_TWO FINAL TESTS OF THE FALSE TEACHING._
"If ye died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as
though living in the world, do ye subject yourselves to ordinances.
Handle not, nor taste, nor touch (all which things are to perish
with the using), after the precepts and doctrines of men? Which
things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility,
and severity to the body; _but are_ not of any value against the
indulgence of the flesh."--COL. ii. 20-23 (Rev. Ver.).
The polemical part of the Epistle is now coming to an end. We pass in
the next chapter, after a transitional paragraph, to simple moral
precepts which, with personal details, fill up the remainder of the
letter. The antagonist errors appear for the last time in the words
which we have now to consider. In these the Apostle seems to gather up
all his strength to strike two straight, crashing, final blows, which
pulverize and annihilate the theoretical positions and practical
precepts of the heretical teachers. First, he puts in the form of an
unanswerable demand for the reason for their teachings, their radical
inconsistency with the Christian's death with Christ, which is the very
secret of his life. Then, by a contemptuous concession of their apparent
value to people who will not look an inch below the surface, he makes
more emphatic their final condemnation as worthless--less than nothing
and vanity--for the suppression of "the flesh"--the only aim of all
moral and religious discipline. So we have here two great tests by their
conformity to which we may try all teachings which assume to regulate
life, and all Christian teaching about the place and necessity for
ritual and outward prescriptions of conduct. "Ye are dead with Christ."
All must fit in with that great fact. The restraint and conquest of "the
flesh" is the purpose of all religion and of all moral teaching--our
systems must do that or they are naught, however fascinating they may
be.
I. We have then to consider the great fact of the Christian's death with
Christ, and to apply it as a touch-stone.
The language of the Apostle points to a definite time when the Colossian
Christians "died" with Christ. That carries us back to former words in
the chapter, where, as we found, the period of their baptism considered
as the symbol and profession of their conversion, was regarded as the
time of their burial. They died with Christ when they clave with
penitent trust to the truth that Christ died for them. When a man unites
himself by faith to the dying Christ as his Peace, Pardon, and Saviour,
then he too in a very real sense dies with Jesus.
That thought that every Christian is dead with Christ, runs through the
whole of Paul's teaching. It is no mere piece of mysticism on his lips,
though it has often become so, when divorced from morality, as it has
been by some Christian teachers. It is no mere piece of rhetoric, though
it has often become so, when men have lost the true thought of what
Christ's death is for the world. But to Paul the cross of Christ was,
first and foremost, the altar of sacrifice on which the oblation had
been offered that took away all his guilt and sin; and then, because it
was that, it became the law of his own life, and the power that
assimilated him to his Lord.
The plain English of it all is, that when a man becomes a Christian by
putting his trust in Christ Who died, as the ground of his acceptance
and salvation, such a change takes place upon his whole nature and
relationship to externals as is fairly comparable to a death.
The same illustration is frequent in ordinary speech. What do we mean
when we talk of an old man being dead to youthful passions or follies or
ambitions? We mean that they have ceased to interest him, that he is
_separated_ from them and _insensible_ to them. Death is the separator.
What an awful gulf there is between that fixed white face beneath the
sheet, and all the things about which the man was so eager an hour ago!
How impossible for any cries of love to pass the chasm! "His sons come
to honour, and he knoweth it not." The "business" which filled his
thoughts, crumbles to pieces, and he cares not. Nothing reaches him or
interests him any more. So, if we have got hold of Christ as our
Saviour, and have found in His cross the anchor of souls, that
experience will deaden us to all which was our life, and the measure in
which we are joined to Jesus by our faith in His great sacrifice, will
be the measure in which we are detached from our former selves, and from
old objects of interest and pursuit. The change may either be called
dying with Christ, or rising with Him. The one phrase takes hold of it
at an earlier stage than the other; the one puts stress on our ceasing
to be what we were, the other on our beginning to be what we were not.
So our text is followed by a paragraph corresponding in form and
substance, and beginning, "If ye then be risen with Christ," as this
begins, "If ye died with Christ!"
Such detachment from externals and separation from a former self is not
unknown in ordinary life. Strong emotion of any kind makes us insensible
to things around, and even to physical pain. Many a man with the
excitement of the battle-field boiling in his brain, "receives but recks
not of a wound." Absorption of thought and interest leads to what is
called "absence of mind," where the surroundings are entirely unfelt, as
in the case of the saint who rode all day on the banks of the Swiss
lake, plunged in theological converse, and at evening asked where the
lake was, though its waves had been rippling for twenty miles at his
mule's feet. Higher tastes drive out lower ones, as some great stream
turned into a new channel will sweep it clear of mud and rubbish. So, if
we are joined to Christ, He will fill our souls with strong emotions and
interests which will deaden our sensitiveness to things around us, and
will inspire new loves, tastes and desires, which will make us
indifferent to much that we used to be eager about and hostile to much
that we once cherished.
