Colossians 2:16-17 - Overcoming Legalism and Embracing Righteousness (Session 15)

This episode is a verse-by-verse Bible study of Colossians 2:16–17, exploring the historical context, theological meaning, and faithful application of the passage within the Christian faith. 

What if the key to a deeper relationship with Christ lies not in ticking religious checkboxes but in a heart wholly surrendered to Him? Join us as we venture into the heart of Paul's teachings in Colossians, where we uncover the pitfalls of legalism and the deceptive nature of false teachings. We delve into the powerful reminder that righteousness stems from Christ alone, not our actions. A crucial insight for anyone grappling with the pull of religious rituals and rules, this episode is a profound exploration of our faith's very essence.

We also unpack the contentious issue of righteousness and legalism within Christianity. By examining passages from the New Testament, we challenge the notion that adherence to Old Testament laws earns us favor with God. Instead, we underscore that it's only through Jesus Christ that we obtain true righteousness. In a world often clouded with religious judgement, this episode serves as a beacon of grace, echoing the message of Jesus Himself. So, tune in and reorient your focus on Christ, the only source of the righteousness we seek.

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:15

The Apostle Paul in the book of Colossians tells the believers there to let no one defraud you of your prize. Let no one defraud you of your prize. So that tells me, steve, that there is a prize and we need to be careful that no one's going to pull us off of the path and have us miss our goal, miss our prize.

Speaker 1 0:39

Wouldn't you agree? It reminds me of here. We have carnivals that come around and they have these games there where you ring toss or you shoot in the basketball into the basket or you do something in order to win a prize. And as a little kid, you continue to do it over and over and over again, thinking that you're going to win the prize, and you really never do win the prize. And then, as an adult, you come to find out that all the games are rigged and there was never any chance that you were going to win that prize anyway. So yeah, I don't like to be defrauded of the prize that's supposed to be available.

Speaker 2 1:17

The carnival games are indeed set up so that the vast majority of the people can't win. So the good news is that the prize that Paul talks about is guaranteed us, and all we have to do is make sure that no one tempts us to get off of the path. Hello to our guest. We're in the book of Colossians, we're in chapter two and we're going to be starting at about verse 16. Just a little bit of a summary as far as where we are in the book of Colossians we have, of course, the apostle Paul is writing to the church at Colossae and he had never been there, but he had heard that there had been some problems, so he corrects that with.

Speaker 2 1:55

The book of Colossians is a very academically toned book. A lot of heavy philosophy and theology are in here, about being sure that the philosophers don't deceive us and making sure that the false theologies don't deceive us, and he does that by reinforcing who we are. In Christ, we've been moved out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the sun, and he did all that. He spends a great deal of time talking about the person of Jesus Christ. He is the firstborn, he is the image of the Almighty God. He is deity in bodily form.

Speaker 2 2:34

Then in chapter two he really talks about five dangerous things that the church at Colossae should watch out for. He tells them to watch out for enticing words. He tells them to watch out for false and deceptive philosophy Legalism what we are going to get into today, legalism, and then mysticism. And then also to watch out for asceticism, which is self abasement or self denial. All of these things are traps that the church could get into that would pull them off of the straight and narrow path of just depending entirely on Jesus Christ. One of the other organizers here is he uses the word let no one. He uses that four times in chapter two. Let no one, for example, what we opened with Colossians 2.18, let no one keep defrauding you of your prize. Paul repeats this four times Let no one, let no one. He's telling them to just be careful. And, steve, we've been trying to tell our listeners this we need to be careful in a church because we're just as susceptible to deception from false teachers as the church at Colossae was.

Speaker 1 3:47

And, as Paul points out, there, let no one. It seems to me that sometimes people get a focus on a person, a personality, and they listen to the personality more than they do to the scriptures, and part of that could be because they don't know the scriptures or they don't look to the scriptures. If they listen to the personality more than they actually go to the scriptures, then they're at risk, according to Paul, to being defrauded or being led astray or different types of actions that are here.

