Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Colossians 2:16
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath [days]:
16 23. Christian Liberty and Theories hostile to it
16. therefore ] Such is the Christian’s position in this sacrificed and triumphant Saviour. He stands possessed of the full inheritance of which the Mosaic ritual institutions were at once the shadow and the veil. Now therefore, so far as those institutions are presented to him by any school of teaching as an obligation and bond on Christian practice, he must decline to receive them.
judge you ] Take you to task (Lightfoot). Cp. Rom 14:3-4, for a close parallel, full of the principles of both liberty and duty in Christ. See also 1Co 10:29.
in meat, or in drink ] Rather better, in eating and in drinking. For the Mosaic laws about food cp. Leviticus 11, 17; Deuteronomy 14, &c. Of allowed or forbidden drinks little is said in the Old Law; Lightfoot notices Lev 10:9 (the prohibition of wine to the priests at special times); Lev 11:34 (the prohibition to drink liquid from an “unclean” vessel); and the law of the Nazirite, Num 6:3. Cp. with the text, Heb 9:10. Possibly the Colossian misleaders forbade wine in toto; not at all on modern philanthropic principles, but as a token of abjuration of social life.
in respect of ] Lit., “in the portion of;” i.e. “in, or under, the class of;” and so, idiomatically, with regard to. The Latin Versions render literally, in parte diei festi; and so Wyclif, “ in part of feest dai; ” Tyndale, Cranmer, Geneva, “ for a pece ( peece) of an holy daye.”
holy day ] feast day, R.V. The Greek word denotes the yearly Jewish festivals; Passover, Pentecost, Atonement, Tabernacles, &c. It is used by the LXX. to translate the Hebrew m’d, rendered in A.V. (e.g. 1Ch 23:31) “ set feast; ” see Chronicles just quoted for an example of such a threefold enumeration as this of holy times. Lightfoot refers to Gal 4:10 (“ days, and months, and seasons, and years ”) as a true parallel here; it only adds a fourth observance, the (sabbatic) year.
new moon ] See Num 10:10; Num 28:11; Num 28:14; Num 28:16; and cp. 1Sa 20:5; 2Ki 4:23; Psa 81:3; Isa 1:13-14.
sabbath days ] Better, sabbath. The original ( sabbata) is a Greek plural in form and declination, but only as it were by accident. It is a transliteration of the Aramaic singular shabbth (Hebrew, shabbth).
It is plain from the argument that the Sabbath is here regarded not as it was primevally (Gen 2:3) “made for man” (Mar 2:27), God’s benignant gift, fenced with precept and prohibition only for His creature’s bodily and spiritual benefit; but as it was adopted to be a symbolic institution of the Mosaic covenant, and expressly adapted to relation between God and Israel (Exo 31:12-17); an aspect of the Sabbath which governs much of the language of the O.T. about it. In that respect the Sabbath was abrogated, as the sacrifices were abrogated, and the New Israelite enters upon the spiritual realities foreshadowed by it as by them. The Colossian Christian who declined the ceremonial observance of the Sabbath in this respect was right. An altogether different question arises when the Christian is asked to “secularize” the weekly Rest which descends to us from the days of Paradise, and which is as vitally necessary as ever for man’s physical and spiritual well-being.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Let no man, therefore, judge you – compare Rom 14:10, note, 13, note. The word judge here is used in the sense of pronouncing a sentence. The meaning is, since you have thus been delivered by Christ from the evils which surrounded you: since you have been freed from the observances of the law, let no one sit in judgment on you, or claim the right to decide for you in those matters. You are not responsible to man for your conduct, but to Christ; and no man has a right to impose that on you as a burden from which he has made you free.
In meat – Margin, or eating and drinking. The meaning is, in respect to the various articles of food and drink. There is reference here, undoubtedly, to the distinctions which the Jews made on this subject, implying that an effort had been made by Jewish teachers to show them that the Mosaic laws were binding on all.
Or in respect of a holy day – Margin, part. The meaning is, in the part, or the particular of a holy day; that is, in respect to it The word rendered holy-day – heorte – means properly a feast or festival; and the allusion here is to the festivals of the Jews. The sense is, that no one had a right to impose their observance on Christians, or to condemn them if they did not keep them. They had been delivered from that obligation by the death of Christ; Col 2:14.
Or of the new moon – On the appearance of the new moon, among the Hebrews, in addition to the daily sacrifices, two bullocks, a ram, and seven sheep, with a meat offering, were required to be presented to God; Num 10:10; Num 28:11-14. The new moon in the beginning of the month Tisri (October) was the beginning of their civil year, and was commanded to be observed as a festival; Lev 23:24, Lev 23:25.
Or of the Sabbath days – Greek, of the Sabbaths. The word Sabbath in the Old Testament is applied not only to the seventh day, but to all the days of holy rest that were observed by the Hebrews, and particularly to the beginning and close of their great festivals. There is, doubtless, reference to those days in this place, since the word is used in the plural number, and the apostle does not refer particularly to the Sabbath properly so called. There is no evidence from this passage that he would teach that there was no obligation to observe any holy time, for there is not the slightest reason to believe that he meant to teach that one of the ten commandments had ceased to be binding on mankind. If he had used the word in the singular number – the Sabbath, it would then, of course, have been clear that he meant to teach that that commandment had ceased to be binding, and that a Sabbath was no longer to be observed. But the use of the term in the plural number, and the connection, show that he had his eye on the great number of days which were observed by the Hebrews as festivals, as a part of their ceremonial and typical law, and not to the moral law, or the Ten Commandments. No part of the moral law – no one of the ten commandments could be spoken of as a shadow of good things to come. These commandments are, from the nature of moral law, of perpetual and universal obligation.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Col 2:16-17
Let no man therefore Judge you.
Christian liberty
I. The points in which that liberty is to be exercised.
1. Those which, in addition to circumcision, were principally in question were–
(1) Meat and drink, which refers to unclean things, things offered to idols, and perhaps the Nazarite vow. As there were few Jewish regulations as to drink, probably other ascetic practices were in question.
(2) Sacred seasons–annual festivals, the monthly feast of the new moon, and the weekly Sabbath.
2. The relation of the Gentile converts to these was really the question whether Christianity was to be more than a Jewish sect, and the main force which, under God, settled the contest was the vehemence and logic of Paul.
3. He lays down the ground on which the whole matter was to be settled. They are a shadow, etc. Coming events cast their shadows before. The great work of Christ whose goings forth have been from everlasting, may be thought of as having set out from the Throne as soon as time was, like the beams of some far-off star that have not yet reached a dark world. The light from the Throne is behind Him as He advances across the centuries, and the shadow is thrown far in front.
II. This involves the purely prophetic and symbolic character of the old testament order.
1. Sacrifice, altar, priest, temple, spoke of Christ.
(1) The distinctions of meats were meant to familiarize men with the conceptions of purity and impurity, and so, by stimulating conscience to work the need of a Purifier.
(2) The yearly feasts set forth various aspects of Christs work, and the Sabbath showed in outward form the rest into which He leads His people who cease from their own works and wear His yoke. And all are like outriders who precede a prince on his progress, and as they gallop through sleeping villages rouse them with the cry, the king is coming.
2. And when the king has come where are the heralds? When the reality, who wants the shadows? And if that which threw the shadow forward has arrived, how shall the shadow be visible too?
III. Therefore the cessation of all these observances is involved in their prophetic character.
1. The practical conclusion is not, let no man observe these any more, but let no man judge you about them. He does not quarrel with the rites, but with men insisting on them.
2. His own practice is the best commentary on his meaning. When they said to him, You must circumcise Titus, he said, Then I will not. When nobody tried to compel him he circumcised Timothy to avoid scandals.
3. In times of transition, wise supporters of the new will not be in a hurry to break with the old. The brown sheaths remain on the twigs alter the tender green leaf has burst from within them, but there is no need to pull them off, for they will drop presently.
4. The bearing of Pauls principles on the religious observance of Sunday.
(1) The obligation of the Jewish Sabbath has passed away, but the institution of a weekly day of rest is put in Scripture independently and prior to the Mosaic institution. That is the natural conclusion from the narrative in Genesis, the fact that Sabbath was made for man, i.e., for the race, and the traces of a pre-Mosaic Sabbath, e.g., in Assyria. It is a physical and moral necessity, and that is a mistaken benevolence which on the plea of culture or amusement for the many, compels the labour of the few.
(2) The gradual growing up of the practice of observing the Lords day is in accordance with the whole spirit of the New Covenant, which has next to nothing to say about externals, but leaves the new life to shape itself. The necessity of a day of rest is not less now than at the first. I distrust the spirituality which professes that all life is a Sabbath, and therefore holds itself absolved from special seasons of worship; but it is better to think of the day as a great gift for the highest purposes, than to keep it as a mere commandment. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The ceremonial and the real in religion
Ceremonial in religion–
I. Can form no just basis for individual condemnation. Let no man judge you. The essence of religion does not consist in the outward form, but the inward spirit.
II. Is typical of the real. Rites have their place in the culture of the race, and in their proper sphere are important. They sketch the outlines of truths, and are valuable only as they conduct to the realities they predict and typify.
III. Is abolished and rendered nugatory by the real. It is a dangerous infatuation to snatch at the shadow when we may embrace the substance. Lessons:
1. Learn to exercise forbearance in externals.
2. Christ alone can satisfy the deepest craving of the soul. (G. Barlow.)
The shadow and the substance
Therefore marks the connection. The handwriting is destroyed, Christians are free; why then go back to the elements of bondage.
I. The admonition.
1. Eating and drinking have reference to the dietetic injunctions of Mosaism. These had a strong hold of the Jewish mind (Act 10:9-16). The distinctions of days point collectively to the periodical feasts and sacred seasons. And the idea was that all this was essential to salvation, and so obligatory on Gentile Christians.
2. Against this notion Paul asserts the great principle of Christian liberty. Such things ought never to be a criterion of piety. Yet how strong is the tendency to-day to forbid certain kinds of food at certain seasons, and to insist on saints days. The doctrine here is that one kind of food is as lawful, and one day as sacred, as another. All these distinctions have passed away, and are no longer binding. That we are at liberty to observe certain days, such as those on which we commemorate the great redemptive facts, e.g., Christmas, Easter, etc., there can be no doubt, but they are not obligatory (Rom 14:6).
3. The great practical question is that which relates to the Sabbath. The seventh day was long kept along with the first; but this was condemned as Judaizing by the Council of Laodicea (a.d. 864). The apostle declares that a Christians true piety is not to be judged by his regard of the Jewish Sabbath any more than to the other festivals. That was a shadow of the Lords day. That a seventh portion of our time should be specially given to God is based on considerations as old as creation; but the foundation and character of the Lords day are altogether changed from those of the Jewish Sabbath. Its true principle is allegiance to a living Saviour whose resurrection on that day it commemorates, as laying the foundation of a new spiritual creation. The Saviours appearances on that day subsequent to His resurrection, and the usage of the apostles, hallow the first day of the week, and make it with a Divine fitness and beauty the Christians day of rest.
II. The argument. The coming Saviour as the Sun of Righteousness, in the establishment of the Jewish economy, flung a shadow of His approaching advent and dispensation down on the descendants of Abraham, that they might walk in it, and conserve the worship and truth of God. As a shadow it was–
1. Predicted and foretold that something grander was coming.
2. It was prefigurative. A shadow is s likeness, however faint, and the truths embodied in Christ were dimly typified in Judaism.
3. But as a shadow is evanescent, it was made to vanish away when that which was perfect had come. Then it answered its purpose and disappeared. The reality was reached in the Son of God. (J. Spence, D. D.)
Religion, freedom, and joy
Religion is not like the prophets roll, sweet as honey when it was in his mouth, but as bitter as gall in his belly. Religion is no sullen stoicism, no sour Pharisaism: it does not consist in a few melancholy passions, in some dejected looks or depressions of mind; but it consists in freedom, love, peace, life, and power; the more it comes to be digested: into our lives, the more sweet and lovely we shall find it to be. Those spots and wrinkles which corrupt minds think they see in the face of religion are, indeed, nowhere else but in their own deformed and misshapen apprehensions. It is no wonder, when a defiled fancy comes to be the glass, if you have an unlovely reflection. (John Smith.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 16. Let no man – judge you in meat, or in drink] The apostle speaks here in reference to some particulars of the hand-writing of ordinances, which had been taken away, viz., the distinction of meats and drinks, what was clean and what unclean, according to the law; and the necessity of observing certain holydays or festivals, such as the new moons and particular sabbaths, or those which should be observed with more than ordinary solemnity; all these had been taken out of the way and nailed to the cross, and were no longer of moral obligation. There is no intimation here that the Sabbath was done away, or that its moral use was superseded, by the introduction of Christianity. I have shown elsewhere that, Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, is a command of perpetual obligation, and can never be superseded but by the final termination of time. As it is a type of that rest which remains for the people of God, of an eternity of bliss, it must continue in full force till that eternity arrives; for no type ever ceases till the antitype be come. Besides, it is not clear that the apostle refers at all to the Sabbath in this place, whether Jewish or Christian; his , of sabbaths or weeks, most probably refers to their feasts of weeks, of which much has been said in the notes on the Pentateuch.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Let no man therefore judge you; he infers none should be condemned: none condemns another for exercising Christian liberty; none hath power to judge and censure herein: q.d. Suffer not any one (he excepts none) to impose upon you that, as necessary in the use and practice of it, which is not after Christ, Col 2:8, not warranted by his law of liberty, Rom 14:3,4; Ga 5:1; Jam 1:25. Paul himself would not be imposed on, 1Co 6:12; 7:23; Gal 2:5,11,14, &c.; he would not (as one of the words doth note) be domineered over by any, or suffer any to exercise authority over him, who held the Head, and owned Christ to be Lord of the conscience, and sole dictator of what way he will be served in.
In meat, or in drink; he therefore would not have the practice of ceremonials obtruded, instancing in some, as the difference of meats and drinks, in the use or not use of which (now after Christ had nailed those decrees to his cross) superstitious ones would, from the antiquated rites of the Jews and Pythagorean philosophers, place holiness in, and add them to the Christian institution.
Or in respect of an holy-day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days; or the difference of festivals and sabbaths, whether annual, or monthly, or weekly, from the Levitical institutions.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
16. thereforebecause ye arecomplete in Christ, and God in Him has dispensed with all subordinatemeans as essential to acceptance with Him.
meat . . . drinkGreek,“eating . . . drinking” (Ro14:1-17). Pay no regard to any one who sits in judgment on you asto legal observances in respect to foods.
holydaya feastyearly. Compare the three, 1Ch23:31.
new moonmonthly.
the sabbathOmit “THE,”which is not in the Greek (compare Note, see on Ga4:10). “SABBATHS”(not “the sabbaths”) of the day of atonement and feast oftabernacles have come to an end with the Jewish services to whichthey belonged (Lev 23:32; Lev 23:37-39).The weekly sabbath rests on a more permanent foundation, having beeninstituted in Paradise to commemorate the completion of creation insix days. Le 23:38 expresslydistinguished “the sabbath of the Lord” from the othersabbaths. A positive precept is right because it iscommanded, and ceases to be obligatory when abrogated; a moralprecept is commanded eternally, because it is eternallyright. If we could keep a perpetual sabbath, as we shallhereafter, the positive precept of the sabbath, one in each week,would not be needed. Heb 4:9,”rests,” Greek, “keeping of sabbath” (Isa66:23). But we cannot, since even Adam, in innocence, needed oneamidst his earthly employments; therefore the sabbath is still neededand is therefore still linked with the other nine commandments, asobligatory in the spirit, though the letter of the law has beensuperseded by that higher spirit of love which is the essence of lawand Gospel alike (Ro13:8-10).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Let no man therefore judge you,…. Since they were complete in Christ, had everything in him, were circumcised in him; and particularly since the handwriting of the law was blotted out, and torn to pieces through the nails of the cross of Christ, the apostle’s conclusion is, that they should be judged by no man; they should not regard or submit to any man’s judgment, as to the observance of the ceremonial law: Christ is the prophet who was to be raised up like unto Moses, and who only, and not Moses, is to be heard; saints are to call no man master upon earth but him; they are not to be the servants of men, nor should suffer any yoke of bondage to be imposed upon them; and should they be suffered and condemned by others, as if they were transgressors of the law, and their state bad, for not observing the rituals of the former dispensation, they should not regard such censures, for the judaizing Christians were very censorious, they were ready to look upon and condemn a man as an immoral man, as in a state of damnation, if he did not keep the law of Moses; but such rigid censures were to be disregarded, “let no man judge”, or “condemn you”; and though they could not help or hinder the judgment and condemnation of men, yet they could despise them, and not be uneasy with them, but set light by them, as they ought to do. The Syriac version renders it, , “let no man trouble you”, or make you uneasy, by imposing ceremonies on you: the sense is, that the apostle would not have them submit to the yoke they would lay upon them, nor be terrified by their anathemas against them, for the non-observation of the things that follow:
in meat or in drink; or on account of not observing the laws and rules about meats and drinks, in the law of Moses; such as related to the difference between clean and unclean creatures, to abstinence in Nazarites from wine and strong drink, and which forbid drinking out of an uncovered vessel, and which was not clean; hence the washing of cups, c. religiously observed by the Pharisees. There was no distinction of meats and drinks before the law, but all sorts of herbs and animals, without limitation, were given to be food for men by the ceremonial law a difference was made between them, some were allowed, and others were forbidden; which law stood only in meats and drinks, and such like things, but is now abolished; for the kingdom of God, or the Gospel dispensation, does not lie in the observance of such outward things, but in internal ones, in righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; it is not any thing that goes into the man that defiles, nor is anything in its own nature common or unclean, but every creature of God is good, so be it, it be used in moderation and with thankfulness:
or in respect of an holyday; or feast, such as the feast of the passover, the feast of tabernacles, and the feast of Pentecost; which were three grand festivals, at which all the Jewish males were obliged to appear before the Lord; but were never binding upon the Gentiles, and were what the Christians under the Gospel dispensation had nothing to do with, and even believing Jews were freed from them, as having had their accomplishment in Christ; and therefore were not to be imposed upon them, or they condemned for the neglect of them. The phrase , which we render “in respect”, has greatly puzzled interpreters; some reading it “in part of a feast”; or holyday; as if the sense was, that no man should judge or condemn them, for not observing some part of a festival, since they were not obliged to observe any at all: others “in the partition”, or “division of a feast”; that is, in the several distinct feasts, as they come in their turns: some c think the apostle respects the Misna, or oral law of the Jews, in which are several treatises concerning a good day, or an holyday, the beginning of the new year, and the sabbath, which treatises are divided into sections or chapters; and that it is one of these sections or chapters, containing rules about these things, that is here regarded; and then the sense is, let no man judge you or condemn you, for your non-observance of feast days, new moons, and sabbaths, by any part, chapter, or section, of , or by anything out of the treatise “concerning a feast day”; or by any part, chapter, or section, of
, the treatise “concerning the beginning of the year”; or by any part, chapter, or section, of , the treatise “concerning the sabbath”; and if these treatises are referred to, it proves the antiquity of the Misna. The Syriac version renders it, , “in the divisions of the feast”: frequent mention is made of , “the division”, or “half of the feast”, in the Jewish writings: thus for instance it is said d,
“three times in a year they clear the chamber (where the half-shekels were put), , “in the half”, or middle of the passover, in the middle of Pentecost, and in the middle of the feast.”
again e
“there are three times for tithing of beasts, in the middle of the passover, in the middle of Pentecost, and the middle of the feast;”
that is, of tabernacles: and this, the Jewish commentators say f, was fifteen days before each of these festivals: now whether it was to this, , “middle”, or “half space”, before each and any of these feasts the apostle refers to, may be considered:
or of the new moon; which the Jews were obliged to observe, by attending religious worship, and offering sacrifices; see Nu 28:11 2Ki 4:23.
Or of the sabbath [days], or “sabbaths”; meaning the jubilee sabbath, which was one year in fifty; and the sabbath of the land, which was one year in seven; and the seventh day sabbath, and some copies read in the singular number, “or of the sabbath”; which were all peculiar to the Jews, were never binding on the Gentiles, and to which believers in Christ, be they who they will, are by no means obliged; nor ought they to observe them, the one any more than the other; and should they be imposed upon them, they ought to reject them; and should they be judged, censured, and condemned, for so doing, they ought not to mind it. It is the sense of the Jews themselves, that the Gentiles are not obliged to keep their sabbath; no, not the proselyte of the gate, or he that dwelt in any of their cities; for they say g, that
“it is lawful for a proselyte of the gate to do work on the sabbath day for himself, as for an Israelite on a common feast day; R. Akiba says, as for all Israelite on a feast day; R. Jose says, it is lawful for a proselyte of the gate to do work on the sabbath day for himself, as for an Israelite on a common or week day:”
and this last is the received sense of the nation; nay, they assert that a Gentile that keeps a sabbath is guilty of death h;
[See comments on Mr 2:27]. Yea, they say i, that
“if a Gentile sabbatizes, or keeps a sabbath, though on any of the days of the week, if he makes or appoints it as a sabbath for himself, he is guilty of the same.”
It is the general sense of that people, that the sabbath was peculiarly given to the children of Israel; and that the Gentiles, strangers, or others, were not punishable for the neglect and breach of it k; that it is a special and an additional precept, which, with some others, were given them at Marah, over and above the seven commands, which the sons of Noah were only obliged to regard l; and that the blessing and sanctifying of it were by the manna provided for that day; and that the passage in Ge 2:3; refers not to the then present time, but , “to time to come”, to the time of the manna m.
c Vid. Casaubon. Epist. ep. 24. d Misn. Shekalim, c. 3. sect. 1. e Misn. Becorot, c. 9. sect. 5. f Maimon. & Bartenora in ib. g T. Bab. Ceritot, fol. 9. 1. Piske Tosaphot Yebamot. art. 84. Maimon. Hilch. Sabbat, c. 20. sect. 14. h T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 58. 2. i Maimon. Hilch. Melachim, c. 10. sect. 9. k T. Bab. Betza, fol. 16. 1. Seder Tephillot, fol. 76. 1. Ed. Amtst. l T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 56. 2. Seder Olam Rabba, p. 17. & Zuta, p. 101. Ed. Meyer. m Jarchi & Baal Hatturim in Gen. ii. 3. Pirke Eliezer, c. 18.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| The Glory of the Christian Economy. | A. D. 62. |
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: 17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. 18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. 20 Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, 21 (Touch not; taste not; handle not; 22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? 23 Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.
The apostle concludes the chapter with exhortations to proper duty, which he infers from the foregoing discourse.
I. Here is a caution to take heed of judaizing teachers, or those who would impose upon Christians the yoke of the ceremonial law: Let no man therefore judge you in meat nor drink, c., <i>v. 16. Much of the ceremonies of the law of Moses consisted in the distinction of meats and days. It appears by Rom. xiv. that there were those who were for keeping up those distinctions: but here the apostle shows that since Christ has come, and has cancelled the ceremonial law, we ought not to keep it up. “Let no man impose those things upon you, for God has not imposed them: if God has made you free, be not you again entangled in that yoke of bondage.” And this the rather because these things were shadows of things to come (v. 17), intimating that they had no intrinsic worth in them and that they are now done away. But the body is of Christ: the body, of which they were shadows, has come; and to continue the ceremonial observances, which were only types and shadows of Christ and the gospel, carries an intimation that Christ has not yet come and the gospel state has not yet commenced. Observe the advantages we have under the gospel, above what they had under the law: they had the shadows, we have the substance.
II. He cautions them to take heed of those who would introduce the worship of angels as mediators between God and them, as the Gentile philosophers did: Let no man beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, v. 18. It looked like a piece of modesty to make use of the mediation of angels, as conscious to ourselves of our unworthiness to speak immediately to God; but, though it has a show of humility, it is a voluntary, not a commanded humility; and therefore it is not acceptable, yea, it is not warrantable: it is taking that honour which is due to Christ only and giving it to a creature. Besides, the notions upon which this practice was grounded were merely the inventions of men and not by divine revelation,–the proud conceits of human reason, which make a man presume to dive into things, and determine them, without sufficient knowledge and warrant: Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind–pretending to describe the order of angels, and their respective ministries, which God has hidden from us; and therefore, though there was a show of humility in the practice, there was a real pride in the principle. They advanced those notions to gratify their own carnal fancy, and were fond of being thought wiser than other people. Pride is at the bottom of a great many errors and corruptions, and even of many evil practices, which have great show and appearance of humility. Those who do so do not hold the head, v. 19. They do in effect disclaim Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and man. It is the highest disparagement to Christ, who is the head of the church, for any of the members of it to make use of any intercessors with God but him. When men let go their hold of Christ, they catch at that which is next them and will stand them in no stead.–From which all the body, by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Observe, 1. Jesus Christ is not only a head of government over the church, but a head of vital influence to it. They are knit to him by joints and bands, as the several members of the body are united to the head, and receive life and nourishment from him. 2. The body of Christ is a growing body: it increaseth with the increase of God. The new man is increasing, and the nature of grace is to grow, where there is not an accidental hindrance.–With the increase of God, with an increase of grace which is from God as its author; or, in a usual Hebraism, with a large and abundant increase.–That you may be filled with all the fulness of God, Eph. iii. 19. See a parallel expression, Which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, fitly joined together, maketh increase of the body,Eph 4:15; Eph 4:16.
III. He takes occasion hence to warn them again: “Wherefore, if you be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are you subject to ordinances? v. 20. If as Christians you are dead to the observances of the ceremonial law, why are you subject to them? Such observances as, Touch not, taste not, handle not,” Col 2:21; Col 2:22. Under the law there was a ceremonial pollution contracted by touching a dead body, or any thing offered to an idol; or by tasting any forbidden meats, c., which all are to perish with the using, having no intrinsic worth in themselves to support them, and those who used them saw them perishing and passing away or, which tend to corrupt the Christian faith, having no other authority than the traditions and injunctions of men.–Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship and humility. They thought themselves wiser than their neighbours, in observing the law of Moses together with the gospel of Christ, that they might be sure in the one, at least, to be in the right; but, alas! it was but a show of wisdom, a mere invention and pretence. So they seem to neglect the body, by abstaining from such and such meats, and mortifying their bodily pleasures and appetites; but there is nothing of true devotion in these things, for the gospel teaches us to worship God in spirit and truth and not by ritual observances, and through the mediation of Christ alone and not of any angels. Observe, 1. Christians are freed by Christ from the ritual observances of Moses’s law, and delivered from that yoke of bondage which God himself had laid upon them. 2. Subjection to ordinances, or human appointments in the worship of God, is highly blamable, and contrary to the freedom and liberty of the gospel. The apostle requires Christians to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ hath made them free, and not to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage, Gal. v. 1. And the imposition of them is invading the authority of Christ, the head of the church, and introducing another law of commandments contained in ordinances, when Christ has abolished the old one, Eph. ii. 15. 3. Such things have only a show of wisdom, but are really folly. It is true wisdom to keep close to the appointments of the gospel, and an entire subjection to Christ, the only head of the church.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Let no one judge you ( ). Prohibition present active imperative third singular, forbidding the habit of passing judgment in such matters. For see on Mt 7:1. Paul has here in mind the ascetic regulations and practices of one wing of the Gnostics (possibly Essenic or even Pharisaic influence). He makes a plea for freedom in such matters on a par with that in Col 2:1; Col 2:14; Col 2:15. The Essenes went far beyond the Mosaic regulations. For the Jewish feasts see on Ga 4:10. Josephus (Ant. III. 10, 1) expressly explains the “seventh day” as called “sabbata” (plural form as here, an effort to transliterate the Aramaic sabbathah).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Therefore. Conclusion from the canceling of the bond. The allusions which follow (vers. 16 – 19) are to the practical and theoretical forms of the Colossian error, as in vers. 9 – 15; excessive ritualism, asceticism, and angelic mediation.
