Let No One Judge You
16Let no one therefore judge you in eating, or in drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day, 17which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s. 18Let no one rob you of your prize by a voluntary humility and worshiping of the angels, dwelling in the things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19and not holding firmly to the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and ligaments, grows with God’s growth. 20If you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances, 21“Don’t handle, nor taste, nor touch” 22(all of which perish with use), according to the precepts and doctrines of men? 23Which things indeed appear like wisdom in self-imposed worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but aren’t of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.
On the news we often hear of people caught making and selling counterfeit bags, shoes, and other goods under stolen brand names. These days, we are told, fakes come in such variety and so closely resemble the real thing that even experts struggle to tell them apart. Some buyers are fooled because they do not know, but others buy the fakes knowingly, out of vanity. It is the buyers who keep this trade from ever dying out.
A person who is full on the inside does not buy fakes to show off. People who chase every trend do so because they feel inferior and lack confidence in themselves; only by following the fashion do they feel ahead of others and believe they stand out. Those who want to display themselves through outward things, or who cannot do without the approval of others, will work to get into the group even when they know it is false. This is called the herd effect, and such decisions always leave regret behind. Because the choice comes from no conviction of one’s own, it gives a person no help in judging and deciding the problems they meet in life, and it leaves them weaker besides. A mind like this cannot discern those who have set out to deceive. Even when such people hear something utterly absurd, they are bound to be taken in, since they are inclined to believe anything once they hear that many others have already accepted and chosen it. When they meet someone who is kind to them for no reason, they accept that person’s decisions without a second thought. Worse, they think that following the fashion is stylish and that refusing to follow it means falling behind. A heart in the grip of desire does not find it easy to reason soundly. So we must use wisdom and think once more whether what we want right now is something we truly need, and whether it is good.
If we are trapped in a mold others have made and cannot weigh our own actions, others will have to decide every part of our lives for us, and we cannot help but be unhappy. When the matter at stake is the truth, the misery is greater still, because salvation hangs on it. To live a life that is not deceived, we must not forget what the goal of our life is, what purpose we live for, and what our priorities are. If you feel anxious that you are falling behind, or uneasy when you own less than others, you need to realize that you are already primed to be taken in by a lie. This is the very reason Satan and the wicked stir up anxiety in people.
Deceivers seem to tell their victims, with great confidence, exactly what they want to hear, but because truth is not at the heart of it, in the end the deceivers will lose everything. They unsettle the other person with empty words to raise their hopes; if the person is fooled, so much the better, and if the lie comes to light, they hide behind the vague words they let drop and deny the whole thing. But if you hold the right standard, you can see plainly what deceivers intend, and so you can judge and decide rightly. People are deceived because they handle everything by greed and feeling and have no power to recognize a lie.
Satan uses the same tactic. Because the truth is the power that saves souls, Satan removes Christ, the heart of the truth, and passes on something that merely resembles Scripture. Watch a swindler at work: they cunningly blend words someone really did say with business ventures that really do exist, and make it look as though they are running a great enterprise. Even if the other person grows suspicious, the deception comes easily, because someone did say those words and such businesses do exist. Satan, too, alters the word bit by bit in order to deceive, so anyone who does not know the Scriptures accurately has no means of detecting the lies slipped in a little at a time, and ends up selling their own soul.
Because the words really are written in the Bible, people accept them as they stand, even when a deceiver gives the verse a slight twist to suit their own purpose. Only someone who knows the whole Bible can judge rightly, but because these people do not know Christ, they make the foolish decision to sell their own souls. They are deceived even when a mere human being claims to be Christ. They are deceived even when some false and detestable figure claims to be the Jesus written of in the Bible and promises salvation to anyone who believes in them. This is not faith in Christ’s atonement and God’s covenant; it is letting greed, the wish to live well in heaven, make fools of them. Whatever the reason, just as the person who is swindled is the one who suffers, so those deceived by a false gospel will receive eternal punishment.
Friends, how hard it is to compete with others in this world! Yet out of countless people God chose you in particular, called you, and brought you to hear his word. If, after all that, you were to fall into the second death, there would be no greater misfortune. What lies beyond death is decided right now, while we live in this world in the flesh, so we must make every effort not to be deceived by evil spirits. Because Satan knows this too, he stops at nothing to deceive people; God, for his part, never ceases to guide us by the Holy Spirit so that Satan cannot lead us astray. You stand between God and Satan. Which side will you choose?
