The Deficiency of Deviant Doctrine
Colossians 2:16–19
© Mike Riccardi
Introduction
Well, after a few weeks away, it is a delight for me to be with you again this evening, as we return to our series in Paul’s letter to the Colossians. So, please turn with me in your Bibles to Colossians chapter 2.
And we’ve found that the Book of Colossians is preeminently a declaration of the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus in and above all things. And Paul is doing this, because false teachers have come, aiming to persuade the Colossians of their teaching—a blend of Jewish legalism and pagan mysticism—which amounted to an attack on the sufficiency of the salvation believers receive by faith alone in Christ. And we come this evening to the point in Paul’s letter where he confronts the false teachers head-on.
But I wonder if, as you hear that, you might be tempted to think, “Another sermon about false teaching and false teachers? Man, why do we always have to be calling someone else out? Why can’t we focus on the positive? We should be known for what we’re for, not what we’re against.” If you’re tempted to think that way, you certainly would have a lot in common with many of the respected thought leaders in contemporary evangelicalism. But you wouldn’t have much in common with those who wrote the New Testament.
Now, I do think there are some people who get so preoccupied with the muckraking that they lose sight of the beauty of Jesus. For some, confronting false teaching seems to be a sport. But we can’t swing the pendulum from, “I don’t want to be a heresy hunter,” to “I only want to be positive and never confront error.” The genuine pastor—the faithful undershepherd of Christ’s sheep—not only knows the sheep, and feeds the sheep, and leads the sheep; he also protects the sheep from the wolves, who often come to them in sheep’s clothing, looking to devour the flock. Because we are saved by faith in the truth, false teaching is an existential threat to our very souls. And because Christ is rightly worshiped only insofar as His person and work are truly known for what they are, and not what we have imagined them to be, false doctrine obscures the beauty of Jesus from the adoring eyes of His people. And that sight of Him is the very marrow of our spiritual life and health.
This is why, in Matthew 7:15, Jesus warned His disciples to “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” In 2 Peter 2:1, Peter warns that there will be false teachers among the church “who will secretly introduce destructive heresies.” The Apostle John counseled the churches of Asia Minor not to believe everyone who comes claiming to speak for God, but to test the spirits, “because,” he says, “many false prophets have gone out into the world.” And in Acts 20:29–30, Paul himself says, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” The New Testament is riddled with warnings to the church against false teachers.
And so along with Jesus and the other Apostles, Paul’s ministry is devoted to safeguarding the church from the disastrous effects of false doctrine—just a like a good shepherd ought to protect the sheep. Paul does this in nearly all of his epistles. In First Corinthians he confronts those who deny the bodily resurrection. In Second Corinthians, there’s a four-chapters-long polemic against the triumphalists. In Galatians he takes the Judaizers to task. In the Thessalonian letters he confronts those who say the resurrection has taken place. And we could go on.
But here in Colossians, he comes face to face with these syncretists, who have blended aspects of ceremonialism, originating in the now-fulfilled Mosaic Covenant, with aspects of religious mysticism, drawing from pagan philosophy and mystery religions, alongside a moralistic asceticism—a sort of self-atoning merit system based on the harsh treatment of the body and abstaining from natural comforts. They would have definitely said Jesus was necessary. But it’s just that He wasn’t quite enough. Christ needs to be supplemented with ceremonies, and visions, and manmade rules.
And Paul’s response has been to say, chapter 2 verse 6, “No, my dear Colossians. You must walk in Christ by grace through faith, even as you have received Christ by grace through faith. You live the Christian life in the same manner in which you began the Christian life. We don’t grow out of Jesus, like an infant grows out of his newborn clothes into his toddler clothes. We don’t grow out of Jesus; we grow into Him. We press further and further into Him as we grow into maturity.”
And it’s as if they say, “But Paul, are you sure? They’re coming to us with some awfully sophisticated, awfully clever, awfully fine-sounding philosophical argumentation!” And he says, verse 8, “All of that is just empty deception. There’s nothing for you there. In Christ,” verse 9, “dwells all the fullness of Deity. In Him,” verse 10, “you have been filled.” Worldly philosophies are empty. All fullness is in Christ. And He dispenses that fullness to all who trust in Him. Spiritual life and vitality and satisfaction are in Christ alone.
