"Fullness in Christ"

Series on Colossians: Colossians 2:1-23

February 13, 2011

Introduction: Illus. “Twinkies and Root Beer,” via the internet. A little boy wanted to meet God. He knew it was a long trip to where God lived, so he packed his suitcase with Twinkies and a six-pack of Root beer and he started his journey. When he had gone about three blocks, he met an old man who was sitting in the park just staring at some pigeons. The boy sat down next to him and opened his suitcase. He was about to take a drink from his root beer when he noticed that the old man looked hungry, so he offered him a Twinkie. He gratefully accepted it and smiled at him. His smile was so pleasant that the boy wanted to see it again, so he offered him a root beer. Again, he smiled at him. The boy was delighted!

They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word. As it grew dark, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave, but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old man, and gave him a hug. The man gave him his biggest smile ever.

When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, "What did you do today that made you so happy?”

"He replied, "I had lunch with God. You know what? He's got the most beautiful smile I've ever seen!"

Meanwhile, the old man, also radiant with joy, returned to his home. His son was stunned by the look of peace on his face and he asked, "Dad, what did you do today that made you so happy?" He replied, "I ate Twinkies in the park with God. You know, he's much younger than I expected."

Paul has never met the Colossians, although it came from his indirect ministry, yet he is able to write these words in Colossians, chapter 2, to encourage them, strengthen them, and build them up in the Lord! It is Paul’s desire that they meet God, and in meeting God receive encouragement, strength, and freedom in faith.

I. Encouraged and United- (Colossians 2:1-5)

Let’s read the first 5 verses of chapter 2: “I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally. ² My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, ³ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. ⁴ I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. ⁵ For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.”

a. Encouraged in heart- Have you noticed how many people in our

world seem discouraged and downcast? I am quite amazed at this. Maybe it is because I feel that God has given me the gift of encouragement, and I am sensitive to noticing those who need encouragement. The wonderful thing is that encouragement can be pretty easy to give: a sent e-mail, a hug, a smile, a kind word, or a compliment, can all encourage someone who needs encouragement.

The apostle Paul wanted the Colossians to be encouraged in their hearts. Why is this? Because Paul knew that for them to continue to grow in their faith (as we talked about last week in chapter 1), and for them to bear fruit (which we also talked about last week), they needed to be ready and willing to stand strong in their faith and to share this faith with others! Those who are discouraged struggle to move forward in their faith.

Along with this, you cannot stay in your discouragement if you hope to cope with the situations of life you face. We are constantly bombarded with the challenges that life brings to us. They can easily discourage us. But if we let the discouragement control us, then it will win, and we will lose, because we will not be able to get past these challenges. We will feel lost in life. We must be a people of God, a church for God, that is encouraged in our hearts, and encourages others!

b. United in love- Along with being encouraged in their hearts, Paul

wanted them to be united in love. ILLUS. A couple of weeks ago when my family and I went skiing in Mammoth, it was fun to work with Tiffany and Tyler in their skiing and snowboarding. They had never done it before, so we started out on the easiest slopes on the hill. I was so pleased with how quickly they picked it up. By the late morning they were ready to go on some harder ski slopes, so we went over to another lift, and up we went. After going down these tougher hills for a while, Tiffany wanted to go back to the easier hills, while Tami, Tyler, and I wanted to stay on these new hills. As you can imagine, it is not good to not have been unified, because we couldn’t go in different directions, we needed to stay together as a family.

Without love for one another, you cannot have a church. Without being unified in purpose and direction, you cannot have a fruitful church. Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t ever have differences of opinion. But to be unified in love is to work things out, and to ultimately agree on a direction. In the end, we took a lunch break, then after lunch we skied the easier slopes some, and then finished with the harder ones. Compromise is an important aspect of being unified in love!

c. The treasure of wisdom and knowledge- Next, Paul talks about

how the Colossians have the treasure of the wisdom and knowledge that are found in Christ. While at face value these words might seem similar, they really aren’t the same. The knowledge that Paul talks about here is better translated as “critical knowledge,” and is the ability to assess a situation and decide on an appropriate course of action. Wisdom, on the other hand, is the ability to confirm the truth once it has been grasped. Wisdom is what confirms that the faith that you have in you is true.

You can understand a situation, but without wisdom, you struggle to carry it out. You probably know of people who seem very knowledgeable, but their actions are not always very wise. They have grasped the knowledge, but struggle to know how to implement it. In the spiritual sense, this is even more true, in that without wisdom we might know what the Bible tells us to do, but we get sidetracked by false truths and we don’t act wisely.

Paul tells us that this knowledge and wisdom are made known to us in Christ. What was once hidden is no longer hidden because the Spirit of God resides in us, and helps us to understand what we are to know, and how we are to wisely act.

II. Strengthened in Faith- (Colossians 2:6-15)

Let us continue with verses 6-15: “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 canceled 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.”

a. Deceptive philosophies- Paul, in teaching the Colossians, lifts up

the idea of not being taken captive ‘through hollow and deceptive philosophy.’ Now there are many teachings in this world that are false, but since Paul focuses so much on Christ, let us do the same.

It is easy to think that ALL RELIGIONS are good. Now if you are thinking that they are good because they make people nicer people, then maybe there is some good to them, but not all religions are good, because they don’t all lead to the One true God. This is why Jesus came to the earth, and why Christ died for us.

