When you consider all that we have been given in Jesus Christ it truly changes everything. Join us in Colossians 2:9-15 as Pastor Marty Baker opens up the Scriptures to show us the person of Jesus Christ and the provisions we find in Him.
A wife of one of my father’s U.S. Customs agents became an ardent, passionate, and bold follower of Jesus Christ during my time in High School. You couldn’t find a finer and more dedicated Christian woman. She served others, worked hard at church, and constantly shared her faith with anyone and everyone.
Years ago, something happened. She became enamored with Judaistic studies, but she wasn’t a Jew. Suddenly, the law of Moses, memorized prayers, feast days, and listening to various rabbis became more important to her than her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Last I heard, she was a disciple of some rabbi on the East Coast and had become a fixture at a local synagogue.
We’ve debated as a family for years whether she was saved, but I think she was, given her years of following Christ closely. But, like some of the Galatian believers, she went after another gospel that stressed faith plus works to secure a relationship with God. So, I’d say for the last 45 years, at least, she has fallen from the faith. Five passages in Hebrews serve as a warning to saints who’d dare go down this heretical road (Heb. 2:1-4; 3:4:13; 5:11-6:12; 10:19-39; 12:14-29). The warning is clear: God will, like a loving father, discipline you to wake you up and, hopefully, move you back to a place of obedience and blessings. At this point, our friend is still in a spiritual stupor. And it all came about when she listened to the wrong “spiritual” voices speaking into her life.
What about you? Are you drifting in your spiritual walk? Have you lost the intimacy with Jesus you once had? Have people who hold a works-based view of knowing Christ clouded your once clear thinking? Have you mixed worldly philosophy with biblical theology, resulting in Christ no longer having preeminence in your life? If so, I believe it is time to come back to Christ. It’s also time to learn how to better safeguard your spiritual walk from deception and derailment.
As we’ve discussed in our study of the church in Colossae, Gnostic false teachers, who wedded Greek philosophy and the religious traditions of the Mosaic law, were seeking to subvert the sound doctrine these saints had received from their pastor, who the Apostle Paul influenced. Enter Paul, the loving shepherd. In chapter 2, he develops a polemic designed to take the Gnostics to task and to educate these wobbly saints on how to stand their ground when false teaching sought a foothold in their vibrant church.
Based on what Paul teaches in this larger section (Col. 2:8-23), I think the main motif can be reduced to this counseling statement:
Safeguard Your Spiritual Walk By Focusing On The Work Of Jesus
By way of review, verse 8 presents us with a clear command:
The Rule: Safeguard Your Walk (Col. 2:8)
Mark the essence of Paul’s warning and counsel:
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. (Col. 2)
The opening verbal command underscores that Christians are supposed to continually pay attention to the teachings they encounter, both inside and outside the church. Does it diminish the person of Christ? Does it water down his redemptive work by wedding it to personal religious works or the observance of religious traditions? Does it challenge you to mix philosophy with theology for a more enlightened view of knowing and walking with Christ? Does it stress faith plus works to garner God’s favor? Does it compel you to join a group of people who are really in the spiritual know, while other saints, who don’t embrace their brand of theology, are not?
So, how about you? Are you spiritually alert? Are you paying attention to what you are hearing, reading, and watching? Are you measuring it against the inspired Word of God? Are you testing it to see whether it has a lofty or low view of Christ’s divine person and redemptive work on Calvary? In a world awash with false teaching, religious and philosophical, it is time for sleepers to wake up lest their faith be hamstrung and minimized.
Moving from this command, in verses 9 through 15, Paul turns and gives us candid reasons why we should always be alert as spiritual soldiers of Christ.
The Reasons: Consider His Person & Provisions (Col. 2:9-15)
Let me put it differently. The reason why you should always be on your spiritual guard is that the doctrine you possess is the best, and as the best, it cannot be improved on. Satan will seek to infiltrate your thinking through the clever heretical teaching of others he inspires (1 John 4:1-3) in a quest to get you to think your doctrine is second best. Once he gets you to think this, then it is not a far journey to get you to believe in teaching that is contrary to divinely revealed truth.