And then, in verse 11, Paul shifts from the supremacy of the Savior, to the sufficiency of His salvation. Verses 11 to 13 teach us that through Christ, God performs the spiritual heart surgery of regeneration and births new life in us where there had only been death. Verse 12 says that Christ unites us to Himself, so that His death and burial was our death and burial, and His resurrection was our resurrection. The end of verse 13 says that He freely forgives us all our sins—as far as the east is from the west, at the bottom of the ocean floor! Verse 14 says that Christ satisfies the law’s holy demand for justice against us by bearing our curse in Himself, and blots out the record of our transgressions with His own precious blood. And verse 15 says Christ has triumphed over every spiritual force that would ever seek to do us harm. The heart is renewed, sin is forgiven, the law is satisfied, and Satan is conquered. Paul tells us: When you have Jesus, you have all that you need—a perfectly sufficient Savior who brings a perfectly sufficient salvation!
And then, in view of all of that, in verse 16, we read, “Therefore.” On the basis of how supreme Christ is as Savior—in light of how sufficient the salvation is that He graces us with—this is the consequence for those false teachers who would trouble your conscience by pressing you to seek something in addition to Jesus. Let’s read our text for this evening. Colossians chapter 2, verses 16 to 19: “Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—17things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. 18Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in [false humility] and the worship of the angels, [entering into] visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.”
This passage sets before us the clear contrast between the sufficiency of our Supreme Savior, and the deficiency of deviant doctrine. The phony substitutes that the false teachers are saying provide spiritual fullness cannot deliver on what they promise. They are clouds without water—a spiritual mirage. But, as always, Christ supplies the spiritual life that causes true, lasting, and God-honoring spiritual growth.
And we’ll work our way through this text in three parts. In verses 16 and 17, we find the deficiency of Jewish legalism. In verse 18, we have the deficiency of pagan mysticism. But in verse 19, we’ll see the sufficiency of Christ supremacism.
I. The Deficiency of Jewish Legalism (vv. 16–17)
First, consider the deficiency of Jewish legalism. Because the Colossians had been filled to completion in Christ, because they had received spiritual circumcision by their union to Him, because the certificate of debt consisting of the law’s decrees was canceled out and nailed to Christ’s cross, “Therefore,” they were to pay no mind to anyone who would seek to condemn them for not observing the ceremonies of the Mosaic Law. This is what verse 16 means: “No one is to act as your judge”—no one is to pass judgment on you or condemn you—“for failing to keep Mosaic Law’s regulations about ‘food or drink,’ or about special religious holidays, like the feasts, or the new moon celebrations, or the Sabbath. And if someone does seek to pass judgment on you for your failure to observe these things, that judgment is to be disregarded.”
Paul speaks of two categories of Mosaic ceremonies that the false teachers were trying to press upon the consciences of the Colossians: laws about diet, and laws about days. In the first place, he speaks about laws about “food or drink,” or “eating and drinking.” This is a reference to the dietary laws of Leviticus 11 and elsewhere that prescribed for Israel what food was considered clean and what was considered unclean to them—those animals which chew the cud and divide the hoof, versus those which chew the cud and do not divide the hoof, and so on. Leviticus 11 is where we find the famous laws prohibiting Israel from eating pork and shellfish. There weren’t too many regulations about beverages, but there definitely were several. Israel was not to drink water from contaminated vessels (Lev 11:34–36); the priests were prohibited from drinking wine or strong drink when coming into the tent of meeting (Lev 10:9); and anyone dedicating themselves to the Lord by a Nazirite vow was also required to abstain from wine and strong drink (Num 6:3).
Then, Paul moves from diet to days. He speaks of “a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day.” And these three words occur together several places in the Greek translation of the Old Testament—almost as a triadic formula, indicating Israel’s holy days. Second Chronicles 31:3 speaks of “the burnt offerings for the sabbaths and for the new moons and for the fixed festivals, as it is written in the law of Yahweh.” And 2 Chronicles 8:13 names the three annual feasts: “the Feast of Unleavened Bread”—or the Passover, when Israel celebrated their deliverance out of slavery in Egypt; “the Feast of Weeks,” or sometimes called the Feast of the Firstfruits, which occurred 50 days after the Passover, as a celebration of the grain harvest and also a memorial of the giving of the Law at Sinai; and about four months after that was “the Feast of Booths,” or Tabernacles, which commemorated God’s divine protection of Israel as they sojourned through the wilderness (Lev 23:34, 42–43).