We will get to this more in a moment.

Now when I say religions, I am not talking about the different Christian denominations: like Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, and even Catholicism. What I am talking about is religions that are different than Christianity, such as: Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, and Jehovah’s Witness, to just name a few. They are deceptive, because they are well thought out, they have been around for quite some time, and they have MANY followers. Plus, we live in a society where we are supposed to honor others beliefs.

The problem with these other religions, is that there is no connection with God and us, His followers. Along with this, there is no assurance of salvation. For example, some Muslims believe that they can kill themselves and the infidels around them (all those who are not Muslim) and they will go to heaven. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that they can LOSE their salvation by committing a terrible sin.

b. The fullness of Christ- The difference between the other religions,

and Christianity, is their concept of who Jesus Christ is. Paul wants us to rightly understand who Christ is, and the role Christ holds in this world, and in eternity. Paul specifically tells us that Jesus Christ is GOD IN THE FLESH, by saying: ‘For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.’ The fullness of deity (of Godness) dwells in Christ!

The truth is, the only thing we need for salvation is Christ. If Christ was not God in the flesh, then His death would not have given us forgiveness for our sins. But since He was God in the flesh, Christ, being perfect, took our penalty onto Himself, and removed the penalty from us.

There is a true story of a missionary in India who was challenged by all the other faiths he encountered in India. In his talking with the Hindus, the Buddhists, and the Muslims he finally discovered the One truth that made his faith secure: that God took on flesh, in the Incarnation, and lived among us, and died for us. Whenever he spoke about this truth, the meeting would lapse into silence, sometimes for many minutes, and then someone would say: “We have nothing in our faith that compares to that. Nothing!”

Christ has triumphed over all things, and in this we are not only saved from our sins, but as we will see in the last part of the chapter, we find wonderful freedom in Christ.

III. Freedom found in Christ- (Colossians 2:16-23)

We finish up the chapter by reading verses 16-23: “¹⁶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. ¹⁸ Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. ¹⁹ They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. ²⁰ Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: ²¹ “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? ²² These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. ²³ Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”

a. What you eat and drink- The major challenge to the Colossian

Christians was Gnosticism. In this last section of chapter 2, we see Paul bringing up these many Gnostic ideas. The first idea is about what you eat and drink. In the Gnostic thinking there were many regulations about what could not be eaten and drunk. They had become much like the Jews in this way, with their lists of what was clean and what was unclean.

The Gnostics believed that matter was evil, and thus the body was evil. If this is the case, then the body must be beaten down in its every impulse. Paul is saying here that they were not to have anything to do with those who identify their religion with laws of what can or cannot be eaten and drunk. For what we eat and drink is digested, and then excreted from the body.

While we are to keep ourselves from drugs and overindulgence of alcohol, since these negatively affect the body and mind, we are not to be guided in our faith by rules of food and drink. We have freedom from this in Christ.

b. Celebrations- Second, was the observation of specific feasts and

New Moons. Again, we see legalism taking shape here as they drew out lists of what was to be done, and what was not to be done. They turned their religion into a ritual. Paul’s criticism was that they had been rescued, freed by Christ from such rituals and regulations.

There is great wonder and worship that can be attained through rituals, such as Advent and Lent seasons, the praying of the Lord’s Prayer, and Communion. What needs to be avoided is qualifying when they have to be done and how they have to be done. When ritual controls your faith and practice, you lose the personalness of who God is, and how God wants us to worship Him. Our faith is to lead us into a growing relationship with God, not a constricting one.

c. Special visions- A third idea that was causing confusion with the

Colossians was those Gnostics who talked about the “special visions” they were having. Now the Bible does talk about “visions” that God gave to His prophets, and that He still gives to His followers from time to time. The visions wasc not what was wrong, what was wrong was the attitude they had behind them. They talked as though they were more special than other believers because they had these special visions. So, if you were not one who had visions, then you were made to feel lesser than those who had them.

The truth is, we all can have special visions given to us from God. For some it might happen in their dreams. For others it happens by God giving them an idea of something that God wants done. And still for others it can happen through special insight into a ministry or need of the church. The important factor here is not so much the vision, but making sure that what is seen is from God, and not what the person wants to see.

Conclusion: Experiment (via the internet)- “Great violinist Joshua Bell plays violin.” On a cold January morning, in the Washington, DC Metro Station, a man with played Bach on his violin. For about 45 minutes he played. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. As he played he was notice by a middle-aged man, who stopped for a few seconds, then a woman stopped long enough to throw a little money in his hat on the ground. One young man actually stopped and listened for a few minutes, then walked on. Some children were curious, and tried to stop, but their mothers hurried them along. In all, only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 people gave money as they walked on by, that totaled 32 dollars. Who was the violinist? His name was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.

He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell played in a sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music. This experiment was organized by the Washington Post about perception, taste and people's priorities.

I believe Colossians, chapter 2 is similar to this, in that Christ came into this world, God in the flesh, and gave Himself for us. Many people don’t stop and notice; even fewer give themselves fully to Christ. Paul writes this chapter to inform and challenge us to live in unity with one another, encouraged by the fact that we have salvation, forgiveness of sins, and God’s wisdom. He wants us to understand that we have freedom in Christ when we live in Christ, not giving ourselves over to the false doctrines around us. The question is, will we walk on by, or will we stop and pay attention? Amen.