To what shall we die if we are Christians? The Apostle answers that
question in various ways, which we may profitably group together.
"Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto _sin_" (Rom. vi. 11).
"He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto
_themselves_" (2 Cor. v. 14, 15). "Ye are become dead to the _law_"
(Rom. vii. 6). By the cross of Christ, "the world hath been crucified
unto me, and I unto _the world_." So then, to the whole mass of outward
material things, all this present order which surrounds us, to the
unrenounced self which has ruled us so long, and to the sin which
results from the appeals of outward things to that evil self--to these,
and to the mere outward letter of a commandment which is impotent to
enforce its own behests or deliver self from the snares of the world and
the burden of sin, we cease to belong in the measure in which we are
Christ's. The separation is not complete; but, if we are Christians at
all, it is begun, and henceforward our life is to be a "dying daily." It
must either be a dying life or a living death. We shall still belong in
our outward being--and, alas! far too much in heart also--to the world
and self and sin--but, if we are Christians at all, there will be a real
separation from these in the inmost heart of our hearts, and the germ of
entire deliverance from them all will be in us.
This day needs that truth to be strongly urged. The whole meaning of the
death of Christ is not reached when it is regarded as the great
propitiation for our sins. Is it the pattern for our lives? has it drawn
us away from our love of the world, from our sinful self, from the
temptations to sin, from cowering before duties which we hate but dare
not neglect? has it changed the current of our lives, and lifted us into
a new region where we find new interests, loves and aims, before which
the twinkling lights, which once were stars to us, pale their
ineffectual fires? If so, then, just in as much as it is so, and not one
hair's breadth the more, may we call ourselves Christians. If not, it is
of no use for us to talk about looking to the cross as the source of
our salvation. Such a look, if it be true and genuine, will certainly
change all a man's tastes, habits, aspirations, and relationships. If we
know nothing of dying with Christ, it is to be feared we know as little
of Christ's dying for us.
This great fact of the Christian's death with Christ comes into view
here mainly as pointing the contradiction between the Christian's
position, and his subjection to the prescriptions and prohibitions of a
religion which consists chiefly in petty rules about conduct. We are
"dead" says Paul, "to the rudiments of the world,"--a phrase which we
have already heard in verse 8 of this chapter, where we found its
meaning to be "precepts of an elementary character, fit for babes, not
for men in Christ, and moving principally in the region of the
material." It implies a condemnation of all such regulation religion on
the two grounds, that it is an anachronism, seeking to perpetuate an
earlier stage which has been left behind, and that it has to do with the
outsides of things, with the material and visible only. To such
rudiments we are dead with Christ. Then, queries Paul, with irresistible
triumphant question--why, in the name of consistency, "do you subject
yourself to ordinances" (of which we have already heard in verse 14 of
the chapter) such as "handle not, nor taste, nor touch?" These three
prohibitions are not Paul's, but are quoted by him as specimens of the
kind of rules and regulations which he is protesting against. The
ascetic teachers kept on vehemently reiterating their prohibitions, and
as the correct rendering of the words shows, with a constantly
increasing intolerance. "Handle not" is a less rigid prohibition than
"touch not." The first says, Do not lay hold of; the last Do not even
touch with the tip of your finger. So asceticism, like many another
tendency and habit, grows by indulgence, and demands abstinence ever
more rigid and separation ever more complete. And the whole thing is out
of date, and a misapprehension of the genius of Christianity. Man's work
in religion is ever to confine it to the surface, to throw it outward
and make it a mere round of things done and things abstained from.
Christ's work in religion is to drive it inwards, and to focus all its
energy on "the hidden man of the heart," knowing that if that be right,
the visible will come right. It is waste labour to try to stick figs on
the prickles of a thorn bush--as is the tree, so will be the fruit.
There are plenty of pedants and martinets in religion as well as on the
parade ground. There must be so many buttons on the uniform, and the
shoulder belts must be pipe-clayed, and the rifles on the shoulders
sloped at just such an angle--and then all will be right. Perhaps so.
Disciplined courage is better than courage undisciplined. But there is
much danger of all the attention being given to drill, and then, when
the parade ground is exchanged for the battle-field, disaster comes
because there is plenty of etiquette and no dash. Men's lives are
pestered out of them by a religion which tries to tie them down with as
many tiny threads as those with which the Liliputians fastened down
Gulliver. But Christianity in its true and highest forms is not a
religion of prescriptions but of principles. It does not keep
perpetually dinning a set of petty commandments and prohibitions into
our ears. Its language is not a continual "Do this, forbear from
that,"--but "Love, and thou fulfillest the law." It works from the
centre outwards to the circumference; first making clean the inside of
the platter, and so ensuring that the outside shall be clean also. The
error with which Paul fought, and which perpetually crops up anew,
having its roots deep in human nature, begins with the circumference and
wastes effort in burnishing the outside.