Judge [] . Sit in judgment.
Meat – drink [ – ] . Properly, eating, drinking, as 1Co 8:4; but the nouns are also used for that which is eaten or drunk, as Joh 4:32 (see note); Joh 6:27, 55; Rom 14:17. For the subject – matter compare Rom 14:17; 1Co 8:8; Heb 9:10, and note on Mr 7:19. The Mosaic law contained very few provisions concerning drinks. See Lev 10:9; Lev 11:34, 36; Num 6:3. Hence it is probable that the false teachers had extended the prohibitions as to the use of wine to all Christians. The Essenes abjured both wine and animal food. In respect [ ] . See on 2Co 3:10. Lit., in the division or category.
Holyday [] . Festival or feast – day. The annual festivals. The word holyday is used in its earlier sense of a sacred day.
New moon [] . Only here in the New Testament. The monthly festivals. The festival of the new moon is placed beside the Sabbath, Isa 1:13; Eze 46:1. The day was celebrated by blowing of trumpets, special sacrifices, feasting, and religious instruction. Labor was suspended, and no national or private fasts were permitted to take place. The authorities were at great pains to fix accurately the commencement of the month denoted by the appearance of the new moon. Messengers were placed on commanding heights to watch the sky, and as soon as the new moon appeared, they hastened to communicate it to the synod, being allowed even to travel on the Sabbath for this purpose. The witnesses were assembled and examined, and when the judges were satisfied the president pronounced the words it is sanctified, and the day was declared new moon.
Sabbath days [] . The weekly festivals. Rev., correctly, day, the plural being used for the singular. See on Luk 4:31; Act 20:7. The plural is only once used in the New Testament of more than a single day (Act 17:2). The same enumeration of sacred seasons occurs 1Ch 33:31; 2Ch 2:4; 2Ch 31:3; Eze 45:17; Hos 2:11.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Let no man therefore judge you in meat,” (me oun tis humas krineto en Brosei) “Let not anyone therefore judge you all in eating;” that is let no one condemn you in what you eat, based on what was once required under the law … Rom 10:12-21. But one should judge himself regarding his influence.
2) “Or in drink,” (kai en posei) “and in drinking,” What one might eat and drink, as clean or unclean, as regulated by the Law of Moses, was no longer to be accepted as a standard or controlling factor in life and worship, 1Co 8:4-13.
3) “Or in respect of an holy day” (he en meri heortes) or in respect of a feast; Holy or fast and feast days designed for sacred law purposes were no longer to regulate the true worshipers of God. Their purpose had been fulfilled and their observance abolished. Gal 3:13.
4) “Or of the new moon,” (he neomenias) “or of a new moon; new moons were no longer to be sacrifice or worship days, as in the law era, 1Ch 23:31; Neh 10:32; Eze 45:17; Hos 2:11.
5) “Or of the sabbath days,” (he sabbaton) “or of sabbath days of rest. Some sabbaths, as the Passover etc., might occur on any day of the week, not just on the week – Even the seventh day sabbath was considered by early Christians to be no longer an appointed day for worship. They met after the resurrection on the first day of the week, as well as on the Jewish Sabbath at- the synagogue for study purposes. Act 20:7; 1Co 16:11; Mat 6:33.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
16. Let no one therefore judge you. What he had previously said of circumcision he now extends to the difference of meats and days. For circumcision was the first introduction to the observance of the law, other things (384) followed afterwards. To judge means here, to hold one to be guilty of a crime, or to impose a scruple of conscience, so that we are no longer free. He says, therefore, that it is not in the power of men to make us subject to the observance of rites which Christ has by his death abolished, and exempts us from their yoke, that we may not allow ourselves to be fettered by the laws which they have imposed. He tacitly, however, places Christ in contrast with all mankind, lest any one should extol himself so daringly as to attempt to take away what he has given him.
In respect of a festival-day. Some understand τὸ μέρος to mean participation. Chrysostom, accordingly, thinks that he used the term part, because they did not observe all festival days, nor did they even keep holidays strictly, in accordance with the appointment of the law. This, however, is but a poor interpretation. (385) Consider whether it may not be taken to mean separation, for those that make a distinction of days, separate, as it were, one from another. Such a mode of partition was suitable for the Jews, that they might celebrate religiously (386) the days that were appointed, by separating them from others. Among Christians, however, such a division has ceased.
But some one will say, “We still keep up some observance of days.” I answer, that we do not by any means observe days, as though there were any sacredness in holidays, or as though it were not lawful to labor upon them, but that respect is paid to government and order — not to days. And this is what he immediately adds.
(384) “ Les autres ceremonies;” — “Other rites.”
(385) “ Mats c’est vne conjecture bien maigre;” — “But this is a very slender conjecture.”
(386) “ Estroittement;” — “Strictly.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Col. 2:16. Let no man therefore judge you.They could not well prevent an adverse judgment being given on their disregard of what the ritualists thought to be of supreme moment, but they could refuse to argue about such trifles.
Col. 2:17. Shadow body.The relationship is indicated here of the old ceremonial worship to the worship of the Spirit. To confound shadow and substance, or mistake the shadow for the substance, has ever been the fatal error of ritualism.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Col. 2:16-17
The Ceremonial and the Real in Religion.
After dealing with the speculative theories so busily propagated by the false teachers at Coloss, the apostle descends from the height of his lofty argument, and with incomparable force sweeps away the whole group of errors which overrated an excessive ritualism and insisted on a rigorous asceticism. The existence of the ceremonial in religion is a confession of the imperfection of our nature; and the more rudimentary the ceremonial, the lower it supposes our condition. The ceremonial foreshadows the real, and is intended to help in attaining it. In the nature of things, therefore, the ceremonial is but temporary. When it puts man in possession of the real it vanishes. The shadow is absorbed in the substance. To compel man to find salvation in the ceremonial, when he already possesses the real, is a retrogression and an injustice. The liberty of the gospel places the believer above the slavery of external ordinances, and furnishes him with a lawthe law of a christianised conscienceas to their use or neglect.
I. That the ceremonial in religion can form no just basis for individual condemnation.Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, etc. (Col. 2:16). The Mosaic law enforced certain injunctions concerning eating and drinking. It gave minute directions as to the animals that were to be eaten, making a distinction between the clean and the unclean. As to drinking, the priests were strictly forbidden the use of wine on the eve of solemn public duty; and the vow of the Nazarites required entire abstinence from the fruit of the vine. The tendency of the Jews was to multiply these distinctions and prohibitions, and to exalt them into undue importance. The reference to special days embraces the collective periodical feasts and sacred seasons of the Levitical ritualthe yearly, monthly, and weekly celebrations. The term holy day would include the festivals of the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles respectively. The new moon alludes to the monthly celebrations mentioned (Num. 10:10; Num. 28:11). The Sabbath days refer to the weekly solemnities and services of the seventh day. The Jews assumed that the obligation of these regulations was permanent, and their observance essential to the salvation of the Christian believer. The gospel teaches that the observance or non-observance of these ceremonial rites is no just ground for judging each other. We are not justified in condemning any one for neglecting them, or to think any better of one who reverently observes them. The essence of religion does not consist in the outward form, but in the inward spiritnot in the ceremonial, but in the real. Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ (Col. 2:17).
II. That the ceremonial in religion is typical of the real.Which are a shadow of things to come (Col. 2:17). Ceremonies have their place in the culture of mankind, and in their legitimate sphere they are important. They are adapted to the infant stage in the development of the race. They sketch out the bold, rough outlines of truths that are in a half-formed, embryotic state. They are shadows projected across the disc of our mental visionof grand realities which are ever advancing into clearer view. They are typical of the existence and certain manifestation of deeper and unchangeable truths. They are predictive of things to come. The great yearly festival of the Passover typified the forgiveness of sins by the shedding of the precious blood of Christ. The Pentecost, or feast of the firstfruits, sets forth the sustenance and ample provision God has made for the soul. The feast of the Tabernacles was a significant reminder of Gods providential guidance and fatherly care of human life. The new moon, or first day of the month, with its usual service, impressed on the minds of the people the truth that Jehovah, the Ruler of the seasons, was the God of providence as well as of creation. The weekly Sabbath, with its grateful rest, was expressly instituted to commemorate the rest of God after the exercise of His creative energy. Then the ordinary sacrifices were doubled, and the shewbread renewed, to indicate that God is the source and sustenance of our life. And so the whole Mosaic law was a type and presage of the gospel. The spiritually enlightened look through the outward and visible symbol to the great truth signified. The ceremonial is valuable only as it conducts to the real.
III. That the ceremonial in religion is abolished and rendered nugatory by the real.But the body is of Christ (Col. 2:17). When the substance appears, the shadow is swallowed up. As the shadows are to the body, so were the types and ceremonies of the law to Christ. They were figures of evangelical blessings; but the truth, the reality, and abiding substance of them are found in the person, work, and salvation of Christ. All the grand truths prefigured by the ancient Mosaic ritual are embodied in Christ. He gives the fullest personal representation of Jehovah as the God of nature, providence, and redemption, at once the Author and the Ruler of the spiritual life. In Christ, therefore, as the substance and antitype, all shadow and symbol disappear. It is a dangerous infatuation to snatch at the shadow and cling to it, when we may embrace and rest in the sufficiency of the substance. This is to restore the cancelled handwriting and nullify the splendid triumph of the cross. In Christ the ceremonial is effete, powerless, dead. He only is the changeless, eternal, all-satisfying real.
Lessons.
1. Learn to exercise the spirit of Christian forbearance in external observances.
2. Be careful not to rest in the ceremonial.
3. Christ alone can satisfy the deepest craving of the soul.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Col. 2:16-17. The Shadow and the Substance of the Sabbath.
I. The transient shadow which has passed away.The Sabbath as a sign between God and the Israelites, marking them off from all other nations by its observanceas a mere Jewish institution.
II. The permanent substance which cannot pass.The body is of Christthe Spirit of Christ is the fulfilment of the law. To have the Spirit of Christ is to have fulfilled the law. Apply this to Sabbath observance.F. W. Robertson.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
16. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day: 17. which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christs.
Translation and Paraphrase
16. Therefore (because Christ is triumphant) let no one judge (and condemn) you concerning (religious laws about) food and drink, or in regard to a feast day, or (the feast of the) new moon, or a sabbath day (a day of rest).
17. (Let no one judge you about your observance or non-observance of these Jewish rituals,) which are (only) a shadow of things (that are) coming, but the (solid) body (that casts the shadow before it appeared itself) is Christs. (He is the fulfillment of all of these Old Testament ceremonies.)
Notes
1.
Col. 2:16-17 are the first verses in a new section, which gives practical applications of the truths in the foregoing paragraph. In the preceding section (Col. 2:8-15) we saw reason after reason why Christ is the perfect antidote to false doctrine. Now, beginning at Col. 2:16, there are practical applications made of that fact. The first is: Let no one judge you concerning Jewish rituals.
2.
Let no one judge you (and condemn you) on the basis of the food you eat (or dont eat), or about drink, or in regard to a feast day, or any such thing.
3.
The word meat (Gr. brosis) refers to food generally, and not to meat or flesh specifically, although meat is included. The law of Moses gave extensive regulations about food. See Lev. 11:1-47. Most religions have some sort of dietary laws: kosher regulations; abstinence from meats on Fridays and during Lent; strict vegetarian rules; etc.
Nothing is more plainly taught in the N.T. than that all dietary restrictions are abolished by Christ. Mar. 7:19; Rom. 14:2-3; Rom. 14:17; 1Co. 6:13; 1Co. 8:8; 1Ti. 4:1-5; Heb. 9:10. Of course, however, our liberty to eat does not do away with instructions against gluttony, intemperance, waste, or causing others to stumble.
4.
With regard to drink this verse teaches us that we are to let no one judge us. All things are lawful for us to use (1Co. 6:12). Nonetheless we must beware lest we be brought under the power of anything, and we must beware lest our liberty be a stumbling-block to others (1Co. 6:12; 1Co. 8:9). Strong drink is particularly likely to get us under its power, and its use is particularly liable to cause others to stumble into drunkenness. Drunkenness will keep us out of the kingdom of God. (1Co. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:21). It would surely be right and wise for us to apply Pauls words about eating meats to strong drink also: If food is a cause of my brothers falling, I will never eat meat, lest I Cause my brother to fall. (1Co. 8:13; RSV).
5.
Christians are liberated from bondage to a set of rules. No man can judge us about non-observance or observance of a feast day. Lev. 23:1-44 lists numerous feasts, such as the Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles.
6.
The New Moon was an observance of the first day of each month as calculated on a lunar basis. The Hebrews celebrated the start of each new month by blowing trumpets and extra sacrifices. See Num. 10:10; Num. 28:11; 1Ch. 23:31; 2Ch. 31:3; Neh. 10:33.
7.
The sabbath day was the seventh day of the week, or Saturday. It was a day of rest kept by the Hebrews in remembrance of Gods rest on the seventh day of creation (Exo. 20:11), and also because God delivered them from bondage in Egypt (Deu. 5:15).
In the primitive church some Jewish Christians continued for a time to meet on the sabbath days, and to observe Jewish hours of prayer. Gentile Christians met together on the first day of the week, and this day was called the Lords Day. (Act. 20:7; 1Co. 16:2; Rev. 1:10). This was done under the oversight and evidently with the approval of the inspired apostles. However it is significant that no New Testament scripture commands us to honor or observe Sunday as a greater day than any other, or as the only acceptable day for group worship. One day is not greater than another day. In Christianity the whole universe is Gods temple, and every day is a holy day.
8.
In our times there are urgent radio broadcasts crying out that we must be keeping the Sabbath day, the feast of tabernacles, and other such rituals to please God. Paul says that no man has the right to judge us about such things.
This is in harmony with his teachings in Rom. 14:5 ff. If we regard a day as being worthy of honor, we regard it unto the Lord. If we regard it not, we do this also unto the Lord. Let us not judge our brother, or set at nought our brother on the basis of these things. (Rom. 14:10).
9.
Pauls teachings about not judging one another concerning ordinances runs contrary to the ideas of some, that anything that is added to the explicit teachings of the scripture is automatically bad and damning. These may be perfectly harmless and only become bad when we try to force everyone else to adopt our ways of doing things.
10.
Many professed Christians of our day fix attention on legalistic taboos and lists of dos and donts, that will supposedly guarantee that we shall make it into glory, even if barely so. But Christians do not live under a system of law, but under grace. The handwritten ordinances have been blotted out and nailed to the cross. (Col. 2:14).
11.
Many, if not all, of the O.T. ceremonies were types of spiritual realities in our present Christian age. (For the meaning of type, see notes on Col. 2:11-12.)
Christ is our Passover. (1Co. 5:7). The Sabbath was a type of our eternal heavenly rest. (Heb. 4:9). The feast of tabernacles reminds us that we also are pilgrims and sojourners upon earth. (Lev. 23:42-43; 1Pe. 2:11).
The O.T. ceremonies were like shadows in the evening. They stretched out far ahead of the body that cast the shadows, revealing that the body was near or approaching, and revealing its general shape. The body that cast its shadow in the Old Testament ceremonies was Christ. He is the reality of which they were but foreshadowings.
Study and Review
38.
About what are we to let no man judge us? (Col. 2:16)
39.
What religion emphasized such ordinances as those named in Col. 2:16?
40.
Does Col. 2:16 indicate that all types of drinking are acceptable? Give a reason for your answer.
41.
What is the new moon? Compare Num. 10:10; Num. 28:11; 1Ch. 23:31; 2Ch. 31:3; Neh. 10:33.
42.
What day of the week is the Sabbath? (Compare Exo. 20:10)
43.
What does Col. 2:17 mean by saying that the ordinances were a shadow of things to come?
44.
Explain the body is Christs. (Col. 2:17)
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(16) Let no man therefore judge you.That is, impose his own laws upon you. See Col. 2:8. (Comp. Rom. 14:3; Rom. 14:10, Why dost thou judge thy brother? in this same connection.)
In meat, or in drink.Or rather, in eating and drinking. We see by the context that the immediate reference is to the distinctions of meats under the Jewish law, now done away, because the distinction of those within and without the covenant was also done away (Act. 10:11). (Comp. on this subject the half-ironical description of Heb. 9:10.) But a study of Rom. 14:2; Rom. 14:20-21, written before this Epistle, and 1Ti. 4:3, written after itto say nothing of the tone of this passage itself, or of the known characteristics of the later Gnosticism of the ascetic typeshow that these laws about eating and drinking were not mere matters of law, but formed significant parts of a rigid mystic asceticism. Of such, St. Paul declares indignantly (Rom. 14:17), The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
An holyday (feast), or of the new moon, or of the sabbath.Comp. Isa. 1:13-14, the new moons and sabbaths . . . the new moons and the appointed feasts My soul hateth; also Eze. 45:17; Hos. 2:13. The feast would seem to be one of the great festivals; the new moon the monthly, and the sabbath the weekly solemnity. With this passage it is natural to compare the similar passage in Gal. 4:10, Ye observe days and months and times (special seasons) and years. But there the specially Judaic character is not so expressly marked; and, in fact, the passage has a wider meaning (like Rom. 14:56), showing the different position which even Christian festivals held in Apostolic days. Here it is the Jewish festivals, and they alone, which are noted. It is obvious that St. Paul gives no hint of any succession of the Lords Day to be, in any strict sense, a Christian Sabbath. We know, indeed, that the Jewish Sabbath itself lingered in the Church, as having a kind of sacredness, kept sometimes as a fast, sometimes as a festival. But its observance was not of obligation. No man was to judge others in respect of it.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
(16-19) To the warning against speculative error succeeds a warning against two practical superstitions. The first is simply the trust in obsolete Jewish ordinances (the mere shadow of Christ) with which we are familiar in the earlier forms of Judaism. But the second presents much strangeness and novelty. It is the worship of angels in a voluntary humility, inconsistent with the belief in an intimate and direct union with Christ our Head.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
6. Deductions from the foregoing, Col 2:16-23.
a. Caution against legal observances, Col 2:16 , Col 2:17 .
16. No man judge you As to the right or wrong of your conduct, in eating, or in drinking, or in the observance of the annual, monthly, or weekly festivals. In these matters there is no obligation. A divine authority was claimed for them; but Paul insists that they were but a shadow whose substance is Christ. The Jewish seventh-day Sabbath is here meant, and not the Christian first-day Sabbath. The Jewish aspects of the Sabbath are done away, but not the day itself as enjoined in the decalogue, which was given, not through the ministry of angels, but by the audible voice of God himself, and which the Saviour taught is “for man” universally. Note, Rom 14:5-6.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Therefore let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day, which are a shadow of the things to come. But the body is of Christ.’
Paul now stresses that because of the victory of Jesus Christ on the cross all ritual requirement has been done away. They were but shadows, pointing the way forward. Now that reality (the body) has come in Christ the shadows are no longer necessary. This might suggest that some teachers were trying to get the Colossians to observe Pharisaic washings, abstention from certain ‘unclean’ foods, and observance of feast days and the Sabbath. But it seems to extend wider than this for the Pharisees did not forbid any types of drink. Abstention from such was, however, looked on by the Jews as making men somehow more exclusively holy (compare the Nazarites – Num 6:2, also John the Baptiser – Luk 1:15). But many ancient religions encouraged asceticism, so that Paul is looking wider to all ascetic teaching. Paul’s point is not to condemn abstention but to condemn it as being seen as a ‘requirement’ or as making men somehow super-holy. If men wish to do it to honour the Lord, and find it helpful, it is up to them, as long as they do not pass judgment on others or deceive themselves by thinking that somehow it makes them superior.
This was a constant problem because there was, and is, always a tendency for the spiritually lazy to prefer to have to ‘do’ certain things rather than be tied down to spiritual requirements. If they can just ‘observe’ certain things and then be free to do what they like, they are content. Others too, fearful for their souls (especially as they get older), try to achieve forgiveness by ritual activity. They think that, if they but do enough of it, it will somehow merit salvation for them. Both overlook the fact that the new message was spiritual and free, that we can do nothing to merit God’s gracious activity or even to spur it on. It is given freely in response to faith, and to faith alone.
‘Let no man judge you.’ Either ‘take you to task’ or ‘pass judgment on you’. With regard to ceremonial regulations each must decide for himself what is right and no one has the right to judge another.
‘Let no man judge you in meat or in drink.’ Here the command is unequivocal. It has become a matter of principle. He could have added, ‘every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it be received with thanksgiving’ (1Ti 4:4). The eating or not eating of certain foods is not to be accepted as incumbent on anyone and the Colossians should not therefore allow themselves to be told what they must, or must not, eat or drink. Such eating or drinking is a matter of personal choice (although drunkenness is always condemned, and ‘strong drink’ is discouraged because it clouds the judgment (Pro 20:1; Pro 31:4; Isa 5:11; Isa 5:22; Isa 28:7 see also Luk 1:15). ‘He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks. And he who does not eat, does not eat to the Lord, and gives God thanks’ (Rom 14:6). It is clear that Paul himself puts no restrictions on what we may or may not eat, and does not consider that it affects our spirituality one way or another as long as it is not made an ‘essential’.
But compare Rom 14:13 where the question is raised of concern for others who may be caused to stumble. He stresses that for the spiritual Christian , ‘the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Rom 14:17). In other words the concern of the Christian should be for spiritual response and behaviour, not for physical or ritual requirements. Indeed he stresses that nothing is unclean of itself (Rom 14:14 compare Mar 7:19), but then he does stress that the Christian must take into account the weakness of others (see 1Co 8:1-13; 1Co 10:23-33). If the eating and drinking of certain things will cause another to stumble then we should avoid them for their sake (1Co 10:21; 1Co 10:28; 1Co 10:32). And if we ourselves are in doubt about such things then we should not partake (1Co 10:23). While such abstentions must not be made a ‘necessary requirement’ or seen as increasing a man’s spirituality, they must also not be allowed to become a stumbingblock or a hindrance to ourselves or others. Compare the condemnation of those who gave wine to Nazarites with the intent to ease their own consciences (Amo 2:12).
‘Or in respect of a feast day — or of a sabbath day.’ As he says elsewhere, ‘one man esteems one day above another, another esteems every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. He who regards the day regards it to the Lord’ (Rom 14:5-6). ‘He who does not regard the day does not regard it to the Lord’ is not said but can be read in because of the parallel with regard to eating. For each is living to the Lord. His responsibility is directly to Him. Thus Paul does not specifically at these points support the keeping of a special day to the Lord. Indeed he says that to judge another person for not keeping the Sabbath, or any other day, is contrary to Scripture.
However having said that many would see the observance of one day in seven especially for the Lord as, while not obligatory, good in principle. Compare Isa 58:13-14. Thus they may encourage such as being wise and good in the upbuilding of the spiritual life, because it is ensuring provision for time with God. But as Paul stresses, every day belongs to God and should be observed to Him, and the spiritual Christian will treat every day as the Sabbath, a day separated to God for the doing of His work.
So some find making such rules for themselves helpful, others find them unnecessary. But we must beware if we take the first view that we do not belittle those who take the second. And if we take the second view we must be sure that it is for the genuinely positive reason that we wish to be even more dedicated to God, and not as a get out for being spiritually lazy. Each will have to account to God (Rom 14:8-12). But the point of these passages is that, while a thing may be good in itself, it should not be made a ‘necessary requirement’. For Christians should not be looking to ‘necessary requirements’ but to the Lord, and nothing apart from faith in Christ must be made a condition of salvation.
‘Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body (or ‘the substance’) is of Christ.’ Requirements such as these had their purpose but they have now been done away (see Heb 8:5; Heb 10:1). They are no longer binding. Now Christ is come shadows fade into the background. Concentration must be on the reality, on Him and on Him alone.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Heresies Exposed: Their Practice Confronted – Having confronted the doctrine and philosophy of these heretics (Col 2:8-15), Paul now exposes their futile practices (Col 2:16-23). When a cult presents it doctrine, it can sound very convincing to a person who is not rooted and grounded in the Word of God. Such cults need further inspection by examining how the put their beliefs into practice. Thus, Paul now confronts some of the vain practices and rituals of these heretics.
Paul Confronts Asceticism – It is important to note that the passage in Col 2:18-23 suggests that Paul was confronting a form of asceticism in which heretics were denying forms of human desires and even isolating themselves in religious rigors. Thus, Paul takes the time to emphasize the sacredness of the family units in Col 3:18 to Col 4:1.
Illustration – For example, as a supervisor over an apartment management company (1993-97), I was asked by an apartment manager to visit a family that was renting one apartment and discuss with them their beliefs and see if they were a cult or not. While talking with them about their doctrine, I heard nothing that alarmed me. When I asked them about their lifestyle, I saw immediately that it was cultic in nature. So, in this passage in Col 2:16-23, Paul will now show them that certain practices are wrong and unacceptable to the Christian lifestyle.
Col 2:16 “in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days” Comments – All of these seasonal observations were found in Jewish history and tradition (Neh 10:33).
Neh 10:33, “For the shewbread, and for the continual meat offering, and for the continual burnt offering, of the sabbaths, of the new moons, for the set feasts , and for the holy things, and for the sin offerings to make an atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God.”
