Readings
- Exodus 24:1–18
- Colossians 2:8–23
- Matthew 4:12–17
- Psalms: 105:1–22; 105:23–45
Colossians 2:8–23
Watch out that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by the removal of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.
Therefore, do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food or drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the body belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with a growth that is from God.
If with Christ you died to the elemental principles of the world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.
Notes
Now we finally arrive at the section that gets at whatever was actually going on in Colossae. The previous chapter and a half have been theological ground-clearing — Christ as source, fullness, head of the body, reconciler of all things. Paul was laying the foundation. Now he starts naming the problem.
Verse 8 opens with a striking image. “See that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit.” The verb behind “takes you captive” is sylagōgeō — literally, to carry off as booty or spoil. A pirate image: someone picks you up and sails away with you.
A word on “philosophy.” I said yesterday that Paul is not anti-intellectual. This verse gets weaponized in the opposite direction. In the tradition I grew up in, it was trotted out as proof that theology, philosophy, and higher education ruin your faith. I have been “prophesied over” multiple times that I had “a spirit of knowledge” — meaning a demon that had deceived me through too much schooling. But read verse 8 carefully. Paul is not warning against philosophy; he is warning against empty deceit, specifically philosophy rooted in the stoicheia — the “elemental principles” of the world, the supposed building blocks of reality in some Greek schools of thought. Not Christ, who (as chapter 1 already told us) is the creator and the one in whom all things hold together. Paul is not anti-thinking. He is anti-thinking-without-Christ.
Verses 9–10. “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.” If you want to know God, look at Jesus. And your fullness comes through him too.
The word translated “head” is kephalē. In Greek it does not typically carry the sense of leader or boss; more often it means source, like the headwaters of a river. That matters for the rhetorical point here. Christ is the source of every authority and it matters for a lot of other places the word shows up. When Paul calls the husband the “head” of the wife, whatever it means, it does not mean he is in charge of her.
Verses 11–12 stack three overlapping metaphors for what has happened to these believers in Christ: you have come into fullness; you have been circumcised spiritually (aka brought into the covenant community); you have been buried and raised with him in baptism. The point underneath all three is the same one that ran through 1 Peter last week and keeps surfacing here: what is true of Christ is true of us.
Verses 13–14 picture salvation as bookkeeping. “God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.” The word behind “record” is cheirographon — a handwritten document, specifically a signed IOU, a debt certificate. What got nailed to the cross, on Paul’s picture, is not Jesus in our place. It is the ledger. Our debt record.
Verse 15 is one of the most important verses in the New Testament for atonement theology. “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.” The verb translated “disarmed” (apekdyomai) can also mean stripped off, divested of, unclothed. These are the same rulers and authorities Paul has been naming since chapter 1. This verse is the textual heart of the Christus Victor theory of the atonement: the cross is a victory over the powers of this age, not a transaction to appease the wrath of God. Jesus wins; the powers lose.
Verses 16–17 finally name the specific false teaching. “Do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food or drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the body belongs to Christ.” Someone was clearly trying to condemn them over diet and calendar. The shadow/body language is very close to Hebrews 10:1.
Verse 18 keeps going: “Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.” Verses 16 and 18 would make a good tattoo — don’t let anyone condemn you; don’t let anyone disqualify you.
And a pastoral word to my LGBTQ siblings in particular: that one is for you too. No one gets to disqualify you by insisting on “harsh self-denial” (CEB). The false teachers at Colossae seem to have been pushing ascetic practices as the price of admission to ecstatic experience and special access to God. Paul refuses the premise.
That is not a denial of spiritual disciplines. Fasting, silence, solitude, Sabbath are gifts. But the question is always why. Disciplines are formational, not transactional. They shape you over time into the kind of person who is present to God. They do not earn you access, buy you experiences, or unlock secret levels. If yours do, well, something else is going on.
Verse 19 uses kephalē again, and it is even clearer here: the head is the one “from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with a growth that is from God.” The head is the source of growth. Not the boss. (There is also an old tradition, echoing Greek medical theory, that the body grew out from the head, which fits Paul’s use of kephalē as source.)
Verses 20–23. Paul closes with a takedown of legalism. “If with Christ you died to the elemental principles of the world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations — ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’?”
That list reads like most youth-group rule sheets I have ever seen. Paul calls it foolishness. My grandmother would not let us have playing cards in her house because she was certain they could invite in the devil. I have known people who believed thrifted clothing carried demons with it. Paul would have no patience for any of this. If we died with Christ to the rulers of this age, then we do not need to fear them. Those powers have been stripped. They have no jurisdiction over thrift shops.
Questions for reflection
Paul says the cross is a victory over the rulers and authorities, not a transaction to appease God. How does that reshape your picture of what the cross accomplishes — and of God?
Where has “do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” — some rule or restriction sold to you as holiness — been shaping your life in ways it doesn’t deserve? What would it look like to die to it?
