Christ or empty world-views?
Leader’s note: After declaring the gospel in chapter 1, and before moving on to a call for holy living in chapter 3, this passage warns of choosing a dead-end road of pseudo Christianity that comes from confusing faith with worldly philosophy.
Read: Colossians 2:6-23
1) As we received Christ, so we must live (lit. walk) in him: i.e. how?
- What must the receiving of and the walking in Christ have in common? cf Ro 1:17
- Read Gal 3:2-3. What does it mean to be “made perfect by the flesh”, and why would anyone want to try it?
2) What does the word ‘philosophy’ (v8) mean today?
- What did it mean to the Colossians? [belief systems, and sects within a religion; e.g. Sadducees and Pharisees were ‘philosophies’]
- What false doctrines were the Colossians confronted with?
- How is asceticism idolized in today’s culture where everything goes? cf. sports, work “ethics”; health obsession, nutrition, eating disorders…
- Why do people always come up with ascetic religious systems?
- Only 3 ways exist to deal with the insatiable desires of the body: Self-indulgence (hedonism), suppression (legalism/asceticism), or Christianity. What makes Christianity a third way?
- v8 ‘elemental principles (gr. stoicheion) of the world’: NIV (and then ESV) popularize one interpretation that these are ‘elemental spirits‘.* What synonym did Paul himself use instead even within the very same sentence to define what this expression means? => Which “human traditions” in particular are so universal that they can be called ‘basic principles’ (pl.) even of the entire world (gr. kosmos)
- Why are austereness and asceticism universally regarded as meritorious virtues? What has religious legalism in common with this belief system? cf Gal 4:9
- (How) did Jesus expose this system as bankrupt and literally shame its champions, v15?
- As Martin Luther translated the Greek here literally, God “stripped the rulers and authorities” to shame them. How?*
- v23: How does this philosophy appear to be spiritual, and why is it not?
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- lit. “…not in any honor (but) unto satisfying of the flesh” (YLT, KJV): Either in the sense that it denies the body the honor for which God created it (such as marriage for those desiring sex, food for those who hunger, sleep for those who are tired etc.). Or “…not in any honor, but…”, in the sense that asceticism in reality indulges the flesh (by self congratulation), rather than restraining it. Why are both unspiritual? v20
3) How can believers avoid to be sucked into the vortex of this basic belief system of this world, and without falling for worldly hedonism instead?
- What did Paul give them to resist this pull? – What does it mean to be ‘complete’ and ‘filled’ in Christ?
- What makes a right standing with God and a clear conscience central?
- Re-read v9-10a. Paul made two seemingly incredible assertions there. How does one give credibility to the other? How did they answer to the world’s philosophy in Colossae, as well as in our times?
- vv11-13: What is the role of baptism in freeing Christians from this traditional old way of living?
- Which baptism, if it is not by human hands? cf Ro 2:28-29
- Therefore, in what sense are believers already buried together with Christ, v12?
4) Personal & application
- A common objection against Christianity is that it is designed to make people feel guilty to thereby take advantage of them (manipulation). After reading this passage, how do you answer this charge?
- Are you attracted to that system?
- If not, how do you infer from this chapter in Colossians how we might escape the pull of such legalism, but without condoning hedonism?
* If the metaphor in v15 of “stripping the authorities” were to be understood literally as a disarmament, why would Paul elsewhere exhort us to use faith as a shield against Satan’s fiery darts, and to put on the helmet of salvation? If the enemy had literally been disarmed, such precautions would be superfluous. Therefore, if “rulers and authorities” in v15 mean demonic forces at all (as inferred from Eph 6:12) and not only represent Pilate and the Sanhedrin and their alikes of this world, then the idea of “stripping” them of anything surely cannot mean to take away their arms.
Therefore, a more plausible reading here is that those who triumphed over Jesus were defeated and even “stripped naked” only in the sense that their murder of Jesus shamed them by exposing to the whole world the hypocrisy and emptiness beneath the disguise of their boastful merit-based legalism.
In other words, those in charge of administering the law crucified Jesus. That they did it in the name of defending the law exposed to public view how incapable the law is to save.
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