The parenthesis which follows in the text, "all which things are to
perish with the using," contains an incidental remark intended to show
the mistake of attaching such importance to regulations about diet and
the like, from the consideration of the perishableness of these meats
and drinks about which so much was said by the false teachers. "They are
all destined for corruption, for physical decomposition--in the very act
of consumption." You cannot use them without using them up. They are
destroyed in the very moment of being used. Is it fitting for men who
have died with Christ to this fleeting world, to make so much of its
perishable things?
May we not widen this thought beyond its specific application here, and
say that death with Christ to the world should deliver us from the
temptation of making much of the things which perish with the using,
whether that temptation is presented in the form of attaching
exaggerated religious importance to ascetic abstinence from them or in
that of exaggerated regard and unbridled use of them? Asceticism and
Sybaritic luxury have in common an over-estimate of the importance of
the material things. The one is the other turned inside out. Dives in
his purple and fine linen, and the ascetic in his hair shirt, both make
too much of "what they shall put on." The one with his feasts and the
other with his fasts both think too much of what they shall eat and
drink. A man who lives on high with his Lord puts all these things in
their right place. There are things which do _not_ perish with the
using, but grow with use, like the five loaves in Christ's hands. Truth,
love, holiness, all Christlike graces and virtues increase with
exercise, and the more we feed on the bread which comes down from
heaven, the more shall we have for our own nourishment and for our
brother's need. There is a treasure which faileth not, bags which wax
not old, the durable riches and undecaying possessions of the soul that
lives on Christ and grows like Him. These let us seek after; for if our
religion be worth anything at all, it should carry us past all the
fleeting wealth of earth straight into the heart of things, and give us
for our portion that God whom we can never exhaust, nor outgrow, but
possess the more as we use His sweetness for the solace, and His
all-sufficient Being for the good, of our souls.
The final inconsistency between the Christian position and the practical
errors in question is glanced at in the words "after the commandments
and doctrines of men," which refer, of course, to the ordinances of
which Paul is speaking. The expression is a quotation from Isaiah's
(xxix. 13) denunciation of the Pharisees of his day, and as used here
seems to suggest that our Lord's great discourse on the worthlessness of
the Jewish punctilios about meats and drinks was in the Apostle's mind,
since the same words of Isaiah occur there in a similar connection. It
is not fitting that we, who are withdrawn from dependence on the outward
visible order of things by our union with Christ in His death, should be
under the authority of men. Here is the true democracy of the Christian
society. "Ye were redeemed with a price. Be not the servants of men."
Our union to Jesus Christ is a union of absolute authority and utter
submission. We all have access to the one source of illumination, and we
are bound to take our orders from the one Master. The protest against
the imposition of human authority on the Christian soul is made not in
the interests of self-will, but from reverence to the only voice that
has the right to give autocratic commands and to receive unquestioning
obedience. We are free in proportion as we are dead to the world with
Christ. We are free from men not that we may please ourselves, but that
we may please Him. "Hold your peace, I want to hear what my Master has
to command me," is the language of the Christian freedman, who is free
that he may serve, and because he serves.
II. We have to consider one great purpose of all teaching and external
worship, by its power in attaining which any system is to be tried.
"Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and
humility, and severity to the body, _but are_ not of any value against
the indulgence of the flesh." Here is the conclusion of the whole
matter, the parting summary of the indictment against the whole
irritating tangle of restrictions and prescriptions. From a moral point
of view it is worthless, as having no coercive power over "the flesh."
Therein lies its conclusive condemnation, for if religious observances
do not help a man to subdue his sinful self, what, in the name of common
sense, is the use of them?
The Apostle knows very well that the system which he was opposing had
much which commended it to people, especially to those who did not look
very deep. It had a "show of wisdom" very fascinating on a superficial
glance, and that in three points, all of which caught the vulgar eye,
and all of which turned into the opposite on closer examination.
It has the look of being exceeding devotion and zealous worship. These
teachers with their abundant forms impose upon the popular imagination,
as if they were altogether given up to devout contemplation and prayer.
But if one looks a little more closely at them, one sees that their
devotion is the indulgence of their own will and not surrender to God's.
They are not worshipping Him as He has appointed, but as they have
themselves chosen, and as they are rendering services which He has not
required, they are in a very true sense worshipping their own wills, and
not God at all. By "will-worship" seems to be meant self-imposed forms
of religious service which are the outcome not of obedience, nor of the
instincts of a devout heart, but of a man's own will. And the Apostle
implies that such supererogatory and volunteered worship is no worship.