“New moon” refers to Israel’s celebration of the first day of each month, in which they were to offer sacrifices of worship to Yahweh—out of gratitude for His goodness to them for another month, as a renewal of their commitment to Him, and as a fresh consecration of themselves to God. And then Paul speaks of “a Sabbath.” This has reference to any kind of sabbath day—whether the sabbatic year of Jubilee, occurring on the fiftieth year (Lev 25:8–13), the sabbath year of the land, occurring one year in seven to give the land rest from being harvested (Lev 25:2–7), or the sabbath day, Israel’s Saturday rest from their labor, which was set aside for the worship of God, prescribed as the very sign of the Mosaic Covenant between God and Israel (Exod 31:16–17).
Paul says: no one may hold any believer in Christ guilty for failing to observe the Mosaic Law with respect to any one of those things. Why? Verse 17: because those were “things which are a mere shadow of what [was] to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.” Those ceremonies were only ever designed to be temporary foreshadowings that pointed to a greater reality that was to come. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 1 says something very similar: “For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices…make perfect those who draw near.”
You see, a shadow has no substance of its own. If you see someone’s shadow on the ground, you can’t touch that shadow, or pick up that shadow. It has no substance. It’s only an indicator that something of substance is nearby. Paul is saying, “These ceremonial laws—food and drink, feast and new moon and sabbath day—these things were just shadows that indicated that Someone of substance was nearby! that there was Someone coming who would be the fulfillment of all those ceremonies signified! And that Someone,” Paul says, “is Jesus.” The substance belongs to Christ, whom Hebrews 9:11 calls the “high priest of the good things to come”.
The shadow of the Feast of Tabernacles celebrated God’s protection of His people as they dwelt in tents for forty years in the wilderness. But the substance comes, John 1:14, when the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us in the tent of our own human nature, as He sojourned through the wilderness of this world into the land of promise with His Father. The shadow of the Passover celebrated Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt by the blood of a slain lamb. The substance comes, 1 Corinthians 5:7, when “Christ our Passover Lamb [is] sacrificed,” whose “precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless,” redeems His people from our slavery to sin. The shadow of the Feast of the Weeks celebrated the first fruits of the yearly harvest. The substance comes, Acts chapter 2, when the Risen Son sends the first fruits of the Holy Spirit from His Father to His Church on the Day of Pentecost. The shadow of the New Moon was the occasion for God’s people to consecrate themselves to Him anew. The substance comes, Titus 2:14, when our great God and Savior appears “to purify for Himself a people for His own possession.” The shadow of the Sabbath gave God’s people a day of rest from their labors. The substance comes, Matthew 11, when we, the weary and heavy-laden, take the yoke of Christ upon us, and find rest for our souls, as our greater Joshua, Hebrews 4, grants us the spiritual rest from our works by His grace, and points us toward that eternal rest in the light of His countenance forever.
The dietary laws only ever existed to set God’s people apart from the nations, because He was the Holy God who was set apart from the gods of the nations. But now that He has come whose flesh is true food, and whose blood is true drink, John 6:55, the shadow of the laws concerning food and drink find fulfillment in the substance of “the bread of life,” who says, “he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”
And so, if all of those ceremonies find their fulfillment in the coming of Christ Himself, how backward—how preposterous it would be—to insist on devotion to the shadows now that the substance they pointed to has come! Galatians 3:24 says, “The Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ.” We who belong to Him by faith are no longer under the Mosaic Covenant; we’re under the New Covenant. To cling to those shadows, then, would be tantamount to saying that the substance hasn’t come—that Christ hasn’t yet come, and that we should still be looking for the Messiah. And that is just unthinkable.
And so this is why we read in Romans 14:17 that “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” It’s why Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:3–4 that we ought not to “abstain from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude.” It’s because Jesus, Mark 7:19, “declared all foods clean.” And as He says to Peter in Acts 10:15, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.”
