EPISODE 187 COLOSSIANS CHAPTER 2 " More than enough"

Welcome to Share the Word. Well, the false teachers are at it again. Actually, they've never stopped. They continually cause confusion. Their goal is to persuade believers that they have all the answers, that they can read the mind of God better than even the apostles themselves. And Christ just falls short.

Boy, are they wrong. Colossians chapter 2: More than enough. Something that is consummate is something that cannot be added to without diminishing or damaging it. Something that is absolutely complete and absolutely perfect. Pretty much every sphere imaginable, that seems like an unattainable ideal, and not a reality, doesn't it? I mean, try to think of something in this world, anything, that you are sure is truly consummate, absolutely complete and absolutely perfect, something that cannot possibly be added to or improved upon.

To get right to the point, in the Epistle to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul is contending that Jesus Christ is consummate. He is preeminent, and there is no possibility of something or someone above Him, and there is no possibility for anyone to add to or improve upon what He has done. Why did he find it necessary to make that point? As Margie was explaining last time, Paul had never been to the city of Colossi or planted any churches in that region of Roman Asia. A Christian named Epaphras had apparently brought the Christian faith to Colossi, probably from the city of Ephesus, which was about a hundred miles to the east and which had become quite a Christian center by this time. A church was born there in Colossi, and at the time of the writing of this letter, it was probably six or seven years old and had grown significantly.

But problems were threatening because of the infiltration of false teachers, and their influence was creating enough confusion that Epaphras traveled all the way to Rome, about a thousand miles, to get Paul's counsel about how to confront and correct them. As usual, the heretics were creating confusion among the young Colossian believers, spreading false ideas about Jesus' identity, as well as perverting the gospel message of salvation by grace through faith in Him. This never changes, does it? This is why Paul begins chapter 2 this way: I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, for those in Laodicea as well—that was a neighboring city—and for all who have not seen me in person. I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the wealth of assurance that comes from understanding God's mystery, that is, Christ.

All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Him. I am saying this so that no one will deceive you with persuasive arguments. He wants them to have full assurance that what they were taught about Jesus and the gospel was the truth. When he says that the assurance of that comes from understanding God's mystery, namely Christ, by mystery he means that who Jesus was and what He accomplished for us by His incarnation in our world and the secret plan of salvation He accomplished at the cross, this is all something no one saw coming. It was a secret plan of God. That God the Son would come out of heaven as a flesh-and-blood man, do what He did for us, was not only unforeseen, it was unimaginable.

Understanding exactly who Christ was and the significance of what He did through His life, death, and resurrection, that's the key to everything for Paul. Christ is at the center of everything relating to God and us. Christ is consummate. We don't have a syllabus of the Colossian heretics' teachings, but we do have Paul's refutations of them here in this letter. Listening to those refutations provides us with clues that we can get a good idea of what they were teaching there. We don't know if this was a unified group, like some organized effort to overtake this church, or whether it was just some persuasive individuals, each advocating for their own particular false ideas.

But from what Paul writes here in chapter 2, we can see three or four areas these false teachers were contradicting the Christian faith as it had been revealed to the apostles and had been taught to the Colossians by Paul. Margie briefly mentioned these last episode. Not surprisingly, because this is how we have seen the enemy operating elsewhere, the root idea in all the false teaching going on in Colossae was the contention that Jesus and what he accomplished were not enough. At verses 8 and 9, Paul writes, Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human traditions, based on elemental forces of this world and not based on Christ. For in him all the fullness of deity dwelt in bodily form. Philosophy means the love of wisdom.

Greek philosophy had saturated as part of the world for centuries. So I think it's safe to say some of the false teachers wrongly influencing the Christians in Colossae were stressing ideas that respected philosophers of the past had popularized, and they were trying to merge these philosophical concepts with Christian ideas. There's nothing wrong with human wisdom until and unless it contradicts God's wisdom. I'll tell you what I mean. Many ideas prevalent in Greek philosophy may have sounded wise, but were simply incompatible with Christianity. For example, the most revered philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, Socrates taught that human reasoning and logic are the best means of ascertaining truth.

Whereas Jesus claimed he came out of heaven to reveal and explain to us the truth. In other words, Christianity teaches that ultimate spiritual truth had to be revealed to us. No amount of human reasoning was going to lead anyone to that truth about who Jesus really was or the purpose and power in what he did. This is why Paul called it a mystery. The most important things that get decided in this life and determine what comes next for us all revolve around Christ, and God has revealed them to us because they cannot be found out on our own. Or another example, most Greek philosophers taught that the human soul is pure and men do evil things only due to ignorance or because they are misguided, while Christianity teaches that humans are born in sin.