Whether offered in a cathedral or a barn, whether the worshipper wear a
cope or a fustian jacket, such service is not accepted. A prayer which
is but the expression of the worshipper's own will, instead of being
"not my will but Thine be done," reaches no higher than the lips that
utter it. If we are subtly and half unconsciously obeying self even
while we seem to be bowing before God; if we are seeming to pray, and
are all the while burning incense to ourselves, instead of being drawn
out of ourselves by the beauty and the glory of the God towards whom our
spirits yearn, then our devotion is a mask, and our prayers will be
dispersed in empty air.
The deceptive appearance of wisdom in these teachers and their doctrines
is further manifest in the humility which felt so profoundly the gulf
between man and God that it was fain to fill the void with its fantastic
creations of angel mediators. Humility is a good thing, and it looked
very humble to say, We cannot suppose that such insignificant
flesh-encompassed creatures as we can come into contact and fellowship
with God; but it was a great deal more humble to take God at His word,
and to let Him lay down the possibilities and conditions of intercourse,
and to tread the way of approach to Him which He has appointed. If a
great king were to say to all the beggars and ragged losels of his
capital, Come to the palace to-morrow; which would be the humbler, he
who went, rags and leprosy and all, or he who hung back because he was
so keenly conscious of his squalor? God says to men, "Come to My arms
through My Son. Never mind the dirt, come." Which is the humbler: he who
takes God at His word, and runs to hide his face on his Father's breast,
having access to Him through Christ the Way, or he who will not venture
near till he has found some other mediators besides Christ? A humility
so profound that it cannot think God's promise and Christ's mediation
enough for it, has gone so far West that it has reached the East, and
from humility has become pride.
Further, this system has a show of wisdom in "severity to the body." Any
asceticism is a great deal more to men's taste than abandoning self.
They will rather stick hooks in their backs and do the "swinging
poojah," than give up their sins or yield up their wills. It is easier
to travel the whole distance from Cape Comorin to the shrine of
Juggernaut, measuring every foot of it by the body laid prostrate in the
dust, than to surrender the heart to the love of God. In the same manner
the milder forms of putting oneself to pain, hair shirts, scourgings,
abstinence from pleasant things with the notion that thereby merit is
acquired, or sin atoned for, have a deep root in human nature, and hence
"a show of wisdom." It is strange, and yet not strange, that people
should think that, somehow or other, they recommend themselves to God by
making themselves uncomfortable, but so it is that religion presents
itself to many minds mainly as a system of restrictions and injunctions
which forbids the agreeable and commands the unpleasant. So does our
poor human nature vulgarise and travesty Christ's solemn command to deny
ourselves and take up our cross after Him.
The conclusive condemnation of all the crowd of punctilious restrictions
of which the Apostle has been speaking lies in the fact that, however
they may correspond to men's mistaken notions, and so seem to be the
dictate of wisdom, they "are not of any value against the indulgence of
the flesh." This is one great end of all moral and spiritual discipline,
and if practical regulations do not tend to secure it, they are
worthless.
Of course by "flesh" here we are to understand, as usually in the
Pauline Epistles, not merely the body but the whole unregenerate
personality, the entire unrenewed self that thinks and feels and wills
and desires apart from God. To indulge and satisfy it is to die, to slay
and suppress it is to live. All these "ordinances" with which the
heretical teachers were pestering the Colossians, have no power, Paul
thinks, to keep that self down, and therefore they seem to him so much
rubbish. He thus lifts the whole question up to a higher level and
implies a standard for judging much formal outward Christianity which
would make very short work of it.
A man may be keeping the whole round of them and seven devils may be in
his heart. They distinctly tend to foster some of the "works of the
flesh," such as self-righteousness, uncharitableness, censoriousness,
and they as distinctly altogether fail to subdue any of them. A man may
stand on a pillar like Simeon Stylites for years, and be none the
better. Historically, the ascetic tendency has not been associated with
the highest types of real saintliness except by accident, and has never
been their productive cause. The bones rot as surely inside the
sepulchre though the whitewash on its dome be ever so thick.
So the world and the flesh are very willing that Christianity should
shrivel into a religion of prohibitions and ceremonials, because all
manner of vices and meannesses may thrive and breed under these, like
scorpions under stones. There is only one thing that will put the collar
on the neck of the animal within us, and that is the power of the
indwelling Christ. The evil that is in us all is too strong for every
other fetter. Its cry to all these "commandments and ordinances of men"
is, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" Not in obedience to
such, but in the reception into our spirits of His own life, is our
power of victory over self. "This I say, Walk in the Spirit, and ye
shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh."