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 %LS