Col 2:17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
Col 2:17
Col 2:18 “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels” Comments – Although there is no reference made to the city of Colossi in the book of Acts, Theodoret (A.D. 393-466), bishop of Cyrrhus, tells us that it was a city with a lax religion that included the worship of angels during Paul’s days, with the archangel Michael becoming the patron and protector of the city. [88] In the fourth century, we read in the 35 th canon of the Synod of Laodicea, a city located nearby, that prayers to angels were prohibited. [89]
[88] Theodoret writes, “Of which now therefore also a fellow companion travelled together in Laodicea of Phrygia. He had refused a law to pray to angels. Even until now, prayers of the angel Michael along with those also to their Jupiter is seen.” ( PG 82 col. 613)
[89] The 35 th canon of the Council of Laodicea reads, “Christians must not forsake the Church of God, and go away and invoke angels and gather assemblies, which things are forbidden. If, therefore, any one shall be found engaged in this covert idolatry, let him be anathema; for he has forsaken our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and has gone over to idolatry.” ( NPF2 14)
Col 2:18 “intruding into those things which he hath not seen” Comments – We are fascinated by the fact that a spiritual world exists around us, and we are eager to learn more about it. We want to know about Heaven, and about the angels, though invisible, who live and minister about us. The fact is, the Holy Bible is a book that focuses our attention upon redemption as it unfolds upon earth. Thus, it reveals very little about the heavenly realm of angels. Col 2:18 indicates that too much emphasis upon the world of angels and spirits can become a distraction to our earthly redemption. It results is much speculation, and little factual evidence. The Scriptures are a book about man’s redemption, and it contains information that is necessary for our redemption. Any other emphasis is “fleshy,” although it may initially appear to be religious.
Col 2:18 “vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” Comments – The phrase, “fleshly mind” can be translated as “a carnal mind,” as these same Greek phrase is translated in the epistle of Romans.
Rom 8:6-7, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”
Col 2:18 Comments – A man can act humble while being vainly puffed in his carnal mind.
Col 2:23 Illustration – Mat 15:8-9 is a quote from Isaiah showing the true heart of the Jewish teachers.
Mat 15:7-9, “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Warning against a false righteousness of works:
v. 16. Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy-day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath-days,
v. 17. which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
v. 18. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
v. 19. and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
v. 20. Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,
v. 21. (Touch not; taste not; handle not;
v. 22. which all are to perish with the using,) after the commandments and doctrines of men?
v. 23. Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh. Having declared to the Colossians the glorious advantages which are theirs through conversion and Baptism, the apostle now names specific errors which threaten to deprive them of the blessings of the Gospel. Among these dangerous errors is that of Judaistic insistence upon the observance of certain days; Let no man, then, judge you in food or in drink; or in the matter of a festival, or new moon, or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of coming things; the body, however, is of Christ. This seems to have been one of the points upon which the Judaistic teachers insisted, that the precepts of the Ceremonial Law were still in force and must be kept. They wanted the distinction between clean and unclean foods maintained; they probably extended the vows which the Nazarites made voluntarily into laws binding upon the consciences of all men. See Lev 11:1-47; Lev 10:8-11; Num 6:1-4. They insisted that the great festivals of the Old Testament, the new moons, and all the Sabbaths must still be observed by divine command. In other words, they wanted the entire Church, or Ceremonial Law of the Old Testament continued for the time of the New Testament as well. These people are not without imitators in our day. Not only are there special denominations whose fundamental principle is that of the observance of the Jewish Ceremonial Law, but there are individual teachers in practically all denominations of our country that insist upon keeping at least the Sunday by divine command, believing that it has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath. But St. Paul’s comment on all such efforts is brief and to the point: Let no man pass an unfavorable judgment upon you, let no man criticize and condemn you for your attitude. For all the things comprised in the Jewish Ceremonial Law served merely as a shadow of coming things; they were merely types of the future, permanent values of the New Testament. The body is Christ’s, in Him all the types are fulfilled, and therefore no longer have any need to be observed. See Heb 9:8-12. He that chooses any day as fixed by divine command, he that confines his diet to certain articles of food and drink as being demanded by the Lord, is deceiving himself, placing himself under the yoke of the Ceremonial Law, and is in danger of losing his soul’s salvation. See Gal 4:9-11.
Another specific instance of Judaizing influence to which Paul finds occasion to refer is that of the superstitious worship of angels: Let no man defraud you (give judgment against you), taking pleasure in humility and cult of angels, intruding into the things which he has not seen vainly inflated by the mind of his flesh, and not holding the Head, from whom the whole body, through the joints and ligaments being supplied and held together, increases the increase of God. The apostle uncompromisingly designates this as another species of fraud, as another scheme to deprive the Christians of the glorious blessings of the Gospel. By their critical, supercilious attitude the false teachers were condemning the Colossian Christians for adhering to the simple truths of the Gospel; they were intimating and teaching that the way advocated by them was so much better, to be commended so much more highly. They took pleasure in exhibiting very ostentatiously what they wanted men to regard as humility; they were advocating a cult or worship of angels. They tried to make it appear as though man should consider himself as too lowly and insignificant for fellowship with God, that he should be satisfied with communing with angels. Under a show of meekness and lowliness, therefore, they had the audacity to intrude into the domain of spirits, into the transcendental regions. They thus became subject to delusions, which they nevertheless wanted to inflict upon others. Without the slightest ground they assumed an attitude of superiority, puffed up by the mind of their flesh, of their old sinful nature. The pride of these people, therefore, as of all their followers in our days, consisted in this, that with all their ostentatious humility they permitted themselves to believe that men could not be satisfied with the simple knowledge, obedience, and belief of the Gospel, but must strive to attain to a peculiar, higher wisdom and sanctity. This resulted, of course, in their not holding fast to Christ as the one Head of the Church. They severed themselves from connection with Christ. But, as Paul says, it is only from Him that the entire body of the Church in all its members receives power and strength to increase according to the will of God. It is just as in the case of the human organism, in which the various limbs and members are held together by joints and ligaments, this being the condition under which they are supplied with blood and nerve force from the centers of life, especially from the head. Note: No one can remain a member of the body of Christ unless he clings to that Redeemer and His Gospel in simple faith and rejects all the systems and methods that are offered as substitutes for the truth in our days.
The apostle concludes this section with some very pertinent and pointed remarks: If, then, you are dead with Christ, away from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you suffer decrees to be laid upon you, (such as) Touch not, taste not, handle not? all of which ordinances lead in their use to (spiritual) destruction, after the commandments and doctrines of men, which have a reputation for wisdom in arbitrary cult and humility and unsparingness of the body, not in any honor, but (only) to the satisfying of the flesh. Here the apostle makes the application to the Colossian Christians. When they learned to believe in Christ, they, with Him, died unto the rudiments, the precepts, of the world, all the ceremonial laws by which people hope to earn something in the sight of God. It is self-evident, therefore, that Christians will not permit false teachers to lay this unnecessary yoke of human ordinances upon them again, just as though they were still members of this present world, as though they had never yet heard of the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Those precepts were indeed being taught by the false teachers, just as those of our day are characterized by their insistence upon such commands: You must not touch that food; you must not taste that drink; you must not be found indulging in this or that or another thing, all of which are things indifferent and therefore matters of Christian liberty. If a person persists in keeping such precepts as commandments of God, the word will apply to him: In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, Mat 15:9. The keeping of such ordinances will thus finally result in the spiritual destruction of those that insist upon them. For they are nothing but commandments and doctrines of men, which, indeed, have a great show and reputation of wisdom, as if they were of value in furthering people in knowledge of a holy life. But it is an arbitrary worship, a self-chosen cult, not based upon God’s Word and will. The attitude of such people, moreover, is one of false humility; they have a great show of meekness, but in the final analysis they will be found full of pride of self and unwilling to accept instruction. And finally, they practice an austerity toward their own bodies in ascetic abstinence which is without command and promise. Thus all their attempts to excel before God with a piety and righteousness not based upon the Word of God are vain and foolish. The apostle pronounces a simple judgment upon all such efforts: Their reputation is without real basis, without honor which will stand before God, And what is more: All these things are done only to the satisfying and gratifying of the flesh. The poor deluded errorists that are trying to lead other people astray by insisting upon works which are not commanded by God delude themselves more than anyone else, because, after all, they derive a great amount of self-satisfaction out of the practices which they advocate, in other words, they are deliberately trying to earn justification before God by works of their own choosing. The fact remains that all precepts, all doctrines, all schemes, all methods, all works that aim at merit in man thereby take away merit from Christ and must result in failure.
Summary
The apostle urges his readers to be steadfast in their faith in Christ and to beware of the philosophy of deceit of men; he pictures to them the riches of the blessings which have come to them in conversion and Baptism, by which they have become partakers of the triumph of Christ; he names some specific Judaistic errors by which the false teachers, under a guise of wisdom and humility, were preparing to kill their faith.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Col 2:16. Let no man therefore judge you, &c. “Since therefore the ceremonial law is thus abolished, and since God without it has quickened you Gentiles, who were dead in sins, and uncircumcised; let no man take upon him to pass sentence upon you, that you belong not to the church of God, because you do not observe the same ordinances with themselves about meats,” &c. See Rom 14:3 and the analy
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Col 2:16 . ] since ye, according to Col 2:11-15 , are raised to a far higher platform than that of such a legal system.
] No one is to form a judgment (whether ye are acting allowably or unallowably, rightly or wrongly) concerning you in the point of eating ( , comp. Rom 2:1 ; Rom 14:22 ; 1Pe 2:12 ). There is hereby asserted at the same time their independence of such judgments, to which they have not to yield (comp. Eph 5:6 ). With Paul, is always actio edendi , and is thus distinct from , cibus (Rom 14:17 ; 1Co 8:4 ; 2Co 9:10 ; also Heb 12:16 ), although it is also current in the sense of with John (Joh 4:32 , Joh 6:27 ; Joh 6:55 ), and with profane authors (Hom. Il . xix. 210, Od . i. 191, x. 176, et al.; Plat. Legg . vi. p. 783 C; Hesiod, Scut . 396). This we remark in opposition to Fritzsche, ad Rom . III. p. 200. The case is the same with (Rom 14:17 ) and (1Co 10:4 ; Heb 9:10 ).
] Since the Mosaic law contained prohibitions of meats (Lev 7:10 ff.), but not also general prohibitions of drinks , it is to be assumed that the false teachers in their ascetic strictness (Col 2:23 ) had extended the prohibition of the use of wine as given for the Nazarites (Num 6:3 ), and for the period of priestly service (Lev 10:9 ), to the Christians as such (as ). Comp. also Rom 14:17 ; Rom 14:21 . De Wette arbitrarily asserts that it was added doubtless in consideration of this, as well as of the Pharisaic rules as to drinks, Mat 23:24 , and of the prohibition of wine offered to idols ( does not point to such things), but still mainly on account of the similarity of sound (Rom 14:17 ; Heb 9:10 , and Bleek in loc .).
. . .] , with the genitive, designates the category , as very frequently also in classical authors (Plat. Theaet . p. 155 E, Rep . p. 424 D; Dem. 638. 5, 668. 24); comp. on 2Co 3:10 , and see Wyttenbach, ad Plut . I. p. 65. The three elements: festival, new moon , and Sabbath , are placed side by side as a further classis rerum; in the point ( ) of this category also no judgment is to be passed upon the readers (if, namely, they do not join in observing such days). The elements are arranged , according as the days occur, either at longer unequal intervals in the year ( ), or monthly ( .), or weekly ( .). But they are three , co-ordinated; there would be only one thing with three connected elements, if were used instead of in the two latter places where it occurs. The three are given in inverted order in 1Ch 23:31 ; 2Ch 2:4 ; 2Ch 31:3 . On the subject-matter, comp. Gal 4:10 . Respecting the Jewish celebration of the new moon , see Keil, Archol . I, 78; Ewald, Alterth . p. 470 f.; and on as equivalent to , comp. Mat 12:1 ; Mat 28:1 ; Luk 4:16 , et al . has been erroneously understood by others in the sense of a partial celebration (Chrysostom: , Theodoret: they could not have kept all the feasts, on account of the long journey to Jerusalem; comp. Dalmer), or: vicibus festorum (Melanchthon, Zanchius), or, that the participation in the festival, the taking part in it is expressed (Otto, dekalog. Unters . p. 9 ff.), or that it denotes the segregatio , “nam qui dierum faciunt discrimen, quasi unum ab alio dividunt” (Calvin). Many, moreover inaccurately, hold that means merely: in respect to (Beza, Wolf, and most expositors, including Bhr, Huther, and de Wette); in 2Co 3:10 ; 2Co 9:3 , it also denotes the category . Comp. Aelian. V. H . viii. Colossians 3 : .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
5. Two special warnings
(2:1623.)
16Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink [in eating or in drinking],24 or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days [of sabbaths]:25 17Which26 are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ [Christs]. 18Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility [arbitrarily in humility]27 and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not28 seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind [lit., the mind of his flesh], 19And not holding the Head, from which [whom]29 all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered [being supplied], and knit together, increaseth with the increase 20of God. Wherefore [omit Wherefore]30 if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, 21(Touch not; taste not; handle not; 22Which all are to perish with the using;) [for destruction in the consumption:]31 after the commandments and doctrines of men? 23Which things have indeed a shew [repute] of wisdom in will-worship, and humility; and neglecting [unsparingness]32 of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh [only to the satisfying of the flesh].33
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The first warning, against a fleshly legality. Col 2:16-17.
Col 2:16. Let no man therefore judge you.Since the personality of the readers is strongly emphasized by the position of the words: . in sharp contrast, therefore refers to what was said above (Col 2:1-15), especially to their endowments and position in Christ: not merely however to the doing away of the Mosaic law (Meyer and others). Bengel: ex. v. 815 deducitur igitur. means to judge; the connexion defines it more closely : allow no one the right to judge and to condemn you, if you do not respond to such demands. The warning is found in this,permitting their action to be determined by this (Bleek). Neminem, qui vos judicare conatur, audiatis (Bengel). He treats of Christian, gospel freedom. Luther: Let no one make conscience for you (see also Rom 14:22). It is not therefore= (Baehr).
In eating or in drinking., denotes the sphere, the point where the judgment was exercised, as Rom 2:1. . and set forth the act of eating and drinkingfood is ; drink, (Rom 14:17; 2Co 9:10; 1Co 8:4; 1Co 10:4; Heb 11:10). As the Mosaic law had (Lev 7:10-27) prohibitions respecting food alone, and forbade wine only to the Nazarites (Num 6:3), and during the time of priestly service (Lev 10:9), the false teachers had certainly gone beyond this and heightened asceticism for Christians (Mat 23:24; Rom 14:21). It is a false view, that there is here only a consonance without further significance (De Wette). Whether all indulgence in meat (Olshausen) or in wine (Schenkel) was forbidden, does not appear from the context.
Or in respect of a holyday, or of the new moon, or of sabbaths.After eating and drinking, joined with the copulative , the disjunctive union with follows, because the Apostle passes over to another matter. [It is true that eating and drinking may form one category, but in view of the doubtful reading, there is no sufficient critical or exegetical ground for preferring to make the above distinction.R.] , in respect of, in the point of (2Co 3:10; 2Co 9:8; comp. Winers Gram. p. 571), denotes the category, which includes the species: , festum annum, , in mense, , in hebdomade (Bengel); the diversity is indicated by instead of . The threefold order of 1Ch 23:31; 2Ch 2:4; 2Ch 31:3, is transposed. Comp. Gal 4:10. It is incorrect to apply it to partial observances of festivals (Chrysostom and others), or to make it=vicibus festorum (Melanchthon), or=ne ulla quidem eorum ex parte (Suicer); Beza and others inexactly interpret by respectu. [The E. V. in respect of is exact enough, as it certainly suggests the idea of a category,=in the matter of.R.] Christians should not permit themselves to be bound to Jewish festivals in their worship of God; neither to the three great annual feasts, nor the new moons, nor the Sabbath; =, Mat 12:1; Luk 4:16; Act 13:14; Act 16:13; it does not refer to the triple Sabbath (jubilee year, Sabbatic year, weekly Sabbath, Heumann [Barnes). Bengel: hic significanter positus; nam sabbata dicuntur dies singuli hebdomados. Thus Ignatius contends against the as well as against Judaism in the Epistle to the Magnesians, 9. [The passage reads in English: no longer observing Sabbaths, but keeping the Lords day.Eadie:nor were they to hallow the Sabbaths, for these had served their purpose, and the Lords Day was now to be a season of loftier joy, as it commemorates a more august event than either the creation of the universe, or the exodus from Egypt. The new religion is too free and exuberant to be trained down to times and seasons like its tame and rudimental predecessor. Its feast is daily, for every day is holy; its moon never wanes, and its serene tranquility is an unbroken Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath was kept by the early Christians as well as the Lords Day. The practice was condemned finally at a council in the neighboring city of Laodicea.Wordsworth: , the Seventh day Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, which as far as it was the seventh day Rest, had been filled by Christ resting in the grave. The position of the day is changed, but the proportion remains unchanged, and has received new strength and sanction by its consecration to Christ under the gospel in the Lords Day.R.].
Col 2:17. Which are a shadow of things to come.This verse is a proof of the warning. O [see critical notes; the meaning is the same if the reading a be adopted.R.] comprises all as a unit, and means: this (eating, drinking, feasts according to the precepts of the laws of Moses) is a shadow of things to come. , umbra vit expers (Bengel), is not=, sketched in outline with charcoal, silhouette (Calvin and others), since its antithesis here is not , but . It denotes the typical in the Mosaic law, not exactly the unsubstantialness (Meyer) or the transitoriness (Spener), and not at all the darkness (Musculus); for it gives certain intimation of the substance of the reality, and truth of the things to come (Heb 8:5; Heb 10:1). denotes the permanent nature of the former things; it is not=, but the commands and institutions have and retain a typical meaning. are future things, the things of , not like this (Schenkel), nor is to be supplied, from Heb 10:1. These things cast a shadow into the , so that the light, as well as the , standing in the light, are before us. So long as one walks in the shadow, holds to it, he is not in the , which began with the appearing of Christ, not to begin first with His parousia (Meyer); for there is added:
But the body is Christs (Winers Gram. p. 495).This refers to the presence of the , which had already entered. However, he, who still holds to the ordinances of the law, and allows himself to be governed by erring and erroneous men, not by Christ, does not hold to Him, is not yet in the Messianic kingdom and age, as he may and should be. The passage treats of a point of view rather than a point of time. See 1Jn 2:8 [Lange, Comm. p. 53.] But the body is in contrast with shadow, fulfilment, full substance and life of the things to come. is to be joined to ; to Him as Head and Lord (Col 2:6; Col 2:19) it belongs; He has the direction of the things to come, is the antithesis of (Col 2:16). It is neither: ad Christum pertinet, ab eo solo petenda est (Grotius), ex Christo pendet (Storr), appeared in Christ (Huther), nor is to be repeated with (Bengel), certainly it is not=the Christian Church (Schenkel); as little is the Jewish Church. [Wordsworth: is substantial reality. Alford incorrectly asserts that the Apostle could not thus have spoken, if the ordinance of the Sabbath had been, in any form, of lasting obligation in the Christian Church. Against this view, see Ellicott in loco and his references, also Wordsworth, Sermon 44, Christian Sunday.R.] The joining of this clause to the following verse (Greek Fathers) is objectionable, because it obviously belongs to the antecedent context, and does not belong to .
Against superstitious worship of angels (Col 2:18-19).
Col 2:18. Let no man beguile you of your reward. corresponds with Col 2:16, and introduces a warning. [Eadie remarks the uniform use of the singular in these warnings, as contrasted with the plural used in Galatians. Either he marks out one noted leader, or he merely individualizes for the sake of emphasis. Probably the latter.R.] Here too the stress is laid upon the object , placed in an emphatic position. corresponds with (Col 2:16). The word is rare, but Attic (Demosthenes adv. Midiam, c. 25), hence not a Cilician provincialism (Jerome); is to be a [i. e., the awarder of prizes in the games.R.], to perform such an office, is to do this partially, unjustly, in favor of or against a competitor, denotes definitely the hostile intent against one entitled to the prize. The prize (, Php 3:14 : of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus; 1Co 9:24) is the imperishable crown (1Co 9:25) of righteousness (2Ti 4:8; 2Ti 2:5), of life (Jam 1:12), of glory (1Pe 5:4). Hence it is not to be interpreted as Christian freedom (Grotius) or the honor and prize of true Christian worship (De Wette), nor is the verb = (Baehr and others). The following thought is not remote from, but not in, the passage; Ne quis brabeut potestatem usurpans atque adeo potestate abutens, vos currentes moderetur perperamque prscribat, quid sequi; quid fugere debeatis, brabeum accepturi (Bengelsimilarly Beza). Luther is incorrect: let no one frustrate you in your aim; Vulgate also: nemo vos seducat.
Arbitrarily in humility and worshipping of angels. characterizes the design of the false teachers as to its ground. The participle denotes, what is joined to in the compound (Col 2:23): the wilful desiring, having pleasure in humility and worshipping of angels. is = 1Sa 18:22; 2Sa 15:26; Rom 10:9; 2Co 9:8; Psa 147:10. It is not to be complemented with or (=, Meyer). Nor is it to be explained cupide (Erasmus). The former is both a pleonasm and brachylogy at once: the latter is contrary to usage. To join it with (Luther) is inadmissible. [Ellicott follows Meyer and renders: desiring to do it, but objects to any imputation of malice.He characterizes the view supported by Braune (Augustine, Olshausen and many others) as distinctly untenable and contrary to all analogy of usage of the New Testament; yet his own interpretation is open to the objections made above. Alford renders: of purpose, joining it with , following Theophylact. The interpretation of Meyer, Ellicott, et al., he deems flat and spiritless; that of Braune, he terms a harsh Hebraismirrelevant. If the view of , given on p. 35, note, be correct, then Alfords interpretation is inadmissible. Braunes exegesis accords best with the distinction there made. They arbitrarily, spontaneously, from the evil impulses of their own nature, indulged in these things. This is relevant, for this made them dangerous.R.] The context indicates that the first substantive, elsewhere used in a good sense (3:12; Eph 4:2; Php 2:3; Act 20:19; 1Pe 5:5), has here a bad sense : false, affected humility, behind which much spiritual pride may hide. The other substantive () means worship, adoration, James 6:26, 27; Act 26:5 [E. V. religion.R.], the object of which is set forth by the genitive. Comp. Wis 14:27; Wis 11:16; 1Ma 5:6. Winers Gram. pp. 176, 233. In the Old Testament the angels repeatedly appeared as mediators between God and man, and as representatives of men with God (Job 5:1; Job 30:23; Zec 1:12; Tob 12:15). In the Testimony of the VII. Patriarchs (Philo) they appear as interceding, helping beings; among the later Jews the opinion is current, that the law was delivered to Moses through angels (Bleek on Heb 2:2). The Fathers refer to the fact that the Jews supplicated angels and councils declare themselves on this point34 (Bhmer in Herzogs Realencyclop. 4. p. 31). [See Eadie in loco. It was at Colosse that special worship was given in after days to the archangel Michael, for an alleged miracle wrought by him, viz., opening a chasm to receive the river Lycus. And at a council held in the neighboring city of Laodicea, the practice referred to in the text was condemned.(Conyb. and Hows. Am. ed. II. p. 390, note 2).R.]Humility is to be regarded as so connected with angel worship, that the latter is proof of the former, since the mediation of angels was claimed in approaching God (Theodoret), or because the Majesty of the Only Begotten demanded it (Chrysostom). It is a mistake to take humility in a good sense, but as irony (Steiger and others), or as genitive subjecti (Luther: spirituality of the angels, Schleiermacher, religion of the angels), or to weaken it to studium singularis sanctitatis, or to understand by it demons, demigods (Estius). [The Catholic interpreters, Estius and A-Lapide, make a strong effort to exclude this passage from such as might be brought against the worship of the saints (Eadie), but the connection of the two substantives gives it a direct application to this error.R.]
Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, [] , is a further definition of . The verb [participle] occurs only here; to step upon a place, hence spiritual regions through speculation; it is used of the entrance of the gods and their seating themselves (Passow sub voce); in distinction from , it denotes a confident, immediate stepping up, which the description of the regions entered ( )the transcendentalemphatic from positionshows to be unjustifiable. [The E. V. intruding is sufficiently accurate, though Braunes sich versteigend is more so.R.] The negative instead of which occurs also, is correct in the relative clause after (Winers Gram. p. 448). Without the negative it may be referred to (Act 20:10; Act 20:12; Act 10:3); or (Act 2:17) with Meyer: but if (Act 9:17) must also be so understood according to the context, still (comp. 1Jn 4:20) cannot be rightly referred to enthusiastic fancies. [These passages above cited speak of visions; to interpret thus would imply either that these visions were in themselves illusions, or in their influence became delusions. Alford renders: standing on the things which he hath seen i. e., an inhabitant of the realm of light, not of faith; which as Ellicott observes is ingenious, but not very plausible or satisfactory. The difficulty in such interpretations arises from following another than the true reading. The canon respecting lectiones difficiliores may be pushed too far.R.]
Vainly puffed up by the mind of his flesh, is the third trait, more closely characterizing humility. , temere (Rom 13:4) or frustra (1Co 15:2; Gal 3:4; Gal 4:11), is here joined with in the former sense. [Ellicott: bootlessly, without ground or reason. So Braune: ohne Ursache. Vainly may imply vanity in the cause or the result; here the former.R.] On account of its position it cannot be joined with (Steiger and others). His obscurity is groundless, since it rests upon his own mind, is caused by his own spirit ( ), and the more so, since the mind () is determined by, entirely in the service of and belonging to, the flesh ( ), which while unredeemed serves evil (Rom 7:14; Rom 7:25), and commands the mind, possesses and rules it, instead of being possessed and ruled by it. Chrysostom: [followed by the E. V., fleshly mind.Meyer: It must be noticed that the matter is so represented that the of the false teacher seems personified (comp. Rom 8:6), as though it had its own , under the influence of which he is made proud. The pride of these people consisted in this, that with all their supposed humility, they allowed themselves to fancy, as is generally the case with fanatical tendencies, that they could not be satisfied with the simple knowledge and obeying of the gospel, but could attain to a peculiar, higher wisdom and sanctity.R.]
Col 2:19. And not holding the Head.This is the fourth trait to be connected with the worshipping of angels, denying Christ and the church [die Christlichkeit und Kirchlichkeit.]The object is Christ, to whom the false teachers did not hold fast as Head, hence as before and above all, angels as well. The negative , not as before, denotes a matter of fact (Winers Gram. p. 452). Bengel: Qui non unice Christum tenet, plane non tenet: but he may yet belong to the church.From whom all the body [or the whole body.R.]According to the parallel passage, Eph 4:15, refers to Christ, hence is masculine, not neuter. (Meyer) [So Eadie following Meyer: not personally as Jesus, but really or objectively. But the following verse seems to imply distinctly the contrary (Ellicott).R.] The preposition which is to be joined with denotes the cause from which proceeds what it predicated, viz., the growth, and not a remote one, only conditioning it from without, but indicating the most intimate vital connection between them. All the body includes the whole church (Gemeinde) without exception; there is no member that does not derive its growth from the Head. [It is a question whether the reference here is to the body in its entirety, or to the body as including every member. Ellicott and Eadie favor the former view, Alford and Braune the latter, which is preferable, as the whole passage is against false teachers, who did not deny the unity of the church, but slighted the fact that each member must hold fast the Head for himself (Alford). There is then the greater reason for taking from whom personally. Meyer, followed by Eadie, refers both to the verb and the participles, which reference does not correspond so well with the above views.R.]
