Untitled Sermon (6)

While the Colossian heresy was basically Jewish, it is not the straightforward Judaizing legalism of Galatians that is envisaged in Colossians, but a form of mysticism which tempted its adepts to look on themselves as a spiritual elite.

F. F. Bruce

Those Sabbath days were, as Colossians 2:17 points out, “a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.” In Christ shadow has become reality.

Richard E. Lauersdorf

My hypothesis, then, is that all the elements of Paul’s polemic in Colossians make sense as a warning against Judaism. The way to maturity for the people of God does not lie in their becoming Jews, but rather in their drawing out, and applying to personal and communal life, the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

N. T. Wright

We may, then, formulate a theology of rules from Colossians 2 along these lines: Rules must never take the place of Christ as the source of spiritual nourishment and growth; and any rules that we propose to follow must be clearly rooted in and lead back to Christ.

Douglas J. Moo

For the false teachers were apparently suggesting that Christians needed to go “beyond” the gospel that Epaphras had taught the Colossians in order to experience spiritual “fullness.” And so it is often the case with false teachers, who err not always in subtracting from the gospel but in seeking to add to it. The gospel can be perverted through addition just as easily as through subtraction.

Douglas J. Moo

Basically, the message is that, since the Colossians have set their minds on heavenly things, they are to keep holding on to that perspective and not to the things to which they have already died.

Arthur G. Patzia