It's inherent in our fallen nature, and that's why we sin and are in need of redemption. What a strong assertion Paul makes about Jesus in verse 9 when he says, In him all the fullness of deity dwelt in bodily form. Jesus wasn't another philosopher with alternative ideas. Jesus was God on earth in bodily form. So then or now, we can believe and trust in the ideas of smart people, human philosophers, or we can believe and trust the ideas of Christ, God in human form, who came down out of heaven to tell us the truth. This is what Paul is saying: Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Others in Colossae were pressing the old Judaizer playbook. Jesus is good, but not enough without you also keeping the laws of Moses from the Old Testament and without observing Jewish ceremonies and holy days and so on. We saw that this became a big problem in the Galatian churches, remember? Paul told them that adding law keeping or anything else about religion to Christ as necessary for salvation was making a different gospel, which is no gospel at all. Paul certainly knew something about trying to live under the 600-plus Old Testament laws of Judaism. The idea that anyone must do that successfully to be acceptable to God, that's not good news, he's saying.

In Romans 10, Paul wrote, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes. In other words, forget about trying to earn God's favor by obeying laws and conforming to external religion. Christ's accomplishments for us have brought that all to an end. In our chapter at verse 16 and following, he addresses the Judaizers by saying, Don't let anyone judge you in regard to food or drink or in the matter of festivals or new moons or keeping Sabbath days. These are a shadow of what was to come. The substance is Christ.

Rules about what you can eat and drink, observing Jewish feast days, making animal sacrifices, keeping the Sabbath restrictions, those Old Testament observances all had symbolic meanings. That's what Paul means by shadows. They foreshadowed what Jesus would accomplish during his life, death, and resurrection, but their purpose, he says, has now been completed. These are men's efforts at achieving righteousness by keeping rules and being religious. And then we have Christ's perfect righteousness, which we can have imputed to us by faith, and there's no comparison between those two. Apparently, the Colossian heretics were also blending ideas from mystery religions that were current at the time.

There were many of these cults in the Greco-Roman world. They believed in mystical, out-of-body experiences, interacting with spirit beings, and they claimed they had secret wisdom and transcendent knowledge. The Eleusinian mysteries was one. The Dionysian mysteries was another. Mithraism, the cult of Isis and Osiris, and so on. We can't be sure which of those mystery religions had adherence in Colossae at the time, but this is what Paul is referring to when he says in verse 18, Take care that no one defrauds you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions and dreams, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind and not holding firmly to the head.

By taking their stand on visions and dreams, Paul is pointing to the fact that false cults then and now always trace back to somebody's supposed dreams and visions, someone who claims they have been given new revelation, new spiritual truth. And by saying, rather than holding firmly to the head, Paul means keeping the focus on Christ, who is our head, the head of the Christian faith, who he was and what he has done. He goes on to mention other characteristics of some of these cults, which included controlling what devotees could eat or drink or touch. Teaching that depriving your body of food or sex or normal comforts made you a holier person.

Many throughout history have promoted such ascetic practices, urging their followers to live a monastic lifestyle or deprive themselves of normal relationships, even treating their physical bodies poorly in hopes that somehow this impresses God that they are spiritual. So again, these heretics who had wormed their way into the Colossian church were teaching the members that faith in Jesus was not enough, that there were additional things involved in being a truly spiritual person and having God's favor. Even that Christ's suffering for us was not enough. So maybe crawling on bloodied knees miles to worship at a special shrine would impress God more, or flagellating yourself with a whip every time you committed a sin would prove to God you are worthy. Solomon once wrote, There is nothing new under the sun. The enemy just keeps repackaging wrong ideas for new generations.

But you can mark this down: those he uses as false teachers always diminish Christ and always suggest that faith in what he did at the cross is not enough. It's insufficient. There's more spiritual wisdom and insights than what's in the Bible, after all. These kinds of confusing messages have never been more prevalent than our generation. A person looking for truth now, wanting to understand God now, only needs to click on their computer or TV to be barraged with voices: this teacher and that talk show host, this guru and that professor, this psychologist, that priest, this imam, that influencer, this witch, that mystic. All these voices trying to persuade us they've discovered something beyond Christ, something more, something missing that you need.

Against all that, we have the Word of God, which has never changed. Its message remains: Christ is enough, more than enough, in fact. He's all we need for spiritual life now and a relationship with God forever. Just in Colossians alone, Scripture tells us that Jesus is the Creator of everything that exists, and that all things are held together by His power. We're told that all the fullness of deity dwelt in Him, and He is over all temporal and spiritual authorities and powers, and that in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So Paul is saying to the Colossians, don't listen to these heretics telling you that Jesus is not enough.

It's in Him that you have been made complete. Complete, Paul meant, that they had received through their relationship with Christ all they'd ever need. It's complete because Jesus and what He has done for us is impossible to add to or improve upon. Beyond Paul's extolling of Jesus here in Colossians, elsewhere in the New Testament we're told Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. He is the Great I Am. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

He is full of grace and truth. He is the Prince of Peace. He is the Lamb of God. He is the Friend of sinners. He is our peace. He is the Author and Perfector of our faith.

He is our Redeemer, and He is our righteousness and salvation. And someone is telling you He is not enough? What He came out of heaven to do for us is insufficient? That's nuts. Verse 13 says, When you were dead in your wrongdoings and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our wrongdoings, having canceled 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. The word that jumps out at me there is all, A-L-L.