By joints and bands being supplied and knit together, , characterizes the body, the church, as Eph 4:16. The first participle belongs to , the second to . Both substantives, joined without a repetition of the article, form a category. are the nerves, the muscles: the former alford help, the latter compactness, firmness. Wherein the assistance consists is not expressly stated, the context only intimating vital activity in general (Meyer), not nourishment [E. V.] however, (Grotius). do not refer to faith (Bengel), to prophets (Theodoret) or believers (Bhmer), for faith is the life and the persons are the members.[The fact that the two substantives are joined without a repetition of the article, is against the assignment of a participle to each. As Ellicott remarks: The distinctions adopted by Meyer, et al., according to which the are especially associated with ., and referred to Faith, the . with ., and referred to Loveare plausible, but perhaps scarcely to be relied upon. As in Eph. the passage does not seem so much to involve special metaphors, as to state forcibly and accumulatively a general truth.In the parallel passage, Eph 4:16, Braune seems to interpret , joints. To limit it specifically to nerves, seems to be incorrect. Eadie: We may understand it not merely of joints in the strict anatomical sense, but generally of all those means, by which none of the parts or organs of the body are found in isolation. He is not correct in giving a middle sense to : furnished with reciprocal aid. Both participles are passive; as present they denote that the process is now going on (Alford).R.]
Increaseth with the increase of God, [lit., increaseth the increase of God. Accusative of cognate substantive and genitive auctoris.R.] By this God is described as He who effects the growth from Christ (1Co 3:6; 1Co 3:12; 1Co 6:18; Winers Gram. p. 232). The most appropriate preposition for Christ in this figure is , for God . Hence it does not refer to growth well-pleasing to God (Calvin), [nor godly growth, Conybeare and Howson.R.] But the folly and danger of the false teachers is sharply marked.
Comprehensive conclusion. Col 2:20-23.
Col 2:20. If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world.Sketch of their Christian state, in accordance with the context and the preceding passage (Col 2:1-15). Bengel: continuatur illatio v. 16 coepta. is a rhetorical if, as is actually the case (Winers Gram. p. 418). There are here two definitions of being dead: how? with Christ; to what ? from the rudiments of the world. The motive for being dead is given in Col 2:11-12, and for with Christ in Col 2:19 (the Head) and Col 2:10-15. For the sake of distinctness, and at the same time to mark the dying as an emancipation (Bengel: concise: mortui et sic liberati ab elementis), the preposition is repeated from the verb, where otherwise the dative would be found (Gal 2:19; Rom 6:2). The rudiments of the world are here those rudiments in which they lived before they became in Christ, when they were still heathen; they should not fall away into such again, seduced by Judaistic false teachers. See on Col 2:8.Meyer incorrectly supposes that Christ also was dead from the rudiments; he overlooks that Gentile Christians are referred to; Christ is indeed the end of the law, but has not to die to it.
Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?Why introduces, emphatically in the form of a question, the conclusion that it was wrong. Comp. Gal 4:8-10. As living in the world like when we were in the flesh (Rom 7:5), describes their standpoint before conversion, to which they are returning; denotes the justifiable conclusion and comparison=quippe qui, as though. is the middle (Luther: why do ye allow yourselves to be caught with ordinances?); the verb is= , like . It can be neither: one decrees to you (Meyer);35 nor: you lay ordinances upon yourselves (Bleek); they did not do this, nor does it correspond with the situation, while the former does not correspond with the intention of the intensive question, as if it concerned only a sketch of the fact, and not a rousing of the readers against it.
These ordinances are now noted concretely as to their purport: Col 2:21. Touch not, taste not, handle not, , , .The triple reference forming a climax, marks the urgency of the demand for abstinence (Meyer). The reference to Col 2:16 allows the omission of the objects, meat and drink, which are required by the second verb . It is incorrect to apply touch not to sexual pleasure (Flatt); this cannot be justified by 1Co 7:1; 1Ti 4:3, against the context, viz., the former part of Col 2:22. The suppression of the object is not to be accounted for by the fear and dissimulation of the false teachers, who did not name it themselves (Steiger), nor thus: that Paul had not thought on any definite object. The objects he sets forth in paraphrase:
Col 2:22. Which all are for destruction in the consumption, This relative clause sketches the forbidden objects, all of them (); , placed first for emphasis, denotes that their nature is,appointed to destruction, perishable (), by being used up (). This verdict reminds us of Mat 15:17; Mar 7:18-19; 1Co 6:13. Hence these words must be considered the Apostles judgment to show, and that not without irony, the perversity of the notion, that through eating and drinking moral detriment originated (Chrysostom: ). They cannot be regarded as the words of the false teachers (Vatable, Schenkel), who will not suffer them to be touched, nor as parenthesis36 (Meyer). Nor is to be referred to , implied in above (Augustine [Barnes] and others), nor is to be explained as moral corruption (De Wette), since it merely describes destruction, decomposition, here of sensuous things. Although must not be taken as the simple noun, it must however be distinguished from and , abuse. [The view Braune upholds is so generally adopted by modern commentators and so far preferable that it seems unnecessary to notice the others particularly. The practical bearing of the passage is obvious to any, who discover its true meaning. That this true meaning has not always been discovered by American Christians is evident from the fact that some still cite: Touch not, taste not, handle not, in support of total abstinence from beverages which can intoxicate. Whatever may be the expediency of such a principle, it is one against which, as a binding rule of universal application, this passage, rightly interpreted, might be used. To use it in its favor is contrary to all fair dealing with the word of God,a wresting of the Scripture, excusable only on the ground of ignorance, if in these days such ignorance be not rather an aggravation.R.]
After the commandments and doctrines of men, , sets forth a modality of , marking it as in contrast with Gods law and word in Christ, indeed with the law of Moses, beyond which they have gone. Doctrines is added in justification of commandments; the latter are more restricted, the former more extended; the latter are results, the former set forth the premises and consequences. Mat 15:7; Mar 7:7. [Ellicott: they were submitting to a not only in its preceptive, but even in its doctrinal aspects.R.]
Col 2:23. Which things have indeed a repute of wisdom.Which things refers to commandments and doctrines of men, and denotes, not single commandments, etc., but the whole category of human ordinances. is a concession (), to which the antithesis () is wanting; still to the very significant we have the correlate , to corresponds , and on this account to the following corresponds. Hence here must mean report, as Luk 5:15; Joh 21:23; Act 11:22. So Herodot. 5, 66 (Grimm, Clavis, sub voce p. 260). Chrysostom: , , . The Vulgate therefore: rationem habentia, and Luther: appearance [E. V.: show] are incorrect. [Alford; possessed of a reputation,Ellicott: do have the reputeare enjoying the repute of wisdom.R.] The omission of a clause introduced by is an anacoluthon, but not strange, since the clause is unmistakable (Winers Gram. p. 535). is used instead of , to mark the weakness of men in permitting themselves to be so readily deceived and blinded, and contains a charge against such in general rather than against those in Colosse. Bengel improperly joins with , and resolves into: cum habeant, ut sit incisum; so Schenkel also.
In will-worship, and humility, and unsparingness of the body, .In, standing only at the beginning, denotes that all three belong together. Compounds with are frequent (see Passows Lexicon) and describe, according to the word, something done freely, voluntarily, on ones own responsibility, arbitrarily, factitiously, affectedly; is self-imposed, arbitrary worship (Col 2:18). The object is not added, because self-evident: God. The false teachers in question would worship Him through the mediation of the adoration of angels. Compare , by which Epiphanius (haer. 1, 16) describes the piety of the Pharisees. , as in Col 2:18, denotes the humility which appeared with ostentation, hence only apparent, external. denotes the unsparing austerity towards the body through ascetic abstinence. Such mortification is based upon contempt of the creatures, false views of matter as the seat of sin. The first substantive denotes the religious aspect of their conduct, the second, the moral in relation to men, the third, the same as respects earthly things. In such ways they gained a repute of wisdom.
In opposition to this repute, the Apostle adds his judgment: not in any honour, . Here belongs , which follows , in order to contrast with the repute of wisdom among the people, the Apostles judgment, viz.: the repute is without honorable grounds, without true honor. This is strongly affirmed; there is nothing at all in it which is really honorable; hence in any honor is a sharp negation () of will-worship, humility and unsparingness of the body.To this negative Paul adds a positive statement: [only] to the satisfying of the flesh, .The former clause denies the repute of wisdom as a just repute; this gives a motive for the negation, in connexion with unsparingness of the body. The false doctrine tends () to a satisfying (in contrast with unsparingness) of the fleshly nature ( opposed to ). It is incorrect to render: not giving to the flesh the honor due to its necessities (Luther and others). implies blame (Bengel: fere excessum denotat) and cannot= (Rom 13:14). The distinction between and , and the omission of after must not be overlooked. Grotius singularly deduces praise from this: habent ista rationem non stultam, si adsint cautiones, si sponte ista suscipiantur non abominando ea, qu deus creavit,cum ea modestia animi, qu alios aliter viventes non damnet,si hoc sibt propositum habeant, dure tractare corpus neque carni obsequi ad saturitalem.[Braunes view is that of Meyer, and is to be preferred, 1) as least un-grammatical; 2) as giving the best correlate to ; 3) preserving the distinction between and ; 4) bringing out the bad sense of and thus conveying the sharp condemnation, that asceticism, while it appears to subdue the body, serves only to gratify the flesh and its evil nature. For other interpretations see Eadie, Alford, Ellicott. The latter agrees most nearly with Braune.R.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Fasts and Feasts are placed together by the Apostle (Col 2:16), while as a rule fasting and prayer occur together; Act 13:3 : when they had fasted and prayed; 14:23: prayed with fasting; 1Co 7:5 : fasting and prayer (A. B. however omit the former). He forbids the one or the other, as little as Christ (Mat 6:5; Mat 6:16); he does not annul the decree of the apostolic council (Act 15:20; Act 15:28), in which also the ethical and ritual are united. But he opposes first, asceticism which extends to unsparingness of the body, secondly, an arbitrary abstinence from the means of nourishment ordained for eating and drinking, demanded equally from all, thirdly, those fasts connected with certain arbitrarily chosen days in the year, month and week. He thus opposes that dualistic view of the world, which does not regard and treat matter as the creature of God, which undervalues the body and its life, and in spite of its unsparingness of the body serves only to the satisfying of the flesh; he demands the maintenance of individual freedom and would commit all abstinence to the free moral resolution (as Rom 14:2 sq., 1Co 8:1 sq., 1Ti 4:3), andas far as such abstinence is justified, and may be occasioned or required by internal or external circumstances, by the discipline necessary for the individual, or occurrences that affect him,he would not have it mechanically and arbitrarily bound to special days, least of all that it should be regarded as of moral merit or as a work of supererogation, transcending or retrieving the purely moral law and moral conduct of life. The Christian should not bind his conscience to men, but only to Gods word and Gods law. Holy days and seasons should be determined by the great facts of salvation and the great acts of God, and not arbitrarily chosen. Thus we must judge both the Romish worship overrun with fasts and saints days, and the Methodist and Baptist sects adhering to the Reformed Church. [The author, being a Lutheran, refers to the entire neglect of even such anniversaries as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.The special reference to the Methodists and Baptists must be confined to Germany,and indeed in this country there is no applicability in his allusion to their adherence to the Reformed Church. It is true that until lately the prevailing practice of many churches in America would fall under the condemnation he hints at, and even now these historic days are observed socially rather than religiously, as holidays rather than holy days. The Lords Day has always been kept in a truer position. I may add that fasting is practically ignored as a Christian duty from extreme antagonism to arbitrary fast days, but while the American Church has allowed no man to judge in eating, it has permitted strict judgment in drinking to lay a burden on the conscience. Paul places both in the same category (Col 2:16). However expedient abstinence may be, this passage (Col 2:16; Col 2:20-23) forbids the infringement on Christian freedom which is quite common.R.]
2. The distinction and the connexion of the Old and New Testament economy are here described. The former is the shadow of things to come (Col 2:17) and the rudiments of the world (Col 2:20), which are given in heathenism as well as Judaism; contrasted with the former, the New Testament economy is the body, with the latter it is perfection (). Christianity is called the power of God and wisdom of God (1Co 1:24), at once to distinguish it from Judaism and to describe it as pre-announced, pre-intimated, prepared for in the same. The law is done away, not because it is in itself of no value, but because man is unable to fulfil it, obtains only in Christ, what he cannot attain without Him through the law. See Schmid, Bibl. Theol. II. 233235; 322325. Catholic and Reformed confessions fail in this respect; they regard the gospel as a nova lex, and permit the distinction between the Old Testament and New Testament to fall into the background: the former is Pharisaical, the latter spiritualistic. [The position of the law in the Reformed confession does not seem to me to warrant this remark. See the Heidelberg Catechism, Ques. 2, 91, 92. Belgic conf., xxiv. xxv. Perhaps others are more open to this, charge. See also Form of Concord, VI.R. ]
[3. The observance of the Lords Day cannot be affected by the warning of Paul (Col 2:16). It is certain that the persons who were judging them, were pressing the duty of observing the Jewish Sabbath, not the Christian Lords Day. It is equally certain that the observance of a weekly day of rest is written in Gods physical and social laws for man, as plainly as in the Decalogue. Nor can we escape the conclusion that the fourth Commandment is but a reminder of a previous institution, so that even those who might contend that the whole Mosaic law is abrogated, as a guide to Christian life, do not escape this enactment. But since the Christian would live gratefully, he still finds the rule in Gods holy, just and good moral law, and sees in his very frame as well as in the frame-work of society, an additional reason for appropriating to rest in Gods service, one day in seven, rejoicing therein, since it now marks the great fact of his Lords resurrection, and since his Master has Himself explained how it should be observed.R.]
4. The importance of the doctrine respecting angels (Philippi: Kirchl. Glaubenslehre I. p. 279 sq.), without which the doctrine respecting Satan remains incomprehensible, is as great as the danger from the rationalistic denial of angels, springing from a Sadduceean view of the world, and the Romish adoration of angels, growing out of Essenic and dualistic heresy. The latter soon appeared in the Church. In Laodicea (at the council held between 343 and 381), it was forbidden in the 35th Canon. Ambrose first encouraged it (observandi sunt angeli). Augustine warns against it: imitandos eos potius, quam invocandos, and refers to the distinction between cultus religiosus and non religiosus. This, the second council of Nica (787) turned in favor of the adoration of angels, and the distinction established between , invocation, and , , pious veneration, must now serve as a support for the heathenish adoration of angels and worship of the saints (Conc. trid. sess. 25. Cat. Rom 3:2; Rom 8:10). Our symbols maintain: angelos a nobis non esse invocandos, adorandos (Articles of Schmalkald ii. 2). [See Reformed Confessions and catechisms generally.R.]
5. Christ the Head of the Church, is for her the foundation of all religious and moral life: she needs no other mediator with God.
6. The Church is a living organism, not an establishment or institution, It is a unity of many members; it rests upon an act and work of God in Christ, is from God and to God, has as its end education for perfection and glory hereafter; and possesses, in the word and sacraments and the proper administration of the same, suitable means for the attainment of this end. As to its inmost being, it is a vital relation of the congregation [Gemeinde] to the ever present, spiritual-physically present Lord (Harless. Ethik. 6. Aufl. p. 564). [By Ceistleiblichwhich is untranslatable, Braune means the presence of Christ in the eucharist according to the Lutheran view. Vital union with Christ the Head is not less insisted upon by those who hold the really Calvinistic view.R.] It is an organization (but not the source), for the facilitating and furthering of Christliness [Christlichkeit,], and the sense of this fellowship founded and maintained by Christ with the corresponding conduct is Churchliness [Kirchlichkeit], which is indissolubly connected with Christliness. As Church and Churchdom [Kirche und Kirchenthum] are so distinguished, that the former, as a Divine act, legally and rightly, takes form in the latter, so there is a two-fold Churchliness; one holding fast to the revelation of grace and ordinance of salvation in Christ, the other adhering to the legal forms of a special Churchdom, which has been and is being humanly and historically developed. The former has its source in the invisible Church, the fellowship of the Spirit, the latter in the visible church, which is the fellowship of law, and hence only human, secondary, accessory; it is not the realization of the idea of the Church, but merely a help and external support (Stahl: Rechts-und Staats lehre, p. 164). All ecclesiastical canons non imprimunt credenda, sed exprimunt credita. But in thus distinguishing, rightly, the ordinances of salvation and of the Church, Christliness and Churchliness, and the latter again in this two-fold manner, care must be taken not to undervalue the latter, as well as not to overvalue it.
7. The principle of Christian liberty especially and of Christian life in general is, that one neither makes nor permits to be made an arbitrary law, and so exercises his Christianity upon all that is created, ordinances as well as gifts, that the creature is used in humble obedience to Gods will, without the fleshly nature exalting itself. Asceticism degenerates into mere mechanical morality, casuistic hair-splitting about the divine law, an externalizing of self-discipline and self-exertion, a stirring up of spiritual pride. Under austerity respecting externals is concealed effeminacy with regard to heart-emotions, and in the unsparing plaguing of the body the flesh is fondled.
[8. The connection of the two warnings. There is instruction in the connection of precepts in Pauls writings. Here are two warnings, one against fleshly legality, the other against worship of angels, both condemned as having a show of wisdombut tending only to the satisfying of the flesh. The connection is not obvious, yet side by side the two errors have existed with the same result. In germ at Colosse, in full flower in the medieval church, and in modern times, in America especially, fanatical binding of the conscience respecting articles of diet and drink, and intruding into things not seen, craving for other spiritual manifestations than those coming from the Head, have taken root and flourished in the same localities, together with a show of wisdom and an intense satisfying of the flesh. Error has its affinities and its unchanging law of development no less than truth.R.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Christ wants no legal man, who through zeal in good works will earn the love of God, but a spiritual man, whose faith through grateful love to God is diligent in every good word and work.In winter fruit trees look more alike than in spring, summer and autumn; where life and liberty are wanting, there is monotony in faith and walk; while lifeless liberty makes every diversity prominent.
Starke:That is the devils way, to judge and make conscience where none should be made, and to make none where it should be. Let us hold to Christ alone, and put no man or creature as mediator with Him; but hold to Him truly too, so that we have His witness, whether we have received of His Spirit to abide in us.Will worship is worthless.
Rieger:Sincerity, which seeks God and clings to His Word, seizing salvation in Christ, as if it were I only in the world, whom it concerned; unity, joining itself to all who are called and pressing to the same goal with the same serviceableness; freedom, which binds and is bound by none in things that can neither hinder nor further me in the ordained course.Each one has a corner in his heart where rash prejudices can hide, to break out swiftly in natural and spiritual things, so that we can quickly stumble at one thing, or thoughtlessly depreciate another.[Self-will makes even humility, a vain puffing up.R.]
Gerlach:While one lives in the world, he serves its rudiments. Of these God made use in His law to typify in that time of childhood higher, eternal truths. But when the full light of truth has risen, to serve these is to be in bondage to the world. All this is renewed in Christendom, whenever Christ, as the only Mediator is supplanted or thrown into the background by other sub-mediators.
Schleiermacher:The right way can only be the one way, in the likeness of the Divine Love to maintain the bond of love among each other, and in common with those who are our brethren to seek and to lead a spiritual life.[The difficult wisdom of the gospel, which so few attain: rightly distinguishing the internal from the external, substance from shadow, spirit from letter.R.]
Passavant:Habit and custom, the regular return of religious exercises and festivals, regular Sabbaths, periodical communion seasons, even set hours of meditations, even family worship otherwise so necessary in addition to public worship,how easily do all degenerate into empty form and external posture without spirit and life.He who does not hold to the Head, but holds rather to the thoughts of his own wisdom and the dreams of his own fancy, relying upon systems of human philosophy, upon highly gifted minds or on the poesy of the human imagination, desiring to seek and find there all that is noble and exalted, salvation, joy, heaven itself, thereby denies and disowns the one great Reconciler and Redeemer, His Truth, His Love, His Right, and His Glory: he loses in his folly and ingratitude the whole wealth of the Word of God; he takes the shadow instead of the body, the sheen for the true light, a self-made life for the true Life, Gods Life in us.
Heubner:The Christian should maintain freedom of conscience. He should not depend on others, but follow his own conscience, not permitting himself to be bound to non-essential exercises. A superstitious over-estimate of things indifferent always leads away from Christ.Young Stilling, although indulging in many fancies about spirits, remained faithful to the biblical principle, that all such attempts to open up the invisible world about him are culpable and opposed to the present probationary state of man. A Christian, clinging to Christ is secure against all such foolery, which would divert him from his aim.
Wilhelm.The holy simplicity of the Christian. It consists herein 1) that he keeps his goal uninterruptedly in view: 2) guards against all going according to his own choice: 3) studies true humility at heart.Lehman:Against what must we guard if we would not miss the mark of our heavenly calling? 1) Against our own choice in the matter of our blessedness; 2) against false humility; 3) against carnal mind. Claus:Two great dangers on the path to the heavenly goal; 1) the error of human ordinances; 2) the pride of our own heart.
[Burkitt:Abstinence is sinful when men abstain from some meats, upon pretence of holiness and conscience, as if some meats were unclean, or less holy in their own nature than others, or as if simple abstinence at any time were a thing acceptable to God in itself, without respect to the end for which it is sometimes required.Men are most forward to that service of God, which is of mans finding out and setting up; man likes it better to worship a God of his own making, than to worship the God that made him; and likes any way of worshipping God which is of his own framing, more than that which is of Gods appointing.Henry: Col 2:19. 1) Jesus Christ is not only a Head of Government over the church, but a Head of vital influence to it. 2) The body of Christ is a growing bodyR.]
[Eadie:
Col 2:16. Sensations of spiritual joy are not to be restricted to holy days, for they thrill the spirit every moment, and need not wait for expression till there be a solemn gathering, for every instant awakes to the claims and the raptures of religion.
Col 2:19. The church can enjoy neither life nor growth, if, misunderstanding Christs person or undervaluing His work, it have no vital union with Him.
Col 2:20. Christ is the Head and to Him alone do we owe subjection.
What mean they? Canst thou dream there is a power
In lighter diet at a later hour
To charm to sleep the threatenings of the skies,
And hide past folly from all-seeing eyes? (Cowper).
Col 2:23. When Diogenes lifted his foot on Platos velvet cushion and shouted thus I trample on Platos pride, the Athenian sage justly replied but with still greater pride. The Apostle utters a similar sentiment. These corporeal macerations, as history has shown tend to nurse licentiousness in one age, and a ferocious fanaticism in another.R.]
[Barnes:
Col 2:16. It is the solemn and sacred duty of all Christians to remit all attempts to make ceremonial observances binding on the conscience.
Col 2:18. Pride may be pampered while the flesh grows lean.Wordsworth: Col 2:18. Pride in its worst form; Pride dressed up in the disguise of lowliness. And this is the besetting sin of the human heart, which is more puffed up by false humility than by open, pride.R.]
[Schenkel:The danger of constituting oneself a judge of the consciences of others; 1) why it is so near us; 2) why it must be so earnestly contended against.Christ the only mediator between God and man: It is not humility, but pride, if we seek another.The officious seeking after revelations outside the Revelation: 1) how dangerous; 2) how foolish it is.The danger of spiritual pride; 1) Its sourcethe flesh; 2) its effectsinflation.Who has died with Christ, can no longer live in the world: 1)The reason, 2) the power of this truth.Will-worship: 1) a self-deception, 2) a deceiving of others.Interference with allowable enjoyment by ordinances of men: 1) the wrong inherent in such interference; 2) the impurity to which it leads.R.]
Footnotes:
[24]Col 2:16.[ , the act of eating or of drinking. See Exeg. Notes. The reading is doubtful: . A. C. D. F. K. L. Rec. most versions; Lachmann, Tischendorf (ed. 7), Ellicott, Wordsworth read . B. Tischendorf (ed. 2). Alford, Braune: . The critical defence of the former reading is: the Common association of and would very naturally suggest the displacement of for the more usual of the latter: would readily be altered to to suit the rest of the sentence. Both are so plausible, that the reading can safely be adopted on uncial authority. As to the meaning as affected by the readings, see Exeg. Notes.R.]
[25]Col 2:16.[, literally sabbaths, here=the singular.R.]
[26]Col 2:17.. A. D. E. F. read ; B. has , which is to be preferred as the more difficult reading. [So Lachmann, Meyer. Alford is undecided, but gives in his text. Ellicott considers the reading not improbable, but insufficiently attested. Here also it is best to follow the mass of uncial MSS., with Rec. Tischendorf, and others. E. V. which are is correct in that case.The reading ( omitted), Tischendorf, Ellicott, is preferable. Hence Christs, poss. gen. Eadie, Ellicott, Rhemish, Lachmann and Alford insert (. A. B. C).R.]
[27]Col 2:18.[. Braune renders willkrlich. There is such diversity in interpretation that nothing more definite could be given in the text, and this will serve to show the one point of agreement among our modern commentators, viz., that the E. V. is incorrect.R.]
[28]Col 2:18. is added in ., where it was originally wanting, as in A. B. and others; but it is not to be omitted, [ is also found, but is the proper form of the negative here. See Exeg. Notes. The reading of Rec, has preponderant external authority, 6 MSS. nearly all cursives: supported by most versions, Tischendorf, Ellicott. Lachmann, Meyer, Alford reject the negative,and this view affects the exegesis of the latter two.R.]
[29]Col 2:19.[ , masculine, Christ the Personal Head, hence whom; which in E. V. doubtless stands for whom.R.]
[30]Col 2:20.[ of Rec. and the article before . have the authority of all the MSS. against them and are properly rejected by all modern editors (Ellicott).R.]
[31]Col 2:22.[The E. V. is indistinct,the rendering given above presents the interpretation of Braune, Eadie, Alford, Ellicott, Wordsworth. The parenthesis should perhaps include this last clause only.R.]
[32]Col 2:23.[, unsparingness. So Eadie, Ellicott (unsparing treatment), Alford, Davies, and older English versions similarly.R.]
[33] Col 2:23.[This is the interpretation of Braune, Meyer, Ellicott and others. See Exeg. Notes. More modifications might well be made, but this slight change sufficiently indicates the view upheld below.R.]
[The text of this abort passage, containing not less than 9 , is remarkably well established and free from variations.R.]
