+I. The text assumes that man possesses the faculty of imitation.+
+II. He requires an example to imitate and that example is Christ.+
+III. A model must be seen to be imitated, so Christ has presented
Himself to us for that purpose.+--_W. Frazer._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF VERSE_ 8.
_The Marks of a False Philosophy._
Philosophy plays an important part in the investigation and discovery
of truth. The use of the word arose out of the humility of
Pythagoras, who called himself a lover of wisdom. The noblest
intellects of all ages have been devoted to the pursuit of the same
coveted prize. Philosophy represents the highest effort of the human
intellect in its search after knowledge. It explores and tests
phenomena in the realm of physics and of morals and discovers the
subtle laws by which those phenomena are governed. It elevates man to
his true rank in creation, and teaches that he must be estimated, not
by his physical relation to the outward world, but by the sublime
endowments of his mind, into which it is the special function of
philosophy to inquire. The philosophic mood never reaches its highest
development till it is Christianised. The apostle does not stigmatise
all philosophy as in vain; he knew the value of a true philosophy,
and in his estimation the Christian religion was the embodiment of
the highest philosophy. But he warned the Colossians against a false
philosophy that was deceptive in its pretensions and deadly in its
influence.
+I. A false philosophy is known by its profitless speculations.+--The
absence of both preposition and article in the second clause shows
that "vain deceit" describes and qualifies philosophy. A celebrated
Roman sophist summed up his deliberate judgment on the efforts of the
learned in the painful search after wisdom in these words: "The human
mind wanders in a diseased delirium, and it is therefore not
surprising that there is no possible folly which philosophers, at one
time or another, have propounded as a lesson of wisdom." When the
most highly cultured intellects have been gravely occupied with
tricks of magic, the casting of nativities, the random guesses of
soothsaying, and the pretended marvels of a mystic astrology; when
the best of life has been spent in discussing transcendental
questions as to the eternity of matter, fate, the mortality of the
soul, the worship of angels, and their mature endowments and habits,
and in definitional hair-splitting as to what constitutes the chief
good of man; when the truest and best discoveries of human reason are
used to disparage Divine revelation and discredit the absolute
authority of saving truth--then philosophy falsifies its name,
frustrates its lofty mission, and degenerates into vain, empty,
profitless speculations. The student of the theories and
contradictions of certain philosophic schools may begin with
extravagant expectations, only to end in chagrin and despondency. The
errors which assailed the Colossian Church were a mixture of the
Oriental system of Zoroaster with Judaism, and with the crude,
half-comprehended truths of Christianity. It was a mongrel system of
philosophy, containing the germs of what afterwards developed into an
advanced Gnosticism and became the prolific source of many forms of
heresy. Its abettors became "vain in their imaginations, and their
foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves wise, they became
fools" (Rom. i. 21, 22).
+II. A false philosophy is known by its purely human origin.+--"After
the tradition of men."
1. _The human mind is limited._--The stream can never rise higher
than its source; so the wisdom that comes from man is necessarily
bounded by the range of his mental powers. The human mind cannot
penetrate far into any subject without discovering there is a point
beyond which all is darkness and uncertainty. It is impossible for
the circumscribed and unaided mind of man to construct a philosophy
that shall be universally true and beneficial. Tillotson has said:
"Philosophy has given us several plausible rules for attaining peace
and tranquillity of mind, but they fall very much short in bringing
men to it."
2. _All human knowledge is imperfect._--"If any man think that he
knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." The
_traditions_ of men are the accumulation of mere human theories
transmitted from age to age until they have assumed the pretensions
of a philosophy, imposing a number of uninspired and unauthorised
observances and austerities. The imperfection of human knowledge is
not obliterated but aggravated by its antiquity. A philosophy that
builds solely on man is baseless and full of danger.
+III. A false philosophy is known by its undue exaltation of
elementary principles.+--"After the rudiments of the world." The
source of the false teaching against which the apostle warned was
found in human tradition, and its subject-matter was made up of "the
rudiments of the world"--the most elementary instruction conveyed by
external and material objects, suited only to man's infancy in the
world. The legal rights and ceremonies instituted by Moses are
evidently referred to here; they were the first rough elements of an
introductory religion fit only for children--shadows at best of great
and deeper truths to which they were intended to lead, and yet, by
the tendency of the soul to cling to the outward, gendering to
bondage. "Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under
the elements [rudiments] of the world. But now, after that ye have
known God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements?"
