+I. The source of all the life of the body.+--Christ is the Head,
therefore the source from which all parts of the body partake of a
common life. There are three symbols employed to represent the union
of Christ with His Church--the vine, the body, and the marriage bond.
+II. The various and harmonious action of all the parts.+--1. _From
Jesus comes all nourishment of the Divine life, even when we think
that we instruct or stimulate each other._ 2. _From Jesus comes the
oneness of the body._
+III. The consequent increase of the whole.+--1. _The increase of
life in the Church, both as a community and in its separate elements,
depends on the harmonious activity of all the parts._ 2. _Is
dependent of the activity of all, and sadly hampered when some are
idle._ 3. _Depends on its vitality within and on the concurrent
activity of all its members._ 4. _Depends not only on the action of
all its parts, but on their health and vitality._ 5. _There is an
increase which is not the increase of God._
+IV. The personal hold of Jesus Christ which is the condition of all
life and growth.+--A firm, almost desperate clutch in which Love and
Need, like two hands, clasp Him and will not let Him go. Such
tenacious grip implies the adhesive energy of the whole nature--the
mind laying hold on truth, the heart clinging to love, the will
submitting to authority.--_A. Maclaren._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 20-23.
_The Ceremonial in Religion Transitory and Unsatisfying._
The apostle returns again to the question of outward observances. He
saw the extreme danger with which the Colossians were threatened from
that source, and before turning to other matters in his epistle he
lifts up a warning voice as for the last time.
+I. That the ceremonial in religion is simply elementary.+--"The
rudiments of the world" (ver. 20). The ceremonial in religion is the
alphabetical stage, suited only to the world's infancy and to the
crudest condition in human development. It is the childish period
which, with all its toys and pictures and gewgaws, is put away when
spiritual manhood is attained. It is in its nature transitory and
imperfect. It conveys knowledge but in part; and when that which is
perfect is come, then that which is in part is done away.
+II. The ceremonial in religion is unworthy the submission of the
Christian believer.+--1. _The believer is liberated from the slavery
of the ceremonial._ He is "dead with Christ" (ver. 20). As Christ by
His death cancelled the handwriting of ordinances that was against
us, and vanquished Satan and all his hosts, so the believer, united
with Christ in His death, shares in the triumph of that death. He is
free; he rises into a new life, not under the tyranny of the old law,
with its demands and penalties, but in allegiance to Christ. He has
passed into another sphere of existence. Worldly ordinances have
ceased to have any value for him, because his worldly life is ended.
They belong to the realm of the transitory and perishable; he has
been translated into the realm of the free and the eternal.
2. _To return to the ceremonial is to forfeit Christian
liberty._--"Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to
ordinances?" (ver. 20). It is to ignore all progress, to impugn the
reality of the change wrought in the soul by spiritual baptism, to
close one's eyes to the altered state of things into which he has
been introduced, and to submit again to the galling yoke of legal
observances and human traditions which never had Divine sanction and
from which he had been emancipated. It is a denial of his
Christianity to subject himself again to their tyranny--to return
once more to the dominion of the world. It is giving up the substance
for the shadow. It is a deliberate self-degradation to the most
abject and pitiable slavery. It is supposed that many of the ascetic
practices of the false teachers at Colossæ were borrowed from the
Pythagoreans. Their philosophy was all on the side of prohibitions,
abstinences, a forced celibacy, the unlawfulness of animal food, the
possibility of attaining perfection by neglecting the body, under the
delusion that evil resided in matter.
+III. The ceremonial in religion, in its main features, is
universally the same.+--1. _It is the same in its dictatorial
prohibitions._ "Touch not; taste not; handle not" (ver. 21). Such is
the arrogant language of a narrow, bigoted, and imperious
superstition. It is an instruction to observe the gradual and
insidious manner in which it obtains the mastery over the human
conscience. _Touch not:_ it prohibits even a light partaking of some
meat or drink. _Taste not:_ the prohibition is extended, so that it
becomes a crime even to taste, though refusing to eat. _Handle not:_
to come in contact with the forbidden object, even in the handling,
is a dreadful sacrilege. So is it ever with the clamorous demands of
a proud, assumptious ritualism. There is no end to the unauthorised
prohibitions with which it seeks to bind the conscience.
