Slices
Prepare
What is lacking in your life? What need is unfulfilled? What effect is that having on your walk with God? Bring those reflections to our Father now. He’s big enough to handle the truth.
Bible passage
Spiritual fullness in Christ
6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Explore
Paul the prisoner calls on the Colossians to avoid captivity! Is this a cruel joke? Or is Paul unaware of the irony? No. He knows all about the chains that matter in our lives. They are not made of metal, but ideas. Paul is completely free and the Colossians are in danger of being imprisoned. Clever people with attractive voices are calling them to put their faith in ‘hollow and deceptive philosophy’ (v 8). Our faith is in a person, Jesus, not philosophy or traditions.
We were effectively dead. Now we are alive in Christ (v 13). No obedience to law or adoption of Jewish traditions can add to what Jesus has done. But these might change our thinking so that we believe we have contributed to our salvation or that something is missing.
That is the trap Paul warns them to avoid. We have been given ‘fulness in Christ’ (v 10). We can’t add anything more. Following Jesus is the correct response (v 6), not trying to do the work he has already done. Overflow with thankfulness for this amazing gift!
Respond
Two big words today: fulness and overflowing. God is not mean. There is no good thing he holds back from his children. Bring your needs before him now. Trust him to be faithful and wise in response.
Deeper Bible study
Fill thou my life, O Lord my God, / in every part with praise, / that my whole being may proclaim / thy being and thy ways.’1
The warning at the centre of the passage contrasts hollow and deceptive philosophies with the fullness of Christ (v 8). Much is at stake here. It’s like being in a doctor’s waiting room, hoping that the doctor will diagnose and treat you, only to learn from others in the waiting room that there is no doctor – but they are willing to help with their own diagnoses. Clearly, in this church, some think they need to undergo external practices such as circumcision and obey other regulations (vs 11,13,14) and have views about the role of other cosmic powers (v 15). Human beings seem naturally predisposed to see religion as obeying rules to appease God. From our own experience we may know how easily such extras can creep in, like legalism about certain kinds of behaviour and dress, but to hold such human philosophies about religion leaves you in that waiting room with no possibility of true diagnosis and liberating treatment.
That is why the fullness of Christ’s work is so strongly stressed here. Jesus is God incarnate – not some religious option open to debate alongside other possibilities (v 9). He is the sole power and authority in the cosmos and by his death he diagnoses our sin and gloriously forgives to make us new. Circumcision done by human hands is redundant, for baptism now identifies physically with Christ’s saving work at its most powerful in his burial and rising (vs 11,12). Speculations about other powers at work are laid hollow by Christ’s triumph on the cross.
Hollow philosophies can sadly take hold in a group, such as legalism placing extra human demands upon believers. Being made alive in Jesus is God’s awesome work that fills everything with meaning – you have been given fullness in Christ (v 10).
Repeat verses 6 and 7 as a prayer for today, with special emphasis on ‘overflowing with thankfulness’ for who Jesus is.
1 Horatius Bonar, 1808–89
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Amos 7,8; Revelation 8
Pray for Scripture Union
Pray for Rob Steward as he leads the SU North team. Pray for continued wisdom and blessing as he works with churches on Revealing Jesus, regional partnerships and with the staff team. Pray also for the planning of the new Easter residential (delayed for two years).