This is why Paul can speak so freely about observing days in Romans 14:5: “One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.” That is incompatible with demanding that every Christian observe a particular holy day, or sabbath day. To be sure, we ought to set aside the Lord’s Day for the worship of God in the assembly of the saints, and for rest and reflection in commemoration of His resurrection. But to insist on sabbath-keeping, like the Seventh Day Adventists do—or even to suggest that Sunday has become the Christian sabbath—is, in my judgment, incompatible with these texts. In fact, Paul goes so far as to say that he fears for the Galatians, that perhaps he has labored over them in vain—that maybe they aren’t even Christians—because, Galatians 4:10, “You observe days and months and seasons and years”—things which he calls “the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again.”
He’s saying, “Don’t you realize that those were shadows whose substance has come in Christ? Don’t you realize that to submit to the judgment of those who would condemn you for not observing these ceremonies are merely trying to enslave you to a system that Christ has already freed you from?” Galatians 5:1: “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore…do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” “No one is to act as your judge” in these matters. No man can subject you to the bondage of any religious ceremony that Christ has fulfilled and therefore liberated us from. No law upon your conscience is legitimate that does not flow directly from the law of Christ under the New Covenant.
Do you hear how insistent Paul is that Christians not submit themselves to the yoke of legalism? We are bound not to be bound by any cords except those of what the Apostle James calls “the law of liberty” in Christ (1:25; 2:12). One commentator puts it like this. He says, “It is the duty of Christians, when ceremonial rites are imposed upon them under the plea of necessity, of righteousness, or of merit, to reject [them], and to despise those masters of ceremonies” (Davenant, 1:480). It is our duty to reject legalism! “Do not be subject!” “Let no one condemn you!”
And so, dear people, whether it’s syncretist false teachers trying to bring the Colossians back under the Mosaic ceremonies, or whether it’s present-day teachers—or even fellow-professing-believers in the visible church—listen carefully: pay no mind to those who make “conformity to man-made rules the measure of spirituality” (MacArthur, 116). That legalism may take one of two forms: the more obvious error is when someone says you can’t be declared righteous before God unless you add works to your faith. The more subtle error is the kind of conscience-binding legalism that says you aren’t really a mature Christian, or a sound Christian, or a solid Christian, unless you conform to some set of cultural or moral preferences that go beyond the teaching of the Scriptures.
“A mature Christian wouldn’t distract himself with the frivolity of sports.” “A truly solid believer wouldn’t eat that, or drink that.” “A sound Christian doesn’t miss Sunday night service.” And it’s tough, because the Word of God does give us principles that have implications for our choices of entertainment, and recreational time. It does give us wisdom to apply to our eating and drinking habits. It does have implications for our dress, and our language, and the priorities of our calendar. But when we start filling in the white spaces in our Bibles, when we start making up our own rules, and using them as a standard we impose upon others to judge their faithfulness to Christ—even if we impose that standard only in our hearts—that we veer into the deficiency of legalism that Paul denounces here.
And he’ll say, in verse 23, that that kind of thing may have the appearance of wisdom. It seems in some manner reasonable that if we add stricter rules around the Scripture, we’ll be sure never to break the real rules of Scripture. But he says, that kind of self-made, man-made, legalistic religion, is “of no value against fleshly indulgence.” It doesn’t restrain the flesh! The flesh is not subdued by rules. In fact, it’s only stirred up by them (Rom 7:7–8). The dutiful rule-keepers take pride in their rule-keeping, and they make their spirituality to consist in the performance of external duties. And those who can’t summon enough willpower to keep the man-made rules, well, they give up hope of ever growing to maturity in the Christian life. And they either (a) stop battling the flesh at all, because, “I’m never going to be able to keep all those commands; I might as well live it up!” or (b) they keep trying, and they live with unspeakable shame and despair, because they feel like they can never be acceptable to God.
That is the deficiency of legalism for true, spiritual fullness. Imagine turning away from the fullness that is in Christ—the substance of all these shadows and the fulfillment of all these ceremonies—for the emptiness of legalism! Paul says: Christian, don’t let it happen to you!