Speaker 2 4:17

So let's go ahead and jump into today's passage. Steve, if you could read Colossians, chapter two, starting at verse 16, and read 16 and 17.

Speaker 1 4:27

Therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regards to food or drink, or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come. But the substance belongs to Christ.

Speaker 2 4:41

Look at the first word in verse 16. Says therefore, and, of course, whenever you see the word therefore, you need to be sure To wonder why it is therefore.

Speaker 2 4:53

Right. So whenever it says, therefore, it's drawing a conclusion, and it always connects what comes before to what's coming after. The apostle is drawing a conclusion here. So what came before this? If we look at verses 10 through 15, he says several things that Jesus did. He made us complete, he removed the old body of flesh, he raised us up through faith. We were dead, but he made us alive. He canceled our debt and then he triumphed over the wicked rulers and authorities. All of that is what he said previous to this. Therefore, let no one defraud you of your prize. He's drawing a conclusion based on all these things that Jesus did for us. Therefore, let no one defraud you of your prize by pulling you into this list of do's and don'ts, and this list of religious things is what he's talking about here in verse 16. What he's saying is Christ did all this canceled our debt, triumphed, raised us up from death All these things. Therefore, don't get caught up in all these religious rituals, thinking that those things are what's going to get you closer to God.

Speaker 1 6:08

And he also talks about there in verse 16 of let nobody act as your judge. And what does a judge do? It makes a judgment call whether they're guilty or innocent, or whether it's true or false. I think what he's saying is those people, if they are false in what they are teaching, or if they are false and against what the Scripture teaches, then their judgment is not valid. Therefore, we shouldn't let them be a judge or give a judgment over us, because they're starting from a position that is an incorrect position, because he saved us.

Speaker 2 6:41

He did all the work. Therefore, we don't have to be judged according to religious acts in order to be considered righteous before God. That's what he's emphasizing here, the things he mentions. Look at the list again in verse 16. Let no one act as your judge in regard to what Food or drink, or festivals or new moons or Sabbath days.

Speaker 2 7:06

These are all religious things. Most of them came out of Judaism, so this would tell us that they probably had some Judaizing influence, people that were saying, hey, yeah, you believe in Christ, but you have to keep the Sabbath. Or yeah, you're a Christian, but you have to go through these religious rituals. You have to do these things. Later he's going to talk about keeping away from worldly things. That's a dead end as well, but here he's talking about doing religious acts, and doing religious acts don't get us any closer to God. And, Steve, it just seems like every generation has to keep repeating, because there's people today that have long traditions that say, in order to get close to God, what do you have to do? Do all these religious rites. And that's exactly what he's saying don't do.

Speaker 1 7:57

There's a couple of things that come to mind, as this congregation was made up of Jewish believers and also Gentile believers, and both of them groups had their own traditions that they were coming out of. It also reminds me of the council that Paul went to with James and Peter and the other apostles. There were three things that came out of it as far as Paul going to the Gentiles. The first was that, yeah, they don't have to be circumcised. The second thing was they need to remember the poor. And then the third thing was they shouldn't eat animals that have been strangled that still had the blood in them. That was the basic requirements that were given to the Gentiles as far as rules to abide by.

Speaker 1 8:40

We have here Paul mentioning in regard to food or drink or respect to festivals or anything else. I think what we see many times in scripture are very simple things that people want to turn into very complicated things or oversimplified rules that just put a burden on people, and that's one of the things that Jesus talked about. Take my yoke. My burden is a light burden. Look at the list again.

Speaker 2 9:07

Look at the list of what he's mentioning here. It says don't let anyone judge you in regard to food, drink, festivals, new moon, sabbath, all of those things. Most of them were things that in the Old Testament were commanded the festivals. God said you will. You shall go celebrate these festivals. You shall celebrate and recognize the Sabbath day. You will eat these foods and not eat those foods. These were all commands that God had commanded them.