[34][Barnes erroneously asserts: there is no evidence that any class of false teachers would deliberately teach that angels were to be worshipped.R.]
[35][Meyer (followed by Alford) regards the verb as passive, finding here, not a reproach but a warning of the readers, who have not yet been led away. In that case, as living in the world indicates the wrong view which the false teachers take of the Christian position. There is much force in his objection to the common view, as implying that they were living as if in the world, a reproach which does not correspond with the tone of the rest of the Epistle. However the implication may only be, that if they allowed this to continue, they would be returning to the world.R.]
[36][The parenthesis of the E. V. seems unnecessary. It was probably designed to connect ordinances and after the commandments of men more closely. If any clause be parenthetical, it is this one, and Meyer, Alford and Ellicott so regard it, agreeing entirely, however, with the exegesis of Braune.R.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
(16) Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: (17) Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. (18) Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, (19) And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. (20) Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (21) (Touch not; taste not; handle not; (22) Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? (23) Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.
It should be observed by the Reader, for the right apprehension of what is here said on the subject of dispute about ordinances, that they related to the Jewish and Gentile Church. The Jews converted to the Gospel, brought with them many of their Jewish prejudices. And the Gentiles having no attachment to those things, were not unfrequently reproved, it should seem, by their brethren the Jews, for not observing them. Paul desires that these things may die away, and that no unkind censure may anymore be heard about the new moon feasts, or the alteration of the Jewish Sabbath day to the first day of the week, in honor of the Lord’s rising. He aims to call the attention of both from the shadow to the substance, from ordinances to Christ.
But though in these disputes the Church of God hath now no concern, yet much improvement may be made from what Paul hath here said on the subject of ordinances. It hath been in all ages, and still is too much the propensity in the human mind, to lay more stress upon the means of grace, than to regard the end. We are more concerned to observe the shadow, than look after the substance. The carcase is substituted for the life. Men feed, as the Prophet speaks, upon ashes, Isa 44:20 . Hence, anything, and everything but Christ make up a form, where there is no power of godliness. The Apostle sums up the whole of this lure of religion, in a full comprehension, when he calls it, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. Alas! what pure form of worship is to be found in the present day wholly free from this leaven? What Church of Christ upon earth is there, that is so holding the Head, as to receive all nourishment alone from him, and to increase with the increase of God?
Reader! let you and I learn from this striking passage, the necessity of being dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, that we may so use ordinances, as not being subject to them. A soul dead with Christ to those things hath life with Christ in spiritual things. The life of Christ in the soul hath fellowship and communion with Christ in all that belongs to him, his life, his obedience, his death, his resurrection, ascension, glory. The soul is justified freely, fully, everlastingly. He is one with Him, and accepted in Him. Hence, though he useth ordinances, yet but as mediums only to lead to Christ, as chariots to carry him to Christ. He is not subject to them, much less to substitute them in the place of Christ, or make them part Saviors. All are subordinate, and as things which perish with using. Christ is the one, and only one object in every desire, in all pursuits, and all attainments. What one of old said, all find, and all blessedness follows in this enjoyment. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion forever, Psa 73:25-26 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days :
Ver. 16. Let no man therefore judge you ] That is, set not up any such for a judge over your consciences; or, if any usurp such an authority, slight him, according to that, Gal 5:1 . Periculosum est in divinis rebus ut quis cedat iure suo, saith Cyprian. In things of God we should be tender of our liberty.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
16 23 .] More specific warning against false teachers (see summary on Col 2:1 ), and that first ( Col 2:16-17 ) with reference to legal observances and abstinence .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
16 .] Let no one therefore (because this is so that ye are complete in Christ, and that God in Him hath put away and dispensed with all that is secondary and intermediate) judge you (pronounce judgment of right or wrong over you, sit in judgment on you) in (reff.) eating (not, in St. Paul’s usage, meat ( ), see reff.; in Joh 4:32 ; Joh 6:27 ; Joh 6:55 , it seems to have this signification. Mey. quotes Il. . 210, Od. . 191, Plato, Legg. vi. p. 783 c, to shew that in classical Greek the meanings are sometimes interchanged. The same is true of and ) and (or or ) in drinking (i.e. in the matter of the whole cycle of legal ordinances and prohibitions which regarded eating and drinking: these two words being perhaps taken not separately and literally, for there does not appear to have been in the law any special prohibition against drinks , but as forming together a category in ordinary parlance. If however it is desired to press each word, the reference of must be to the Nazarite vow, Num 6:3 ) or in respect (reff.: Chrys. and Thdrt. give it the extraordinary meaning of ‘in part,’ : Mey. explains it, ‘in the category of which is much the same as the explanation in the text) of a feast or new-moon or sabbaths (i.e. yearly, monthly, or weekly celebrations; see reff.),
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Col 2:16-23 . SINCE THE LAW HAS BEEN CANCELLED AND THE ANGELS DESPOILED, RITUAL OR ASCETIC ORDINANCES HAVE NO LONGER ANY MEANING FOR THOSE WHO IN CHRIST POSSESS THE SUBSTANCE, OF WHICH THESE ARE BUT THE SHADOW. THEY MUST NOT BE INTIMIDATED BY ANGEL WORSHIPPERS, WHO ARE PUFFED UP BY FLESHLY CONCEIT, AND ONLY LOOSELY HOLD THE HEAD, FROM WHOM THE BODY DRAWS ALL ITS SUPPLY. SINCE THEY HAVE DIED TO THE ELEMENTAL SPIRITS, THEY MUST NOT SUBMIT TO THE PRECEPTS OF ASCETICISM, WHATEVER REPUTATION FOR WISDOM THEY MAY CONFER.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Col 2:16 . The connexion with the preceding argument is this: Since the bond written in ordinances has been abolished, and the angelic powers spoiled and led in triumph, allow no one to criticise your action on the ground that it is not in harmony with the precepts of the Law, or cuts you off from communion with the angels. You have nothing to do with Law or angels. At best they were but the shadow, and in Christ you possess the substance. : “judge you in,” meaning on the basis of. Whether a man eats or drinks or not his conduct in this respect supplies no fit ground for a judgment of him. . is not to “condemn,” though the context shows that unfavourable judgment is in Paul’s mind. : “eating and in drinking,” not food and drink, for which Paul would have used and . The question is not altogether between lawful and unlawful food, but between eating and drinking or abstinence. Asceticism rather than ritual cleanness is in his mind. The Law is not ascetic in its character, its prohibitions of meats rest on the view that they are unclean, and drinks are not forbidden, save in exceptional cases, and then not for ascetic reasons. But these injunctions stand along with ordinances of the Law itself, partly, because they may have been regarded as extensions of its principles, partly, we may suppose, because, like the Law, they were attributed to the angels by the false teachers. In Heb 9:10 regulations as to drinks seem to be referred to as part of the Jewish Law. That the false teachers were ascetics is clear from in Col 2:23 . : “in the matter of,” . expressing the category. Chrysostom and some others have taken it strangely to mean “in the partial observance of”. : the Jewish sacred seasons enumerated as they occur yearly, monthly and weekly. The Sabbath is placed on the same footing as the others, and Paul therefore commits himself to the principle that a Christian is not to be censured for its non-observance. ., though plural in form, means a single Sabbath day.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Col 2:16-19
16Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day- 17things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. 18Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.
Col 2:16-23 Col 2:16-23 are the strongest condemnations of religious legalism in Paul’s writings. When Paul was dealing with “weak” believers he was gentle (cf. Rom 14:1 to Rom 15:13; 1 Corinthians 8-10), but when he was addressing religious self-righteous legalists (i.e., false teachers) he was uncompromising. This self-righteousness was what brought such condemnation from Jesus on the Pharisees and Scribes. Paul knew well performance-oriented religion. His encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus (cf. Acts 9) changed everything!
There were two types of Gnostic false teachers: (1) salvation is through secret knowledge and, therefore, it does not matter how you live (antinomian libertines) and (2) salvation through secret knowledge plus a very restricted lifestyle (legalists).
Col 2:16
NASB”let no one act as your judge”
NKJV”let no one judge you”
NRSV”do not let anyone condemn you”
TEV”let no one make rules”
NJB”never let anyone criticize you”
This is a present imperative with the negative particle, which meant to stop an act already in process. This referred to (1) matters of food (cf. 1Ti 4:3); (2) special days (cf. Rom 14:5; Gal 4:10); or (3) the worship of these angelic levels (cf. Col 2:8; Col 2:20). There is an obvious parallel between Col 2:16 (“act as your judge”) and Col 2:18 (act as “umpire”). Be careful of religious legalism whether Jewish, Greek, or modern.
SPECIAL TOPIC: SHOULD CHRISTIANS JUDGE ONE ANOTHER?
Col 2:17
NASB, NRSV”but the substance belongs to Christ”
NKJV”but the substance is of Christ”
TEV”the reality is Christ”
NJB”the reality is the body of Christ”
There is a contrast between “shadow” (skia, Col 2:17 a) and “substance” (sma, lit. “body,” Col 2:17 b). Religious ritual, devotion, and special days of worship are not bad in themselves unless they become ultimate issues. Christ, not human performance in any area, is the focus of the gospel.
Paul saw the religious ritualism and required religious performance of the false teachers as a mere shadow of real spirituality. The interpretive question is what does “the body of Christ” mean? The two main theories are: (1) Philo of Alexandria and Josephus interpret “body” in the sense of “substance” (NASB, NKJV) or “reality” (TEV), “true spirituality in Christ” or (2) true spirituality is manifested in the Church which is Christ’s body (NJB, cf. Rom 12:4-5; 1Co 10:17; 1Co 12:12; 1Co 12:27).
The author of Hebrews also used the term “shadow” (skia, Col 2:17 a) to compare the Mosaic covenant to the new covenant in Christ (cf. Heb 8:5; Heb 10:1).
Col 2:18
NASB”Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize”
NKJV”Let no one defraud you of your reward”
NRSV”Do not let anyone disqualify you”
TEV”Do not allow yourselves to be condemned by anyone”
NJB”Do not be cheated of your prize by anyone”
This is a present imperative with negative particle, which meant to stop an act already in process. This term is used only here in the NT. This is one of Paul’s athletic metaphors for the Christian life (cf. 1Co 9:24; 1Co 9:27; Gal 2:2; Php 3:14; 2Ti 4:7). Believers must not let legalists act as umpires robbing them of their freedom in Christ (cf. Rom 14:1 to Rom 15:13; 1 Corinthians 10-12. The Williams translation of the NT catches the athletic thrust, translating this “defraud you as an umpire”). The “prize” is true freedom in Christ (cf. Gal 2:4; Gal 5:1; Gal 5:13; 1Pe 2:16)! Freedom to serve God, not self. Freedom from past fears and taboos, freedom from, not freedom to (Romans 6)!
NASB”delighting in self-abasement”
NKJV”taking delight in false humility”
NRSV”insisting on self-abasement”
TEV”insist on false humility”
NJB”who chooses to grovel to angels”
This phrase is theologically related to Col 2:23. In the ancient Greco-Roman world asceticism was seen as religious devotion. This was part of the Gnostic depreciation of the physical. For them, and Greek thought in general, the body was evil. Therefore, to deny the body was a sign of spirituality. This view is still alive in the church!
This Greek word, translated by NASB as “self-abasement,” means “lowliness,” “modesty,” “humility” and is not a negative term in the NT. Paul used it in a positive sense in Act 20:19; Eph 4:2; Php 2:3; Col 3:12. It is the motive that turns it into a spiritual charade!
“and the worship of the angels” This obviously refers to the Gnostic angelic levels (cf. Col 2:8; Col 2:10; Col 2:15). It is also possible that this related to a Jewish theological obsession with the angelic realm. The “New Age” movement in our own day seems to be headed in this direction. Angels are “ministering spirits” for redeemed humanity (cf. Heb 2:14).
“taking his stand” This term was used of initiates into the Mystery religions (cf. Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, p. 206). It refers to the so-called secret revelations or passwords of the Gnostics which they thought brought salvation through the angelic spheres so as to reach the presence of the high, holy god.
“on visions he has seen” This possibly refers to the false teachers’ claims of special revelations. The King James Version adds a negative, making the verse imply what they had not seen but only claimed to have seen. This, however, is a later scribal addition to the manuscripts 2 and D2. The ancient Greek manuscripts P46, *, A, B, and D* do not have the negative. The UBS4 rates the shorter text as “B” (almost certain).
“inflated without cause” This is a Present passive participle. Literally it means “in vain puffed up.” Paul uses this term often in his first letter to the Corinthians (cf. 1Co 4:6; 1Co 4:18-19; 1Co 5:2; 1Co 8:1; 1Co 13:4). The unexpressed agent of the passive voice was their own fallen minds. Unbelievers and false teachers are often sincere and enthusiastic.
“by his fleshly mind” For Paul there is an obvious dichotomy between the thinking of the fallen world and the Christian. Believers have received the mind of Christ which is in conflict with the mind-set of a world operating and functioning apart from God (cf. Col 1:21; Rom 7:22-23; Rom 8:5-7; Rom 11:34; 1Co 2:16; Eph 2:3; Eph 4:17-23). See Special Topic: Flesh (sarx) at Col 1:22.
These legalistic religionists are to be rejected for three reasons.
1. their insights are mere shadows of reality (Col 2:17)
2. their visions are false because they are informed by a fleshly mind (Col 2:18)
3. they have stopped holding on to Christ (Col 2:19)
Legalistic false teachers are still with us! Beware! Be informed!
Col 2:19 Paul again stressed the major truth of fallen mankind’s need for a relationship with Christ (individual) and also with His body, the church (corporate, cf. Col 2:8; Eph 4:16). We need salvation from sin and wisdom from God on how to live. Christ provides both!
NASB, NKJV,
NRSV”not holding fast to the Head”
TEV”have stopped holding on to Christ”
NJB”has no connection to the Head”
This is a negated present active participle. The implication is that at one time the false teachers were holding on to Christ. This can be understood in several ways.
1. they were like the two seeds in the Parable of the Sower (cf. Mat 13:20-23) that germinated but fell away and did not bear fruit
2. they were like “the believers” of Joh 8:31-59 who turned against Jesus
3. like the church members who left in 1Jn 2:18-19
4. they were like the believers in the church of Ephesus who abandoned their “first love” (cf. Rev 2:4)
“the Head” Paul often uses the analogy of the people of God as a body (cf. Rom 12:4; 1Co 10:17; 1Co 12:12; 1Co 12:14; 1Co 12:20; Eph 4:4; Eph 4:16; Col 3:15), but it is only in Ephesians (Eph 1:22; Eph 4:15; Eph 5:23) and Colossians (Col 1:18; Col 2:19) that Christ is specifically identified as “the Head” (see Special Topic: Head at Eph 5:23).
This whole verse speaks of Christ as the indispensable founder, leader and sustainer of the Church.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
no. App-106.
man. App-123.
judge. App-122.
meat, &c. = eating and drinking.
respect. Litearal, part, i.e. taking part.
holy day = feast. See Lev 23.
new moon. See 1Ch 23:31.
sabbath days = sabbaths. See Lev 23:3, Lev 23:7, Lev 23:8, Lev 23:21, Lev 23:24, Lev 23:27-32, Lev 23:35, Lev 23:36, Lev 23:38, Lev 23:39. Joh 20:1.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
16-23.] More specific warning against false teachers (see summary on Col 2:1), and that first (Col 2:16-17) with reference to legal observances and abstinence.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Col 2:16. , therefore) The therefore is deduced from Col 2:8-15. See Col 2:16 (comp. note on Col 2:20), ch. Col 3:1; Col 3:5; Col 3:12.-, let no man judge) A Metonymy of the antecedent for the consequent, i.e. attend to no one who attempts to judge you; so Col 2:18.- , in meat) He says less than he wishes to be understood (Tapeinosis).[13]- , [in part or partly] in respect of a holiday) The expression, [in part or partly] in respect, here seems to have the power of separating. One might disturb believers on the subject of meat and drink (Col 2:21), another again about holidays. The holiday is yearly; the new moon, monthly; the sabbaths, weekly. Comp. Gal 4:10, note.- , or of sabbaths) The plural for the singular, Mat 12:1 : but it is used here significantly [with express design]; for the several days of the week are called Sabbaths, Mat 28:1 [ . See Gnom. there]; therefore Paul intimates here that all distinction of days is taken away; for he never wrote more openly concerning the Sabbath. Christ, after that He Himself, the Lord of the Sabbath, had come, or else before His suffering, in no obscure language taught the liberty of the Sabbath; but He asserted it more openly by Paul after His resurrection. Nor has it yet been expressly defined what degree of obligation is to be assigned to the Sabbath, what to the Lords day; but this has been left to the measure of every ones faith. The Sabbath is not cited as authoritative [laudatur], is not commanded; the Lords day is mentioned, not enjoined. An appointed [a definite and fixed] day is useful and necessary to those who are rather deeply immersed and engrossed in the concerns of the world. They who always sabbatize [they who keep a continual Sabbath], enjoy greater liberty. The Sabbath is a type even of eternal things, Heb 4:3-4; but yet its obligation does not on that account continue in the New Testament, otherwise the new moons should be retained, Isa 66:23.[14]
[13] See App.
[14] For there we find in a future state an antitype to the new moons as well as to the Sabbath, which would prove too much.-ED.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Col 2:16
Col 2:16
Let no man therefore judge you-Since the old covenant was nailed to the cross of Christ, and was thus made invalid, its written decrees, he tells them, are not binding on the saints, and they were not to be judged for neglecting them.
in meat, or in drink,-This refers to ceremonial, and, doubtless, extremely rigid requirements as to clean and unclean articles of food and drink. Whether a man eats or drinks or not his conduct in this respect supplies no fit ground for a judgment of him.
or in respect of a feast day or a new moon-Christians should not permit themselves to be bound to Jewish festivals in their worship of God; neither to the great annual feasts. The claims of these observances were, no doubt, greatly exaggerated, and, possibly made tests of fellowship,
or a sabbath day:-[The sabbath means rest, and was a shadow of the rest which believers have in Christ. For we who have believed do enter into that rest. . . . There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. . . . Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience. (Heb 4:3-11). The seventh day was the Sabbath or rest of God in creation, and was afterwards given to the Israelites, and formed part of their economy of types. But since Christ has come, this typical rest cannot be kept without ignoring him as our rest. The Sabbath of the Israelites is past, and the first day of the week has begun in life and liberty. It is not physical rest that is to be sought, but praise and adoration to him who has brought life and immortality to light. On the first day of the week the believer ceases his daily labor, but it is that he may honor Christ by his spiritual service. The first day of the week should never be called a Sabbath, because it is neither true nor appropriate to so name his resurrection day.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
judge: Rom 14:3, Rom 14:10, Rom 14:13, 1Co 10:28-31, Gal 2:12, Gal 2:13, Jam 4:11
in meat: etc. or, for eating and drinking, Lev 11:2-47, Lev 17:10-15, Deu 14:3-21, Eze 4:14, Mat 15:11, Act 11:3-18, Act 15:20, Rom 14:2, Rom 14:6, Rom 14:14-17, Rom 14:20, Rom 14:21, 1Co 8:7-13, 1Ti 4:3-5, Heb 9:10, Heb 13:9
in respect: or, in part
of an: Lev 23:1-44, Num 28:1 – Num 29:40, Deu 16:1-17, Neh 8:9, Neh 10:31, Psa 42:4, Rom 14:5, Rom 14:6
the new: Num 10:10, Num 28:11, Num 28:14, 1Sa 20:5, 1Sa 20:18, 2Ki 4:23, 1Ch 23:31, Neh 10:33, Psa 81:3, Isa 1:13, Eze 45:17, Eze 46:1-3, Amo 8:5, Gal 4:10
or of the sabbath: Lev 16:31, Lev 23:3, Lev 23:24, Lev 23:32, Lev 23:39
Reciprocal: Gen 9:3 – even Lev 11:8 – they are unclean Lev 11:24 – General 2Ch 31:3 – for the new moons Isa 66:23 – that from Eze 20:12 – I gave Mat 5:17 – but Mar 2:27 – General Act 15:1 – Except Rom 14:17 – is Gal 5:1 – entangled Col 2:18 – beguile you Col 2:20 – subject
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
(Col 2:16.) -Let no one, therefore, judge you in eating or in drinking,-test your piety by such a criterion. The participle refers back to the preceding statement, especially to the first clause of the 14th verse. The verb may be followed by the accusative, intimating who are the objects of judgment, while accompanying it sometimes specifies its period, as in Joh 12:48, and sometimes its quality, as in Act 17:31, but here it denotes the basis on which judgment is passed, or rather, the sphere in which it is exercised. According to Meyer, , in the writings of the Apostle Paul, is uniformly actio edendi, and so distinct from -cibus, though in other portions of the New Testament, and among the classics, that distinction is not observed. Some of the lexicographers do not admit the statement, as is manifest by their citations, neither does Fritzsche-but we believe Meyer to be correct. is also the act of drinking, in contrast with , the draught. Though the Mosaic law did not dwell so much on drinks as meats, yet, as we shall see, it included some statutes about drinks and drinking vessels, and therefore we cannot agree with De Wette that was inserted for the sake of the alliteration-des Gleichklanges wegen. The eating and drinking are, therefore, a reference to the dietetic injunctions of the Mosaic law. Lev 7:20-27, xi. Certain kinds of animal food were prohibited. The Jews were allowed the flesh of ruminant quadrupeds with a cloven hoof, of fishes with scales and fins, and of such insects as the locust, while unclean birds were specified in a separate catalogue. The priests on the eve of ministration were solemnly forbidden the use of wine. Certain kinds of vessels that had contained water, and been defiled, were to be broken, but others were only to be rinsed. The Nazarites did not taste any product of the vine. No doubt the pride of sanctity was strong in the Jewish mind, and the tendency was, both in Essenes and Pharisees, to multiply such prohibitions, and to place around meats and drinks a finical array of minute and complex regulations. The party at Colosse had strong ascetic tendencies, and were apt to sit in judgment upon those who felt that every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused. The errorists forgot that the spirituality of Christianity rose far above such physical restraints and distinctions, and that the new kingdom was not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
] -Either in the particular of a festival, or of a new moon, or of Sabbath-days. The phrase , as in classic use, signifies not simply in respect of, as Beza, Flatt, Bhr, and Huther give it. It gives a specialty to the theme or sphere of judgment, by individualizing the topic or occasion. Melancthon and Zanchius render-vicibus festorum. The Greek Fathers Chrysostom and Theophylact take it as denoting a partial observance, as if the heretics did not retain the whole of the original rule; and Calvin supposes to intimate that they made unwarranted distinctions between one day and another. Feast, or Festival, refers, as is plain from the contrast, to the three great annual feasts of the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The new moon ushered in certain monthly celebrations, while the sabbaths were weekly in their periods. Some, indeed, such as Neumann, suppose the allusion to be to the grand sabbatic periods of the seventh day, the seventh year, and the fiftieth year. But there is no warrant or necessity for such a reference here, though the apostle says to the Galatians, ye observe days and months, and times and years. Rom 14:5-6. The term often occurs in a plural form in the New Testament, as if, as Winer supposes, the Syro-Chaldaic form–had been transferred into the Greek tongue. Mat 12:1; Luk 4:16; Act 13:14; Act 16:13. Allusions to these feasts, collectively, will be found in 1Ch 23:31; 2Ch 2:4; 2Ch 31:3. The observances of the Jewish rubric, whether in its original form, or with the multiplied and ascetic additions w hich it presented in those days, laid believers no longer under obligation. They belonged to an obsolete system, which had decayed and waxed old. Christianity inculcated no such periodical holidays. For it did not bid men meet thrice a year to feast themselves, but each day to eat their bread with gladness and singleness of heart. It did not summon them to any tumultuous demonstration with trumpets at new moon, since every division of the month was a testimony of Divine goodness, and the whole kalendar was marked by Divine benefactions-every day alike a season of prayer and joy. Nor were they to hallow the sabbaths, for these had served their purpose, and the Lord’s day was now to be a season of loftier joy, as it commemorates a more august event than either the creation of the universe or the exodus from Egypt. Every period is sanctified-day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night teacheth knowledge. Sensations of spiritual joy are not to be restricted to holy days, for they thrill the spirit every moment, and need not wait for expression till there be a solemn gathering, for every instant awakes to the claims and the raptures of religion. The new religion is too free and exuberant to be trained down to times and seasons like its tame and rudimental predecessor. Its feast is daily, for every day is holy; its moon never wanes, and its serene tranquillity is an unbroken Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath was kept, however, by the early Christians along with their own Lord’s day for a considerable period; till at length, in 364 A.D., the Council of Laodicea condemned the practice as Judaizing.
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians
Col 2:16. The law of Moses had certain regulations concerning what they might eat and drink, and how (Lev 7:10-27). It had various days that had to be observed as holy days. Among these were the new moons (2Ch 31:3; Num 28:11), and all the sabbath days (Exo 31:13). Since that law has been replaced by the Gospel, no man should be a/llowed to judge the Christians concerning these regulations, by trying to force their observance on them.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Col 2:16. Let no man therefore judge you. Therefore bases these practical admonitions on the positive truths set forth in Col 2:8-15. Judge, sit in judgment, condemning you if you do not respond to their demands.
In eating, or in drinking; the words occur in Rom 14:17, referring to the acts of eating and drinking, not to food and drink. A few authorities read: and instead of or. This makes of the two a single category, while in respect of introduces a second class. But the evidence for and is not strong enough to warrant the substitution. The Mosaic law had prohibitions respecting food alone (Lev 7:10-27), forbidding wine to Nazarites (Num 6:3) and to priests in service (Lev 10:9); hence the Phrygian ascetics had probably gone beyond the law (so Meyer, followed by most recent commentators). Comp. Romans 14.
Or in respect of a festival. The first term refers to yearly feasts, the second to monthly, the third to the weekly Sabbath; a sabbath day is the usual rendering of the plural form here used, and joined with two other terms in the singular number. The Jewish Sabbath was kept by many of the early Christians as well as the Lords Day, and the practice was finally condemned at a council in Laodicea. It has been asserted that Pauls language is inconsistent with the lasting obligation of the Sabbath, in any form, on the Christian Church, But this is too sweeping. The Lords Day is in a different position, has a fresh sanction, and should have its higher observance. The need of such a day is written in mans body, and experience proves that Christianity is the loser by the neglect of a religious observance of one day in seven. Here the Lords own words hold good: The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath (Mar 2:27).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Here we have an inference or conclusion drawn by our apostle from the foregoing argument, that seeing the ceremonial law was now abolished, therefore none should take upon them to judge or condemn another for not observing any of the legal ceremonies, either those that related to meats, that is, the difference to be observed in meats, or the other relating to the difference to be observed in days.