On a cruise back in 1990, our Viking cruise line docked in Ensenada, Mexico. Liz and I disembarked with the other 1,000 Americans and descended on the city’s main drag. Walking into one jewelry store, I found one entire glass cabinet full of Rolex watches on sale for $50.00. What a deal. I had a nice Seiko watch on my arm, but the salesman assured me I could get rid of it and trade up for a more prestigious Rolex. Right. A Rolex for $50 bucks? I would have traded down, not up.
My father’s seizure of counterfeit items like this in his job with U.S. Customs made me quite aware of what was going on in this particular shop. They promised you something better, more costly, while, in fact, you were getting something inferior and junky. Liz and I walked away. And so it is with false teaching. It appears amazing and magnificent, but when you have the best with Jesus, why settle for something less?
As we move through these polemical verses with Paul, we quickly learn why we should be on our guard as we go about our lives.
Consider Christ’s Person (Col. 2:9). False teaching always diminishes the person of Christ. No exceptions. It doesn’t matter whether it is scientism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Islamists, New Agers, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian Science, or whatnot; they collectively and deceptively speak about Jesus but not the Jesus of the Word of God. So, concerning Him, Paul reminds us, again, who He was and is:
9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form…
Jesus didn’t become God, as we discover in Mormon thought. Jesus wasn’t a god, not the God, as Jehovah’s Witnesses teach. Jesus is not just a great teacher and prophet, as Islamists articulate. On the contrary, Christ has always possessed absolute deity. That deity eventually merged with a bodily, fleshly form so He could go to the cross and become mankind’s sin-sacrifice and Savior.
“Fullness,” or pleroma, was a Gnostic term. In their system, spiritual fullness came to those who embraced their esoteric, hidden knowledge about Jesus, sin, and salvation. Paul takes their term and applies it directly to Christ’s person. He wasn’t a god, or a weak, watered-down version of God, but the absolute fullness of deity. Think of a glass full of water, I mean, water right up to the rim, making it hard to pick up without spilling it. That’s Jesus as the God-man. While on earth, He was 100% God and 100% man.
Did Jesus claim deity status? Yes, and He did it most definitively. Speaking to the disciples in the Upper Room after He washed their feet to prepare them for the Passover meal, He made this statement:
18 “I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats My bread has lifted up his heel against Me.’ 19 “From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He. (John 13)
Right after saying this, Jesus doubled down on the prophetic word that one of the disciples would betray Him (John 13:21-30), and then He turned and prophesied that Peter would soon deny Him three times (John 13:31-38). Why did He do this? He gave this precise prophetic word so that the disciples would be utterly convinced that, to use His words, “I am He.”
The pronoun “he” is not in the original Greek text. It merely reads, ego eimi (19 ἀπʼ ἄρτι λέγω ὑμῖν πρὸ τοῦ γενέσθαι, ἵνα πιστεύσητε ὅταν γένηται ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι). Ego is the first-person personal pronoun, I. Eimi is a first-person present-tense of the verb “to be” (the copula). The pronoun, He, is added to the English sentence to make it grammatically complete. But the pronoun, as I’ve said, is not in the Greek text. Why not? This is the name of God in the Old Testament.
