This chapter furnishes us with some important warnings against man's interference with so wonderful a revelation as God has given. It is well for the heart to have firm hold of the grand truth that all is from God, and therefore not to be reasoned about but received in faith; and the more unquestioning that faith, the more apprehension there will be of the mind of God. For this we need, as in the prayer of the apostle in Eph. 1, that God would give the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of the heart being enlightened, &c.
Here, too, Paul expresses the desire of his heart that there might be in the saints everywhere this knowledge of the mystery of God, which would so satisfy the soul that its search after other things would be stopped. The common participation in these things by saints would knit their hearts together in love. It was not alone for those at Colosse the apostle desired these things, but for as many as had not seen his face in the flesh. His ministry was in the whole church, and what he desired for one he desired for all, longing after them in the bowels of Jesus Christ.
To him a special dispensation or stewardship of the mystery of God was committed, and this was not alone taken up as responsibility, "Woe is me if I preach not the gospel," but his heart's affections had been won to Christ as the One who had died and risen for him, and whose love, thus shown towards him when in sin, now constrained Paul to live to Christ.
In the mystery of God are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If this be apprehended, mans enticing words will not beguile one. He may offer what to the unwary and uninstructed may appear fascinating, but it is only at best a poor substitute, and is introduced by the enemy in order to divert from Christ.
A little word of commendation is graciously added, words of encouragement in the path of right for those already in danger of being warped from it. This, in the wisdom of the Spirit, was the true way to gain access to their hearts; not by blaming them for their failings, but commending their order, and the steadfastness of their faith in Christ.
But there was not lacking the exhortation to walk in Christ and not to be satisfied with present progress, but to be gaining firmer hold of the one that they had already known. Rooted and built up speaks of growth in every way, a firmer hold of the One already known through grace; such as the picture given in Phil. 3, Christ at the right hand of God as the source of all grace and blessing, and as an object for the heart in heaven, and Christ in His lowly path down here as the One whose mind we shall thus have.
Only as we get the object right will the path be right, all else is but fleshly effort; and however sincere the soul in its desires, it must Surely 'succumb to the pressure from outside and within; and what is produced becomes the piety of nature, sanctified flesh, and not the manifestation of the life of Jesus in our mortal bodies. How fruitless the attempt to be any way walking as approved unto God save as we take in, in faith, this blessed object—living by faith—"the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me"! Self-judgment may clear the eye from the mists which have obscured it, and in this we need constantly to be exercised, but only as we see Him in the unclouded light of the glory of God can there be energy communicated to maintain our ground against the enemy, or go on to perfection.
But human philosophy, the mere working of mind and imagination about moral principles, which to the pride of the heart might seem an easier or, at least, a needful way of settling many points, the faithful needed to be warned against. Traditions, law-keeping, and such-like things, would approve themselves to the mind or conscience, but they were after the rudiments of the world, and when God had given up dealing with man upon that ground they were but "beggarly elements."
By the law, God had taken up man in the flesh and educated him in certain moral principles. If he heartily adopted these principles, and accepted them as a proper definition of human righteousness, they led to the discovery of his own incapacity to keep them, and guilty and without strength was in consequence man's proved condition by them. They became the ministry of death and condemnation. But this was not now God's way with man, still less were mere human traditions, however sanctified by the appearance of antiquity. Christ, a heavenly Christ, was now revealed—the revelation of God's perfect love to man in all his proved need, and the remedy for all the sin in which he was found through His atoning, death and sufferings, as well as now risen and glorified, was the measure of man's place and acceptance in the heavenlies. In view of Christ how all man's traditions, and even the law, holy as it was, and God's purpose in giving it, sink into nothing in comparison.
How wonderful the statement that follows! " For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power." How suitable to the condition of those who were in danger of looking another way, to remind them of this. Divine fullness, the fullness of Godhead dwelling in a man. As to the cross itself, how striking the way in which it is presented. "For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and having made peace by the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto itself." How well and completely must that work be done which had thus been taken up.
