March 2016

Paul's Epistle to the Colossians Part 6: The Indwelling Word

Presenting the last two segments of Paul’s epistle to the Colossians, we made digressions to discuss several things which Paul may not have addressed explicitly, but which certainly are related to Paul’s message. The first of these addressed substance pharisaism. There are many substance pharisees who seek to judge other men for partaking of things which Yahweh’s law does not proscribe. Some of these things are a part of Yahweh’s very creation, and therefore He provided them. So if our God provided them, and did not prohibit them in His law, how could we justify prohibiting them? How could we condemn men for using such substances? The truth is that we cannot justly prohibit our brethren from anything which the law of our God does not prohibit. If we do, then we imagine ourselves to be as gods, like the high priests that Paul had scathingly criticized in his second epistle to the Thessalonians. They were sitting in the temple of God, exalting themselves above everything that was truly godly, and imagined themselves to be as gods. When man makes his own laws rather than seeking to uphold Yahweh’s law, he becomes an idolater because he is certainly not God. Yahweh did not give men laws as a supplement to man’s law. Rather, He gave men laws to live by, and when they do, they are free of the tyranny of men.

Another sort of pharisaism which we addressed was word pharisaism. The word pharisees insist upon controlling the lexicons of others. So where Paul had advised at Ephesians 4:29, for instance, to “let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth”, as one translation has it, they imagine that to refer to literal words rather than to lies, flattery, threats, provocations, ribaldry, statements which are actually damaging regardless of what sort of words are used to express them. Likewise, here in Colossians 3:8 Paul admonished against “filthy communications”, or as we would translate the phrase, “abusive language”, or perhaps “shameful language”. The shallow, Judaized denominational Christian imagines these passages to be talking about certain words when they are really admonishing men not to lie to one another, not to slander one another, not to blaspheme God, not to use flattery and deceit, or any of the other things which men say and do to one another whether they be done with language that is "nice" or "naughty". But these passages do not advocate word pharisaism.

Paul's Epistle to the Colossians Part 5: Bad Words and “Filthy Communications”

Thankfully, bad words and filthy communications are not all we have to discuss this evening, however we seem to constantly be confronted by what I can only call “word Pharisees”, and they certainly need to be addressed.

In our recent discussions of Colossians chapter 2, we had seen Paul of Tarsus assert that because the children of Israel were freed from the ordinances of the law by the sacrifice of Yahshua Christ, Christians should not seek to judge one another based on those ordinances. Therefore Paul said “no one must judge you in food and in drink, or in respect of feast or new month or of the Sabbaths.” Of course, Paul was not telling Christians to disregard the sabbaths and the feasts, which he had advised them elsewhere to observe. Rather, he must have meant that no one should judge them as to how they observe those things, and especially concerning all of the commandments of men that were added to God’s laws regulating them.

Paul then advised his readers to “let no one find you unworthy of reward”, where he must have been referring to earthly rewards, making reference to those who would tell them that “One should not hold, nor should one taste, nor should one touch, (things which are all for corruption in their misuse,) according to the commands and instructions of men?” So we see that Christians should not seek to bar their brethren from anything which may give them refreshment or relief, even though that particular substance may be abused. Discussing this, we made examples of substances such as wine, marijuana and poppy, things which can certainly be abused, but which also have many legitimate uses. Conceding to the idea that the potential for the abuse of a substance is a good reason to proscribe the use of the substance actually isolates us from many of the wonderful and important resources provided for our use by the Creation of God, and in the long run often causes us more harm than good.

Paul's Epistle to the Colossians Part 4: Salvation is not by Legalism

Many Identity Christians profess to keep the laws of God, and for the most part they do. But then they adopt and intermingle a lot of their concepts of right and wrong from the greater society, or from their own personal judgment of things transpiring in society, good or bad, whereby they are really not following Yahweh’s law in the degree which they imagine. Of course, none of us follow it perfectly, and that is why we require the mercy which is found in Christ. But Yahweh’s law is much more than just church law. It is a schematic for the coming Kingdom of Heaven, and Christians should seek to live by it and establish it now. They should base their everyday decisions and their judgments of right and wrong upon God’s law first. In our time of punishment we may be compelled to obey some of the laws of men, but of course we should not do so to the point of negating or invalidating the laws of our God. When man and God disagree, we must choose to follow God.

I had initially thought to subtitle this segment of our presentation of Paul’s epistle to the Colossians as Puritanical Pharisaism, or perhaps Pharisaical Puritanism. These titles would be appropriate within the confines of our modern vernacular use of those terms, but are not really fair to most of the original Puritans, or even to at least some of the original Pharisees.

At first, the Puritans sought to purify the Church of England of the idolatry and rituals and other things considered Catholic and which have no foundation in Scripture. However numbers of them, realizing that the established churches could never be reformed, broke from the Anglican church and established their own churches. Many of these, being persecuted, fled to America or Holland, and among the first Pilgrims were a large number of separatist Puritans, but there were also some non-separating Pilgrims, Puritans and others who remained within the Anglican church.