Here note, That the days observed amongst the Jews, were of three sorts: Anniversary, which returned every year, called here an holy day; Lunary which returned every month, the first day of every new moon; Weekly, which returned every week, and on the seventh day of every week: All which are abrogated, even the Jewish seventh-day sabbath; and the Lord’s day, or the Christian’s first-day sabbath, substituted in its place, 1Co 16:2.
Observe here, 1. That there is both a sinful and a lawful abstinence from meats; that abstinence is sinful, when men abstain from some meats, under pretence of holiness and conscience, as if some meats were unclean, or less holy in their own natures than others, 1Ti 4:4 or as if simple abstinence at any time were a thing acceptable to God in itself, without respect had to the end for which it is sometimes required.
But there is a three-fold abstinence from meats, which is lawful; Political, enjoined by the magistrate for civil ends; Medicinal, prescribed by the physician for health’s preservation; Ecclesiastical, when God by his providence, and the voice of his church, calls his people to fasting.
Observe, 2. The reason alledged by the apostle, why Christians should not judge one another, with respect to meats and drinks, times and seasons, namely, because those legal ceremonies were but dark shadows of things to come; but the body and substance, represented by those shadows, is Christ come in the flesh: And consequently, to observe the ceremonies, and regard these shadows under the gospel, is in effect to say, That Christ the body is not yet come.
Here note, 1. The title given to the ceremonial worship, it is styled a shadow, because it was a dark and imperfect representation of the truth: What is a shadow, but the coming of a thick body posed between Christ the true light and us, and so casts a shadow of him.
Note, 2. The title given to Christ with respect to the shadows of the ceremonial law, he is the body and the substance of them; now as the shadow vanishes when the substance is come, so these ceremonial ordinances were to cease upon the coming of Christ; and to observe them now, under the gospel, is in effect to say, that Christ is not yet come in the flesh.
Note, 3. That the Jewish sabbath was a ceremonial ordinance, and a part of that handwriting of ordinances which was to be blotted out by Christ; and consequently the Christian is not obliged to observe it.
As the distinction of meats and drinks and the observation of the new moons were confessedly ceremonial; so was also the Jewish sabbath, which with the rest was equally cancelled by Christ as a part of the handwriting of ordinances; so that to observe the Jewish sabbath, or to condemn the Christian for not observing it, is as much a denial, that Christ is come in the flesh as to observe circumcision, or any other part of the ceremonial law.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Warnings About False Teaching
Since the law of Moses had been nailed to the cross, Colossian Christians did not have to answer to anyone as to why they did not observe various parts of the law or some group’s private requirements. It is particularly interesting that Paul mentions the Sabbath, since some would still require its observance today. Those things, according to Paul, were a shadow of the things which would come in Christ. A shadow can tell us someone is approaching and give us a vague idea of the shape of that person. While the shadow is but an image, the body is reality. In this case, the shadow is the Old Testament law and the body is Christ’s ( Col 2:16-17 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Col 2:16-17. Let no man, therefore, &c. Seeing these things are so, and the ceremonial law is now abolished, let no one, who is in a bigoted manner attached to it, judge and condemn you Gentile Christians; that is, regard none who judge you, in regard to the use of meat or drink Forbidden by it; or in respect of a holyday , in respect of a festival. The festivals, distinguished from new moons and sabbaths, meant days of rejoicing annually observed. Of these some were enjoined in the law, others by human authority, such as those instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of the Jews by Esther, and of the purification of the temple by Judas Maccabeus. Or the new moon, or the sabbath days The weekly Jewish sabbaths; which are but a lifeless shadow emblematical of good things to come Intended to lead mens minds to spiritual and evangelical blessings. But the body Of those shadows; is of Christ The substance of them is exhibited in the gospel of Christ, in whom they all centre; and having the latter, we need not be solicitous about the former. The whole of the ceremonial law of Moses being abrogated by Christ, (Col 2:14,) Christians are under no obligation to observe any of the Jewish holydays, not even the seventh-day sabbath. Wherefore, if any teacher made the observance of the seventh day a necessary duty, the Colossians were to resist him. But though the brethren in the first age paid no regard to the Jewish seventh-day sabbath, they set apart the first day of the week for public worship, and for commemorating the death and resurrection of their Master, by eating his supper on that day; also for the private exercises of devotion. This they did, either by the precept or by the example of the apostles, and not by virtue of any injunction in the law of Moses. Besides, they did not sanctify the first day of the week in the Jewish manner, by a total abstinence from bodily labour of every kind. That practice was condemned by the council of Laodicea, as Judaizing. Macknight.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
ARGUMENT 12
VISIBLE RELIGIONS: CARNAL AND COUNTERFEIT
16. Let no one judge you in meat or in drink, or in participation of a feast, or of the new moon or of Sabbaths. The old law of restriction on meats was nailed to the cross, universal liberty peculiar to the gospel dispensation, the typical significations of clean and unclean superseded in the spiritual dispensation of entire sanctification; meanwhile we are to live hygienically and harmonically with the endless diversity of variant constitutions and climates. On the drink problem we should all be Nazarites unto the Lord, as they were the holiness people of the old dispensation, and most radical teetotalers relative to all intoxicants. Coffee and tea are admissible under hygienical restrictions. I much enjoy the privilege of abstinence from all nervines. As to festivals, be sure that you follow the Lord. Do not hold them in the house of God. (1Co 11:22.) Sabbaths, in the original, is in the plural number, having prophetic reference doubtless to the controversy now prevailing on that subject. In Mat 18:1, the Greek reads, At the dawn toward the first of the Sabbaths, confirming the conclusion that both days were recognized at the time of the writing; i.e., the Jewish Sabbath, which was the last day of the week, and the Christian Sabbath; the first day of the week, so memorialized by our Lords resurrection as ever afterward to be denominated the Lords day. The Christian Church began all Jews, in a century eliminating the Jewish element and becoming Gentiles. Of course the apostles and pentecostal converts kept the Jewish Sabbath as well as the Lords day, till the Jewish element evanesced after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, A.D. 73. There are fundamental reasons arising out of the genius of the gracious economy, which justify the change from the last to the first day. The law says, Work first, and then rest, and if you do not finish your work, you shall not rest. Hence, the pertinency of the last day under the law dispensation. The gospel says, Rest first, and then you will be in good fix to do your work, as a well rested man will do about ten times as much work as a tired man. Besides, we have clear and positive proof of the change, and the observance of the first day by the primitive Christians. The bloody persecution inaugurated by Nero, in which Paul lost his head and Peter was crucified, lasted three hundred years, during which martyrs blood flowed like rivers. When a student in college, I read the Roman historians, Sallust, Pliny, and Seutonius, who lived and wrote during those bloody centuries. As they were heathens, having no sympathy with Christianity, they are certainly impartial witnesses to the current events of the times. In their simplicity and candor they chronicle their historic sketches of the Christians, describing them as a strange, bigoted, fanatical sect, the followers of one Jesus, who was crucified under the reign of Tiberius and the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate at Jerusalem, whom they certify to have risen from the dead, and they worship him as a God, though the good emperors had done their utmost to reconcile these fanatical people, even proposing to confer the apotheosis upon Jesus Christ, thus adopting him as one of their own gods, to be worshipped along with Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, Minerva, and Diana. But these incorrigible fanatics treat with utter contempt all of the good old Roman gods, obstinately refusing to worship any god except Jesus Christ. In their simplicity they described the persistent efforts of the emperors to correct and loyalize this disturbing element in the empire.
Then they proceed to describe the arraignment, trial, and martyrdom of the Christians. When persons were suspected of being Christians, they were arrested and arraigned before a civil magistrate. Then they asked them the question, Dominicum servasti? Have you kept the Lords day? The answer came promptly, Christianus sum, I am a Christian, Intermittere non possum, I am not able to omit it. This is positive and unequivocal proof that they kept the first day of the week, which, from the apostles, was called the Lords day. If Saturday had been the day, they would have asked them, Sabbaticum servasti, Have you kept the Sabbath day? The very fact that they never asked them if they had kept the Sabbath day, but always, Have you kept the Lords day? is unequivocal proof that they kept the first day of the week. While we have this clear and unequivocal assurance of the change from the seventh to the first day, simultaneously with the change from the Jewish to the Christian dispensation, we would subjoin,
If you have any conscientious scruples that you ought to keep Saturday as a holy Sabbath, we exhort you to satisfy those convictions in the observance of that day. In that case, you will keep both days, as you must keep Sunday, conservatively of the conscience of Christendom. (1Co 8:12.)
Thus you will keep both days, the former pursuant to your own conscience and the latter the conscience of the Lords people. An easy way to settle the whole matter, and sweep controversy from the field, is for you to get sanctified wholly, and walk with Jesus in the beauty of holiness. Then you will have seven Sabbaths in the week, instead of one. The history of the apostolic Church during the early centuries utterly upsets the allegation that the Emperor Constantine, who was not converted till the fourth century, made the change from the seventh to the first day; while the fiction that the popes did it is still more at random, as there never was a pope till the seventh century. Doubtless, Constantine and the popes, like all other ecclesiastical leaders, frequently sent out edicts exhorting the people to keep the Christian Sabbath. There is no more reason why we should Judaize on the Sabbath dogma than that we should go back to the Jewish dispensation on other things. God wants holy hearts. In that case, all days will be holy. It is the wildest fanaticisrn to magnify holy days, instead of holy hearts.
17. Which things are a shadow of the things to come. These Old Testament institutions all symbolize the glorious spiritual experiences of the pentecostal dispensation. Sabbath is a Hebrew word, and means rest. It symbolizes the perfect repose of the sanctified soul in Jesus. It is an awful mistake to keep the eye always on the shadow and miss the substance, like Aesops dog in the fable, walking through the creek with a piece of meat in his mouth, and, seeing his shadow in the water, thinking it was another dog carrying a piece of meat, leaped at the shadow, dropping his meat to get the other, and, losing all, came out of the water meatless and hungry. If you have perfect rest in Jesus, you have an everlasting Sabbath in your soul. If you have not got the soul-Sabbath, the devil will get after all of your zeal about days.
But the body is of Christ that is the thing for you to settleis that you are a bona fide member of the New Testament Church; i.e., the Divine Ecclesia, who, responsive to the call of the Holy Ghost, have come out of the world, and separated themselves unto God. This blood-washed Church of the First-born is called the body of Christ. If you are saved and sanctified, and thus a bona fide member of the body of Christ, the day problem, along with all other symbolisms, will take care of itself.
18. Let no one, pursuant to his own will, rob you of your crown in humiliation and worship of the angels. Then the Church, which had been kept pure by martyr blood and fire three hundred years, during which she pushed her conquest to the ends of the earth, and soon would have prepared the world for her Lords return, received the sudden uplift into power and riches through the conversion of Constantine, the Roman Emperor, she soon plunged headlong into the darkness and secularism of Roman Catholicism, and set up the worship of angels, to which Paul alludes: Thrusting in those things which he has seen, being vainly puffed by the mind of his depravity. Here we see a sweeping condemnation against all visible religions as consequently carnal, the true being invisible and spiritual. Not a solitary apostle ever preached in a church edifice, the Jews and pagans throughout the world making a great pomp and show with fine buildings. One hundred and fifty years rolled away before the Christians erected a house of worship. I sometimes feel that they made a mistake in ever building a house, and localizing the worship of God. Solomons temple signified the sanctified heart. Jesus certifies that neither at Jerusalem nor in Samaria is the true worship, but in the humble, sanctified heart. The first trend into apostasy and idolatry is always through a materialistic religion. Christendom is this day flooded with the idolatry of materialism, spirituality being more and more superseded by materiality, as the Churches, like Judaism and Romanism, go deeper into apostasy. All the paganistic Churches of the present day, with a thousand millions of souls, are the apostasy of the patriarchal dispensation; Jews and Mohammedans, two hundred and fifty millions; of the modern Roman Catholics two hundred and sixty millions; while one hundred and fifty millions of Protestants are following them at racehorse speed on the downward way to idolatry and diabolism. They all traveled the same way, originally deflecting from a purely spiritual and invisible into material and visible forms, ceremonies, temples, shrines, musical instruments, etc.
19. Not holding the head. Here the prophetic eye of Paul sees a great man at the head of the Church, leading the people in the pompous rites and ceremonies of a visible worship, with fine house, splendid choir, pipe- organ, and Official Board, and utterly destitute of salvation. Not holding the head; i.e., has no connection with Christ, and utterly ignorant of his saving power. Ecclesiastical leaders on this line are too many to be counted. Their name is legion. O how the present age is flooded with the fulfillment of these wonderful latter-day prophecies, which flashed continually from Pauls inspired pen! How deplorable to see myriads of preachers blindly and ignorantly fulfilling these prophecies! From which the whole body, through joints and ligaments supplied and cemented together, increaseth the increase of God. Here we have a beautiful affirmation of the universal oneness of the Lords Church. There is no harmony in Satans kingdom. The miseries of the damned are constantly augmented and awfully intensified by the universal disharmony, perturbation, and bitter conflicts in hell. It is equally true on earth; war, bloodshed, strife, and disharmony universally characterize the kingdom of Satan. The world is belted with sectarian Churches, rivaling each other in visible pomp and pageantry, and material power and aggrandizement, amid universal rivalry, competition, and disharmony; while the Church of God is an invisible spiritual entity, consisting of blood-washed souls dispersed in all the earth and millions in heaven, all not only perfectly harmonious but identical in spirit, each individual identified with Christ as the branch in the vine, and all receiving the same life-blood flowing out from the heart of Jesus. Union there can never be, unless that we be one in Jesus,one as he is one in God, in spirit, and in disposition. This the Holy Scriptures teach. It is plain without an exposition.
20. If you are dead along with Christ from the institutions of the world, why are you dogmatized as living in the world? There is no reference here to Church ordinances, as you might conclude from E.V., but to human institutions indiscriminately and independently of Divine authority. So fast as Churches lose the Holy Spirit and backslide, they always depart from New Testament simplicity, and go off into human institutions, laying heavy burdens on the people, and depending on their own works instead of the Holy Ghost. Jesus came to break all of these yokes off our necks, and make us free as angels. For this he died, nailing all human creeds, institutions, and authorities to the cross. How inconsistent for people whom God has made free, to still live encumbered by these human burdens! If you are a Christian, you have come out of the world. Then, why do you live like the people of the world, still wearing the yokes of worldly people? How few people, who claim to be the Lords, really enjoy the glorious freedom which Jesus purchased on the cross?
21. Touch not, taste not, handle not. What is here referred to under this sweeping prohibition? Why, all human institutions, inventions, customs, and laws, laying on you a thousand heavy burdens. You have come out of the world. Then how inconsistent that you be enslaved, contaminated, and encumbered like people of the world!
22. All which are for destruction by the use, according to the commandments and teachings of men. Every age has had its methods, institutions, and customs, by which the people were burdened and enslaved. They have all vanished away with the revolving centuries, leaving not a trace. Our life in Christ is invisible, spiritual, and immortal. Is it possible we can not rise above transitory things, and even here live the life of God and eternity, remembering that all these human fashions, customs, laws, and usages perish with the fleeting moment?
23. Whatsoever things are indeed having a manifestation of wisdom in will worship, humiliation, and deprivation of the body, are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh. The heathen in all ages have tortured the body to get rid of sin. The Roman Catholics have long preached the doctrine of remedial suffering in this life and in purgatory. The apostatizing Protestant Churches are fast going away in the track of their predecessors, losing sight of the great Bible truth of justification and sanctification by the free grace of God in Christ, received and appropriated by faith alone. It takes a preacher on Sunday morning nearly as long to announce his appointments as to preach his little sermonette. These appointments are a concatenation of work for all of his members every day, in cooperation with a great catalogue of human institutions, which give no relief to the heart aching for purity, and to the immortal soul longing for victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil. The week is spent in toil and drudgery, and no victory for Jesus. A little filthy lucre is gathered up, which is of no value, for our God is infinitely rich. John Wesley was a great man for institutions, establishing the class meeting, for the conversion of penitents; the holiness band, for the sanctification of Christians; and the select societies, for the establishment of the sanctified; all these being strictly the institutions of the Holy Ghost. Let us still have them, instead of wearing ourselves out in will worship; i.e., worshipping the will of preachers and leaders, and perhaps our own will, instead of worshipping the sweet will of God. In a Western town I met a young man from Kentucky, who, when a boy, had been converted in my meeting. Fearing that he was on a downward trend spiritually, I requested his pastor to look after him. Yes, that I will; I must hunt up some work for Joe to do. The poor fellow was about to starve to death. He needed a Benjamins mess, instead of a job. But that is the way the blind pastors are doing. They starve and work their members to death. Paul says that all this is of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
You may torture, toil, pay your money, and suffer bodily privation till the judgment-day, and find old Adam in you big as a rhinoceros, gripping you by the throat and dragging you into hell. Salvation does not come in this way. It is not by works, but by faith. Stay at the feet of Jesus till you get saved to the uttermost, and filled with the Holy Ghost. Then go and work for God and souls, with victory in your heart and heaven in your life.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 16
Judge you in meat, &c.; condemn you on account of any thing relating to these outward ceremonies.–Sabbath days; the various sacred days of the Jews.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
SECTION 10. WARNING AGAINST VARIOUS DOGMAS, JEWISH OR GENTILE, CONTRARY TO CHRIST. CH. 2:16-3:4.
Let not any one then judge you in eating or in drinking, or in a matter of a feast or of a new moon or of a sabbath, which things are a shadow of those to come, but the body is Christs. Let no one rob you of your prize, desiring to do it in lowliness of mind and worshipping of angels, investigating things which he has seen, vainly puffed up by the mind of his flesh, and not holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, through the joints and hands receiving support and being knit together, increases with the increase of God.
If ye died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why as though living in the world are ye placed under dogmas? Handle not, nor taste, nor touch, (all which things are to perish in the using up of them,) according to the commandments and teachings of men: things which have indeed a repute of wisdom in will worship and lowliness of mind and unsparing treatment of the body, not in any value against indulgence of the flesh.
If then ye have been raised together with Christ seek the things above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: mind the things above, not those upon the earth. For ye are dead, and your life lies hidden with Christ in God. When Christ shall be manifested, your life, then also ye with Him will be manifested in glory.
This section falls into three clearly marked divisions, each comprising four verses. Col 2:16-19 specifies the errors referred to in the more general warning of 9 distinguishing their Jewish (Col 2:16-17) and theosophic (Col 2:18-19) elements: Col 2:20-23 brings to bear against them one factor of the positive teaching in 9, viz. our death with Christ: and Col 3:14 brings to bear upon them another factor, viz. our resurrection with Christ.
Col 2:16. Practical application of the foregoing, especially of Col 2:14. Since God has nailed to the cross of Christ, and thus made invalid, the written obligation of the Old Covenant with its decrees, do not submit to any ones award of praise or blame on the ground of its prohibitions or prescriptions: for these have passed away.
Eating drinking: same words in Rom 14:17, and similar thought; cp. Rom 14:13, let us no longer judge one another. They might refer, as they do associated together in Rom 14:21, to meat and wine offered in sacrifice to idols. But, that this is not Pauls main reference here, is proved by Col 2:16 b, which mentions distinctively Levitical ordinances, by the mention in Col 2:11 of circumcision, which involves obedience to the whole Law of Moses, and the mention in Col 2:14 of a written obligation. The word eating refers therefore chiefly to the Levitical prohibition of unclean animals as food. The word drinking suggests that the would-be judges extended to themselves the Mosaic prohibition of wine to Nazarites (Num 6:3) and (Lev 10:9) to priests while officiating at the altar. In other words, they not only maintained the abiding obligation of the Law but also claimed to belong to the narrower circle of Nazarites, and possibly wished to force into it the entire Church of Christ. Pauls protest against this judgment is in close accord with Rom 14:13-14. And it is a complete abrogation of the Law of Moses, of which a conspicuous feature was distinction of meats.
Feast new-moon sabbath: same words in same order in Eze 45:17; Hos 2:11; in the inverse order in 1Ch 23:31; 2Ch 2:4; 2Ch 31:3.
Feast: a yearly festival, as in Act 18:21; Mat 26:5; Mat 27:15; Lev 23:4, etc.
New-moon: same word in Num 28:11-15 : it refers to the special sacrifices at the beginning of each month.
Sabbath: the weekly day of rest. This is the ordinary meaning of the word; and is determined here by the ascending scale of frequency, annual, monthly, weekly. These three terms include all the sacred seasons of the Jewish year.
Col 2:17. A shadow: an intangible outline caused by, and revealing the approach of, a solid reality. Important coincidence of language and thought in Heb 8:5; Heb 10:1. Indeed this verse contains the germ of very much in that Epistle.
The things to come; or about to be: either the New Covenant or the eternal glory. There is no grammatical objection to the former: for the future must be measured, as in Rom 5:14, from the point of view of the shadow or type. And the Jewish restrictions and sacred seasons suggest at once by contrast our present service of Christ. On the other hand, since the shadow was still existing, though fading, when Paul wrote, the words things to come seem to point forward to the far future. So Heb 8:5 : shadow of the heavenly things. Indeed the distinction is unimportant. For Christian life on earth receives its real worth from the glory awaiting the children of God. Just so the daydawn is of worth chiefly as herald of the day. The prescriptions of the Old Covenant were outlines both of the Gospel and the spiritual life which it at once imparts and of the eternal temple and service and sabbath. Even the old restrictions of food have their counterpart in a loyalty to Christ which controls our food and all the little details of life: e.g. 1Co 8:13.
The body, i.e. the solid and tangible reality, (of the things to come,) is Christs, i.e. belongs to Him, so that he who has Christ has the reality whose approach was dimly foreshadowed by the Old Covenant. Cp. Josephus, Jewish Wars bk. ii. 2. 5, asking a shadow of royalty when he had seized the substance (or body) of it. In Heb 10:1, the contrast is between a mere outline cast by a shadow and a complete picture or image. Possibly here the choice of the word body was prompted by the use Paul had made of it in Col 2:17.
Col 2:17 supports Col 2:16. Since Christ is ours, with all He has and is, we have the reality dimly outlined in the ancient ordinances. Consequently, the ancient ritual, once of value as an outline of things to come, is now worthless. Thus, as throughout this Epistle, Christ is Himself a sufficient safeguard against all error.
The warning in Col 2:16 proves how far Paul was from placing the Lords Day in the same category as the Jewish Sabbath. And this warning is not altogether needless now. For it is possible to degrade into a mere prescribed rite this precious and abiding gift of Christ to His Church. That this warning does not in any way contradict the divine authority and abiding validity and infinite value of the Lords Day, I have in my note under Gal 4:11 endeavoured to show.
Col 2:18. Another warning. Whether it refers to another class of false teachers or to another element in the teaching combated in Col 2:16-17, Pauls words do not indicate.
Rob-of-the-prize: by giving as an umpire an unfavourable judgment. This one word is a compound of that rendered prize in 1Co 9:24; Php 3:14. And the prize is in each case the same, viz. eternal life, the reward of victory in the good fight of faith: 1Ti 6:12. In Col 2:16 some one is supposed to be pronouncing sentence on the ground of eating and drinking. Here some one is supposed to be setting up himself as umpire in the Christian race and judging the prize in a spirit hostile to Pauls readers. [Notice the present imperative in Col 2:16 and Col 2:18. It suggests that what the false teachers are already saying practically amounts to a hostile judgment.] Paul warns his readers not to submit to the judgment of the one or the other. And his words imply that such submission will rob them of the hope which is to them the light of life.
Lowliness-of-mind: same word in Php 2:3. Whether it was real or only professed, Paul does not say. In either case his warning remains the same.
Worship: the outward form of religious adoration: same word in Act 26:5; Jas 1:26-27. This outward adoration, these men paid to the angels.
Wishing to do so in (or with) lowliness of mind etc.: description of the profession and outward action of the would-be umpire. (For the lowliness of mind must in some way have made itself known.) We may conceive him pretending to be unworthy immediately to approach God or the Son of God, and therefore in his humility directing his worship towards the created spirits who from heaven minister to the needs of men on earth. Paul says that what such men actually wish is to deprive his readers of the prize for which they are running the Christian race.
[The object-matter of this wish must be inferred from the long word foregoing. Evidently the would-be umpire wished to give a hostile decision. So 2Pe 3:5, this lies hidden from them, they wishing it to be hidden. The Greek phrase here, , is found in the LXX. as a rendering of a Hebrew phrase denoting to take delight in. But in this sense it never took root in the Greek language; and therefore is not likely to be so used here. Moreover, a mans own delight in these things would do no harm to Pauls readers unless he tried to force his own religious tastes upon them. But, however we understand the grammatical structure, practically the sense is the same. Paul feared that by this professed humility and this worshipping of angels his readers might be beguiled, and thus robbed of their prize.]
Investigating etc.: another detail collateral with in lowliness etc. Probably it refers specially to worshipping of angels, and traces this worship to its professed origin and foundation, viz. visions of angels. The word rendered investigate denotes originally to step into something, especially with a view to take possession of it. It is also used of mental entrance into a subject with a view to examine and thus take mental possession of it. So 2Ma 2:30, to investigate and to make discourse about all things and to be much occupied with the details, is fitting for the author of the story.
Things which he has seen: professed visions of the unseen world. Like so many teachers of strange doctrines in all ages, these men professed to have seen something unseen by others. These supposed visions then became matters of investigation, i.e. of comparison and inference; and thus became the foundation of a system of teaching and of religious rites.
Vainly: either without reason or without result: senses closely allied. Same word in Rom 13:4; 1Co 15:2; Gal 3:4; Gal 4:11, Grammatically it may be joined to the words foregoing or to those following. For the order of the original is, things which he has seen, investigating vainly puffed up by etc. The word in-vain is best understood as Pauls verdict about the uselessness of this investigation of these fancied visions. For it is needless to say that self-inflation is vain. He talks about things which he has seen and makes his own visions a matter of laborious inquiry: a useless inquiry. Paul declares that this useless inquiry is the only foundation of his worship of angels and of his pretended humility.
Puffed-up: same word in 1Co 4:6; 1Co 4:18-19; 1Co 5:2; 1Co 8:1; 1Co 13:4; and not elsewhere in N.T. Notice that here only the false teachers are said to be puffed up, and of these Paul speaks in the third person: but at Corinth the same charge is brought against the whole Church.
The mind of his flesh: not exactly the same as, but similar to, the mind of the flesh in Rom 8:6.
His flesh: that portion of flesh and blood, with all its belongings physical and psychological, which is owned by one person. It is the bodily side of his nature.
Mind: the inward eye which looks through phenomena to the reality underlying them: same word in Php 4:7; Rom 1:28; Rom 7:23; Rom 7:25, etc. Here the bodily nature is said to have a mind. And rightly.
