“For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom [or rather which] are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:1-31For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; 2That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; 3In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Colossians 2:1‑3)). The mystery is now revealed, even the relation of Christ and the church; the actual testimony of God’s counsels in Christ to those who compose His body. And as a rule, it is always what God is actually doing that is the urgently needed truth. Special wants may spring up and claim attention at particular moments; but since Christ was set on high, this is the truth for the saints, and for a very simple and sufficient reason—it is what God the Father designed for the day of salvation. It is of this Christ is the objective center and Head. In this we have what the Spirit occupies Himself with as sent down from heaven. Satan being invariably the personal and persistent antagonist of Christ, whatever is God’s purpose in Christ becomes peculiarly the object of Satan’s hatred and hostility.
Hence, as the Apostle Paul was one on whom God set particular honor in developing the mystery, and communicating it in inspired words also, so he was more than any other called to suffer the consequences in this present evil world. His labors were not merely indefatigable, but accompanied by the sorest trial and anguish of spirit, as well as continual detraction with public hatred and persecution. Everything which could break the heart of a holy man from day to day he passed through. Yet, carrying out his ministry with continual tears, he looked before men as one whom none of these things moved. Nevertheless, he lets the Colossians know what he went through for their sakes and other saints who were before his heart, even though unknown in the flesh. “And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.” There was much that was blessed at Colosse; and the Apostle loves to give full credit for it. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him: rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.” In fact, this was their fault: they were not content with Christ and Him only. Not appreciating His glory and fullness, they did not see that the secret of true wisdom and blessing is in going on to know more of Christ than is already possessed. Such is the only sure root of all blessing, and in this above all is real faith and spirituality shown. Is the heart satisfied with Him? Do we feel and know that we can add nothing to Him? Is it all we want to draw from Him?
Then he brings in, accordingly, his first solemn caution. “Beware,” says he, “Lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Here we have the mingling, I apprehend, of natural man’s philosophy, and religious man’s tradition. These things at first sight appear far apart, but they are not so in result. They may seem to be far as the poles asunder; but in point of fact, there is nothing that more shows an energetic spirit of evil at work in the world than the way in which he marshals and combines these two armies, that outwardly look enemies to each other. Have you not proved it? Somehow or another, freethinkers and superstitious men coalesce in reality. There is no feature of the present day more remarkable than the success with which Satan is massing, as it were, his forces, bringing together at the very same point, where they are wanted, these two parties; that is to say, the heavier arms of human tradition, and the lighter ones of man’s philosophy. This is the reason why at each grave juncture you will find that ritualists will as a rule support rationalists, and rationalists will try to extenuate the proceedings of ritualists. They may wear the semblance of being altogether hostile to each other: they are both of them only hostile to the truth. They both are thoroughly and essentially ignorant of Christ; but the Christ that they ignore, for religion or reason, is that blessed Person not so much as He who here lived and labored, as especially dead and risen. They use freely His name; they in word and bodily exercise do Him no small reverence; but without faith all is vain.
Beloved, the Christ that we know gives no glory to the first man; neither does He put honor on ordinances or human priesthood. How He would have been exalted, if He had consented to shed the halo of His own glory on the race as such! But our Lord is the Christ who condemned the first man. Fallen humanity by Him was detected and judged root and branch. This cannot be forgiven by all who cleave to the first man, on the side either of ordinances or of philosophy. How can man brook that he, and the world that he has built up since he lost Eden, should be made nothing of? It is impossible to look for it from human nature. He who probed it all cannot be endured. We must and do judge all things as they are. This is truth about them; and He who is the truth told it out. The cross of Christ is the death-knell of the world in all its pretensions before God. His grave is man’s grave. Brethren, the Christ that God has made known to us is the Christ that man scorned, cast out and crucified. But He is the Christ that God raised from the dead and seated in heavenly glory. And this is the truth that is so offensive to flesh in every form. Never will it be received, either by the world’s religion, or by its philosophy.
How vain and perilous—at least for themselves—was the effort of the Colossians! They were endeavoring to strike an alliance between Christ and the world. They had really themselves slipped away in heart: no such hope had found favor otherwise. It was not wonderful that he said in chapter 1, “If ye continue in the faith rooted and grounded, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel.” They had been moving away, not perhaps so rapidly as the Galatians; in faith they had been infirm. And now the Apostle would recall them: “Walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him” Let them beware of philosophy and tradition; “For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” It is not to be found in tradition, still less in philosophy.
Philosophy is an idol of man or nature, a blind substitute for the knowledge of God. It is false and ruinous, whether it leaves Him out or brings Him in—whether it denies the true God, or makes everything a sham god. Atheism and Pantheism are the ultimate results of philosophy, and both in reality set God aside. As to tradition, it invariably puts man as far off from God as it can, and calls this religion. The truth in Christ is not merely that God came down to man in love, but that man, the believer in Christ, is now dead and risen in Him. Is Christ in the glorious presence of God? The Christian is one with Him. Accordingly, he brings in now for this object the twofold truth: “For in Him,” says he, “Dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him.” How blessed! If He is the fullness, you are made full in Him, “which is the head of all principality and power.” Away, then, with every pretense to add to Him; away with all possible expedients to give luster to Christ! “He is the head of all principality and power: in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the flesh [for so it runs] by the circumcision of Christ: buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen.”