From verses 10-15 is a statement of some aspects of that completeness, and it seems as if the Spirit of God anticipates all the ways in which need could be felt, and shows how fully they are met. Thus are the avenues guarded by which these human devices would gain access. The divine remedy being known, the human is not needed.
A Jew would come with his circumcision and press it as a divine institution, and how early this was done, and how successful the snare, Galatians and other portions of the word prove. But in Christ I have the true circumcision, the body of the flesh put off, all that to which the law applied gone, through the death of Christ. But I have more, I have been buried with Him in baptism; yet not left in the grave either, though I, as a poor corrupt and corrupting creature, needed to be put out of sight. But faith in the working of God, who raised Christ from the dead, has linked me, identified with Him, in this new place with God.
My history closed, as to the ruin I was connected with, and a new beginning made for me a risen man in Christ. Next, as to my condition in nature as dead in sins, I am made alive together with Him, and as to all the sins which were the expression of that state, they are all forgiven. How thorough the deliverance His love has wrought that the conscience, free from all guilt, the heart might delight itself in God, and now no longer dead to Him, "alienated from the life of God," but alive with Christ, my privilege is to live to Him who has thus rescued and redeemed me.
But there remain two other things which though they are not my personal condition, which has thus been so blessedly met, were yet opposed to me and operated to shut me out from blessing. The first is the law, not now looked at in its rule over me and the consequent results, but as that which given to the Jew as his distinctive privilege, if it shut him into the place of privilege, shut me, the Gentile, out. This then is taken out of the way, nailing it to His cross, as now fully entered into in Eph. 2, the barrier has been removed and no longer withstands the entrance of the Gentile into the full favor of God and place of nearness such as was never known to a Jew or could be for a man in the flesh.
Lastly, principalities and powers, under whose dominion I was, have been triumphed over through the cross. We are delivered from the authority of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Thus every aspect of need is met, but not alone that, every blessing conferred which the blessing of God, working according to the perfection of His wisdom, could plan to give us. How wonderful His ways! Well may we say, "What has God wrought!"
Such being our established place of blessing, the exhortations that follow are simple. I am to refuse man's ordinances, and the things whereby he would infringe my liberty, and to accept them is to deny Christianity. What have meats and drinks and holy days to do with risen heavenly life? Yet such is ours. Eternal life begun is not so limited or marked, and the body is of Christ, and belongs to a different scene from this in which that life is now for a season displayed. Yet holy days are shadows of things to come, but for the earth, and will be kept and enjoyed by those whose calling connects them with the earth in a scene of millennial blessedness.
Neither is the intrusion of some other being, under the plea of a humility which is false, to be allowed. Those who would put angels, or saints, or priests, between me and Him, have interposed a fatal hindrance to my growth and even secured my downfall. True humility is an accompaniment of the faith which puts God in His true place as the Giver and myself as the receiver of His benefits. And if God, acting from Himself, is pleased to bestow the highest blessings freely on the least deserving, what becomes us is to take with thankful and rejoicing hearts what He gives. When, too, we know that all comes to us as the fruit of God having been glorified by Christ, we find ourselves in happy liberty before Him as identified, through grace, with all the sweet savor of that precious offering. But the thickness of a gold-leaf between the head and the members is as fatal, though not as manifest, as a great chasm.
May we be kept sensible that all the fullness is in Him, and open to us continually to draw upon with the faith which honors and gives Him His true glory. Dead and risen with Him we are cut off on the one hand from all the evil in which man in the flesh, religious or otherwise, is found, and on the other brought into that new scene where "old things have passed away and all are become new and all of God.” Our privilege is to live to God, and seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God; living in the scene which rejected Him as strangers and pilgrims and unknown, but waiting for Him, who is our life, to be manifested when we shall share His joy and glory and its unending bliss forever. R. T. G.
When man occupies himself philosophically with all things, the insufficiency of his own resources always throws him into the hands of an intellectual leader, and into traditions, and, when religion is the subject, into tradition which develop the flesh, and are suited to its powers and its tendency.