Imagine you are living in the ecclesia in Colossae. You recently experienced a surprise visit from a small group of brethren belonging to the Circumcision party. You, as many in the ecclesia, were awed by their Bible knowledge and exposition. But you were bothered by their continual insistence that the Jewish traditions needed to be kept. Not many days following their visit a letter from the Apostle Paul, to whom the ecclesia owed its very existence, was read before the ecclesia. The account below is a fictional story of one brother’s reflections on these experiences and the profound insight he gained through Paul’s letter.
The Messengers’ Message
I think it was their Godly demeanor and exceedingly devout and reverent behavior that set these brethren so much apart. They seemed to epitomize what “holiness” was all about with the intensity of their piety and disciplined living. And their knowledge of Scripture? It was unparalleled! They knew their Bibles backwards and forwards, especially the Law of God! No one was their match when it came to arguing a point of doctrine or exposition. It was so easy to understand why so many brethren in the community held them in such great esteem. If it hadn’t been for that letter from Paul…
Do you know what these brethren were saying to us?
First, they insisted, we must keep certain divinely appointed rituals, that our very salvation depended on it: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses,” they proclaimed, “you cannot be saved!”
I am personally so very thankful that Brother Paul addressed this in his letter. He told us that we already were circumcised! We were circumcised in Christ when we were baptized. We didn’t cut off a piece of our flesh; instead, in baptism, we put away our old lives, driven as they were by the sins of our fleshly bodies. This was the work of God’s hands and not mans! (Col 2:11)
Second, they taught that true devotion to God required a strict keeping of all the Jewish food laws and observance of the divinely appointed annual festivals, monthly feasts, and, especially, the weekly Sabbaths.
Paul again was very clear there was no such requirement for salvation. No one, he said, had a right to judge us in this matter. It was up to us if we personally wanted to follow the food laws and observe the feast days. All these things were only shadows, of which Christ was the reality. It is the reality we must look to, not the shadow. (Col 2:16-17)
Finally, they argued, that if we really wanted to ensure a holiness and purity of life acceptable to God and free from uncleanness, we must rigorously adhere to a specified set of rules and regulations for our lives. It really was amazing how much of what they taught had to do with negatives: “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” I wondered whether there was anything positive in their religion!
Paul truly caught the essence of their teaching in what he wrote: “ If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, 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’ (referring to things which all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines?” (Col 2:20-22 NIV).
And what would be the outcome if we faithfully followed their teaching? An assured life of godly purity and satisfying self-denial and holy sacrifice; a life, they said, that would be “holy, blameless, and irreproachable” in God’s sight.
If it weren’t for Paul, we would never have seen the tragic flaw in their teaching: “These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh!” (Col 2:23 NIV). What an irony, their religion accomplished the very thing it sought to deny — the satisfaction of the flesh!
Reflections on a Religion of Rules
I have thought long about the religion of these brethren. I would like to share with you my reflections.
The first thing I noticed was how easily zealous, capable, “together” brethren could be attracted to this religion. Here was such a clearly marked path to God… and what wonderful feelings of holiness and purity this can bring! What intensity of devotion and piety! What closeness to the Holy God!
But what of those “less fortunate”, those who struggle mightily with temptation and sin, who know only their weaknesses and failures? What of those brethren whose lives are less than “perfect”, who are feeling crushed under the weight of painful circumstances — an abusive husband, a faithless wife, or rebellious child, a disintegrating marriage? I wondered: What could this religion possibly hold out for them, but impossible demands, unachievable holiness, failure and rejection by God and man, leading to depression, despair, and death.
How quickly an ecclesia would become divided into two groups: Those who are “holy” and those who can’t quite make it.
Next I noticed how the religion of these brethren seemed to undermine the most fundamental lesson of the Gospel, a lesson that our beloved brother Paul illustrated for us so vividly from a recounting of his own life as a Pharisee: He told us how he was “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless” (Phil 3:5-6 NIV).
