nailed to the tree, the law. So Christ has taken the law and really ended it as a means of seeking a relationship with God. It's dead.

It died with him. The full force of the broken law and the requirements of the law were leveled against Christ, and he died and paid the penalty for it, and that emptied the law of all its teeth and of all its, you know, wind, as it were. So the law no longer has validity as a means of spirituality or of a relationship with God.

Jesus took that whole system, and when he died, it died with him. It was nailed to the cross when he was nailed to the cross, it says here. And in doing so, verse 15 says, having disarmed principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

It apparently means the cross, though some manuscripts say in him. That would be in Christ. So whether it's in it, the cross, or in him, it remains debatable depending on which manuscripts are consulted, but it hardly makes a difference in the meaning of the general verse.

The idea is that when Jesus died, he did a couple of things. He took the written charges against us, and they died with him. They were nailed to the cross with him.

And in so doing, he disarmed the principalities and powers. Now, who are they? I understand, of course, the principalities and powers to be a reference to the demonic realm. What is the demonic realm's principal concern? Is it that they like to haunt houses and do poltergeist things? Is that what the demons are all about? You know, they like to spook people? Or is it that they like to possess people and make them foam at the mouth and bark like a dog and cut themselves with stones and live in tombs and take off their clothes and stuff like that? You know, you find demons sometimes do that.

That's not what the demonic realm is about. That's not what darkness is about. What darkness is about is damning your soul.

That's what darkness is. That's what the demons are for. That's what the devil's there for.

He's the accuser of the brethren. And you know what? Before Jesus died, he was loaded for bear. I mean, the devil, he had all the goods on you, didn't he? And yet when Jesus died, a voice in heaven says in Revelation 12, 10, Now has come salvation and strength in the kingdom of our Christ.

For the accuser of our brethren has been cast out who accused them before God day and night. And Satan's ability to accuse has basically evaporated. It's like he's standing there to accuse you of the rug's pulled out from under when he falls through the trap door.

There's nothing there for him to stand on. Why? Because you don't sin anymore? Because since Jesus died, no one sinned, so the devil has nothing to talk about? No, people still sin. There's a difference, though.

The penalty was laid on our substitute. So that if the devil wants to point to our sins when we have repented and availed ourselves of the merits of Christ by faith, there's nothing there to look at. They've all been transferred to a substitute who then paid the penalty for them.

There's nothing there to point at you for. The accuser is out of a job. Now, the way Paul puts it here is that when Jesus died, he disarmed the principalities and powers.

Their whole task and their whole goal was to condemn you. They don't have any weapons left. They don't have any strength.

It's been pulled out of their hands. They've been disarmed. Because the ordinances and laws that were written against us have been nailed up to the cross, there's no more grounds for accusation.

So Paul says in Romans 8, who can bring any charge against God's elect? It is Christ who justifies. Who is he who condemns? And Paul is saying the same thing another way here. He's just saying, the devil can't condemn us anymore.

The demons have been disarmed. They can't condemn you. Because of what Jesus did, he triumphed over them.

Now, the actual wording Paul uses in verse 15, when it says he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it, this word triumphing is a special Greek word that was used in secular Greek literature to describe the triumphal entry of a conquering Roman general as he would return from the battlefield victorious and he would bring in chains back to Rome the generals and the rulers and the chief citizens of the country that had been conquered, that had opposed them and had lost. And rather than just killing them in their own land, they brought them back to Rome to kill them. But before they killed them, they paraded them through the streets of Rome and the emperor in the honor of the conquering general would set up an arch of triumph.

If you go to Rome today, you can still see the arch of triumph for Titus that was set up for him by Vespasian after he conquered Jerusalem. And what these Romans would do, they'd have big parade and the returning general, victorious, would bring his prisoners captive and he'd parade them through the streets and at the end of the parade, they'd kill him. Paul uses the word in the Greek that referred to this kind of a triumphal procession.

He says that Christ through the cross, although Christ to the eye of man seemed to be defeated on the cross, yet what was really defeated was not Jesus, but his enemies. In fact, as far as the heavenly view of things was, he was parading the principalities and powers as if in chains, as conquered foes, doomed, not yet dead, but doomed. And so Jesus conquered the powers of the devil in his death.

And so he says in verse 16, Therefore, let no one judge you. Notice how Paul assumes that people who are legalists are doing the work of demons because the demons have been conquered. Don't let the legalists get you down because the force behind their accusations has been evaporated, has been nailed to the cross.

Don't let anyone judge you. About what? Well, about food or drink. He's talking about the dietary restrictions of not eating pork and things like that, which the law forbade.

Or in regard to a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come. But the substance or more literally in the Greek, the body is of Christ or is Christ's. The body is Christ's.

Now, the statement the body is Christ could be a reference to the church. And I have a friend who thinks it is, but I've never quite understood how the flow of thought of the sentence goes, if that's what it means. More often it is believed that the body simply is in contrast to the word shadow.

A body is physical and substantial and real. A shadow is not anything real. It's just kind of a silhouette that exists because of the absence of light.

But where there is a shadow, there is a body. Where there is a shadow, there's a substance that blocks the light and so is to cause a shadow. And the shadow is in some sense a depiction of that body, but not perfectly so.

