Don’t Abandon This Gospel – Colossians 2:6-15

It is so tempting to abandon or water down the true gospel message of Christ. Human ingenuity always thinks it has a better idea of how to live out God’s plan. Sometimes we get too focused on one aspect of our true purpose to the detriment of the others (evangelistic or social). But other times we deviate entirely. It always starts subtly, as Paul shows.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (Colossians 2:6-15, ESV)

Both here and in Galatians 3 Paul uses the standard of the gospel we originally received and that transformed our lives as a basis for rejecting later “gospels” that come begging for our approval. As the Colossians originally received Christ Jesus as Lord, as sovereign and king, through the preaching of Epaphras, they should adhere to that same message, rooted like a sturdy plant in its soil, built up like a holy temple on its foundation. And they should be thankful that God spoke to them and brought them into His kingdom rather than be looking for something else to satisfy them.

The philosophy that was being offered them at Colossae was empty, not full, like the faith, and it was captive-taking, not freedom-giving. This is because it sprang from two useless and dangerous sources, human tradition, what human beings have used to explain God’s world in opposition to how He explained it, and the elemental spirits, the demons who seek to keep people diverted from the truth.

The gospel, instead, is based in Christ, the one in whom the “whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Human religions spoke often of semi-gods who only partly embodied the Creator. But Jesus is the Creator, 100% God and 100% man, not some semi-god. And so he is able to fill us. The circumcision this false philosophy was requiring was done in the flesh, in the body, but believers have received a circumcision of the heart from Christ, the cutting away of that hardness which prevented us from receiving the truth. That is something physical circumcision could not accomplish. Our baptism took care of this circumcising by showing our burial and resurrection with Christ. His death to sin and rising to life became ours by virtue of us being attached to him.

We were previously dead in our sins and incapable in our uncircumcision. We still had the flesh nature hardening our hearts from the truth. We couldn’t gain life except that God made us alive with Christ and forgave all our sins. That record of debt we owed to God, that the law condemned us with because we had failed to keep its demands, Jesus nailed to the cross. And by doing that he effectively nullified the elemental spirits, the demons, the rulers of darkness who were keeping us from the kingdom of light, and exposed their foolishness. They thought they had won with his death but his victorious resurrection destroyed their supposed victory.

Don’t abandon this gospel. False gospels will deny our total sinfulness, and therefore our need for a rescue outside our own efforts, and they will deny the deity of Jesus Christ.