(Gal. iv. 3-10). The apostle shows the Colossians that, in Christ,
they had been exalted into the sphere of the Spirit, and that it
would be a sad retrogression to plunge again into the midst of the
sensuous and ceremonial. A true philosophy, while starting
necessarily with elementary principles, conducts its votaries into a
pathway of increasing knowledge and of spiritual exaltation and
liberty. A false philosophy fetters the mind by exaggerating the
importance of first principles and insisting on their eternal
obligation.
+IV. A false philosophy is known by its Christlessness.+--"And not
after Christ." Christ is neither the author nor the substance of its
teaching; not the author, for its advocates rely on human traditions;
not the substance, for they ignore Christ by the substitution of
external ceremonies and angelic mediators. Such a method of
philosophising may be after the Jewish fanatics, after the
Pythagoreans or Platonists, after Moses and his abrogated legalism;
but is it _not after Christ._ There is no affinity between Christ and
their inventions; the substances cannot amalgamate. As it is
impossible, by any process, to convert a baser metal into gold, so it
is impossible to elevate a vain philosophy into Christianity. All
true saving knowledge must be after--_i.e._ according to--Christ. It
is in Him alone the deepest wants of man's nature can be met and
satisfied. Any philosophy, though championed by the most brilliant
intellects, that tends to lure the soul from Christ, that puts
anything in the place of Him, or depreciates in any way our estimate
of His glorious character, is false and full of peril.
+V. A false philosophy is known by its destructive influence.+--"Lest
any man spoil you." The meaning of the word "spoil" is very full and
significant: it is not simply to despoil--to strip off--but to carry
away as spoil, just as the four kings, after the battle in the vale
of Siddim, plundered the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and bore away
as spoil the people and all their property and victuals (Gen.
xiv. 12-16). The Colossians had been rescued from the bondage of
darkness and transferred to the kingdom of light; they were settled
there as free and happy citizens; and now there was danger lest they
should be tampered with by some crafty marauder, seized and carried
away as booty, and fall into a worse state than their former slavery.
There are worse losses than loss of property, or even of children:
man is never so grievously spoiled as when his soul is debased and
robbed by the errors of wicked seducers. Men who have contemptuously
given up the Bible as a book of fables, lost their peace of mind,
wrecked their moral character, and blasted their prospects for ever,
began their downward career by embracing the apparently harmless
ideas of a false philosophy. "The thief cometh not," saith Jesus,
"but to steal, to kill, and to destroy; I"--the infallible Teacher,
the incorruptible Guardian, the inexhaustible Life-giver--"am come
that they might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly" (John x. 10).
+VI. Against a false philosophy the Church must be faithfully
warned.+--"Beware."
1. _Because it is seductive in its pretensions._--It seeks to refine
and elevate the plain Gospel by a show of lofty intellectualism; it
dignifies some particular religious rite into an unjustifiable
importance; it elaborates a ritual marvellous for spectacular display
and musical effect; it flatters the pride and ministers to the
corruption of the human heart; and, stealing through the avenue of
the charmed senses, gains an imperious mastery over the whole man.
2. _Because it is baneful in its effect._--It not only misrepresents
and distorts the truth, but injures the faculties of the soul by
which truth is obtained and kept. It darkens the understanding,
pollutes the conscience, and weakens the will. It robs man of his
dearest treasure, and offers in exchange a beggarly system of crude,
unsatisfying speculations. The soul is goaded into a restless search
after rest and cursed with its non-attainment.
+Lessons.+--1. _Human philosophy is essentially defective._ 2. _The
true philosophy is the highest knowledge of Christ._ 3. _All
philosophy that weans the soul from Christ is false and should be
shunned._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 9, 10.
_The Divine Fulness of Christ a Pledge of the Believer's Perfection._
Christianity is the true philosophy. Here are its profoundest depths,
its loftiest themes, its most substantial discoveries. The philosophy
that is not after Christ is vain and misleading. It was a false
conception of the Colossian heresy that the Divine energy was
dispersed among several spiritual agencies. The apostle boldly
declares that in Christ dwells the whole πλήρωμα the entire fulness
of the Deity, and that it is in vain to seek for spiritual life in
communion with inferior creatures.
+I. The Divine fulness of Christ.+--1. _In Christ is the fulness of
the Deity._ "For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead"
(ver. 9). A small text, but a great subject. These words contain the
sublimest truth in the narrowest compass. Fulness is a term used to
signify all that anything contains. Hence, we read of the fulness of
the earth, the fulness of the sea, and that the Church is Christ's
body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. In Christ inhere
all the perfections, attributes, and qualities that essentially
constitute the Divine nature--power, wisdom, eternity,
self-existence, omnipresence, truth, love, holiness. The deities of
the heathen never pretended to possess more than a few Divine
attributes, some portion of Divinity. But Christ contains in Himself
the totality of Divine powers and excellencies.
