Colossians 2:6-23

Intro

2:6-7 is the heart of the letter. this is his aim in writing all he has

verse 6: The first clause succinctly restates the key theological argument of the letter to this point: Jesus Christ is Lord, and we have entered into his Lordship. The second clause then summarizes the specific commands and warnings that follow: we are to continue to live in him, to work out just what it means in both our thinking and our acting to live under the Lordship of Christ.

Moo, D. J. (2008). The letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (p. 177). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

HUGE POINT OF VERSE 6:

Colossians and Philemon A. The Heart of the Matter: Remaining Centered on Christ (2:6–7)

“Let Christ—and no other! for he is Lord—establish your values, guide your thinking, direct your conduct.”

What captivates your heart (6-8)

6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

It is kind of funny to me the way Paul says the word there fore here

It may be my own lens reading it but i can almost hear a sarcasm in it

He has just gone scorched earth in chapter 1.

Despite what the new flashy pop pastors are teaching these believers are not almost they already are true believers

If these pop star pastors are selling that theres special experiences these believers need Paul has displayed Christ as The mystery revealed

If these guys are selling that ministry must look successful like the world…Paul has destroyed that claim with nothing held back

So he says..since all of what I have said is the reality of the world....live it out

We are to work out just what it means in both our thinking and our acting to live under the Lordship of Christ.

These verses are the point of the letter.

It looks like a simplistic sentence but there is immense weight to these words

Why does Paul have this urgency?

More than that Why has God given us this word for our day?

Because lucas says “The new teaching had an immediate appeal just because it spoke to a real need.”

We can go at the prosperity or the gospel lite seeker guys all we want but they have 15 thousand member churches because the people listening long for something to make a busted up world better

Things are not how they are supposed to be.

Things were brutal for the Colossian believers.

These new teachers were selling a “fuller, better, more complete” way to live life where there are funerals, and affairs, and addiction, and wayward kids breaking parents hearts.

We cannot blame anyone for longing for God to make the world of sin and pain one we can navigate with less fear and pain with maximum pleasure and security and hope.

Paul knows that is the reality of the world

He is in a hell on earth prison cell as he scribbles this letter out on smuggled in paper

What he is saying is that he knows it is hard and we want to know peace…and he knows the only place to find it is the treasure they already Have in Christ so don’t abandon it ....immerse yourself in it and don’t look back

The hunger is right Paul is saying…but it can never be satisfies with the empty words of the world

The hunger is right and in Christ we have a banquet to never exhaust the fullness of

Lucas says: “First he shows that ‘receiving Christ’ is not the end but the beginning of life; that foundations exist not for themselves, but to be built upon; and that what we first learnt opens to us a life of increasing knowledge.”

You already are all God has saved you to be now continue to mine the riches of being His in how you live think love do life…keep in it never leave because nothing compares.

Verse 6 says:

as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,

In our age where we see many pray to receive Jesus into their heart scared of hell in an emotional experience we need these words of Paul

Sometimes we can be scared into a prayer to cover ourselves…but there is no follow up so we move on with some “spiritual experience in our back pocket

We can have a spiritual high at a camp but have no real depth and soon fall away but we follow a still christian culture so we comfortably drift

In all these cases we easily want saving from consequences not saved from a wicked heart hell bent on spitting in the face of our creator who was nailed to a tree to save us

Paul makes it clear to Receive Christ Jesus means a lot more than a prayer once adding a loving jesus as simply the best way to do the things we wanted before we even met him

Jesus from Nazareth 2000 years ago is Lord

Dick Lucas says: “When the earliest Christians ‘received Christ’ through Paul’s ministry, what primarily they received from the apostle was an account of the gospel truths he had himself received from the risen Lord.”

Repeatedly Paul refers to this in 1 Corinthians , 15:1-3 is a clear example

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

Lucas again hammers home so well Paul’s clarity: “This, for example, is why Mark’s Gospel begins the story of Jesus as the appearance of an Authority who could not be denied. All other authorities, of whatever kind (the will of man, ancient traditions of truth, demons, disease, the powers of nature, and even the powers of death) must yield to him.”

To ‘receive Christ Jesus the Lord’, then, is to recognize as truth the marvellous news that, in Christ, the Lord who has power to redeem the world from error and misery has come. More than that, the words necessarily imply the appropriate submission to that Lord for personal deliverance. This means that ‘life in the Spirit’ is recognizable, according to Paul, by some genuine acknowledgment of Christ’s lordship

This has HUGE implications for us today

We see so many young people who turn away from the faith they say

Yet all we have done for generations now is present a prayer completely divorced from the beauty of life lived under the Lordship of Christ

He is Lord wether we acknowledge it or not

selling an experience or a way out of consequences never presents the need for heart change or the beauty of life lived as we were created for it

People don’t walk away and never return…if they do they never received the Lord in the first place more than likely

This is why we make disciples not programs

This is why this letter is written to the members not professionals only of the church

We don’t cry for outreach programs and never immerse ourselves in a missional lifestyle where we live out life saturated by the gospel....if you have received him live it out

The Colossian church had received it ...

