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NOTES for Col 2:16-17

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16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
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And in the time of Paul, and later in the Church sounded various opinions as regards the rite and its role in the life of the church. And most of those who took seriously the spiritual life came to the conclusion that it should not be put in the first place. But does Paul speak only about it? Because in fact, he calls shadow of things to come all the existing Jewish religiosity at that time, and calls the Church literally only the body of Christ. And what thus: religiosity does not have a place in the Church? Probably, such a question sounds all the same a little bit categorical. It would have been more exact to ask: what religiosity could find a place in the Church? And of what could consist its role?

It is obvious to Paul Himself that the Church is not a religious community, as well as Christianity itself is not a religion. The Kingdom is Kingdom; it can’t be contained in any religious frame. But indeed, there are also again the forms, necessary for the non transformed world. Of course, for the very Kingdom they are not necessary. But they are necessary when the Kingdom through the Church enters our world, are necessary for this world, in order to receive at least a certain representation of what within the framework of the non transformed reality is impossible to imagine.

And here it is in particular the religious language that helps: because of all the existing cultural languages, it is the best adapted for the expression and the realization of the revelation received from God. That is why throughout our era, the era of the Kingdom to come, the Church speaks with the world in the religious language. But in the religious images and symbols, it puts new meanings, meanings connected already not to the religious life, but to the life of the Kingdom.

It is exactly in this meaning, apparently, that Paul calls the elements of the religious tradition, modern to him, the shadow of things to come, i.e. of what has to come into the world with Christ. And for Paul himself, the language of his religious tradition was close: all that was said by him about the Messiah, about the Kingdom, about salvation was said in particular in this language. And it is all the same very important not to confuse the tool of the acquisition of the purpose, even the most important, with the purpose itself, and that’s what Paul reminds us.

Other notes

 
For Col 2:13-20
13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
19 And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
20 Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,
Hide
In our everyday thinking, we suppose that repentance arises from sorrow over the lawlessness we have committed...  Read more

In our everyday thinking, we suppose that repentance arises from sorrow over the lawlessness we have committed. But in today’s reading the apostle Paul says something very important: godly sorrow produces irrevocable repentance leading to salvation (in the Synodal translation: “godly sorrow produces unchanging repentance for salvation”). For this irrevocable, once-for-all change of mind to take place (the literal meaning of the Greek word usually translated as “repentance”), one must long for God, grieve at being separated from Him, and desire to meet Him. This alone bears fruit. This alone makes us capable of living according to truth and the commandments. All our striving for self-improvement is commendable, but fruitless.

Hide
 
For Col 2:8-23
8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:
11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
19 And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
20 Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,
21 (Touch not; taste not; handle not;
22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?
23 Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.
Hide
Paul writes that Christianity presupposes spiritual life, not religious life. The church in Colossae had the same problems that were appearing then in other church communities...  Read more

Paul writes that Christianity presupposes spiritual life, not religious life. The church in Colossae had the same problems that were appearing then in other church communities: a withdrawal, to a certain degree of course, into religion; a tendency to replace spiritual life with religious life, with all the consequences that followed: growth of legalism, demands for obligatory observance of Jewish religious prescriptions, and the like.

Paul understands perfectly that the essence of Christianity is elsewhere: in Christ a person is transformed, his very nature, including his bodily nature, changes; a person participates in the life of the Kingdom, and the "body of flesh" is transformed as the person participates in this life. The apostle calls this transformation, in the spiritual sense, circumcision. Indeed, circumcision originally symbolized one or another kind of initiation, a person's transition into a new quality or a new state.

Initiations could be age-related or religious; in Yahwism circumcision came to symbolize entry into the community of God's people and participation in the spiritual fullness it bears. But there is no greater change than the one a person experiences when becoming a Christian and participating in the life of the Kingdom: here a fullness is opened to the participant that cannot be found anywhere else.