For the bodily appetites ever tend to dominate the intelligence, and to make it their slave. And since each mind thus dominated has a development of its own, both mind and flesh are here individualized: the mind of his flesh. Now the animating principle of the flesh is selfishness: for our bodies care for nothing except their own protection and maintenance and indulgence. Consequently, the mind of our flesh always begets an inflated self-estimate, which is a form of selfishness. This accounts for the supposed visions: for the selfish man is ever ready to believe anything which flatters his own vanity; and few things do this more than belief that he has personal and unusual intercourse with the unseen world. This man pretends to investigate his wonderful revelations; and on the ground of them pays outward adoration to angels. And, blinded by his own vanity, he attributes his desire to worship angels to a humility which dares not approach God Himself. Paul warns his readers that these empty products of self-esteem will, if accepted, rob the Christian of the prize he has in view; and that this is their real aim.
Such is perhaps the easiest explanation of this very obscure verse. Doubtless the obscurity is caused by our ignorance of details well known to the readers. Paul says plainly that worship of angels was part of the teaching of these false guides. And we can easily believe that they claimed to have seen visions of angels, and made these visions a matter of serious though empty examination. If so, the word in-vain would reveal in a moment the unreality of these boasted researches. And Pauls explanation of them as a product of a self-estimate inflated by a sensual mind was probably verified by personal knowledge of the men who put forward these lordly claims.
The sense of this verse is completely changed by the corrected reading which he has seen. See Introd. iii. Lightfoot, moved by the difficulty of the passage, suggests that error may have crept into all our copies, and proposes a reading of which no trace whatever is found in any ancient MS., version, or quotation. A better suggestion in the same direction is made by Westcott and Hort; and may be rendered treading empty air. But that the true reading should have utterly vanished from the almost innumerable witnesses to the original text of the Epistle, is in the last degree unlikely. Even the erroneous insertion of the negative shows that the suggested reading was unthought of in the early Church. Its complete obliteration is much more difficult to accept than is the exposition given above. See a very good paper by Findlay in The Expositor 1st series, vol. xi. p. 385.
The express mention of angels here sheds light upon the mention of them in Col 2:15 where they are said to be led by God in triumphal procession, in Col 2:10 where Christ is said to be their Head, and in Col 1:16, where He is said to be their Creator.
Worship of angels was a conspicuous feature of the Gnostic sects so prevalent in so many strange varieties throughout the second century and traceable in their early origin almost or quite to the days of the apostles. So Irenus (On Heresies bk . i. 31. 2) speaks of the Cainites as appealing to angels, O angel, I use thy work O authority, (same word as in Col 2:10; Col 2:15,) I perform thy operation. And Theodoret in his note on this passage says that a synod at Laodicea (in A.D. 364) forbade prayer to angels. This prohibition reveals how deeply the practice here condemned had taken root in the immediate neighbourhood of Coloss. And this worship of angels implies as its basis supposed visions of the unseen world. See further in the note at the close of the Epistle.
Col 2:19. Further description of the false teachers, tracing their error, negatively, to their failure to grasp, or to retain hold of, Him from whom as the Head flows to the various members of the body nourishment and stability and growth.
The Head: as in Col 2:10 and Col 1:18 : the one highest member, itself a part of the body yet directing all the other members, which live only so long as they are united to each other and to the Head. The would-be seducer does not hold fast the Head, i.e. he has no firm union with Christ, the one great reality, and therefore investigates unreal visions and betakes himself to angel worship.
From whom etc.: reason for holding fast the Head, a reason which explains the aberrations of those who fail to do so.
The joints: Eph 4:16 : the various points of contact of the various parts of the body.
Ligaments: the bands which hold together the bones which form the joint. In this technical sense of ligaments the word is used by the Greek medical writers. The joints and ligaments comprise the whole mechanism by which the various parts of the body become one whole.
Receiving supply: see under 2Co 9:10. The supply in this case must be nourishment. We need not assume that Paul means that nourishment flows through the joints and ligatures. Probably his one thought was that without the bodily union of which these were the means the various members of the body would receive no nourishment.
And knit-together: same word as in Col 2:2.
The increase of God: i.e. wrought by God, 1Co 3:7 : cp. peace of God in Php 4:7. Paul here asserts that the entire body of Christ, consisting of various members, all receiving from Him nourishment and compactness, so long as they are closely fitted and joined each to the others, grows with a growth which God works and gives. Hence the need for holding fast the Head: for, separate from Him, there is neither nourishment nor compactness nor growth. Through want of this union with Christ, the false teacher is given up to his own vagaries. Close coincidence of words and thought in Eph 4:16.
Col 2:16-19 contain the specific warning of the Epistle. We note in it two distinct elements. Paul warns first against those who would maintain as still binding, and even extend, the prescriptions of the ancient law: and then against those who, relying upon fancied intercourse with the unseen, would set up a worship of their own invention. To this second error Paul gives great attention, unveiling its source in blind conceit fostered by sensuality. But against each error his real safeguard is a knowledge of Christ in His relation to His Church. They who know Christ have the reality dimly foreshadowed in the Old Covenant, and therefore will not wish to re-establish it. And He is the Head of the Church, His body, consisting of various members each receiving from Christ, in virtue of its close union with Him and with the other members, nourishment and compactness and growth. They who know this will not be led astray by empty fancies even about the bright ones of heaven.
Col 2:20-23. These verses bring to bear against the errors mentioned or alluded to in Col 2:16-19 the teaching in 9 that through the death of Christ His servants have been placed beyond the domain of the ordinances of the written Law.
If ye died: not doubt, but logical sequence. For death is plainly asserted in Col 3:3. It brings to bear against all restrictions of food the teaching of Col 2:11-12 : for baptism and resurrection imply death, and death is essentially a separation from the life previously lived.
Died with Christ: same words in Rom 6:8; and practically the same in 2Ti 2:11; Gal 2:20.
The rudiments of the world: as in Col 2:8, which it recalls and in some measure explains. These rudiments of religious education belong to the bondage of spiritual childhood: Gal 4:3. Under them Christ was Himself in bondage when for our sakes He took (Php 2:7) the form of a slave and was made (Heb 2:17) in all things like us, and became (Gal 4:5) under law and (Gal 3:13) under the burden and curse of our sins. From this subjection Christ was set free by His own death. That death we have shared: for through His death our old life of bondage has come to an end. In this sense we are (Col 3:3) dead with Christ, and thus removed from the elements of the world. Same thought, but not so fully expressed, in Gal 6:14 : crucified to the world. Paul asks why, if all this be so, his readers are submitting-to-dogmas as though they were still living their old life in the world.
Allow-yourselves-to-be-dogmatized: the passive form of a verb derived from the word dogma. The active form is found in Est 3:9; 2Ma 10:8, and means, to issue an authoritative command. The passive form here used does not, however, imply that the Christians at Coloss were actually submitting to this spiritual tyranny; and therefore does not necessarily imply blame. But it implies that efforts were being made to place them under the bondage of dogmas. Pauls question reveals how inconsistent with their relation to Christ and His death is such bondage. To try to maintain it, is to try to keep in prison one whom death has set free. By showing this, Paul practically exhorts his readers not to bare the neck to the yoke which others would impose. Notice the contrast died from the world and living in the world: cp. Rom 6:2. This verse is a practical application of Col 2:14. For the decrees which the false teachers would reimpose have been nailed to the cross of Christ and thus made invalid.
Col 2:21. Various prohibitory dogmas which the false teachers sought to impose. This correct meaning of these words was observed so early as Tertullian: Against Marcion bk. v. 19. But it was overlooked by some of the Latin Fathers. What the prohibited things were, Paul did not find it needful to say. His readers knew well. The word taste evidently refers to the eating and drinking of Col 2:16. And to the same refer most probably the words handle and touch. This inference is strongly confirmed by Col 2:22 : for food and drink are, and most things are not, destroyed in their use. Of the three words, the first seems to be somewhat stronger than the third, which seems to denote always a mere touch, whereas the first is sometimes used in the sense of take hold of. Hence the R.V. reverses the order of the A.V. The words are in an ascending scale of stringency. Of this, that, and the other, these teachers say, Do not take it, do not even taste it, do not so much as touch it.
Col 2:22 a. All which things: those forbidden by the dogmatizers.
Are for destruction by the using: they exist in order to be used up and thus destroyed. This proves that the forbidden things were articles of food. For all such are by their nature perishing; and attain the aim of their existence by being consumed. Cp. 1Ti 4:3, to abstain from articles of food, which God created to be partaken of. Also 1Co 6:13, food for the belly, and the belly for the food: i.e. each is designed for the other, and both will pass away. And 2Pe 2:12, born to be caught and destroyed. The argument here is that, since these articles of food were created in order to be eaten, to forbid them is to bring back the state of childhood (cp. Gal 4:3) in which for a time certain things were not allowed to be put to their natural use.
Col 2:22 b. These words have evidently no connection with those immediately foregoing. Consequently, Col 2:22 a must be a parenthetic comment on the prohibitions of Col 2:21; and Col 2:22 b must be joined to dogmatized in Col 2:20, as a further description of the ordinances which the false teachers sought to impose.
Commandments: verbal prohibitions, resting on doctrinal grounds or teachings. All were of human origin. This clause recalls a similar rebuke of empty forms of religion in Isa 29:13, which in the LXX. reads, teaching commands of men and teachings. It was quoted by Christ in Mat 15:9 as a warning to some who transgress the commandments of God because of their traditions. This similar use of O.T. words suggests whether Paul had heard of the discourse of Christ there recorded.
We saw under Col 2:16 that the mention of drink proves that the false teachers not only maintained but exaggerated the Mosaic prohibitions. Such exaggerations were evidently commandments and teachings of men. And the divine commands of the Law of Moses became mere human precepts when they were asserted to be still binding after they had been revoked by Christ. The perpetual obligation of the Law was therefore a demand resting only on human authority. Consequently, all the prohibitions suggested in Col 2:16 come under this description, and under the warning in Col 2:8.
Col 2:23. Pauls final and solemn judgment about the mere human and traditional teaching which forms the basis of the dogmas which some would impose on the Christians at Coloss. They are things (or better a class of things) having indeed a repute of wisdom. In other words, these commands and doctrines belong to a larger category to which as a whole the following words apply.
Repute (literally word) of wisdom: a verbal utterance of wisdom, i.e. either called wise or claiming to be wise; senses closely allied. This recalls philosophy, i.e. love of wisdom in Col 2:8, by which Paul feared that his readers might be despoiled.
Self-imposed worship: evidently the worship of angels in Col 2:18, this looked upon as a fiction of mans invention. It keeps before us, as in Col 2:8; Col 2:22, the human origin of that which Paul here condemns.
Lowliness-of-mind: again recalling Col 2:18 where, as here, a professed inward state of mind is joined with outward forms of religion.
Unsparing treatment of ones body: harsh refusal to it of that which rightly or wrongly it desires. It seems to be a description of the prohibitions in Col 2:21. And these three things, self-imposed worship, apparent humility, ascetic self-denial, are represented as an encompassing element, perhaps as an auriole of glory, of the false teaching Paul here combats: in self-imposed-worship etc. This composite surrounding gained for it the repute of wisdom. [Pauls language suggests that it was an empty repute: solitary.]
This apparent glory was no mark of real worth: not in any honour. The precise meaning of these words is very obscure. Perhaps Paul wishes to say that this unsparing treatment, this refusal of all pleasant things, was no honour to the body, i.e. no recognition of its true dignity. For all asceticism is contempt of the body. From the body, the organized unity belonging to each one, Paul now turns to the flesh, the material constitution which human bodies have in common, which creates common needs, likes, and dislikes, and thus exerts a common influence on the spirit within.
Indulgence (or satiety) of the flesh: a supply to the full of these needs and desires, good or bad. The word rendered against is in itself neutral; and may refer, as the context determines, to something gratifying, or checking gratification of, the flesh. Perhaps the latter here. And, if so, we may join these words closely to the word honour. Thus understood, the verse means that these human prescriptions, though possessing a repute of wisdom, as being apparently fitted to show men a way to the attainment of their highest good, are not associated with any real honour to the body in the way of guarding it from the self-indulgence which so often covers it with shame.
Col 2:20-23 prove that our relation to Christ renders, or ought to render, impossible submission to the empty dogmatism of Col 2:16-19. And from it we may glean something about the nature of this dogmatism. We have what seem to be some of the very words of these spiritual autocrats words forbidding by mere human authority the eating of food destined by the Creator to be eaten. We are reminded that their worship of angels was a fiction of their own fancy; and that their hard treatment of their own bodies was not accompanied by any real honour to the body as the temple of God, and was not of any use to enable men to resist the temptations to self-indulgence prompted by the constitution of the body. Yet, as so often in the history of the world, this homage to citizens of the unseen world, this refusal of the luxuries and comforts of life, and the apparent humility of which these seem to be an outward expression, gained for these teachers credit for rare wisdom, i.e. for acquaintance with things unknown to the multitude. All this surrounded with an illusive auriole of glory the spiritual tyranny with which these apparently wise ones sought to dictate, by their own arbitrary will, restrictions to those foolish enough to submit to them. But to those who are Christs, such submission is impossible. For by His death they have themselves died, and have thus escaped from all spiritual bondage.
Col 3:1-4. The new life into which, by their union with Christ in His resurrection and ascension, Christians have already entered, a life utterly inconsistent with bondage to human dogmas. Thus, after bringing to bear upon the errors of Col 2:16-19, in Col 2:20-23, the believers union with Christ in His death, Paul now brings to bear on the same the believers union with Christ in His resurrection and ascension.
If then ye have been raised together with Christ: more glorious counterpart of Col 2:20, which it recalls. It takes up a statement in Col 2:12 and makes it a basis of exhortation. Through the resurrection of Christ we have been made citizens of the world to which He has gone and sharers of its wealth and glory. That this resurrection with Christ includes not only new spiritual life but also a place with Christ in glory, is made clear by the exhortation which follows.
The things above: the blessings of heaven. These are the reward of faithful service on earth, and are within reach of present human effort and are its noblest aim. Indeed every effort to please Christ and to advance His kingdom may be looked upon as an effort to gain the things at His right hand: for these are an inevitable and known result of such effort. Cp. Rom 2:7, seek glory and honour and incorruption.
Where Christ is: cp. Rev 22:12, My reward is with Me. Christ and the reward are together. Pauls assertion is then further developed. Among the things above Christ is; more accurately defined, He is at the right hand of God: and He is there, not worshipping or standing, but sitting in majesty. Same teaching in Rom 8:34; Eph 1:20; Heb 1:3; Heb 1:13; Heb 8:1; Heb 10:12; Heb 12:2; 1Pe 3:22; Mat 26:64 etc. These passages reveal a thought familiar in the early Church.
Col 3:2. Mind the things above: literally the things above, make these the objects of your thought. The repetition of the things above keeps conspicuously before us the new and lofty element just introduced.
Not the things on the earth: cp. Php 3:19, who mind the earthly things. This antithesis to the things above recalls the low aims of the false teachers. For their whole thought was, in spite of their religiousness, after the passing things of earth.
Col 3:3. Reason for the foregoing exhortation, viz. that the life which-Pauls readers once lived on earth has ceased: consequently they can no longer mind the things on the earth.
Ye-are-dead or ye-have-died: in the death implied in the burial of Col 2:12 and hypothetically stated in Col 2:20. Christians are not merely dead to the world, i.e. separated by the death of Christ from its control, but dead absolutely; i.e. their former life which was entirely earthly has come absolutely to an end. So complete is the change that Paul can describe it only by saying that they are dead. And the dead care nothing for things pertaining only to the world they have left. So, if Christians are true to their profession, will they no longer care for things merely belonging to earth.
And your life: like Christ they still live, though dead: so Rev 1:18; living and was dead; 2Co 5:15, all died they who live. For they share already the immortal life of the Risen One. And this is their only life. For all they have and are and do is an outflow of it. On earth they are living a life which in its essence belongs to heaven and which will develop into eternal life.
Lies-hidden: beyond human sight and beyond reach of accident and death.
With Christ; for they are dead, buried, and risen with Him. Whatever Christ has and is, they share.
In God: the surrounding and life-giving element of the new life, and its impenetrable bulwark. As Christ is (Joh 17:21) in the Father, so are Christians with Christ in God. And, in the arms of omnipotence, their life, though apparently exposed to deadly peril, is absolutely and for ever safe.
This Christian life, hidden as to its root and essence beyond reach of human intelligence and human attack, is also incomprehensible in its manifestations. For these are an outflow of its hidden essence. Thus are men on earth living a life hidden from the children of earth, a life absolutely safe, a participation of Christs life in heaven. For by union with Christ in His death on the cross their old life has ceased; and by union with the Risen One they have entered a life altogether new.
Col 3:4. This life cannot be for ever hidden. Like all hidden things, it must be manifested: Mar 4:22.
When Christ etc.: or whenever Christ be manifested: suggesting uncertainty about the time of an event which itself is absolutely certain.
Manifested: set publicly before the eyes of all men in the great day. So will all men themselves be manifested: 2Co 5:10. The same word is used of Christs self-presentation to men in His earthly life: Joh 21:1; Joh 21:14. To describe His appearance in judgment, the word revelation is also used: 1Co 1:7; 2Th 1:7; 1Pe 1:7; 1Pe 1:13. For in that day manifestation and revelation (see under Rom 1:19) will coincide i.e. Christ will be set before the eyes of all; and all will actually see Him.
Christ is our life: for we shall live (Joh 14:19) because He lives and because (Gal 2:20; Joh 17:23) He lives in us and we in Him. Consequently, where Christ is, there is our hidden life: and when Christ is manifested to the eyes of all men, then shall we also be manifested, sharing the splendour of His manifestation.
With Him: a frequent phrase, making conspicuous the truth that we shall be all that Christ has and is.
In glory: surrounded with a splendour which will excite the admiration of all: so 2Co 3:7-9; 2Co 3:11; Php 4:19; 1Ti 3:16. At present the real dignity of the sons of God is hidden from the eyes of men and indeed from their own eyes, as Christ is hidden from mortal sight. In that day Christ in His essential grandeur will appear and with Him will appear also the grandeur with which He will adorn His servants. Cp. Php 3:21, conformed to the body of His glory, and Rom 8:19; Rom 8:21, revelation of the sons of God glory of the children of God.
The believers death and his pursuit only of things in heaven will in nowise unfit him for life on earth, or lessen his interest in things around. For the things of earth reach forward in their influence into the world to come. For instance, the movements of political life and the course of war have again and again helped or hindered the progress of the Gospel. Consequently, the Christian man whose eyes are open to the many spiritual issues at stake will watch these movements with deepest interest. Even the details and drudgery of common life receive thus importance and dignity. On the other hand, the new light in which he views all things will save him from the degrading tyranny which the uncertainties of earth exercise over those whom Christ has not made free.
Notice that in the phrases dead and risen with Christ we have an ideal Christian life which is ours objectively in Christ; and which it is our privilege to make subjectively our own by faith. Hence Paul sometimes speaks as though his readers were already actually dead with Christ: at other times he urges them to appropriate the inward experience thus described. Contrast Col 3:5 with Col 3:3 and Gal 5:24. This apparent contradiction is easily understood, and is spiritually helpful. To speak of believers as already dead with Christ, helps our faith: to urge them to put to death their members on the earth, warns us that the ideal needs to be made actual.
DIVISION III. reveals the specific occasion of the Epistle, viz. errors, or possibly one composite error, which some unknown persons were actively pressing on the Christians at Coloss. Before mentioning this great danger, Paul armed his readers in DIV. II. with a complete protection against it, viz. a full exposition of the nature and work of Christ. He begins DIV. III. by saying in 8 that he has written this exposition in order to guard them from seductive and perverse reasoning; and then goes on to recognise the solid front which faith enables them to present to all opponents, and to beg them, as already they have laid hold of Christ, to make Him the surrounding element, the nutritious soil, and the firm foundation, of their life and movement.
In 9 Pauls warning becomes more definite. The false teaching professes to be philosophy; but is really empty deception. It is such as we might expect from its outward source, viz. mere human tradition, and from its inward principle, viz. the rudiments of religion common to all mankind. And it does not take for its directive principle the one true norm, viz. the Person and Work of Christ. This norm, Paul further expounds, keeping in view the errors at Coloss and thus to some extent indicating their nature.
From 10 we shall learn that the seducers worship angels. And in 9 Paul says that Christ, in whom the whole nature of God finds perfect embodiment in human form and in whom His people find their full development, is Himself Lord of the successive ranks of angels. From 10 we shall also learn that the false teachers sought to enforce the restrictions and ordinances of the Jewish Law. And Paul teaches in 9 that in Christ His people have received the fulness of which circumcision was but an outline, and that, just as it is needless to circumcise a corpse, so they who have been spiritually laid in the grave of Christ need no circumcision. Moreover, if dead with Christ, they are also by faith sharers of His resurrection. By forgiving their sins, God raised them from the dead. He did this by nailing to the cross of Christ and thus making invalid the Law which condemned them. Thus, what the ministrations of angels could not do, God did without their aid. So conspicuously subordinate is their position in this culmination of the work of salvation, as contrasted with their more prominent place in the Old Covenant, that God may be said, by placing them in this subordinate position, to have used them simply to swell the triumphant train of the real Conqueror. Thus without exact mention of the errors he is combating, Paul has virtually overturned them by expounding more fully the relation of Christ to the work of salvation.
In 10, the errors indicated in general language in 9 are stated without reserve. The false teachers not only maintain the abiding validity of the Law, which God had made invalid by nailing it to the cross of Christ, but add to its stringency. And other teachers, or more probably the same, amid professions of humility as unworthy directly to approach God, pretending to receive instruction from visions of the inhabitants of the unseen world, bow in worship to angels. From this it is evident that the errors which Paul combats comprise two elements, Jewish and theosophic. The former he rebuts by asserting that the Law is only an unsubstantial outline, of which the solid reality belongs to Christ. The latter element he condemns as worthless by pointing to its real source, viz. an inflated self-estimate, offspring of a mind dominated by the needs and pleasures of the bodily life, a delusion possible only to those who have no hold of Christ and who do not know that from Him is derived, by the mutual contact and close cohesion of the members of His Body, spiritual nourishment, firmness, and growth. The entire mass of restriction and ritual, resting as it does simply upon mere human assertion and pertaining only at best to the rudiments of religion common to the whole world, is for us completely set aside by the cross of Christ, which has for ever separated us from the things in which once we lived. It is far below the feet of those who are already sharers of the immortal life of the Risen Saviour and already citizens of the world in which He reigns. Our one aim now is to seek, even while we tread the soil of earth, the infinite and abiding wealth of heaven. Our thoughts and hearts go forward to that day when the inner life, hidden now not only from the world, but in great part even from us who live it, will by the appearance of Christ be manifested in the splendour of the eternal glory.
Notice how in DIV. III. Paul has led us down into, and completely out of, the mist and gloom of error. Before we entered the dark valley, he had already fixed our gaze upon the Son of God, Creator of the world, crucified that He might reconcile us to God, and risen from the dead. In 8 he warned us that danger was near. In 9 the outlines of the enemy became discernible. In 10 he came fully into view: and we seemed in Pauls argument to enter into deadly conflict with him. In that conflict, death came to our rescue, even the death of Christ upon the cross. We lay dead with Him. Then burst upon us like the light of Easter morn the bright vision of Col 3:1 ff: We saw Christ not only risen from the grave, but seated at the right hand of God. In the brightness of that vision we forgot that our bodies are still doomed to corruption and worms. These had vanished from our view. And we felt ourselves to be already where Christ is; and that henceforth the only matters worthy of our thought and effort are the realities which abide with Christ in God.
Notice how throughout DIV. III. Paul points to Christ. With Him we go down into the grave. In death we are with Him. And His presence guides us up to the light of day. As throughout this Epistle, so especially in this Division, the Son of God is All and in all.
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath [days]:”
He has set the principalities and powers to naught and is victorious over them all
SO
LET NO MAN JUDGE YOU IN FOOD!
NOW
Let’s list some current do’s and don’ts.
DO DON’T
Go to church four times a week. Movies
Act holy Dancing
Drinking
Smoking
Now. Why do people hold to these do’s and don’ts?
1. They want to be weird.
2. They want to give up fun things.
3. They want to be a killjoy.
4. They want to be as close to what they feel the Lord wants them to be.
5. They want to refrain from things that might be mistaken by others that might cause problems of testimony.
1Ti 3:2 “an overseer must be above reproach…respectable…”
1Ti 3:7 “He must also have a good reputation…”
They do not want to have anything in their lives that will detract from their testimony.
They are not seeking righteousness — Christ gave that to them — they are seeking to live righteously.
Will do’s and don’ts vary from time to time? Yes, possibly. The pool table used to be a tool of the Devil! Indeed, in some areas of the country this may well be the case yet today. Yet in most areas it is quite respectable to have a table in your home. Indeed, some Bible Colleges have them for student recreation.
Why was the pool table wrong a number of years back?
The pool room atmosphere was not the type of atmosphere the Christian would want to identify with. Pool is now in many bowling alleys and other public places.
Sunday afternoon baseball was the Devils worst not that many years ago in Nebraska. (1940’s I think)
How do you react to a believer that thinks MIXED SWIMMING is wrong?
Ridicule NO!
Make fun of NO!
Admire his conviction YES!
Understand his liberty to believe and practice this YES!
Ask him about his belief and LISTEN YES!
Can you think of why a person might have a strong conviction about mixed swimming?
a. Maybe he or she has a problem with lust.
b. Maybe he or she has a strong belief that the believer should be modest and that the current swim wear is not modest.
Do some Christians close their eyes to don’ts and ridicule to cover up their own conscience?
Some for years saw nothing wrong with smoking. Today we have proof that it is dangerous to your health. Some continue to smoke even though they know that they are to care for the temple of the Holy Spirit – their body.
Many things are held as okay by some Christians yet scripture tells us not to cause another to stumble. The mixture of these two items is hard to determine. Social drinking is again raising controversy in the Church.
Some of the problem may be the fact that we are cold and unresponsive to the sin that is around us.
Many years ago the movie “From Here to Eternity” was banned at most Armed Forces bases due to the beach scene. Today there is T.V. activity in the bedroom far more suggestive on prime time, yet Christians continue so soak up the trash. Some cities have independent stations that are showing movies with nude scenes in prime time.
Several years ago we went to the mountains for the day. As we exited the mountains into the valley, a large billboard was to be seen. A large woman in a bikini was pictured. I was somewhat shocked. It struck home to me that I had seen the billboard many times and didn’t think about it. At that point in time after eight hours away from the world I felt uneasy about the picture.