So Paul says verse 7 the good news of the full gospel is not the ABC’s it is the A-Z of faith

It is the foundation and all of life is built on it

Verse 7: 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Colossians and Philemon A. The Heart of the Matter: Remaining Centered on Christ (2:6–7)

“Let Christ—and no other! for he is Lord—establish your values, guide your thinking, direct your conduct.”

Let this sink in…the building up of converts in a life of the gospel was JUST as important to the apostles as the moment of salvation…you cannot have one without the other

Is that still our view of receiving Him?

We count attendance and baptisms…and have failed miserably for decades to make a disciple who can make a disciple

Good News we are doing it every wednesday

What does all that mean?

Here is a great application from our M Group and my life personally

Our emotions and our heart are our gut reaction to all our experiences all day

That self talk though is saturated with my sinful heart, the half truths of satan, and a world message that says live for yourself

So when i have no clue where we are going to be in 5 months, out of our house in march, no job on the way and our third baby due in January there is alot of conversation and emotion

On top of that God is very silent, and it looks like people all around me are being successful while i am fotgotten it seems

Do you see now what it means to live this out

I live it out by remebering the Gospel. I am not forgotten he came to kill the dragon and get me back…he is not inactive i know that

Will those succeeding in earthly ways get away with anything? God is a God of justice so it is not my job to worry about it…nothing that is mine can be taken…because I know he is Lord

Do i need to look to my wife to make it all OK and be something only God can be? No i can sacrificially love her even though i am anxious at times because God loves us selflessly

Do you see on and on how the Gospel is lived out in a million ways each day....and this is just the tip of the iceburg

It is learning how to live in the most counter cultural way and it takes time and effort…all built on the foundation of the truth of what Christ has done for you.

It is about the heart. It is about our deepest affections and longings

Ever notice how you notice beauty? How you hate the absence of truth? We all know when things aren’t good?

We are made to notice these things we aren’t taught too.

We were made to be captivated . We are made to be in awe

We are lovers not thinkers and Paul is shouting that those longings are wonderful get them fullfilled in the only place that is true and can

We all have that wiring but we are blind unless we are taught how to cultivate the gospel into those longings

This part I love here in verse 7:

7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

JUST AS YOU WERE TAUGHT

This is for all of us. Theology and worldview and evangelism are the responsibilty of all of us to learn

Seminaries exist because the church has failed to do what it exists for but make no mistake we are always to be teaching each other the Gospel

If we aren’t rooted in it and continuing to live it we will drift

Verse 8:

8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

The verb here is so powerful

The word is rarely used and it means to literally be taken as plunder

It is not just a theft its a taking away as valuable to sought after . It is the language of kidnapping

Dick Lucas says here:

Someone is out to capture the Colossians’ allegiance. But it is worse than that. The unusual word used here speaks of the slave-raider carrying off his victim, body and soul. These plausible teachers may say that they come to bring Christians new liberties but, says Paul in effect, don’t go near them if you value your spiritual freedom

This is the sale of half truths to play on the longings and fears we all have.

This is why Paul wastes not words. It is why I do not play with the text or teach what sounds good.

In the whole counsel of god life is found

We all want pleasures. do you want the passing kind that leave you longing again as if you never held it?

Do you want joys that are shallow and easily shaken or those that even on the darkest nights bursts through like fire

do you want the forever kind? The Psalm 16 Kind?

Where David says:

11  You make known to me the path of life;

in your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

God has made know the path of life. These believers already have it

These flashy teachers have nothing but invented good sounding half truths that never satisfy the soul

They are man made and Paul is settling the matter

Paul has not made up his message as we saw last week

He has preached the message that the Risen Christ gave him when he saw him on the Damascus road.

Let the Gospel shape your worldview. Let the Gospel inform how you answer the deepest questions of life…continue to teach others how to do it...

This is not a Paul verses the cool pastors ....This is Christ the Lord verses his rivals to the throne and they are already crushed and defeated

That is why Paul turns the corner from these main verses of the letter to show that nothing compares to Christ

9-15: What compares to Christ

9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him

Listen to my pastoral hero Dick Lucas here:

First, in him, all that deity means is now dwelling! Think for a moment of what deity does mean to the Christian mind. It means the ‘Creator, who is blessed for ever’. It means the great ‘I am’. It means the ‘only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality’.

With such titles in mind, consider again the scope of the words, ‘the whole fullness of deity’. And then recognize, surely with awe, that this fullness of Godhead dwells in Christ.

These new pop star pastors feel there is something missing in the message of the Gospel.

They have what is lacking.

Their method is the one that works after all look how much money they make and the crowds they have....they have the cool christian brand and the colossian beleivers are missing out

Paul says there is nothing but FULL DIETY in our Lord

What else can we want other than this fullness of diety to take on flesh and bone to come take back what was His…you and me

Paulk isn’t finished

He wants true followers of Christ to know how full exactly this privilege makes us in Him

What good is this beother and sisters if this is not the story of reality?

Do you believe this?

I mean really believe it

Like believe right now on the throne is our God in flesh and bone spatially located ...

Do you believe it like Paul…to the point that you are overjoyed while surrounded by pain and death....simply at the word that this Gospel is spreading and saving lives

Is that you?

If not i have some amazing news....it can be!!!!

Get after this thing. Run it down with all you have and finish your race

Nothing compares to Him

Look at verse 10:

10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

Listen to this powerful summary:

“in Christ we have all that can be ours this side of heaven. With regard to heaven’s victory over powers and principalities, we share with Christ all that he has won.”

What compares to this?

Look at what Paul just RIPS across history with in 11-15 this is insane

In this unmatched God who took on flesh and stepped into our hell on earth look what you have

You have been covenantally made His not with hands but through the new life breathed into your dead bones....you have been burried once already..let that sink in…burried in HIm which means when he got up YOUR HOPE GOT UP and YOU WITH HIM!!!!!!!

Want more he has more.....

Though before Him we had covenanted with death because of our rebellion....God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

The verdict of death was read out and the Son took your place as the gavel hammered down and the price was paid in the flesh of the glorious SON

What compares to this King.

What compares to this message

What compares to the simple means he has ordained for this message to spread to the ends of the earth

NOTHING DOES

NO ONE DOES Because .....

Verse 15:

15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

He conludes with as powerful a picture the readers could imagine

The Roman Empire was ruthless

There was no power that stood in it’s way

When they conqured a country they would march accross the empire to Rome in open shame for the conquered people.

Paraded as a trophy

Do not miss the even greater irony of the Cross that N.T. Wright points out:

“The ‘rulers and authorities’ of Rome and of Israel— the best government and the highest religion the world of that time had ever known—conspired to place Jesus on the cross. These powers, angry at his challenge to their sovereignty, stripped him naked, held him up to public contempt, and celebrated a triumph over him. In one of his most dramatic statements of the paradox of the cross, and one moreover which shows in what physical detail Paul could envisage the horrible death that Jesus had died, he declares that, on the contrary, on the cross God was stripping them naked, was holding them up to public contempt, and leading them in his own triumphal procession—in Christ, the crucified Messiah.”

What compares to our Savior?

If nothing compares…then no matter what the world sells as half truth can never qualify us for this right inheritance in Christ.

16-23 : What qualifies you

English Standard Version Chapter 2

16 Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

I love this “therefore” here

Paul is like ok so you get what i am saying now…so let none of this derail you

N.T. Wright says here:

“Paul is drawing out the implications of the victory of Christ over the rulers and authorities. They had tried to disqualify Gentiles from membership in God’s people, holding up ‘the handwriting, with its regulations’ as a barrier against them. Now Paul warns the Colossians against letting any ordinary mortal do what the ‘powers’ have failed to do.”

This not in the sense of judging them or looking down on them…it is a matter of these flashy elitist pop stars making the Colossian christians feel they were not part of the people of God if they weren’t on board with their brand

If you were really the church you would look like this, if you were really the church you would be doing this if you were really the church you would be marketing like this on and on… this is the message of ministry the worlds way

That is what the Colossians were hearing

Verse 16 shows that this new group was all about the spectacle.

These rules go beyond the Old Testament as a way to show their willingness to publically withhold things

Not a fast but a show

I had a person one time i knew went to a massive seeker gospel lite church do this to me

They offered me a dr. pepper just to say oh i dont have any we at ____ church are doing a soda fast so i don’t have any

i was like one…you brought it up so i didn’t ask you....two did you jsut do that to tell me how extra special you mega church super star pastor has mad eyou all?

This is what was happening in Colossae but worse

this is important because this is very far from the disciplined Christian life Paul always urges us to live

Remember this: “Every Bible reader knows that Paul was no enemy of self-discipline in the life of the Christian, but rather the reverse. It is axiomatic in his portrait of the effective servant of God that appetites will need disciplining, and self-control will need to be exercised, if time is to be found for prayer, if the body is to know its master, and if the ultimate prize is to be won.”

This is about refusing the good gifts of God in creation in order to put on a show and make the family of God a man made exclusive club