2. _It is the same in its undue exaltation of the external and
transitory._--"Which all are to perish with the using" (ver. 22). The
very eating and drinking of them destroys them. They are consumed in
the using; and in order to nourish us they themselves perish--a plain
proof that all the benefit we receive from them respects only our
physical and mortal life. What folly is it to insist on a scrupulous
avoidance or observance of externals in order to salvation! You claim
an affinity with the eternal, and it is unworthy of your glorious
destiny to be absorbed with the worship of the perishable.
3. _It is the same in its human origin._--"After the commandments and
doctrines of men" (ver. 22). A commandment is a precept; a doctrine
is the principle or truth on which it is based. The one furnishes a
direction, the other the reason on which the direction rests. The
ceremonial in religion is an accumulation of the commandments and
doctrines of men. Depending on human authority, it has no value in
itself; and when it is made obligatory in order to human salvation,
it is an impious insult to Christ and an intolerable servitude to
man. The commandments of men, having no solid doctrines to rest upon,
are transitory and illusory.
+IV. The ceremonial in religion can never satisfy the many-sided
wants of humanity.+--1. _It pretends to a wisdom it does not
possess._ (1) In self-imposed methods of worship. "Which things have,
indeed, a show of wisdom in will-worship" (ver. 23). It insists on
certain distinctions of meats and drinks; on abstinence from this or
that kind of food; on certain ritual observances as necessary in
order to render due homage to God. The enthusiast for the ceremonial
argues that he who only does what God positively demands does only
what is common; but he who goes beyond, and submits to additional
observances, reaches a higher degree of saintliness. This is
will-worship, which has peculiar charms for the corrupt tendencies of
our depraved nature. The works of supererogation it invents are
pleasanter than the holy, humble, adoring worship of God through the
blood of the cross. (2) In the affectation of a spurious humility.
"In humility" (ver. 23). It is a pretence of wisdom to renounce all
worldly splendour and profess to live in poverty and seclusion. But
at the root of this profession the most pernicious pride may lurk. A
self-conscious and dramatically acted humility is the most degrading
and detestable. (3) In an unjustifiable indifference to bodily wants.
"And neglecting of the body" (ver. 23). The body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost, and is to be honoured and cherished, and all its just
wants satisfied, in order that its best powers may be employed in the
service of God. But the abuse of the body in starvation, painful
macerations, and squalid neglect is a folly and a sin.
2. _It is of no value in preventing the indulgence of the
flesh._--"Not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh" (ver.
23). The radical error of the ascetic lies in his belief that evil
resides in matter. Not the body, but the soul, is the source of sin:
the body is depraved because the soul is depraved. Sin exists as a
thought and conception of the heart before it exists as an act of the
flesh. No amount of outward flagellation, or of abstinence from
needful food, will satisfy the natural wants of the body, or destroy
its sinful tendencies. The attempt to be virtuous by afflicting the
body is like battering the outwork while the main citadel remains
untouched. The outward man can never satisfy the complicated needs of
man's nature. First bring the soul into a right relation to God, and,
with the aid of Divine grace, it will control all the outgoings of
the flesh.
+Lessons.+--1. _The ceremonial has its place in religion, and
therefore should not be despised._ 2. _The believer is raised above
the power of the ceremonial in religion, and therefore should not be
subject to it._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._
Ver. 20. _Principles above Rules; or, Wheat is better than
Bread._--Bread may feed us for the moment, but when once eaten it is
gone for ever. Wheat on the contrary will bear seed, increase, and
multiply. Every rule is taken from a principle, as a loaf of bread is
made from wheat. It is right to enforce the principle rather than the
action, because a good principle is sure of producing good actions.
Seeming goodness is not better than religion; precept is not better
than principle.--_A. W. Hare._