II. The Deficiency of Pagan Mysticism (v. 18)
Well, in the second place, consider not only the deficiency of Jewish legalism, but also, number two: the deficiency of pagan mysticism. Verse 18: “Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in [false humility] and the worship of the angels, [entering into] visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind.”
Just as the Colossians were to let no one become their judge, in verse 16, so here they are commanded, “Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize.” That phrase translates the single Greek verb, katabrabeúo. In extrabiblical Greek, the simple form of the verb, brabeúo, was used to refer the task of an umpire, or a referee, or a judge in the games, who would award the crown of laurels to the victor in the competition. That’s where “prize” comes from; a prize is a brabeíon. By adding the preposition kata- to the verb, it gives it a negative or even evil connotation. And so katabrabeúo comes to mean: to unrighteously disqualify, to defraud—to rob the winner of the race of his rightly deserved crown.
He’s saying, “This is what these false teachers are trying to do to you!” Elsewhere, throughout his letters, Paul describes the Christian life as a race that we run. And the prize for which we run is, Philippians 3:14, “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” in which we receive that “unfading crown of glory,” 1 Peter 5:4—that “crown of righteousness,” 2 Timothy 4:8, which “the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award…on that day to all who have loved His appearing.”
And so he’s saying, “By seeking to turn you away from the simplicity and sufficiency of Christ, over to the mysticism of false humility and angel worship and mystical visions, these infiltraters would steal your crown from you! If you wander after their mysticism, you will lose your crown. Don’t let them take your crown from you!” But also at the same time, he’s saying, “Don’t let them convince you that you need all their super-spiritual supplements to Jesus, and that without them you’re some sort of second-class Christian.”
And then Paul describes the nature of the kind of defrauding these false teachers are attempting to perpetrate against the Colossians in three ways. First, “by delighting in false humility and the worship of the angels.” Many translations have “by delighting in self-abasement,” and so several interpreters take this phrase to refer to ascetic practices—severe treatment of the body that would prepare a worshiper to receive heavenly visions, which would include the worship of angels. And that certainly is a possibility. But the term itself is tapeinophrosune: literally, “lowliness of mind.” Which, of course, usually, is a good thing. The term is used positively in chapter 3 verse 12: “Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility.” But here in 2:18 the connotation is plainly negative, and so it refers to a false humility. And the grammar of the original closely links this false humility with the worship of angels. And so other commentators believe this refers to a kind of phony humility that pretends to be modest by suggesting that we’re unworthy to approach God directly in worship, and so therefore we ought to seek the intercession of the angels, who are creatures like we are, though more glorious than we are, and so function as a class of mediators between God and men.
Not only was that an established thought in Platonic philosophy, it was especially common in that region of Phrygia and Pisidia for people to believe that angels were sort of semi-divine orderers of the cosmos, and that they could be invoked to ward off evil and provide protection. But of course: that is nothing more than pagan idolatry. To look to the angels as mediators in this way is nothing less than worshiping them. And in Matthew 4:10, the Lord Jesus Himself quotes Deuteronomy 6:13 to Satan, who entreats the Lord to worship him: He says, “It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.” Angels are not to be worshiped, even as we’re reminded in Revelation 19:10. The Apostle John falls at the feet of the angel to worship him, and the angel replies, “Do not do that! I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God.”
And besides that, what better Mediator do we need than Christ, in whom all the fullness of deity dwells, and who is Himself fully human just like we are! You can’t say either of those things of the angels. “There is one Mediator between God and men: the Man Christ Jesus.” And so to place any other mediator than Christ between us and God is to take what is Christ’s and give it to mere fellow-creatures—whether they be angels, as here, or whether they be the virgin Mary and the panoply of the saints, whom the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches make into co-mediators, and commit this very error that is condemned by Paul in this verse.
It’s nothing less than paganism—than gross idolatry—wrapped in the cloak of humility, which is no true humility at all. Both the Colossian false teachers, and the false teachers of Rome and Constantinople, suggest that we mustn’t vaunt ourselves directly into the presence of God, but should humbly approach Him through the angels, or the saints, or Mary. But listen: deviating from the biblical prescriptions for worship and inventing worship practices on the basis of what we think is humble is not humility. It’s pride. God tells us that we are to “come boldly unto the throne of grace,” Hebrews 4:16, precisely because we have a mediator who shares our very nature! We don’t need to sheepishly search for other mediators. All that we could ever want or need is in Him, and He invites us to come to Him with confidence.