I wonder if we took a month vacation to heaven and then returned if our do’s and don’ts might be much changed. I have to wonder if our coldness to the sin around us wouldn’t embarrass us!
Were the pastors of the 40’s and 50’s wrong to preach against the jewelry and makeup? Their approach was wrong often times yet they were dealing with the encroachments of worldliness upon their congregations and it was their place to warn their people.
Were these pastors saying that you had to follow their do’s/don’ts to be saved? No, they were trying to teach their congregations as they saw fit. Some call this legalism – no, legalism is teaching a series of items to keep so that you might be saved.
Were the pastors of the 60’s and the 70’s wrong to condemn the short skirts? No they should have been dealt within many more churches.
I assembled some do’s and don’ts relating to how to handle a person that has a questionable belief/practice.
THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF DOING AND DON’TING
1. Don’t offend the person on purpose. (By trying to change their mind with undue pressure.)
2. Don’t place the person in a situation where they will have to say no.
3. Don’t condemn, judge, or ridicule the person either to their face or behind their back.
4. Don’t be a stumbling block. (1Co 8:9-13; Rom 14:13)
5. Do apologize if you offend them and be sure not to offend them again.
6. Do honestly and sincerely seek to understand their reasoning and principles. (They have their reasons and you may find out that they are right.)
7. Do realize that this person is a child of God. (In earthly families different children like to please their father in different ways – one is no less important than the other.)
8. Do realize that if they are wrong it is not sin. It is however wrong for them to do something which they can’t do in faith. (Rom 14:23)
9. Do be sure the person is saved. An unsaved person can not properly distinguish the proper Christian life if they aren’t a believer under the leading and direction of the Holy Spirit.
SEE, A DON’T MAN CAN HAVE MORE DO’S THAN DON’TS!
If someone comes with a don’t, do check them and their don’t out. If they have Scripture then don’t. If they hath not Scripture then do.
vs. 17 “Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body [is] of Christ.”
“which are a shadow of things to come”
What is Paul getting at here?
1. These are only a hint of the don’ts that will come through the ages.
2. These are a vague picture of the substance of the things to come in Christ.
3. The New International Version states it this way “These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”
18 “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,”
In short don’t let someone pull the wool over your eyes, don’t let anyone hoodwink you, don’t let anyone trick you, don’t let anyone fool you into following their methods of being righteous – they are puffed up – full of themselves – arrogant – think they are smarter than the average bear.
====
Darby “(which have indeed an appearance of wisdom in voluntary worship, and humility, and harsh treatment of the body, not in a certain honour,) to [the] satisfaction of the flesh.”
American Standard Version “Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body; [but are] not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.”
New King James Version “These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, [false] humility, and neglect of the body, [but] [are] of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.”
New International Version “Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”
King James Version “Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.”
This is the only usage of the term translated will worship – it is one word meaning “1) voluntary, arbitrary worship 1a) worship which one prescribes and devises for himself, contrary to the contents and nature of faith which ought to be directed to Christ 1b) said of the misdirected zeal and the practice of ascetics” Thayer
Robertson believes Paul coined the term to describe the self designed worship of angels.
One said it meant sanctimony or unwarranted piety.
Gill takes it in a positive manner and suggests “being what was over and above that which was commanded by God, and so, like the freewill offerings under the law, must be acceptable to him; this was one of their colours, which had some show of wisdom, religion, and zeal:”
I surmised it was worship stemming from the will of the person – Jamison Fausset and Brown likewise suggest: “arbitrarily invented worship: would-be worship, devised by man’s own will, not God’s. So jealous is God of human will-worship, that He struck Nadab and Abihu dead for burning strange incense (Lev 10:1-3). So Uzziah was stricken with leprosy for usurping the office of priest (2Ch 26:16-21). Compare the will-worship of Saul (1Sa 13:8-14) for which he was doomed to lose his throne. This “voluntary worship” is the counterpart to their “voluntary humility” (Col 2:18): both specious in appearance, the former seeming in religion to do even more than God requires (as in the dogmas of the Roman and Greek churches); but really setting aside God’s will for man’s own; the latter seemingly self-abasing, but really proud of man’s self-willed “humility” (Greek, “lowliness of mind”), while virtually rejecting the dignity of direct communion with Christ, the Head; by worshipping of angels.”
It seems that most follow the thought that it is worship coming from the will of the person, rather than something stemming from God.
Since believers naturally worship God, it would take an active change of will to worship other than God.
19 “And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.”
They reject Christ, the head of the church! Don’t you dare follow them and lose out on the reward that you might have from following Christ.
Note the body increaseth not by the work of the people, not by the prayer of the people, not by the giving of the people, not by anything the people can do, but by the will/acts of God Himself. Now, that is not to say that the works of the people aren’t used of the Lord to increase the church – He does, but it is He that builds His church not us.
To me that is the biggest relief a pastor could ever have. He needs to be sure he is busy about the Lord’s business, but if the church does not grow, it is because God does not have growth in mind for that body for that time.
20 “Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,” 21 “(Touch not; taste not; handle not; 22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?” 23 “Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.”
The New International Version states it this way: “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”
So, having read that, can we eliminate all do’s and don’ts from our life? NO WAY! The Bible is full of do’s and don’ts! We need to be very careful to follow them. What we do not have to follow are do’s and don’ts set forth by man from their own wisdom and knowledge.
Might I tread on touchy toes for a moment? Can we list some items of worship that are imposed upon congregations as the “in thing” to do?
How about dressing casually?
How about greeting times?
How about taped music?
How about children’s church?
How about – you fill in the blank.
Are any of these wrong? No, not in and of themselves. Are any of these right? No, not in and of themselves. Are these things useable in the church? Possibly – but don’t let them become the method to reach God – they are not! Nor, are old hymns and customs of the church I might be quick to add before someone reminds me of this.
Christ perfects us – not what we do or don’t do. It is that perfecting process than allows us to serve Him in that perfect spot of service.
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
2:16 {15} Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath [days]:
(15) The conclusion: in which also he means certain types, as the difference of days, and meats, and proves by a new argument, that we are not bound to them: that is, because those things were shadows of Christ to come, but now we possess him who was exhibited to us.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
C. The false doctrines of men 2:16-23
Having revealed what believers have in Christ, Paul next pointed out the errors of the false teachers more specifically to help his readers identify and reject their instruction.
"Sad to say, there are many Christians who actually believe that some person, religious system, or discipline can add something to their spiritual experience. But they already have everything they ever will need in the person and work of Jesus Christ." [Note: Wiersbe, 2:105.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The false teachers were encouraging the Colossians to place their Christian freedom under their control. They wanted to limit it by prohibiting certain perfectly legitimate activities. The five items mentioned in Col 2:16 were all part of Judaism. Therefore it is very probable that the legalistic false teachers were to some extent Jewish (i.e., advocating obedience to the Law of Moses for justification and sanctification).
"The believing Gentiles in Colossae never were under the Law of Moses since that Law was given only to Israel (Rom 9:4). It seems strange that, now that they were Christians, they would want to submit themselves to Jewish legalism!" [Note: Ibid., 2:128-29.]
The dietary and festival observances were like shadows of Christ.
They were ". . . a dim outline, a sketch of an object in contrast with the object itself. . . . The offerings were reflections of the one genuine saving offering at the cross, the priesthood was a foreshadowing of the priestly ministry of Christ, and the kings of Israel faintly suggested the coming King of kings and Lord of lords. The new age, then, is not the extension of Judaism; rather, Judaism was a mere shadow of the present age projected into the past." [Note: Johnson, 478:112. Cf. Hebrews 10:1.]
When Christ came, He explained that the Mosaic Law was no longer binding (e.g., Mar 7:18-19; Luk 16:16; cf. Joh 1:17; Act 10:12; Rom 7:6; Rom 10:4; Rom 14:17; 1Co 8:8; 2Co 3:6-11; Gal 3:19; Gal 3:23; Gal 4:9-11; Gal 5:1; Heb 7:12; Heb 9:10). This failure of the false teachers really amounted to a failure to appreciate Christ.
"The new religion [Christianity] is too free and exuberant to be trained down to ’times and seasons’ like its tame and rudimental predecessor [Judaism]. Its feast is daily, for every day is holy; its moon never wanes, and its serene tranquillity is an unbroken Sabbath." [Note: Eadie, p. 177.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 2
WARNINGS AGAINST TWIN CHIEF ERRORS, BASED UPON PREVIOUS POSITIVE TEACHING
Col 2:16-19 (R.V.)
“Let no man therefore judge you.” That “therefore” sends us back to what the Apostle has been saying in the previous verses, in order to find there the ground of these earnest warnings. That ground is the whole of the foregoing exposition of the Christian relation to Christ as far back as Col 2:9, but especially the great truths contained in the immediately preceding verses, that the cross of Christ is the death of law, and Gods triumph over all the powers of evil. Because it is so, the Colossian Christians are exhorted to claim and use their emancipation from both. Thus we have here the very heart and centre of the practical counsels of the Epistle-the double blasts of the trumpet warning against the two most pressing dangers besetting the Church. They are the same two which we have often met already-on the one hand, a narrow Judaising enforcement of ceremonial and punctilios of outward observance; on the other hand, a dreamy Oriental absorption in imaginations of a crowd of angelic mediators obscuring the one gracious presence of Christ our Intercessor.
I. Here then we have first, the claim for Christian liberty, with the great truth on which it is built. The points in regard to which that liberty is to be exercised are specified. They are no doubt those, in addition to circumcision, which were principally in question then and there. “Meat and drink” refers to restrictions in diet, such as the prohibition of “unclean” things in the Mosaic law, and the question of the lawfulness of eating meat offered to idols; perhaps also, such as the Nazarite vow. There were few regulations as to “drink” in the Old Testament, so that probably other ascetic practices besides the Mosaic regulations were in question, but these must have been unimportant, else Paul could not have spoken of the whole as being a “shadow of things to come”; The second point in regard to which liberty is here claimed is that of the sacred seasons of Judaism: the annual festivals, the monthly feast of the new moon, the weekly Sabbath.
The relation of the Gentile converts to these Jewish practices was an all-important question for the early Church. It was really the question whether Christianity was to be more than a Jewish sect-and the main force which, under God, settled the contest, was the vehemence and logic of the Apostle Paul.
Here he lays down the ground on which that whole question about diet and days, and all such matters, is to be settled. They “are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.” “Coming events cast their shadows before.” That great work of Divine love, the mission of Christ, Whose “goings forth have been from everlasting,” may be thought of as having set out from the Throne as soon as time was, travelling in the greatness of its strength, like the beams of some far off star that have not yet reached a dark world. The light from the Throne is behind Him as He advances across the centuries, and the shadow is thrown far in front.
Now that involves two thoughts about the Mosaic law and whole system. First, the purely prophetic and symbolic character of the Old Testament order, and especially of the Old Testament ritual. The absurd extravagance of many attempts to “spiritualise” the latter should not blind us to the truth which they caricature. Nor, on the other hand, should we be so taken with new attempts to reconstruct our notions of Jewish history and the dates of Old Testament books, as to forget that, though the New Testament is committed to no theory on these points, it is committed to the Divine origin and prophetic purpose of the Mosaic law and Levitical worship. We should thankfully accept all teaching which free criticism and scholarship can give us as to the process by which, and the time when, that great symbolic system of acted prophecy was built up; but we shall be further away than ever from understanding the Old Testament if we have gained critical knowledge of its genesis, and have lost the belief that its symbols were given by God to prophesy of His Son. That is the key to both Testaments; and I cannot but believe that the uncritical reader who reads his book of the law and the prophets with that conviction, has got nearer the very marrow of the book than the critic, if he have parted with it, can ever come. Sacrifice, altar, priest, temple spake of Him. The distinctions of meats were meant, among other purposes, to familiarise men with the conceptions of purity and impurity, and so, by stimulating conscience, to wake the sense of need of a Purifier. The yearly feasts set forth various aspects of the great work of Christ, and the sabbath showed in outward form the rest into which He leads those who cease from their own works and wear His yoke. All these observances, and the whole system, to which they belong, are like out riders who precede a prince on his progress, and as they gallop through sleeping villages, rouse them with the cry, “The king is coming!”
And when the king has come, where are the heralds? and when the reality has come, who wants symbols? and if that which threw the shadow forward through the ages has arrived, how shall the shadow be visible too? Therefore the second principle here laid down, namely the cessation of all these observances, and their like, is really involved in the first, namely their prophetic character. The practical conclusion drawn is very noteworthy, because it seems much narrower than the premises warrant. Paul does not say-therefore let no man observe any of these any more; but takes up the much more modest ground-let no man judge you about them. He claims a wide liberty of variation, and all that he repels is the right of anybody to dragoon Christian men into ceremonial observances on the ground that they are necessary. He does not quarrel with the rites, but with men insisting on the necessity of the rites.
In his own practice he gave the best commentary on his meaning. When they said to him, “You must circumcise Titus,” he said, “Then I will not.” When nobody tried to compel him, he took Timothy, and of his own accord circumcised him to avoid scandals. When it was needful as a protest, he rode right over all the prescriptions of the law, and “did eat with Gentiles.” When it was advisable as a demonstration that he himself “walked orderly and kept the law,” he performed the rites of purification and united in the temple worship.
In times of transition wise supporters of the new will not be in a hurry to break with the old. “I will lead on softly, according as the flock and the children be able to endure,” said Jacob, and so says every good shepherd.
The brown sheaths remain on the twig after the tender green leaf has burst from within them, but there is no need to pull them off, for they will drop presently. “I will wear three surplices if they like,” said Luther once. “Neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse,” said Paul. Such is the spirit of the words here. It is a plea for Christian liberty. If not insisted on as necessary, the outward observances may be allowed. If they are regarded as helps, or as seemly adjuncts or the like, there is plenty of room for difference of opinion and for variety of practice, according to temperament and taste and usage. There are principles which should regulate even these diversities of practice, and Paul has set these forth, in the great chapter about meats in the Epistle to the Romans. But it is a different thing altogether when any external observances are insisted on as essential, either from the old Jewish or from the modern sacramentarian point of view. If a man comes saying, “Except ye be circumcised, ye cannot be saved,” the only right answer is, Then I will not be circumcised, and if you are, because you believe that you cannot be saved without it, “Christ is become of none effect to you.” Nothing is necessary but union to Him, and that comes through no outward observance, but through the faith which worketh by love. Therefore, let no man judge you, but repel all such attempts at thrusting any ceremonial ritual observances on you, on the plea of necessity, with the emancipating truth that the cross of Christ is the death of law.
A few words may be said here on the bearing of the principles laid down in these verses on the religious observance of Sunday. The obligation of the Jewish sabbath has passed away as much as sacrifices and circumcision. That seems unmistakably the teaching here. But the institution of a weekly day of rest is distinctly put in Scripture as independent of, and prior to, the special form and meaning given to the institution in the Mosaic law. That is the natural conclusion from the narrative of the creative rest in Genesis, and from our Lords emphatic declaration that the sabbath was made for “man”-that is to say, for the race. Many traces of the pre-Mosaic sabbath have been adduced, and among others we may recall the fact that recent researches show it to have been observed by the Accadians, the early inhabitants of Assyria. It is a physical and moral necessity, and that is a sadly mistaken benevolence which, on the plea of culture or amusement for the many, compels the labour of the few, and breaks down the distinction between the Sunday and the rest of the week.
The religious observance of the first day of the week rests on no recorded command, but has a higher origin, inasmuch as it is the out come of a felt want. The early disciples naturally gathered together for worship on the day which had become so sacred to them. At first, no doubt, they observed the Jewish sabbath, and only gradually came to the practice which we almost see growing before our eyes in the Acts of the Apostles, in the mention of the disciples at Troas coming together on the first day of the week to break bread, and which we gather, from the Apostles instructions as to weekly setting apart money for charitable purposes, to have existed in the Church at Corinth; as we know, that even in his lonely island prison far away from the company of his brethren, the Apostle John was in a condition of high religious contemplation on the Lords day, ere yet he heard the solemn voice and saw “the things which are.”
This gradual growing up of the practice is in accordance with the whole spirit of the New Covenant, which has next to nothing to say about the externals of worship, and leaves the new life to shape itself. Judaism gave prescriptions and minute regulations; Christianity, the religion of the spirit, gives principles. The necessity, for the nourishment of the Divine life, of the religious observance of the day of rest is certainly not less now than at first. In the hurry and drive of our modern life, with the world forcing itself on us at every moment, we cannot keep up the warmth of devotion unless we use this day, not merely for physical rest and family enjoyment, but for worship. They who know their own slothfulness of spirit, and are in earnest in seeking after a deeper, fuller Christian life, will thankfully own, “the week were dark but for its light.” I distrust the spirituality which professes that all life is a sabbath, and therefore holds itself absolved from special seasons of worship. If the stream of devout communion is to flow through all our days, there must be frequent reservoirs along the road, or it will be lost in the sand, like the rivers of higher Asia. It is a poor thing to say, keep the day as a day of worship because it is a commandment. Better to think of it as a great gift for the highest purposes; and not let it be merely a day of rest for jaded bodies, but make it one of refreshment for cumbered spirits, and rekindle the smouldering flame of devotion, by drawing near to Christ in public and in private. So shall we gather stores that may help us to go in the strength of that meat for some more marches on the dusty road of life.
II. The Apostle passes on to his second peal of warning, -that against the teaching about angel mediators, which would rob the Colossian Christians of their prize, -and draws a rapid portrait of the teachers of whom they are to beware.
“Let no man rob you of your prize.” The metaphor is the familiar one of the race or the wrestling ground; the umpire or judge is Christ; the reward is that incorruptible crown of glory, of righteousness, woven not of fading bay leaves, but of sprays from the “tree of life,” which dower with undying blessedness the brows round which they are wreathed. Certain people are trying to rob them of their prize-not consciously, for that would be inconceivable, but such is the tendency of their teaching. No names will be mentioned, but he draws a portrait of the robber with swift firm hand, as if he had said, If you want to know whom I mean, here he is. Four clauses, like four rapid strokes of the pencil, do it, and are marked in the Greek by four participles, the first of which is obscured in the Authorised Version. “Delighting in humility and the worshipping of angels.” So probably the first clause should be rendered. The first words are almost contradictory, and are meant to suggest that the humility has not the genuine ring about it. Self-conscious humility in which a man takes delight is not the real thing. A man who knows that he is humble, and is self-complacent about it, glancing out of the corners of his downcast eyes at any mirror where he can see himself, is not humble at all. “The devils darling vice is the pride which apes humility.”
So very humble were these people that they would not venture to pray to God! There was humility indeed. So far beneath did they feel themselves that the utmost they could do was to lay hold of the lowest link of a long chain of angel mediators, in hope that the vibration might run upwards through all the links, and perhaps reach the throne at last. Such fantastic abasement which would not take God at His word, nor draw near to Him in His Son, was really the very height of pride.
Then follows a second descriptive clause, of which no altogether satisfactory interpretation has yet been given. Possibly, as has been suggested, we have here an early error in the text, which has affected all the manuscripts, and cannot now be corrected. Perhaps, on the whole, the translation adopted by the Revised Version presents the least difficulty-“dwelling in the things which he hath seen.” In that case the seeing would be not by the senses, but by visions and pretended revelations, and the charge against the false teachers would be that they “walked in a vain show” of unreal imaginations and visionary hallucinations, whose many-coloured misleading lights they followed rather than the plain sunshine of revealed facts in Jesus Christ.
“Vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” is the next feature in the portrait. The self-conscious humility was only skin-deep, and covered the utmost intellectual arrogance. The heretic teacher, like a blown bladder, was swollen with what after all was only wind; he was dropsical from conceit of “mind,” or, as we should say, “intellectual ability,” which after all was only the instrument and organ of the “flesh,” the sinful self. And, of course, being all these things, he would have no firm grip of Christ, from whom such tempers and views were sure to detach him. Therefore the damning last clause of the indictment is “not holding the Head.” How could he do so? And the slackness of his grasp of the Lord Jesus would make all these errors and faults ten times worse.
Now the special forms of these errors which are here dealt with are all gone past recall. But the tendencies which underlay these special forms are as rampant as ever, and work unceasingly to loosen our hold of our dear Lord. The worship of angels is dead, but we are still often tempted to think that we are too lowly and sinful to claim our portion of the faithful promises of God. The spurious humility is by no means out of date, which knows better than God does whether He can forgive us our sins, and bend over us in love. We do not slip in angel mediators between ourselves and Him, but the tendency to put the sole work of Jesus Christ “into commission,” is not dead. We are all tempted to grasp at others as well as at Him, for our love, and trust, and obedience, and we all need the reminder that to lay hold of any other props is to lose hold of Him, and that he who does not cleave to Christ alone does not cleave to Christ at all.
We do not see visions and dream dreams any more, except here and there some one led astray by a so-called “spiritualism,” but plenty of us attach more importance to our own subjective fancies or speculations about the obscurer parts of Christianity than to the clear revelation of God in Christ. The “unseen world” has for many minds an unwholesome attraction. The Gnostic spirit is still in full force among us, which despises the foundation facts and truths of the gospel as “milk for babes,” and values its own baseless artificial speculations about subordinate matters, which are unrevealed because they are subordinate, and fascinating to some minds because unrevealed, far above the truths which are clear because they are vital, and insipid to such minds because they are clear. We need to be reminded that Christianity is not for speculation, but to make us good, and that “He who has fashioned their hearts alike,” has made us all to live by the same air, to be nourished by the same bread from heaven, to be saved and purified by the same truth. That is the gospel which the little child can understand, of which the outcast and the barbarian can get some kind of hold, which the failing spirit groping in the darkness of death can dimly see as its light in the valley-that is the all-important part of the gospel. What needs special training and capacity to understand is no essential portion of the truth that is meant for the world.
And a swollen self-conceit is of all things the most certain to keep a man away from Christ. We must feel our utter helplessness and need, before we shall lay hold on Him, and if ever that wholesome lowly sense of our own emptiness is clouded over, that moment will our fingers relax their tension, and that moment will the flow of life into our deadness run slow and pause. Whatever slackens our hold of Christ tends to rob us of the final prize, that crown of life which He gives.
Hence the solemn earnestness of these warnings. It was not only a doctrine more or less that was at stake, but it was their eternal life. Certain truths believed would increase the firmness of their hold on their Lord, and thereby would secure the prize. Disbelieved, the disbelief would slacken their grasp of Him, and thereby would deprive them of it. We are often told that the gospel gives heaven for right belief, and that that is unjust. But if a man does not believe a thing, he cannot have in his character or feelings the influence which the belief of it would produce. If he does not believe that Christ died for his sins, and that all his hopes are built on that great Saviour, he will not cleave to Him in love and dependence. If he does not so cleave to Him he will not draw from Him the life which would mould his character and stir him to run the race. If he do not run the race he will never win nor wear the crown. That crown is the reward and issue of character and conduct, made possible by the communication of strength and new nature from Jesus, which again is made possible through our faith laying hold of Him as revealed in certain truths, and of these truths as revealing Him. Therefore, intellectual error may loose our hold on Christ, and if we slacken that, we shall forfeit the prize. Mere speculative interest about the less plainly revealed corners of Christian truth may, and often do, act in paralysing the limbs of the Christian athlete. “Ye did run well, what hath hindered you?” has to be asked of many whom a spirit akin to this described in our text has made languid in the race. To us all, knowing in some measure how the whole sum of influences around us work to detach us from our Lord, and so to rob us of the prize which is inseparable from His presence, the solemn exhortation which He speaks from heaven may well come, “Hold fast that thou hast; let no man take thy crown.”
III. The source and manner of all true growth are next set forth, in order to enforce the warning, and to emphasise the need of holding the Head.
Christ is not merely represented supreme and sovereign, when He is called “the head.” The metaphor goes much deeper, and points to Him as the source of a real spiritual life, from Him communicated to all the members of the true Church, and constituting it an organic whole. We have found the same expression twice already in the Epistle; once as applied to His relation to “the body, the Church,” {Col 1:18} and once in reference to the “principalities and powers.” The errors in the Colossian Church derogated from Christs sole sovereign place as fountain of all life natural and spiritual for all orders of beings, and hence the emphasis of the Apostles proclamation of the counter truth. That life which flows from the head is diffused through the whole body by the various and harmonious action of all the parts. The body is “supplied and knit together,” or in other words, the functions of nutrition and compaction into a whole are performed by the “joints and bands,” in which last word are included muscles, nerves, tendons, and any of the “connecting bands which strap the body together.” Their action is the condition of growth; but the Head is the source of all which the action of the members transmits to the body. Christ is the source of all nourishment. From Him flows the life blood which feeds the whole, and by which every form of supply is ministered whereby the body grows. Christ is the source of all unity. Churches have been bound together by other bonds, such as creeds, polity, or even nationality; but that external bond is only like a rope round a bundle of fagots, while the true, inward unity springing from common possession of the life of Christ is as the unity of some great tree, through which the same sap circulates from massive bole to the tiniest leaf that dances at the tip of the farthest branch.
These blessed results of supply and unity are effected through the action of the various parts. If each organ is in healthy action, the body grows. There is diversity in offices; the same life is light in the eyes, beauty in the cheek, strength in the hand, thought in the brain. The more you rise in the scale of life the more the body is differentiated, from the simple sac that can be turned inside out and has no division of parts or offices, up to man. So in the Church. The effect of Christianity is to heighten individuality, and to give each man his own proper “gift from God,” and therefore each man his office, “one after this manner and another after that.” Therefore is there need for the freest possible unfolding of each mans idiosyncrasy, heightened and hallowed by an indwelling Christ, lest the body should be the poorer if any members activity be suppressed, or any one man be warped from his own work wherein he is strong, to become a feeble copy of anothers. The perfect light is the blending of all colours.
A community where each member thus holds firmly by the Head, and each ministers in his degree to the nourishment and compaction of the members, will, says Paul, increase with the increase of God. The increase will come from Him, will be pleasing to Him, will be essentially the growth of His own life in the body. There is an increase not of God. These heretical teachers were swollen with dropsical self-conceit; but this is wholesome, solid growth. For individuals and communities of professing Christians the lesson is always seasonable, that it is very easy to get an increase of the other kind. The individual may increase in apparent knowledge, in volubility, in visions and speculations, in so-called Christian work; the Church may increase in members, in wealth, in culture, in influence in the world, in apparent activities, in subscription lists, and the like-and it may all be not sound growth, but proud flesh, which needs the knife. One way only there is by which we may increase with the increase of God, and that is that we keep fast hold of Jesus Christ, and “let Him not go, for He is our life.” The one exhortation which includes all that is needful, and which being obeyed, all ceremonies and all speculations will drop into their right place, and become helps, not snares, is the exhortation which Barnabas gave to the new Gentile converts at Antioch-that “with purpose of heart they should cleave unto the Lord.”