Colossians 2:20-23

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Colossians 2:20. Dead … from the rudiments of the world.—Such as are given in Colossians 2:21. Subject to ordinances.—Why do you consent to receive these “burdens grievous to be borne”?

Colossians 2:21. Touch not; taste not; handle not.—“These three prohibitions apply probably

(1) to marriage,
(2) to the use of certain foods,
(3) to contact with material objects” (Godet). The rigour of the prohibitions is greatest in the last of the three. Note the change in R.V: “handle not, nor taste, nor TOUCH.”

Colossians 2:23. Neglecting of the body.—A.V. margin, “punishing or not sparing.” R.V. text, “severity to the body.” No doubt the apostle felt that on this subject he would need to tread cautiously, for he himself had beaten his body into subjection (1 Corinthians 9:27). Not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.—The R.V. gives light on the obscurity: “not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.” This is the evidence which for ever disqualifies asceticism in its many forms. We can understand how a Lenten fast or a hair-shirt may make a man irritable. If they are of any value in themselves, monastic annals need revision and expurgation, and the Christian finds himself far outdone by the dervish.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Colossians 2:20

The Ceremonial in Religion Transitory and Unsatisfying.

The apostle returns again to the question of outward observances. He saw the extreme danger with which the Colossians were threatened from that source, and before turning to other matters in his epistle he lifts up a warning voice as for the last time.
I. That the ceremonial in religion is simply elementary.—“The rudiments of the world” (Colossians 2:20). The ceremonial in religion is the alphabetical stage, suited only to the world’s infancy and to the crudest condition in human development. It is the childish period which, with all its toys and pictures and gewgaws, is put away when spiritual manhood is attained. It is in its nature transitory and imperfect. It conveys knowledge but in part; and when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part is done away.

II. The ceremonial in religion is unworthy the submission of the Christian believer.—

1. The believer is liberated from the slavery of the ceremonial. He is “dead with Christ” (Colossians 2:20). As Christ by His death cancelled the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and vanquished Satan and all his hosts, so the believer, united with Christ in His death, shares in the triumph of that death. He is free; he rises into a new life, not under the tyranny of the old law, with its demands and penalties, but in allegiance to Christ. He has passed into another sphere of existence. Worldly ordinances have ceased to have any value for him, because his worldly life is ended. They belong to the realm of the transitory and perishable; he has been translated into the realm of the free and the eternal.

2. To return to the ceremonial is to forfeit Christian liberty.—“Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” (Colossians 2:20). It is to ignore all progress, to impugn the reality of the change wrought in the soul by spiritual baptism, to close one’s eyes to the altered state of things into which he has been introduced, and to submit again to the galling yoke of legal observances and human traditions which never had divine sanction and from which he had been emancipated. It is a denial of his Christianity to subject himself again to their tyranny—to return once more to the dominion of the world. It is giving up the substance for the shadow. It is a deliberate self-degradation to the most abject and pitiable slavery. It is supposed that many of the ascetic practices of the false teachers at Colossæ were borrowed from the Pythagoreans. Their philosophy was all on the side of prohibitions, abstinences, a forced celibacy, the unlawfulness of animal food, the possibility of attaining perfection by neglecting the body, under the delusion that evil resided in matter.

III. The ceremonial in religion, in its main features, is universally the same.—

1. It is the same in its dictatorial prohibitions. “Touch not; taste not; handle not” (Colossians 2:21). Such is the arrogant language of a narrow, bigoted, and imperious superstition. It is an instruction to observe the gradual and insidious manner in which it obtains the mastery over the human conscience. Touch not: it prohibits even a light partaking of some meat or drink. Taste not: the prohibition is extended, so that it becomes a crime even to taste, though refusing to eat. Handle not: to come in contact with the forbidden object, even in the handling, is a dreadful sacrilege. So is it ever with the clamorous demands of a proud, assumptious ritualism. There is no end to the unauthorised prohibitions with which it seeks to bind the conscience.

2. It is the same in its undue exaltation of the external and the transitory.—“Which all are to perish with the using” (Colossians 2:22). The very eating and drinking of them destroys them. They are consumed in the using; and in order to nourish us they themselves perish—a plain proof that all the benefit we receive from them respects only our physical and mortal life. What folly is it to insist on a scrupulous avoidance or observance of externals in order to salvation! You claim an affinity with the eternal, and it is unworthy of your glorious destiny to be absorbed with the worship of the perishable.

3. It is the same in its human origin.—“After the commandments and doctrines of men” (Colossians 2:22). A commandment is a precept; a doctrine is the principle or truth on which it is based. The one furnishes a direction, the other the reason on which the direction rests. The ceremonial in religion is an accumulation of the commandments and doctrines of men. Depending on human authority, it has no value in itself; and when it is made obligatory in order to human salvation, it is an impious insult to Christ and an intolerable servitude to man. The commandments of men, having no solid doctrines to rest upon, are transitory and illusory.

IV. The ceremonial in religion can never satisfy the many-sided wants of humanity.—

1. It pretends to a wisdom it does not possess.

(1) In self-imposed methods of worship. “Which things have, indeed, a show of wisdom in will-worship” (Colossians 2:23). It insists on certain distinctions of meats and drinks; on abstinence from this or that kind of food; on certain ritual observances as necessary in order to render due homage to God. The enthusiast for the ceremonial argues that he who only does what God positively demands does only what is common; but he who goes beyond, and submits to additional observances, reaches a higher degree of saintliness. This is will-worship, which has peculiar charms for the corrupt tendencies of our depraved nature. The works of supererogation it invents are pleasanter than the holy, humble, adoring worship of God through the blood of the cross.

(2) In the affectation of a spurious humility. “In humility” (Colossians 2:23). It is a pretence of wisdom to renounce all worldly splendour and profess to live in poverty and seclusion. But at the root of this profession the most pernicious pride may lurk. A self-conscious and dramatically acted humility is the most degrading and detestable.

(3) In an unjustifiable indifference to bodily wants. “And neglecting of the body” (Colossians 2:23). The body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and is to be honoured and cherished, and all its just wants satisfied, in order that its best powers may be employed in the service of God. But the abuse of the body in starvation, painful macerations, and squalid neglect is a folly and a sin.

2. It is of no value in preventing the indulgence of the flesh.—“Not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh” (Colossians 2:23). The radical error of the ascetic lies in his belief that evil resides in matter. Not the body, but the soul, is the source of sin: the body is depraved because the soul is depraved. Sin exists as a thought and conception of the heart before it exists as an act of the flesh. No amount of outward flagellation, or of abstinence from needful food, will satisfy the natural wants of the body, or destroy its sinful tendencies. The attempt to be virtuous by afflicting the body is like battering the outwork while the main citadel remains untouched. The outward can never satisfy the complicated needs of man’s nature. First bring the soul into a right relation to God, and, with the aid of divine grace, it will control all the outgoings of the flesh.

Lessons.—

1. The ceremonial has its place in religion, and therefore should not be despised.

2. The believer is raised above the power of the ceremonial in religion, and therefore should not be subject to it.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Colossians 2:20. Principles above Rules; or, Wheat is better than Bread.—Bread may feed us for the moment, but when once eaten it is gone for ever. Wheat on the contrary will bear seed, increase, and multiply. Every rule is taken from a principle, as a loaf of bread is made from wheat. It is right to enforce the principle rather than the action, because a good principle is sure of producing good actions. Seeming goodness is not better than religion; precept is not better than principle.—A. W. Hare.

Colossians 2:21. Asceticism—

I. Multiplies unnecessary restrictions.

II. Is a species of self-worship.

III. Is unjust to the body.