Since the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, we must look at how ego eimi (I, I am) is used in the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew. What we quickly discover is that the phrase ego eimi is used specifically of the Hebrew ani hu, or I am He, to denote God (Deut. 32:39; Isa. 41:4; 43:10, 13; 46:4).[1] Let’s read some of these references:
‘See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39)
רְא֣וּ׀ עַתָּ֗ה כִּ֣י אֲנִ֤י אֲנִי֙ ה֔וּא וְאֵ֥ין אֱלֹהִ֖ים עִמָּדִ֑י אֲנִ֧י אָמִ֣ית וַאֲחַיֶּ֗ה מָחַ֨צְתִּי֙ וַאֲנִ֣י אֶרְפָּ֔א וְאֵ֥ין מִיָּדִ֖י מַצִּֽי
39 Ἴδετε ἴδετε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι, καὶ οὐκ ἔστι Θεὸς πλὴν ἐμοῦ· ἐγὼ ἀποκτείνω, καὶ ζῇν ποιήσω· πατάξω, κἀγὼ ἰάσομαι· καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ὃς ἐξελεῖται ἐκ τῶν χειρῶν μου.[2]
‘I, the Lord, am the first, and with the last. I am He.’ ” (Isa. 41:4)
מִֽי־פָעַ֣ל וְעָשָׂ֔ה קֹרֵ֥א הַדֹּר֖וֹת מֵרֹ֑אשׁ אֲנִ֤י יְהוָה֙ רִאשׁ֔וֹן וְאֶת־אַחֲרֹנִ֖ים אֲנִי־הֽוּא׃
4 Τίς ἐνήργησε, καὶ ἐποίησε ταῦτα; ἐκάλεσεν αὐτὴν ὁ καλῶν αὐτὴν ἀπὸ γενεῶν ἀρχῆς· ἐγὼ Θεὸς πρῶτος, καὶ εἰς τὰ ἐπερχόμενα ἐγώ εἰμι. (Isa. 41:4)
11 “I, even I, am the Lord, and there is no savior besides Me . . . 13 Even from eternity I am He, and there is none who can deliver out of My hand; I act and who can reverse it? (Isa. 43:13)
Why delve into all this grammar? Because God used these particular grammatical constructions to describe Himself. While Jesus walked the planet, He clearly identified Himself as the great “I am,” the eternal God, who was now among us in bodily form.
Let’s now get back to what Jesus said in John 13. He predicted the future, not because He was a great prophet, which He was THE prophet (Deut. 18), but because, as fully God, He knew the future with precision. This is what God claimed as the ego eimi and the ani hu in the Old Testament. In fact, God taunted the false prophets with His ability to tell the future with total precision.
26 Who has declared this from the beginning, that we might know? Or from former times, that we may say, “He is right!”? (Isa. 41:26).
This taunt is uttered in a passage where God denounces the lifeless idols. Only He can foretell the future, and this ability shows that His prophets are the prophets, and that He alone is God. Jesus, therefore, foretold the future to teach the disciples, again, that He was fully God, or the great I Am from the Old Testament. God went on in Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1 to correctly prophesy the coming of Cyrus, King of Persia, to become Israel’s deliverer from captivity. The only problem was that Israel was not yet in captivity, and this was 150 whopping years before Cyrus was even born! Jesus, therefore, used precise prophecy to reveal that He was none other than the ani hu, ego eimi, or the I Am God from Old Testament times. The Jews knew exactly what He was saying when He said this, and this is why they attempted to stone Him for blasphemy in John 8:58-59.
So, Christ’s words revealed that He was fully God. So, too, did His works. When Philipp struggled with Christ’s identity, Jesus told him:
11 “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. (John 14)
Christ’s works, or miracles, validated His divinity because He did things only God, who created all things, could pull off.
Changing water into wine (John 2:1-11)? No problem. He made water and can do with it what He wants.
Catching a large number of fish (Luke 5:3-10)? No problem. He created the fish that swim in any given lake; therefore, He is equipped to tell you where to fish because the fish obey Him.
Healing a leper (Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-15)? No problem. He is the Lord over disease.
Healing a paralyzed man (Matthew 9:1-8, Mark 2:1-12, Luke 5:18-26). No problem. Paralysis can’t thwart the power of God.
Healing a man who was crippled for 38 years, at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-18)? No problem. He who gave us legs in the first place could certainly give a crippled me a new set at will.
Raising a widow’s son in Nain (Luke 7:11-17)? No problem. He is the Lord of death and life, so raising a young man from the dead in a funeral procession took no effort.
I could go on, but you get the point. Jesus was, and is, fully God. So, why would you want to settle or switch to a belief system that sought, or seeks, to degrade or minimize Him? How ridiculous. He is God, so you don’t need to adopt a system that teaches anything less than this because you have the best.
