Playing by the Rules

Series on Colossians

I The Mystery of Christ

C The Regulation of False Teachers

4 Works

Text: 2:20-23

Introduction

The great divide in religious thought is between two ways of salvation. One is characterized by works, legalism, bondage, man’s righteousness and human invention. The other way is characterized by faith, grace, freedom, God’s righteousness, and divine intervention. The former is man’s religion and the latter is God’s revelation. All the religions in the world, save one, are man’s efforts to justify himself. The one that is different is the Christian gospel which is about God’s free offer of justification by grace. Man’s religion appears to men to be wise and God’s appears to them to be foolish, but in reality it is through the foolishness of preaching that men are saved because it is actually the wisdom of God. Now of course, good works are wonderful and needful when done for the glory of God. But when they are done to earn His favor they are bad. The renowned missionary to China, Hudson Taylor understood the wonder of grace. He once wrote, “I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help him. I ended up by asking him to do his work through me.” In a similar vein Mother Teresa in India said, “I’m still convinced that it is He and not I. That’s why I was not afraid; I knew that if the work was mine it would die with me. But I knew it was His work, that it will live and bring much good. If the work is looked at just by our own eyes and only from our own way, naturally, we ourselves can do nothing. But in Christ we can do all things. That’s why this work has become possible, because we are convinced that it is He, He who is working with us and through us in the poor and for the poor.” These would be foreign ideas to the heretics in Colosse. They were all about their own glory. Let us look at the associations, axioms and appearances that claimed their devotion.

I Associations

Do you remember Jesus parable of the Pharisee and the publican? He described the Pharisee as a man standing on the street corner advertising his righteousness. He thanked God that he was not like other men for he fasted and prayed and gave alms frequently. He kept the rules. That is the kind of person Paul is talking about in verse 20, Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules? Right now we are involved in one of our oft repeated election cycles. You cannot escape the hundreds of political ads. They always praise the virtues of the sponsoring candidate and depreciate the character of the opposition. Does anybody actually believe this trash? When a man’s religion is rules keeping he always ends up putting other people down. That’s what the Pharisee did and as P. T. Barnum said you can fool most of the people most of the time, but Jesus is never fooled. He asked which man went down to his house justified, the Pharisee who bragged, or the publican who cried out for mercy, and said “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus is never fooled by men’s self-righteous efforts to please Him. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Thus, whether men attempt to achieve righteousness through observance of the rules or by mystical experiences, they utterly fail. The rules of which Paul writes in this text are religious rules that men have invented and Paul describes them as the principles of this world. We are all familiar with what we call the “rat race.” In matters of money and fame the race is to see who has the most admirers or who has the most toys. Its either bigger crowds, or bigger cars and boats, houses, and bank accounts. What we don’t all see is that for centuries most people in the world have been involved in a different rat race in religious exercises. My religion is better than your religion, my church is bigger than your church, my prayers are longer than your prayers, my donations are bigger than your donations. Right now we are engaged in a struggle with the adherents of a religion who unabashedly say they believe that if you don’t agree with them you would be better off dead, and they plan to help you. Christians, says Paul, have died with Christ, died to the rat race, died to self-righteousness, and died to self glorification. The basic principles of this world focus exclusively on your achievements, but the basic principle of the Gospel is Christ’s achievement on the cross. Thus Paul writes in Galatians 6:14, May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

II The Axioms

The view that the body was evil eventually found its way into the church. According to the church Father Athanasius, Anthony, the founder of Christian monasticism, never changed his vest or washed his feet. He was outdone, however, by Simeon Stylites, who spent the last thirty-six years of his life atop a fifty-foot pillar. Simeon mistakenly thought the path to spirituality lay in exposing his body to the elements and withdrawing from the world. Their feats have been emulated by monks throughout church history. Even Martin Luther, before discovering the truth of justification by faith, nearly wrecked his health through asceticism. God may call some to a life of self-denial, but not as an attempt to gain spirituality. Here as set forth in verses 21 and 22 Paul decries any attempt to win God’s favor by self denial, “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Jesus taught exactly the same thing in Matthew 15 when the Pharisees complained about His disciples eating with unwashed hands. In verses 10,11, and 15-20, we read, Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them…” Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.” “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” The hand washing in view was not a health precaution such as you hear during the flu season. I have eaten in a dining room at the King David hotel in Jerusalem and when the Jewish people enter they observe a ritual of 3 hand-washings that is complex and precise. Not only is this practice not a health precaution but according to New York doctors in Orthodox Jewish communities it may actually contribute to the spread of disease because the water is cold and there is no soap. The point here is simply that this is a commandment of men much like the other 613 commandments prescribed in the Talmud including the dietary ones, but in Colosse it was associated with an effort to encourage a mystical connection to God. Historically there was a three-fold path to God through mysticism, and the first step was purging or purification of the body. Sadly some modern Fundamentalists have equated such acts of self-denial with holiness. Let us beware of thinking that holiness consist in avoiding allegedly worldly practices. All these do is puff men up, but they bring no one closer to God.

III Appearances

Almost everything in the twenty-first century both in the church and outside of it is gauged by appearances. In the world it is how big is my car or my house, or my investment portfolio, or my following. In the church it is how many members are in my church, how many services we have, how successful our programs are, or our annual church income. Such appearances do not matter to God for man looks on the outward appearance but God looks upon the heart. Thus Paul writes in verse 23, Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. It is certainly quite foolish to base one’s hope for victory over sin and for complete salvation on anything which in the process of nature is doomed to destruction. Not only does this legalism of self-denial demote the importance of divine grace, it also focuses primary attention on the physical “what” rather than the theological “why,” so it is actually counterproductive. Nevertheless in their culture as well as in ours people are impressed with such dedication. They whisper in awe about how humble and religious such self-deniers are. This just flatters the pride of these heretics. They appear so wise. A modern example would be Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Even she sees the misplaced admiration of people based on appearances. She wrote, “Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.” Another example of false appearance from the twentieth century is Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian born medical missionary, renowned musician, theologian and author. He was admired all over the world for burying himself in the dark continent and ministering in a hospital to needy Africans. He received the Nobel Peace Prize. However, his theological work, “The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” did much to undermine historic Christianity. He maintained that the life of Jesus must be interpreted in the light of Jesus’ own convictions, which reflected late Jewish eschatology and he writes: “The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth and died to give his work its final consecration never existed.” He maintained that Jesus believed that the world would end soon and that he was sadly and badly mistaken. He even wrote a paper defending the sanity of Jesus which had been called into question by his own views. Thus the great spiritual Christian was neither very spiritual or very Christian. So much for appearances. In the final analysis the practices that justify us before men do not justify us before God. Only Jesus can do that.