God made us alive with Christ, having forgiven all our wrongdoings. So wait a minute. If God, as a result of our relationship with Christ, has forgiven all my wrongdoings, all my transgressions against Him, all my shortcomings, then Christ is enough. The philosophers and the legalists and the mystics and all those suggesting we need more, we need something beyond that, we need to do more, understand more, we need Jesus plus something more, whatever their angle, they're all wrong. I like how Paul explains why Jesus is enough for us, because for those of us in Christ, God has canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us. That's His charges against us.

He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to Christ's cross. Typically, when the Romans crucified a criminal, they nailed a sign to the cross listing that person's crimes. Here is what this guy has done that has put him on the cross, the sign was saying. In Paul's word picture, he says God has canceled our debts with Him, His charges against us. How? He nailed them up there on Jesus' cross, and Jesus paid the full penalty for them.

For those of us who are in Christ, Jesus has paid for all our wrongs and all our transgressions against God. And so God has wiped our slate with Him clean, our debts with Him are canceled. Years ago, when we had our house built, I hired a general contractor builder. His name was Price to oversee that project. Mr. Price ran up quite a bill with a local lumber company building supply store during the several months he was constructing our home.

I was paying him draws, but I learned later he was not always paying the store for all the building supplies, and I had no idea about that. When the house was completed, I got a letter shortly from Masten's Building Supply with a very large bill attached to it. It said, As of this date, we have not received payment for all the materials listed below, and there was a long list of things there, tens of thousands of dollars worth of materials that had not been paid for. My immediate reaction was, What? I paid Mr. Price for all this.

I called the store and found out that no, in fact, the bills had never been paid and needed to be within so many days or I would be taken to court. Oh my word, I felt sick, and I knew I had a big problem. The contractor was trying to scam me and leave me with a big debt. After I calmed down, I called the owner of the store and asked for a meeting, and he graciously agreed. When the big day of the meeting came, I was pretty nervous. I couldn't do anything but just go in there and explain the whole situation.

When I got into Mr. Masten's office, he asked me if the materials listed on the bill sent to me had been used on my house, and I said, Yes, I honestly believe they have. So why are you here? I explained what had happened. He heard me out, and to my surprise and great relief, when we were done talking, he said, I can see it's Mr. Price that owes us this money, not you.

And he handed me a copy of that bill that had my name on it, and across the paper he had written, Canceled. I felt a huge burden lift off me as I walked out of that store that day. Somebody else was going to pay that debt. It was not on me anymore. Paul is telling the Colossian believers, Jesus has paid your debt in full. God has canceled it.

All your transgressions, all your wrongdoings, they were nailed to His cross. He fully paid for them there. They are not on you anymore. Hallelujah! If you've received Jesus as your Savior and Lord, your debt with God has been canceled too. Don't let anybody tell you that Christ and what He did at Calvary was not enough.

I had a funny memory too when I was thinking about this chapter, and Colossians in general, really. When I was 17 or 18, our youth group was at a summer camp once, and we were in an informal discussion one afternoon with a youth pastor, and he was asking us what our favorite book in the Bible was. One after another, my friends were saying either the Gospel of John or the Book of Romans, or I think someone mentioned the Proverbs. These were kind of the obvious expected answers as parts of the Bible that we had heard lots of messages on. But coming to me, I remember thinking, I don't want to go with the obvious, and I just said, Colossians, for no apparent reason except that it's a lesser-known New Testament writing, I guess. I think I wanted to appear to be a deep student of the Word.

Thank God our youth pastor didn't ask me why Colossians was my favorite, because I didn't know the first thing about Colossians at the time. But he didn't. He just said, Colossians, hmm, that's interesting, and he moved on to someone else. Well, since then, I have come to appreciate Colossians for real, and one of my favorite personal challenges comes from this chapter. I hope you will take it to heart too. It's in verses 6 and 7 where it says, Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and abounding in thanksgiving.

I'm very thankful that someone shared the gospel with me and that I've received Jesus as Savior and Lord. I'm also very thankful that I was taught and established in the Christian faith. Now I want to walk in Him, meaning live out my Christianity in the day to day, and I want to stay deeply rooted in Him and built up in Him because Christ is enough. He's more than enough. He's the consummate Savior, leader, and friend of sinners like me. This has been Paul for Share the Word.

Another incredible podcast, Paul. Once we understand that Christ is supreme and He is enough, the Bible tells us very clearly that by making the choice to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior of your life, we are saved. But what does that mean? It means that that choice gives you the ability to either spend eternity in heaven with God and all of your loved ones who've accepted Jesus, or we spend it apart from them. My friends, it's not what we do on this earth that will get us into heaven. It's when we acknowledge and we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, recognizing His power, His authority, and majesty as God.

And when you believe with all of your heart that God raised Him from the dead, that's when you're saved. No one can make that choice for you. Jesus said very clearly, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me. If you've made that choice today, everyone at Share the Word would love to hear about it. Email me at tony@sharetheword.org.