Professor Wayne Grudem tells us why it is so important for believers to embrace the full deity of Jesus:
Here it is appropriate to recognize that it is crucially important to insist on the full deity of Christ as well, not only because it is clearly taught in Scripture, but also because (1) only someone who is infinite God could bear the full penalty for all of the sins of all those who would believe in him– any finite creature would have been incapable of bearing that penalty; (2) salvation is from the Lord(Jonah 2:9 NASB), and the whole message of Scripture is designed to show that no human being, no creature, could ever save man– only God himself; and (3) only someone who was truly and fully God could be the one mediator between God and man. (1 Tim. 2:5), both to bring us back to God and also to reveal God most fully to us (John 14:9). Thus, if Jesus is not fully God, we have no salvation and ultimately no Christianity.[3]
This type of reasoning is why Paul waxed eloquent in articulating the full deity of Jesus Christ in the face of those who questioned it and sought to diminish it for their own selfish purposes. For Christ to have you and for you to have Christ is all you need. You need no other so-called Savior or salvific system that weds faith with perpetual works. The only redemptive work that counts is Christ’s work, and it counts because He was fully God and fully man.
Turning from a powerful statement about Christ’s identity, Paul turns in the ensuing verses to highlight what Christ has done for believers. His point should be well-taken and remembered: Because of what Christ’s salvation has accomplished, why would you think of embracing a religious/philosophical system that promised you something better and grander?
Consider Christ’s Provision (Col. 2:10-15)
First, Paul says that your faith relationship with Jesus has made you complete.
10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;
The NIV translates this verse: “you have been given fullness in Christ.” The verb “to be full” is a perfect tense verb, pepleromenoi (πεπληρωμένοι). As such, it grammatically denotes a past act with an abiding result. Hence, what is stated here is a done deal, never to be broken or lost. What it denotes is the question. I think what it means is explained well by Curtis Vaughan:
Thus, in union with Christ, our every spiritual need is fully met. Possessing him, we possess all. There was no need, therefore, for the Colossians to turn to the “philosophy” of the errorists, the ritual of the Mosaic law, or to the spirit-beings worshiped by the pagan world. All they needed was in Jesus Christ.[4]
Translated, when you are in Christ’s family by means of faith (1 Cor. 12:13), you don’t need any more of Him and what He can give you. He has you, and you have Him. Put differently, with Christ in your life, you have access to all of Him. What more could you want?
He is with you in the middle of the night when you wake up.
He is with you when you are on a battlefield.
He is with you when you and your wife are trying to figure out how to raise a testy teenager.
He is with you when you face the loss of a friend.
He is with you when you receive a medical report that rocks your world.
He is with you when you have questions about life that trouble you.
He is with you fully, not partially. What a thought. What a comfort.
He is with you when your new baby is born.
He is with you when your daughter gets married.
His total presence in your life is why you don’t need to look to anyone or anything else for fulfillment. Having Him is enough.
And who is He? Yes, who is Jesus? As the creator, He is the Head. El Jefe.
10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority…
The Greek terms, rule, arche, and authority, exousia (ἀρχῆς καὶ ἐξουσία ), refer to angelic beings (Col. 1:16). Hence, since all angelic beings, good or evil, are ultimately responsible to Him, why would you want to be part of a theological/philosophical system that had you appealing to these beings for access to God? That was what Gnosticism did. How crazy, according to Paul. To know Christ redemptively is to know the One whom all angelic beings report to. To know Christ redemptively is to need no other mediator to gain access to the Holy Trinity. You, as a saint, have direct access to the One with all the power to help you in this life to live for and know Him. Let’s put this in different terms: If I had direct access to the President anytime I wanted, why in the world would I want to appeal to a secretary in one of the offices of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB)? The point is, I wouldn’t. So, if I wouldn’t do this, because it is quite illogical, why would you attempt to do this with your relationship with Jesus.
To proceed further into Paul’s argument, we must ask: How was it that you, as a sinner, acquired the presence of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, in your life? It all happened at the moment of salvation. What exactly happened? Paul explains in rapid-fire succession with several metaphors:
11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;
What does this mean? From the emphasis in this passage on Jewish laws and traditions, it is a good chance the Gnostics had wedded their system to Judaism in Colossae. If so, then they probably told the Gentile saints they had to be physically circumcised to be truly holy and identified with God. It’s the same theological problem Paul dealt with in Philippi (Phil. 3), and it was the first big church issue back in Acts 15 at the first Church council. What was the conclusion of the council? Outer circumcision is not as important as inner circumcision.