Paul, like all Pharisees, was such a superbly disciplined man; his powers of rigorous self-denial set him apart and above the ordinary Jew. And, like his companions, his zeal for the highest standard of righteousness was unmatched: “as for righteousness based on the law, faultless”! To this could be added his extraordinary single-minded devotion to a cause he deemed to be right.
Would not such an individual develop an extraordinary confidence in his own abilities and strength? How easily pride rises up in you because of what you can achieve that others cannot! This pride, Paul said, this “confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:4) only underscored the real essence of the Pharisees’ religion: It was a religion of self-sufficiency. They did not need God in their religion.
When Matthew, always such a perceptive and insightful man, wrote his account of our Lord’s life, he put side by side in one of his chapters these two groups of people in an absolutely remarkable way. The record is found in his account about the Pharisees’ tradition of washing of hands (Matt 15).
The Pharisees have always been unmatched in their zeal for the highest standard of righteousness, a standard that had become codified through the centuries into a book of rules and traditions so that one following this standard might keep themselves from transgressing the commandments of God.
But there were two problems with their religion then, as now: Pride came easily to these men because of what they could achieve that others could not. Who, indeed, can exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees! (vs 20) And, they thought that their strict adherence to their religious traditions and rules made them clean in the sight of God. Ironically, all it created was an external holiness without any impact on their hearts: an unclean spirit still ruled inside! (vv. 16-20)
Mark the contrast to the Canaanite woman: She and her daughter were the very epitome of uncleanness! But this woman had two things the Pharisees did not: She knew her desperate need and her complete inability to meet it with her own resources, and, she had a persistent, tenacious faith in Christ (vv. 21-28).
The marvel of it all? One was cleansed, the other was not… and never knew it!
What a lesson our beloved Matthew was led to put before us! Salvation and the cleansing of our hearts from the uncleanness of our flesh can never come by a rigorous self-discipline and adherence to a set of rules defining “righteousness”: It can only come when our self-sufficiency is slain and we must look to God alone in faith. This is where true holiness and the blessing of God begins as the prophet Isaiah said: “For thus saith the high and lofty One that in habiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, (Isa 57:15). I marvel at the greatness of our God who defines the place of His holiness to be those who know their desperate need!
The Spirit of our Lord’s Religion
I have always thought the spirit of our Lord’s religion was best seen when he was in the garden for the last time. Matthew again fills in the picture for us. “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt 26:41).
“Spirit willing” — what an understatement! Jesus always sought to please his Father! And yet, this only begotten Son of God, who could with a word silence a storm and quiet an angry sea, who could command 72,000 angels for his protection: this one confessed his own utter powerlessness in the face of his own flesh. “The flesh — my flesh, Peter — is weak.”
Where, then, did our Lord get the power and strength to drink the cup of humiliation and suffering?
It is our beloved Luke who draws the curtain for us to see: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him” (Luke 22:42-43).
The determination, the willingness, came from our Lord, but the strength to overcome came from his Father. Truly, as the prophet said, Jesus was the man God made strong for Himself. Like Sarah who received strength to conceive seed because she believed Him faithful who had promised (Heb. 11:11), even so our Lord, by his faith, received strength to conquer sin in his own flesh.
The spirit of our Lord’s religion is the very antithesis of Self-Sufficiency: God wants us to trust in His provision, in His strength, in His righteousness as it is written in Isaiah:
“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength” (Isa 45:22-24).
How hard, Paul told us, it had been for him to learn this simplest, and yet most profound lesson about faith in Christ. He shared with us what the Lord said to him when during one particularly troubling period of his life he begged the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).
I will never forget what he said next: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Here, I thought, is the fundamental paradox of life in Christ. I remember a portion of Paul’s letter to the brethren in Philippi that I have thought often about: “Not that I speak according to need, for I have learned to be content in whatever state I am. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound. In everything and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:11-13 NKJV). This is the secret of the religion of faith.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One