Above All Earthly Things

Today’s Question: Do we truly believe that Christianity is true and other religions are false?

Colossians 2:6–7 ESV

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Christians do not believe that we have received merely “another religion.” We have received Christ Jesus the Lord.

Colossians 2:8 ESV

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.

All rivals to Christ are “merely religions,” systems of ideas originating among the very humans they intend to save.

Colossians 2:9–10 ESV

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

Christianity believes Jesus is God, and begins not with the ascent of an idea from man, but the descent of the Creator to man.

Colossians 2:11–12 ESV

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, 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.

Christianity holds that curing the human problem requires a work of God, as powerful as raising up the dead.

Colossians 2:13–14 ESV

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, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

On the one hand, God at the cross set aside all systems of dogmas and their lists of our failures.

Colossians 2:15 ESV

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

On the other hand, God at the cross disarmed all the systems of power that give rise to our spiritual diseases.

Colossians 2:16–17 ESV

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. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Every system of dogmas is an attempt to do what Christ alone and above all has done.

Colossians 2:18–19 ESV

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, 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.

To chose one of these systems for salvation is to sever ourselves from the lifegiving head, Jesus Christ.

Colossians 3:1–2 ESV

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Today’s Answer: Christian believe that the man from heaven is greater than any religion from earth.