What is the inner circumcision? It is the act where God, at the moment of conversion/faith, removes or subdues the power of the flesh that, before faith, dominated and reigned over you (Rom. 3). Note that God didn’t just remove a part of your sinful flesh, but the entire body of it. Does this mean you are now sinless? Far from it. But you are now, for the first time in your life, free to choose righteousness and holiness. Paul makes this argument well in Romans 6:
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. (Rom. 6).
It doesn’t get any clearer. Christ’s salvation has waylaid your old, sinful man, and given you the ability to say “Yes” to God’s word and ways. Why, then, would you think any other approach to God, who is holy, would work? It wouldn’t. His work and what it has done for you is sufficient, so enjoy it to the fullest.
Additionally, through your baptism, you outwardly demonstrated that Jesus raised you from spiritual death to life (Eph. 2:5).
12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
When you went under the water, you identified with His death. When you rose from the water, you demonstrated the old sinful you was left behind, and the new spiritual you was quite alive. The drunk is now free to choose sobriety. The druggie is now free to live a clean life. The gambler is now free to use his money for God’s purposes. The sexually promiscuous person is now free to live a noble life of control. The prideful is now free to embrace humility. And so on.
The only way to obtain this new status is to come to faith in repentant faith. No other approach to God will do. What a unique standing this gives us! Who wouldn’t want this? Who wouldn’t want the inner power and ability that the Spirit gives us to move away from sin to embrace holiness, to our maturity, and God’s ultimate glory?
What exactly happened at the moment of faith? Paul explains:
13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. (Col. 2)
When we were spiritually dead, incapable of saving ourselves, Jesus did all the work for us on the cross. He took all of our sins that He was quite aware of and nailed them to the cross. He then died for them so that at the moment of faith, all those sins would be wiped away, forever, leaving us with a clean, holy life in the inner man (1 Cor. 1:30). Think about this. Think about what a whiteboard would look like with your lifetime of sins written all over it. Talk about white turning to black. Then consider how, at the moment of faith, Jesus’s rich, red, royal blood wiped that board clean for all time and eternity. And on that board He wrote in big letters: Paid in Full. Wow. He’s the only one who could, and can, do this, so why would you want to stoop to any lesser belief?
Finally, at His ascension, Jesus paraded His spiritual victory before the very demons that inspired the Gnostics. How ironic.
15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. (Col. 2)
After a victory, a Roman General would ride in an ornate, four-horse chariot through the main streets of Rome to proclaim his total victory over his foes. Those defeated foes would typically precede him, along with his courageous troops and war booty.
Jesus did something greater. At His glorious ascension into heaven, He moved through the demonic realm to put them on notice that they were defeated foes. Paul’s point can’t be missed: Since the angelic beings who oppose God by spreading false teaching (1 John 4:1-3) are defeated foes, why would any Christian want to leave the biblical teaching about Christ’s person and redemptive work and seek wisdom and divine acceptance through any other means? The point is, you shouldn’t. Jesus is enough.
Is Jesus enough for you? Or are you looking for more? Look no further as a saint. You have all you need in your relationship with Him.
For those who realize that, right now, they are still dead in their sins, this can be quickly changed by kneeling before Christ in repentant faith and asking for His forgiveness. And what will He do when He sees your faith? He will wipe all your sins away for all time. He will free you from sin’s domination. He will empower you to live a noble, moral, and meaningful life. Are you ready to be spiritually transformed by the only One who can transform you?
[1] Abraham Even-Shoshan, A New Concordance of the Old Testament Using the Hebrew and Aramaic Text,(Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer Publishing, 1989), 94.
[2] Lancelot C. L. Brenton, The Septuagint Version: Greek (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1851), Dt 32:39.
[3] Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1999), 241.
[4] Curtis Vaughan, “Colossians,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians through Philemon, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 11 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), 199.