And what Paul is saying is that the rules and regulations of the Jewish law were like that. They depicted Christ, but not perfectly. But he's come now and he depicts himself quite perfectly.

And you don't need to consult shadows now to know what the reality is. You don't need to have a religion based upon rituals that foreshadowed something that has now come and we can now see clearly who Jesus is. We don't need to mess with the things that were supposed to be didactic teaching devices, pneumatic devices to teach us what Jesus is going to be like when he comes.

He has come. Those shadows were imperfect representations of the reality that is Christ, but he has come and he is the reality. We need him only.

We don't need these laws. Now it's quite clear that Paul is assuming that some of the persons that are imposing their ideas on the Colossians are legalists of a Jewish sort. And that they are trying to bring the Christians under the law of circumcision, which has been alluded to earlier, the laws of dietary restriction, the law of keeping festivals and sabbaths.

By the way, I get a lot of calls on the radio and from other people about sabbath keeping. And people who believe that we have to keep sabbaths, they don't like this verse. It's uncomfortable to them because it indicates that the sabbath is like the dietary laws.

It's a shadowy thing that it's not valid. People can't judge anyone about those things anymore. It's part of the ceremonial law like the festivals.

But sabbath keepers usually say, well, this sabbath doesn't mean the seventh day sabbath, the Lord's sabbath. This refers to special sabbaths that were part of festival weeks, etc. I disagree.

It seems like the structure of Paul's sentence is very clear. Festivals, new moons, sabbaths. Festivals are like Passover, Pentecost, Feast of Tabernacles.

These were annual occurrences. Festivals were annual holy days. New moons were monthly.

Every first day of the month was a new moon. And sabbaths were weekly. So he's basically saying all the Jewish holy days, whether they are annual, monthly, or weekly, doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter how often they happen, they're still all of the same nature. They're all holy days. And holy days have nothing to do with Christianity.

Those are shadows. They all had symbolic value. They don't have any lasting spiritual value and they don't have any lasting spiritual demands they place upon us.

Paul told the Galatians he was very concerned about their spirituality because they observed holy days. He said in Galatians 4, he says in verse 10, Galatians 4, 10, you observe days and months and seasons and years. I'm afraid for you lest I've labored for you in vain.

I'm afraid you're not even Christians anymore. My labor to bring you to Christ seemed to be in vain. Because what? You're getting into keeping holy days.

And Paul has the same concern here. These holy days are a shadow. They're not the reality.

Christ is the reality. And that's what we need to be concerned about. So don't let anyone put you under laws of an Old Testament sort.

Now he says in verse 18, let no one defraud you of your reward by taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen. Some manuscripts says which he has seen, referring possibly to visions that someone claims to have seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind and not holding fast to the head. That's Jesus from whom all the body nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments grows with the increase, which is from God.

Now the body of Christ grows from Christ. Christ is the head and it's from him that the nourishment comes to grow. Don't let people get you off onto sidetracks like worshiping angels or into their special revelations they claim they've had that are outside of Christ.

These people are puffed up. They're proud. They're egotistical.

They're arrogant about their revelations. There's a false humility, he says, attached to this. But this is all, this all seems like it's referring to mystery cults, oriental mystery religions.

And the problem seems to be a mixture of maybe Jewish legalism and oriental mysticism here. And he says these people, they're not holding fast to Christ, so ignore them. Don't let anyone catch you up.

Don't let anyone defraud you of your reward this way. Verse 20, therefore, if you died with Christ, which he indicated earlier when we were baptized, that indicated we had died with Christ, we're buried with him. If you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, which apparently is legalism and laws and so forth, the basic stuff of religiosity, why as though living in the world do you subject yourselves to regulations? You died to this.

Why do you still live under these things? What kind? Well, do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which all concern things which perish with the using according to the commandments and doctrines of men. These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom and self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. Now, in the introduction to Colossians, I read these verses and mentioned that there is apparent reference here to Greek neglect of the body, Greek asceticism.

Certainly Jewish, the Jews had their laws about don't touch and don't handle, but this seems to be speaking about man-made doctrines. He says according to the commandments and doctrines of men. He also talks about things that had the appearance of self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body.

This was a Greek ascetic idea. Apparently the problems in Colossians were a mixture of Jewish legalism, Greek asceticism of agnostic sort probably, and Oriental mysticism, worshipping angels and stuff. It is a big mixed up bag of religious nonsense.

And basically he's saying all of that is extraneous. If you have Christ, you are complete in him. He's everything.

The fullness of God dwells in him. You don't need to get off into ascetic trips. You don't need to go off into head trips and philosophy and somebody's claims to having some new revelation or how to get in touch with your angel.

All of that is many, many steps down from where you already are, not up, because you're complete in him. He in him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Let's not get caught up in these other curiosities.

They only bring you further away from the reality, which is Christ, and back into the realm of shadows and things that are not real. So this one chapter, more than any other in Colossians, lays out the real areas of concern that Paul has. In the remaining chapters, he gets into practical counsel for how to live in certain life situations, in family life and in work life and in other things.

We'll talk about those in due time, but we've run out of time for this class and we can then wrap it up at this point and at another time, go into these other things in chapters three and four.