Well, then Paul says these false teachers—and it seems he singles out one man in particular—he is “entering into visionshe has seen.” Some translations will have “going on in detail about visions” (ESV)—that is, he’s “entering into” them in the sense that he’s always talking about them, bragging that he’s receiving them and relating them as if they reveal the secret keys to spiritual enlightenment and success. Other translations say “taking his stand on visions” (NAS)—“entering” as in setting foot upon something, and so taking a stand in the sense that that is what he bases his legitimacy upon. Not an appeal to Scripture—to received apostolic doctrine—but to the unverifiable, mystical revelations that he claims he’s receiving from heaven.
This is mysticism proper—the belief that spiritual truth may be attained by looking within oneself, being directed by their own feelings or intuition or subjective experiences, and then attributing those things to God, so as to justify it and give it authority. Some of the worst heresies and most egregious perversions of sound doctrine have started with claims of such revelations—from Muhammad’s vision of the angel Gabriel, supposedly receiving the revelation of the Koran and beginning the false religion of Islam; to Joseph Smith’s vision that told him not to join any current church, and his later visions of the angel Moroni that directed him to found the cult of Mormonism; to Ellen G. White’s numerous visions that spawned the Seventh-Day Adventist cult; all the way down to the twisted manipulations of the Charismatic movement—from Agnes Ozman, to William Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival; from Kenneth Copeland and all the rest of the prosperity Gospel phonies, to Mark Driscoll and his pornographic divinations. What untold mischief has been perpetrated against the truth all under the banner of, “God told me”!
One’s own supposéd visions are not what sound teachers appeal to for spiritual authority. Scripture alone is God’s infallible and inerrant revelation to mankind. Biblical teaching founded upon Scripture is objective, and accessible, and verifiable. Visions and impressions and emotional experiences are subjective, often inaccessible because they’re internal and unrepeatable, and unverifiable. And so as Pastor John would say: when teachers justify their teaching by appealing to revelations that no one but them can see, hold on to your wallet! The only right response to, “The Lord told me,” is, “What verse?” I love what John Calvin says about this. He writes, “Truly all the wisdom that men have from themselves is mere wind: hence there is nothing solid except in the word of God and the illumination of [that word by] the Spirit” (198).
And that brings me to the next thing Paul says—namely, that such false teachers as the one troubling them are “inflated without cause by [their] fleshly mind.” In claiming to have access to revelation that no one else received, and in using that pretension to make other believers think they were deficient in their spiritual progress, and to condemn them for not having attained to this rarified air, is nothing but spiritual arrogance. It is to be inflated—puffed up—without cause. They claimed to have access to spiritual fullness? Paul says the only thing they’re full of is the hot air that puffs them up in their own arrogance. And he says that’s done by their fleshly mind, which is an especial thumb in the eye to these false teachers, who believed that matter was inherently evil. They may have appealed to their spiritual mind for these revelations, and the secret wisdom they dispensed as a result of them, but Paul says, “Your mind is fleshly! It’s carnal! It is not in subjection to the Spirit of God!”
And so, Paul says to the Colossians, again: Pay these false teachers no mind. Don’t be defrauded by their claims that you need all of their supplemental additions to Jesus for spiritual fullness. All that is is false humility, self-made religion, mystical invention, and spiritual arrogance. No, dear people, all the fullness of deity is in Christ alone! He is full of all grace! He ‘is able to make all grace abound to you! so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed’” (2 Cor 9:8). Don’t be defrauded by phonies when you’ve got the real thing!
III. The Sufficiency of Christ Supremacism (v. 19)
And that thought leads us very naturally to our third point, which has really been the point all along. We have seen the deficiency of Jewish legalism, and the deficiency of pagan mysticism. Now we come in verse 19 to the sufficiency of Christ supremacism. Paul says, “not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.” The great deficiency of both legalism and mysticism is that they sever you from the sufficiency of Christ, the supreme One, who is the only source of true spiritual growth.