Speaker 2 9:38

Yet here he's saying look, let nobody judge you according to these things. No one has act as your judge regarding religious rights before God. Well, why? Because what you said a minute ago, steve, that council, in Acts 15, peter, at the beginning of it, stood up and said brothers, how can we lay this burden on the Gentiles for things that remember what he said that neither we nor our fathers were able to keep? We can make all these rules I mean, some of them are good. There's some foods that really not very good to eat, but eating that or not eating it doesn't make us righteous before God. That's the point here. That's what he's saying. It may be you want to celebrate a festival or want to be a Sabbath keeper, praise the Lord, but don't think that's going to get you closer to God, and that's exactly the point that Paul continues to make and he has made before.

Speaker 1 10:37

With your in Christ, then that's the sufficient because of the things that Christ brings to us. Therefore, you don't need to be judged about all of these food and drinking, festivals and all these other items that he's talking about and I worry about if I'm doing the right thing. I think that that's what runs through people's mind Am I doing the right thing? Sometimes they'll go to somebody. I might come to you, Glenn, and say hey, Glenn, am I doing the right thing by doing this or so? And then you'll give me your opinion. Whatever it might be, but knowing you, you're going to give me an opinion that has to do with Scripture. But if you're going to somebody that is not teaching the correct Scripture in the right way, you're not going to get a good opinion from them.

Speaker 1 11:24

Now, what comes back to me is okay, he says I'm not doing it the correct way. He says I need to do something else. Therefore I need to go off and do it, and before you know it, we're down the rabbit trail of doing rather than just being aware of. Wait a minute, I'm in Christ and therefore I don't need to do these things to be found righteous in the sight of God, Because my righteousness in the sight of God is based on Christ. It's not based upon what I do Exactly.

Speaker 2 11:54

That's the point is that our righteousness before God is based on. Again in Romans, chapter four, abraham believed God and it was counted as righteousness, and he goes on in that same chapter Was it before or after Abraham obeyed? Well, it was before he obeyed, before he did anything. Well, therefore, how can we then add religious rituals to it in order to say that, well, you have to go through this, this right, or this liturgy, or attend church X number of times, or go do this thing, in order to be considered righteous? That's what he's specifically speaking again Now. The other thing that comes in here, steve, is that there are people still today running around the countryside saying that we are obligated to keep the Old Testament dietary laws and the Old Testament Sabbath laws. There's several passages in the New Testament that deal with this. One of them is right here. He says fairly clearly let no one be your judge in regard to food or Sabbath keeping. This includes all of those Old Testament dietary laws, but this isn't just the only place. As we can see Acts 10, 9 and following God uses food to show Peter that Gentiles are to be considered clean. Remember the vision that Peter had of the sheet that comes down and has all the clean and unclean animals and God says rise, kill and eat. Well, the main point was Gentiles was the point of that exercise, but he used food as an example and he was saying eat all these kinds of food.

Speaker 2 13:38

Romans, chapter 14 specifically says that Christians can choose to eat all kinds of foods or not, eat all kinds of foods and can keep days or not keep days. Praise the Lord, don't judge people according to food and Sabbath keeping. 1 Timothy 4, 1 through 5 says that all foods are permitted. Mark 7, 19,. Jesus declared all foods clean. 1 Corinthians 8, 8 says that eating or not eating types of foods has no bearing on us before God. Galatians 4, 9 and 10 describes the keeping of days as quote weak and worthless element. So all of these passages tell us that we do not earn our righteousness before God by doing these things. If somebody wants to keep a Sabbath because I'm going to honor God by keeping the Sabbath, praise the Lord, people says you know, I don't want to eat bacon sandwiches because I just don't think that's a good thing to do. Praise the Lord, but don't think you're earning righteousness before God by those things. That's the key element here, wouldn't you agree?

Speaker 1 14:50

I do agree, and one of the things that drives us to mention this over and over again is because it's in the Scripture, and if it's mentioned in the Scripture multiple times, we need to address it every time that it's there. But the other reason that we mention it is because, as we have talked with people and witnessed the people, some of our listeners might be there and they're going. Okay, I get it, I get it. I don't understand why Glenn and Steve keep going through this in Christ, out of Christ. Why do they have to keep doing it? Well, that's good that you get it.