Colossians 2:13-15
13You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; 15having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
The people of Israel were circumcised according to the law and lived by keeping it. Because breaking the law meant death, they would lay down even their lives in order to live by it. Sadly, however, the law has no power to forgive sin. So Jesus took up the cross and made atonement for sin.
Those who came to true faith in Jesus Christ were baptized and became a holy people who share in his resurrection. Through the death of Jesus on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension, sinners who had been spiritually dead became God’s people. If such a holy people foolishly traded the genuine article for a fake, nothing could be more tragic. The law had written that the only way to have sin forgiven is by blood; Jesus took that decree upon his own body and, by shedding his blood on the cross, abolished it.
In this way the believers in Colossae were brought under the atonement by faith, and through Christ God forgave them all their sins.
Since every sin committed before we received Christ has been forgiven, all that remains is to live a life of goodness by faith in Christ. When the passage speaks of stripping the principalities and the powers, it means that on the cross Jesus tore down all the power by which evil angels had been leading souls to death. Put simply, when Korea was under Japanese rule, our people were forced to change their names to Japanese ones and had to live by the laws Japan laid down. But after liberation they gained their freedom and came to live as Koreans.
Article 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea provides in its first paragraph, “The Republic of Korea shall be a democratic republic,” and in its second, “The sovereignty of the Republic of Korea shall reside in the people, and all state authority shall emanate from the people.” Under that constitution everyone came to live in freedom. In the same way, when Satan held people under his evil power, Jesus took up the cross to set sinners free, and by doing so displayed before the whole world that Satan had been utterly defeated. He completely overthrew their forces, principalities, and powers, and made sure they could no longer torment believers united with Christ. It is just as Japan, once defeated, could no longer oppress Korea. Only when we understand all of this can we know God’s plan with certainty, and then we will not be deceived by Satan’s schemes or by heretics who spread lies. However closely those heretics imitate the Bible, however they threaten that salvation depends on accepting their ideas, those who know the truth will not be shaken. Ignorance of the Bible makes people fall into the sin of serving a human being as God whenever something seems close to the truth. It also leaves them shaken by a false gospel that makes salvation seem to depend on keeping the law and the feasts. They embraced it because they thought that the evil idea of salvation through devotion, works, and zeal could display human righteousness better than the truth that we are saved by faith alone. Satan’s promise that their eyes would be opened like God’s suited the evil in human nature, which is why the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was eaten so readily. People were shaken because the claim that a visible person is God, rather than the invisible God, sounded tempting, as though it held something more.
Colossians 2:16-17,20
16Let no one therefore judge you in eating, or in drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day, 17which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s. 20If you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances,
Believers who trust in Christ’s complete victory simply live faithfully by faith; they do not hold a faith built on keeping the law. When Jesus cried out on the cross that it was finished, that cry included the fulfilling of the law. There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
The Jews took pride in being the only chosen people, and they believed that keeping the feasts, the new moons, and the Sabbaths was what it meant to fear God. On that ground they attacked the Christians who did not keep the feasts or the Sabbath, accusing them of breaking God’s law. But since all the feasts are shadows that reveal Jesus, to believe in Christ, who said that he is Lord of the Sabbath, is to keep the whole law.
Hebrews 10:8-9
8Previously saying, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you didn’t desire, neither had pleasure in them” (those which are offered according to the law), 9then he has said, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first, that he may establish the second,
Of the first, that is, sacrifices and offerings, whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin, God said he neither desired them nor took pleasure in them. He took all these away, Scripture says, in order to establish the second, that is, the will of God fulfilled through Christ. God’s new covenant stands forever. No one, then, can annul the new covenant God has made. It was established by the blood of Jesus, and no one can alter or revoke the promise that we are saved by faith in Christ. How sad it would be if those saved by the sacrifice of the almighty Jesus Christ were deceived by a false gospel and left the truth! Because God has now made his covenant fully known to us through the Scriptures, no one will be able to excuse their sins before the judgment seat on that day. The asceticism the false teachers promote is their own invention, and the Jewish feasts are all shadows that symbolize Christ’s work of redemption. Just as a shadow cannot show you for certain who a person is, so the world, the feasts, and false gospels, being shadows, can never make known Jesus, who is the substance. We need only trust the promise Jesus made as he ascended, that he would come again. The truth is to believe his promise that after preparing a place he will surely come back for us. To listen instead to people who claim to be God, and to entrust our salvation to them, is utter folly.