Any time you wander away after new doctrines, new worship, new means of salvation (cf. Davenant, 1:512), which have their origin in man’s innovations and not in God’s sufficient Word, you are not holding fast to—not clinging to—the Head of the Church! You claim to be members of Christ’s body—Romans 12:5, 1 Corinthians 12:27, Ephesians 5:23–30—but your deviation from the exclusivity of His mediation and from the sufficiency of His Word and salvation demonstrates that you are not members of His body.
As we’ve seen both in chapter 1 verse 18 and chapter 2 verse 10, by calling Christ the head of the body, Paul means to say that Christ is the authoritative ruler and governor of our lives. As the head gives direction to the body, so also Christ governs His church, and we subject ourselves to Him. His Word is the rule of our lives. No pope, no college of cardinals, no priest, no king or president, no governor or mayor, has the authority to bind the consciences of the people of God in matters of doctrine and worship.
But the emphasis on Christ’s headship here is how He is the source of all spiritual life and vitality for the members of Hs body. Our head is sufficient to supply us with the sustenance and nourishment that we need to grow up into spiritual maturity. John Gill puts this so beautifully. He writes, Christ “hates not his own flesh [Ephesians 5:29], the members of his body, but nourishes and cherishes them, with the wine of divine love, with the water of life, with himself the bread of life, with his flesh which is meat indeed, and with his blood which is drink indeed; with his own wholesome words, even the words of faith and sound doctrine.” He is the vine, John 15, and we are the branches. Apart from Him, dear people, we can do nothing. And yet in Him, we can do all things by His strength. And so we should look nowhere else but to Christ for all the fullness of grace and strength that we need to follow God faithfully.
Conclusion
Dear unbeliever—you who sit here this evening still a stranger to the grace of Christ—can you sit under the proclamation of the sufficiency of this precious Savior, and refuse Him another day? Will you stand and testify tonight that the sins you cling to have satisfied your soul with the fullness that is promised in this Jesus? Have you found the rest and the satisfaction that your heart longs for in the numbness of drugs and alcohol? in the evanescence of riches and possessions? in the slavery of sexual immorality? in the vanity of fame and power?
Will any one of you stand and testify that you have found a sure foundation of righteousness before the holy God of heaven in your own good works? Have any of your religious performances and self-made standards achieved the peace of conscience that you know you will need to face your Judge on that great day? No, you haven’t, because there is no righteousness that avails with God except the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no satisfaction that brings the soul to rest and delight except the sweetness that comes from union and communion with Christ. So: “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy?” Come this evening to Jesus, who has obeyed the law of God that you have broken, who has died the death you’re required to die, who has risen again in victory over sin and death, and who calls you: “Every one who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. … Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance.” Come to Christ in faith this evening, and taste the sufficiency of His supremacy!
And to my brothers and sisters who are trusting Him, be on guard against the deficiencies both of legalism and mysticism. Is there anything in your life that indicates that you believe that the blood and righteousness of Jesus are an insufficient ground of righteousness before God? that the salvation that He gives freely is not enough? In what subtle ways do you seek to add to His righteousness? Is it by conjuring up extrabiblical rules by which to judge your own spiritual maturity, or the spiritual maturity of others? Are you tempted to trust your religious performance for your righteousness before God?
Or is it mysticism? Are you tempted to dissatisfaction with the Scriptures? thinking of the Bible as a dry, and static, and cold artifact of history, where what you really need is a warm, lively, fresh revelation from God directly to you—perhaps in an audible word from God, or an intense emotional sense that God is speaking directly to you, apart from Scripture?
There’s nothing there. Those are deficient. But the Supreme Christ who is all-sufficient holds His hands out to you each day in His Word, in prayer, in fellowship with the saints; each week in the gathering of His church, and in the lively signs of baptism and the Lord’s Supper—all as avenues of communion with Him, by which He supplies you with everything necessary for spiritual fullness! O, go on trusting Him, and walking with Him, and feeding on Him, and pay no mind to any phonies who would lead you away from Him to trust in yourselves. He is the One who causes you to grow with the growth that is from God.