Constructively, to my mind, this points to the great sign of His death. It is in baptism rather than in Him Hence it seems to me not in whom, but rightly “wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God.” Thus baptism is not limited to signifying death. Yet it is never the sign either of life or of blood-shedding, but of a state of privilege beyond. When the Apostle was told to wash away his sins, calling on the name of the Lord, blood does not seem to have been meant, but water. For this is the sign not so much of what would expiate as cleanse. But the cleansing as well as expiation is by the death of Christ, out of whose side flowed both.
Here the doctrine carries one a little farther than either Romans 6 or 1 Peter 3. There is death and burial of all we were; but there is here at least resurrection with Christ—death and resurrection. In Romans the emphatic point is simply death, because the argument of the Apostle in chapter 6 does not admit of going beyond the truth that the baptized believer is alive from the dead—not exactly risen, but alive unto God. In Colossians the argument requires that our resurrection with Christ, as well as death and burial, should be distinctly stated. And so it is. “Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who has raised Him from the dead.”
He applies the truth to the case in hand after this: “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven us all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us.” He does not say “against you,” because, in truth, the Colossian saints had never been under the law and its ordinances; they had been Gentiles. But whereas he said, “that you, being dead,” were now thus raised, so he says, “blotting it out against us”; for all that we, poor Jews, could boast—the ordinances—were against us instead of being for us, and they are gone now.
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. 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: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Col. 2:14-1714Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; 15And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. 16Let 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: 17Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. (Colossians 2:14‑17)). Thus is seen first of all, in virtue of the dead and risen Christ in whom they believed, that they were quickened and all their trespasses forgiven, two things here strikingly united together. The very life that I have in Christ is a witness that my sins are forgiven. It is not merely the life of a Christ that lived in this world, but the life of Him that was lifted up on the cross, and bore my sins there. But now the work is done, and the atonement is accepted before that new life is given me in Him risen.
One cannot therefore be quickened together with Christ without having one’s trespasses, yea, all (for if not all, none) forgiven. The guilt which a broken law charged on the conscience is gone by an act infinitely more glorifying to God than the personal righteousnesses of all the men that ever lived, not to speak of the conscious pardon which is also secured to those who possess it. Had you to do with the law? The mighty work of Christ has entirely delivered from it. The sentence is blotted out; the power of Satan is spoiled openly; Christ risen triumphs over all. There is no new means of grace; there is no development, still less supplement to Christ. The one and same Christ it is who has settled everything.
As to the Jewish rites and feasts that some were endeavoring to reimpose, take for an instance the Sabbath, which is the stronger, because it was from the beginning of the first man, yet unfallen, and of course long before the Jewish people. “Let no man judge you” is the exhortation. They were shadows. Have you not got the substance? Why be found running from the substance after the shadow? “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, and not holding the head.” Thus the fact of prying into that which God has not revealed, and man has not seen, such as speculations about angels, is the patent proof that the heart is not really satisfied with its portion. This is not holding the Head. He who keeps fast Christ thus, in conscious union with Him, could never be craving after angels. In Christ the saint is above them, and leaves them to God without anxiety or envy. We know well that God is making a good use of them, and that, in point of fact, if we meddle, it can only be to loss and confusion. “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.”
Next, the doctrine is applied still more definitely. “Wherefore,” says he, “if ye be dead with Christ”—which is one grand part of his subject—“if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living [or alive] in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” Of course it is not at all being dead to what a man had as a natural life in the world. Such is not the Christian life, which is really the life of Him that died and rose again. He died—this is the point here—and therefore I am dead too. But if I am dead, what have I to do with those things that only affect men as long as they live? Certainly they have no relation to me now risen with Him. A man alive in the world is under these ordinances, and owns them. Such was the position of Israel. They were a people living in the world, and the whole system of Judaism supposed and dealt with a people in the world.
In moral truth, as well as literal fact, the veil, shadowing their state, was not yet lifted up from the unseen world. But the first characteristic result of Christ’s work on the cross was the veil that shut up the holiest rent from top to bottom. Thus it begins, not with the incarnation (for sin was not yet judged, nor man brought to God), but with the cross, with redemption. There was no Christianity—that is, no deliverance—of man and setting him in the Second Man—before Christ became firstborn from among the dead. Clearly, therefore, the whole character of the new system depends, first, on the Deity of the incarnate Saviour, and, secondly, on the glorious truths of His atoning death and of His resurrection. Thus we should hold Him fast, not only in other respects, but in this special relation of “Head.”
So he says, “If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” Then he gives a specimen of these: “Touch not; taste not; handle not.” But this is not the character of Christianity, but of Judaism. It pertains to a life in this world to say, “Touch not; taste not; handle not.” It is all well for a Jew, because he has got his abstinences and his restrictions. But this is not at all the divine way of dealing with the Christian. We are not Jews; we have our place in Christ dead and risen, or are nothing. Such prohibitory commands had their day; but the time of reformation is come. It is a question now of truth and holiness in the Spirit—of Christ, in short.
These restrictions dealt with meats and drinks, and such like things, which perish in the using. The Christian never stood on any such fleshly ground. He is dead with Christ; consequently he has passed out of the sphere to which such dealings apply. “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.” Proud, fallen nature is satisfied even by these efforts to put down the body; whereas God would have the body to have a certain honor in its own place, and that of the Christian is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Thus in every way the ritualistic system is false, and a traitor to Him who died on the cross.