Here, in prospect, not only a change in a person's life and inner state is possible, but also the acquisition of a new quality of one's own nature, a transformation that will completely and forever make him different. Of course, the completion of this process will not take place before the day of the Savior's return and the full triumph of the Kingdom, but it begins when a person turns to Christ and first participates in the life of the Kingdom.

Meanwhile, fearing sin and its consequences, many strove backward into religion in order to hide there from the threatening danger. Indeed, religion is to a considerable degree sustained by fear, not fear of some unknown natural phenomena, as people once thought, but by that existential, metaphysical fear that a person experiences when he senses the damage done by sin to his own nature.

It is precisely about this fear that the apostle says that with Christ we have nothing to fear: He takes the consequences of the sins we have committed upon Himself, promising that He will help us deal with them and, in the end, be freed from them. On the cross He Himself tore up all our debt records, giving us the possibility of beginning life from a clean slate. No religion could do anything like this for us, as Paul reminds the recipients of his letter.

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For Col 2:8-23
8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:
11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
19 And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
20 Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,
21 (Touch not; taste not; handle not;
22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?
23 Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.
Hide
In our everyday thinking, we suppose that repentance arises from sorrow over the lawlessness we have committed...  Read more

In our everyday thinking, we suppose that repentance arises from sorrow over the lawlessness we have committed. But in today’s reading the apostle Paul says something very important: godly sorrow produces irrevocable repentance leading to salvation (in the Synodal translation: “godly sorrow produces unchanging repentance for salvation”). For this irrevocable, once-for-all change of mind to take place (the literal meaning of the Greek word usually translated as “repentance”), one must long for God, grieve at being separated from Him, and desire to meet Him. This alone bears fruit. This alone makes us capable of living according to truth and the commandments. All our striving for self-improvement is commendable, but fruitless.

Hide
 
For Col 2:8-23
8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:
11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days:
17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
19 And not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.
20 Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,
21 (Touch not; taste not; handle not;
22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?
23 Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.
Hide
Reflecting on spiritual life, Paul mentions certain human teachings, which he calls "philosophy"; by following...  Read more

Reflecting on spiritual life, Paul mentions certain human teachings, which he calls "philosophy"; by following them, in the apostle's view, a person can easily lose the main thing that gives Christianity its meaning (vv. 8-10). And the main thing, according to Paul, is that new life, the life of the Kingdom, for which the Savior paid by His death on the cross (vv. 11-15). When he speaks of what was "against us" ("the handwriting that was against us," v. 14), the apostle, it appears, has the Torah in mind, whose testimony always only condemns the sinner by exposing his sins. Such testimony could be answered only by becoming completely free from sin and revealing the fullness of righteousness, becoming, in the expression common in rabbinic circles of that time, a "living Torah." But this ideal remained unattainable for a person wounded by original sin, and only the Savior Himself, in whom, according to Paul's word, all the fullness of God dwells (v. 9), was able to show the example of the "living Torah." It is precisely the pattern revealed by the Savior that renders the Torah's testimony about our sinfulness powerless and opens the road to the Kingdom for us (v. 14; the corresponding Greek word means not only "teaching," but also "example" or "pattern").

But, as it appears, the church in Colossae was being troubled by preachers who were trying, in essence, to return the Christians there to a pre-Christian past. Evidently they were the ones who gave special importance to the religious side of Judaism, again and again reminding the Colossian Christians of religious rules and customs and insisting on their strict observance as the chief condition for receiving the Kingdom (vv. 16-19). For Paul, however, any return to religion is not a path into the Kingdom, but a departure from it. He understands perfectly well that all religious norms and rules belong not to the Kingdom, but to our world, still not transformed (vv. 20-22). Of course, at times they can help a person on his spiritual path. But they can also become an obstacle for those seeking the Kingdom if they are made the goal and meaning of life: then they only create an illusion of spiritual life, while in reality having nothing to do with it. It is no accident that Paul says of such religiosity that it only has the appearance of wisdom, without truly being wisdom (v. 23): for him the Kingdom is the only goal of the Christian life, and he rejects everything that can distract from it and lead a person off the path.

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