2. _The fulness of the Deity in Christ is present and
permanent._--"Dwelleth." The present tense is used. It is not as a
transient gleam or as a brilliant display to serve a temporary
purpose, but as an ever-present and unchanging reality. Mystery of
mysteries! the body that hungered and thirsted, that bled and died,
that rose and ascended on high, is still the temple of illimitable
Deity! The manifestations of God through angels and prophets were
brief and partial. The Shekinah, or visible glory, that hovered over
the ark of the covenant was a symbol only of a present deity and
disappeared as mysteriously as it came. But in Christ, the
transcendent fulness of the Godhead finds its permanent home, never
to depart, never to vanish.
3. _The fulness of the Deity in Christ has a visible
embodiment._--"Bodily." In the person of Christ every moral
perfection of the Godhead was enshrined and brought within the range
of human vision. He presented and proved the fact of the Divine
existence. He embodied and declared the Divine spirituality. He
delineated the Divine disposition, and character in the days of His
flesh. Gleams of the Divine nature occasionally broke forth. "We
beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten Son of God" (John
i. 14). And now, from that subtle, glorified human form of our
exalted Mediator, the splendour of the Deity rays forth, filling the
universe with light and glory and joy. In Christ the Godhead is
revealed, not as a changing, shadowy phantasm, but as a positive,
substantial reality.
+II. The supreme authority of Christ.+--"Which is the Head of all
principality and power" (ver. 10).
1. _Angels are the principalities and powers of the universe._--They
are called _spirits_ to express their nature, and _angels_ to
designate their office as messengers sent by God. They are called
_sons of God,_ to indicate their lofty relationship; _cherubim,_
because of their composite nature, and because they are placed under
the presence of Jehovah, whose moving throne they appear to draw;
_seraphim,_ because of their burning ardour in executing the commands
of God; _stars of the morning,_ to set forth their brightness; _a
flaming fire,_ because of the fierceness and celerity with which they
carry out the vengeance of Heaven; and they are called
_principalities_ and _powers_ on account of their exalted rank and
superior endowments.
2. _Among the principalities and powers of the universe Christ has
supreme authority._--He is the Head of all angelic hierarchies. He
called them into being. He endows them with vast intelligence. He
designates their rank. He controls their beneficent ministries. He
fills the circle of their bliss. To worship angels, or to seek their
mediation in the affairs of the soul, is not only gross idolatry, but
an insufferable insult to the fulness of the Deity in Christ.
+III. The believer's fulness in Christ.+--"And ye are complete in
Him" (ver. 10).
1. _In Christ is the inspiration of the believer's life._--The soul
finds its true life by believing on the Son of God. "He that hath the
Son hath life" (1 John v. 12). In ourselves we are like empty
vessels; but in Christ we are filled up to the brim. As there is an
original and Divine fulness of the Godhead in Christ, so there is a
derived fulness communicated to us. Every advance in Christian
experience, every aspiration after a more exalted spiritual tone,
every yearning of the soul after clearer light, every struggle for
victory over self and sin, is prompted and accelerated by the
impetuous inflow of the Divine life.
2. _In Christ is the perfect ideal of the believer's
character._--Christ has exalted human nature. He took not on Him the
nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. He has shown what human
nature can become, and what it can do. In Him we have the illustrious
pattern after which our souls are to be fashioned and rounded off
into a full-orbed completeness. "Christ is the mirror that glasses
God's image before us, and the Spirit is the plastic force within
that transfers and photographs that image; and so, beholding as in a
glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
3. _In Christ is the interminable bliss of the believer's
future._--The present life is a training for the future. The more it
is in harmony with the will of Christ the happier will it be. Every
attempt, amid the multiform relations of life, to do our duty in a
Christly spirit, is bringing us into closer sympathy with Christ, and
preparing us for a joyous life with Him hereafter. The apostle
expressed the condition of the highest conceivable bliss to the
believer in the words, "And so shall we ever be with the Lord"
(1 Thess. iv. 17).
+Lessons.+--1. _Christ is essentially Divine._ 2. _There is an
ineffable fulness of salvation in Christ._ 3. _All secondary
mediators between God and man are superfluous._ 4. _The soul is
complete in Christ only as it believes in Him._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._