Speaker 1 15:25

Our experience is that there's the vast majority of people that don't get it, and when you ask them the question, something like, are you going to heaven, when they profess to be a Christian, and their response is well, I hope so. Well, there's a lot of people that are Christians, that claim to be Christians and are Christians, that they still have this burden over them, that they hope that they're doing good enough in order to make it to heaven. What Paul is addressing here that you're in Christ or not and that's what we hope to convey for people that are listening, christians that come in and listen to maybe just one session, that we have to give them comfort and peace and knowing that if you're in Christ then you're sufficient.

Speaker 2 16:12

Yeah, and I would agree, Steve. We keep mentioning this because one, the Scriptures keep mentioning it and we keep pumping into these people. I mean there's centuries of people that think we have to do something to earn righteousness, we have to go through some right ritual liturgy, we have to do some religious act, we have to keep some set of rules, we have to go through some process of purging away our sins. The Scripture just keeps pounding away at this idea that there's nothing we can do to earn righteousness, to go through a process, to be holy. We have Christ's righteousness, and it says that over and over.

Speaker 2 16:57

Because there's just so many people that think that, well, I have to do something. One of the ways they do it is they take the Old Testament, mosaic law that has hundreds and hundreds of commands, and they say, oh well, the ceremonial law is done away with in Christ at the cross, but the moral law is not. Therefore they'll say, okay, we don't have to go sacrifice a lamb out in the yard anymore because that's the ceremonial part, but all these other commands we still have to do, and that sounds kind of nice. They'll come up with saying you're not. The technical word they use is you're not antinomian, are you, which means no law? You're not a lawless person, are you?

Speaker 2 17:39

That says you can just go do anything and everything and all that kind of sounds good, until you really start to look at the specifics of the Old Testament law and get down to brass tacks on exactly which things you're requiring people to do, and then you fall into these exact same traps that Paul talks about in Galatians and Colossians and says don't allow people to come along and pull you down that rabbit hole, because it turns into a ball and chain. But that's why we keep mentioning these things. There's no practical way to separate ceremonial and moral laws across all the laws in the Old Testament. It just doesn't work once you deal with specifics and Steve and I kind of smile at this one story I had once where I started asking a guy about specifics and he's through.

Speaker 2 18:31

He had been for weeks he'd been telling me oh yeah you have, we're still obligated for the Sabbath and the dietary laws and those Old Testament moral laws. Until I start giving specifics and he starts saying well, you know, you have to be reasonable. We start talking about okay, quit your job tomorrow because you worked the last six years and are you really wearing mixed fabric clothing and yada yada.

Speaker 1 18:56

Yeah, and in that example he had been listening and reading based off of an author, and when you confronted him with that, he actually says, well, I really don't know, and rather than going to the scriptures to find and research for himself, he just goes back to the author and the author is the one that comes back to the way you got to be reasonable. So again, it's an example of somebody they're listening to people rather than they're going and delving into the scriptures. And look, there's nothing wrong with listening to people. We hope that people listen to us, but we do expect that our listeners are going to also go to the scriptures themselves and ferret out the golden nuggets that are in the scriptures on their own.

Speaker 2 19:35

So it was Acts 15. Peter calls these rules a yoke of bondage. In three five, We'll get to this in a little bit. Three five tells the Christians to avoid impurity and immorality in our bodies. But that's different than saying OK. In order to be righteous before God, we have to go through these rituals. So we'll get to chapter three in a little bit. Steve, you and I have used the word legalism a few times. But what is that? When we call somebody a legalist or a legalism, how would we define that?