No one can know when Jesus Christ will come, but you need only live today in the hope of heaven. To try to learn what Jesus has not revealed is a foolish kind of faith, and it is just as foolish to try to keep a law he has already fulfilled in every respect. A piece made by a master craftsman is clean and complete in itself. A counterfeit looks similar but is not the genuine article, so selling it takes much more explanation. The seller has to dazzle people’s minds, and that requires all the more talk. In just this way, false teachers had come into the church in Colossae and were insisting on the ceremonial law; they taught asceticism and the worshiping of angels, and they taught that to walk with God more fully one had to treat the body harshly through self-denial and self-punishment. Following such teaching amounts to betraying God, which is why the apostle Paul told the believers to discern the spirits with care.
The believers in Colossae knew the word of Christ, yet when the false teachers confidently preached asceticism and the worshiping of angels, they could not drive them out. The reason is that the false teachers taught that for a sinful person, worshiping the angels first was a humbler faith than worshiping God directly. To the ear, it may even sound right that a sinner would be arrogant to approach the almighty God in worship directly. But it is a trick, a scheme of Satan to trip up believers who commune with God directly through the Holy Spirit, since following their teaching would make the death of Jesus on the cross meaningless.
The false teachers called those who would not follow this teaching proud, and told the others to condemn those proud people and keep away from them. They were teaching a knowledge that denies Jesus in order to destroy the church, and still the believers were swayed by their confident words. When we are firm in our faith, we can grow into spiritual soldiers who resist the evil powers. By faith we become members of Christ’s body, a holy people under his protection; but if we fall for Satan’s schemes and choose to live a counterfeit life, we will walk the way of Judas Iscariot, who threw away the genuine truth he had already received. The false teachers say we must make ourselves holy through self-denial, but those united with Christ are made holy by that union itself.
When you stand firm on Christ the rock, your faith will not be shaken, however the world, Satan, and other people may tempt you. You know every answer through the Bible, so even when Satan tempts you, you can drive back the darkness with the light of Christ and win the victory. You have already been set free in Jesus Christ; you are children of God who have received new life. The apostle Paul said that if you live after the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. [Romans 8:13-14]
We all know the heart with which the Father loves his children; we must therefore firmly block every scheme and move of Satan to come between the Father and his children. Believers know how good God is, so however much the false teachers distort the truth, they are not shaken. If children who are loved like this were lured by Satan into living after the flesh, they could only die; but if they put away the deeds of the body and its desires, they can have eternal life in heaven.
The Holy Spirit who dwells in us knows our weakness. He rescues us in every moment of danger, gives us wisdom so that crafty people cannot deceive us, and never leaves our side until the day we open the gate of heaven and walk in. The apostle Paul told the believers in Colossae that, since they were children of God who had died with Christ from the elements of the world, they must not take hold of the world again or even touch it. We have received new life, so now we must prepare to become citizens of heaven in order to enter it. Our citizenship has been transferred from the world to the Kingdom of God, and as a holy people we must live lives that praise God with a faith that gives thanks in all things. If we cling to greed and vanity, pride and complaint, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God. May you not be swayed by such worldly things, but live for the faith and the holy life that will lead you to eternal life, and for your brothers and sisters in the faith.
Hypocritical humility is pride in disguise. Put away that false humility; if you serve God and your brothers and sisters in the faith with true humility, that faith will lead you into the eternal kingdom. The powers of darkness are using every means they have to make us fall, but if you hold a true faith, you can build up the church on firm ground.
We have all been buried with Jesus Christ in baptism and raised with him as children of God. I hope you will not take up again the burden of sin God has lifted from you, and will not cling to the elements of the world, which bring no profit at all, but will be wise children who seek the things that are above, together with Jesus Christ. May you always keep your faith firm and live in peace and rest, living as those whom God loves and holds dear.