Speaker 1 20:09

term. I think a broad definition would be somebody that are trying to keep a set of rules in order to work their way or find their cells, by keeping those set of rules, to become palatable or beautiful or righteous in front of God worthy maybe, as a better term, they have these list of rules and they say, if I keep these rules, therefore I will be found worthy to be able to go into the presence of God. So what are the rules? They're the legal things that says you either do them or you don't, and if you don't do them, you're not going to be worthy, and if you do do them, then you are going to be worthy.

Speaker 1 20:53

The problem with that is is just what Peter and others have said there's nobody that can actually keep all of those rules. And it becomes apparent to the people trying to keep the rules Well, I can't keep these rules. Then they get into the position of I'm not ever going to be worthy. That's what legalism does to people. It's something that really works against them, as a detriment to them, if they get in the mindset of I've just got to do this stuff in order to be worthy.

Speaker 2 21:23

All of the lawyers and attorneys, especially contractual lawyers, are all there because over time, the old set of rules weren't working and so we have to have more and more and longer and longer legal documents that have more clauses in it, trying to hold us to things because people weren't keeping the set of rules last time. We can make all the rules. Not wrong with rules. What's wrong with me and with you? Because we don't have the power to keep them. That's what's wrong with, and so setting up more and more rules. All that does is give us more and more rules to break, because what Christ is really interested in is are you motivated to keep it in the first place? Do you have an internal drive to be righteous? And adding external rules onto people that are already criminals not going to help them and that's the message of Colossians is the lost person Remember this dramatic shift from losts to save. The lost person has no desire to keep the rules. It's just okay. The only desire is I don't want to get caught. It's not out of love for the Lord. What he's saying here in Colossians 2.16 is don't let the legalists, don't let the religious people that are indeed motivated by holiness and righteousness. Their motivation is good, but the solution is wrong, adding more and more ceremonies to go through and more and more things to do ritually, and doesn't really give us any way to earn righteousness. This is the next thing looking for. 17. These Old Testament laws regarding diet and Sabbath and festivals, or shadows of the substance which is Christ all the rules or shadows.

Speaker 2 23:06

Hebrews 10.1 also calls the Old Testament law a shadow, and the New Testament, and I think this is quite profound. Think of it this way. Here's a little silly story really. But let's say you had a loved one, somebody you love very greatly, somebody in your family close to you that you really wanted to see and they'd been gone for a long time. They're due back and seen them in a long time. You're really longing to see them and you hear a knock at your door and you go outside and you say, wow, look at that shadow. That's a really great shadow. I'm going to sit here and look at the. No, I'm going to hug the person. Why should I look at the shadow when the person's there? That's what it's talking about. Don't get all caught up in the Sabbath, keeping the dietary laws and how many candles you light and how many church services you go to and how many prayers you have to say, those things are shadows. The real thing is Christ. That's what it's saying in Colossians 2.16 and 17.

Speaker 1 24:04

And by being in Christ means that you have a relationship with Christ, then that's where we should be. That's the real question, is having a relationship with Christ, because once you have that relationship with Christ, you are presented to God through Christ, by being in Christ, and you're presented clean and holy and righteous, but it's through Christ.

The Importance of Focusing on Christ

Speaker 2 24:28

The message of Colossians 2.16 and 17. Do not get caught up in rules and regulations. Even though they were set up as religious things that were originally designed to point us towards God or point us towards Christ, they're shadows. That's pointing towards Christ. Why not focus on the real thing instead of the shadow?

Speaker 2 24:49

Christians have split churches over these things, over these rituals and these rites and religious rules on when we should meet and how we should meet and how the ceremony should go. Denominations have been created and destroyed over some of these rituals, and instead we should focus on Christ. That's the message here. Don't let people get your eye off of the prize and onto doing religious things. So with that, let's pull it to the curb for today. We talked here about how we need to be real careful about how people get us off track, and what we really need to focus on is the Lord Jesus. Now, next time, we'll get into the part where he adds some ideas onto this whole idea of legalism, and we'll get into that as far as adding rules to the Word of God, and so we'll deal with that next time and we trust that you'll be back here with us.

Speaker 1 25:45

Thank you for listening and watching. May God bless you.