As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. ~ Colossians 2:6-15
Colossians is a book about truth and knowledge. Paul is
preoccupied with these things in the church. He says that he has a desire to
extol the “word of truth” vs. 1:6; that he desires and prays that they would be
“filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and
understanding,” vs. 1:9. He dismisses “plausible arguments” that deceive, vs.
2:4, and deceptive philosophies that take people captive, vs. 2:8.
But the most startling claim is the pronouncement in chapter
two, verses two and three, that the “knowledge of God’s mystery . . . is Christ
himself, in whom are hidden all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” In Christ, he declares, “all the
fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Truth, the Apostle declares, is a person.
So this isn’t some claim of 2+2=4 or the capital of Texas is
Austin. It’s truth understood as intimacy and relationship with the One who
created “all things visible and invisible” (1:16). How do we know this God? Story of Dr. Ray
Anderson and the first day of theology class.
The object to be known determines the method of knowing. How
do you get to know a person or a way of life? How do we come to know this One
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, who is truth?
What method do we use? What is the quality of this relationship of truth?
1.
Truth
is carried by a community that has received Christ.
Paul begins our section with the claim that the church in
Colossae has “received Christ Jesus”– Today many evangelicals use this phrase
to mean “to become a Christian.” Believers receive Christ by accepting him into
their hearts. That’s a nice sentiment. I am not suggesting, either, that it’s
entirely wrong but that that’s not what the Apostle Paul is saying. He’s not
talking about some fuzzy warm feeling about Jesus but the verb here in 2:6
“receive”, is a technical term taken over from Judaism which refers to the
transmission of teaching from one person or generation to another. This
connects directly to vs. 7 where we have the clause “as you were taught.” It is
about learning the gospel story, understanding what Jesus has done, who Jesus
is, and what Jesus taught, so that we are rooted, built up, established, and
abounding in thanksgiving – the ongoing response to a life changing gift. It’s
about learning about Jesus from others – from those who saw and heard him on
the dusty roads of first century Palestine and from those who carry that story
into the present.
Paul believed that the historical traditions about Jesus – that he
himself received, c.f. 1 Cor. 15:3, what Jesus said and did, provided the foundation
and the guidelines for the Colossians’ life as they must continue to do for us.
He is the truth. It means to be rooted in the knowledge of a story that
happened in time and space - that can be investigated, that welcomes all the
tools of historical inquiry. It also means that the story of God is a
historical vision that counters and challenges other stories, other
philosophies. It means that what we know isn’t simply entrusted to experience
but vigorous historical study and that knowledge isn’t simply about pastors but
the whole church passing it on. For Paul, Jesus is the center of Christian doctrine and the Christian life. When we
consider the wide variety of doctrinal issues and convictions, our beliefs and
understandings must begin and take their shape from the life and teachings of
Jesus as well as his death, burial and resurrection. It is no accident
that in creeds, like the Apostles’ creed, the sections dealing with Christ are
always the longest parts. Our beliefs and vision of Jesus provide meaning and
content to all the other doctrines. He is, the whole NT declares, the
self-disclosure of God in whom all the fullness of the God-head dwelled (Col.
1:19). All the doctrines of the Christian faith are related to Christ as spokes
to the hub of a wheel. Paul makes the radical claim that we simply cannot talk
about who God is, how we know God, what God is like, and what God wants with us
without talking about God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ. So he doesn’t just
show us the truth. He is the truth. How do I know who God is, what God thinks
of me, what God wants from – I look at and listen to Jesus – this one talked
about and shared by others.
It means bringing and knowing your Bible is an act of
devotion not simply an acquisition of knowledge. It means that we need to unite
together to teach our youth about Jesus because our faith is always something
that we receive.
2.
Truth
is about a community that embodies the fullness of God
Knowing Jesus, then,
is not simply a solitary, objective, dispassionate, investigation into the life
of a Jewish man living in first century Palestine. It is interesting that Paul
suggests that such truth is understood not so much by “plausible arguments”
(2:4) but by a community of love, read vs. 2:2 – the community is “united in
love so that they may have all the
riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is,
Christ himself”. Truth, ingh the Christian sense, ties intimately to our
commitment of fidelity to one another and our knowledge of Jesus ties not so
much to personal devotion per se but
to the commitment we have toward living it together. That’s why it’s important
to remember that the “you” in our passage is not you singular but “you” plural
referring to the church. Truth comes from the old English word troth – which finds its way in our word
betrothal. That’s a vision of the kind of truth Paul is talking about. Parker
Palmer puts it this way: “To know something or someone in truth is to enter
troth with the known . . . to become betrothed, to engage the known with one’s
whole self, an engagement one enters with attentiveness, care, and good will toward
others. Christian truth, therefore, is both received and expressed corporately.
It is incarnate in "his body" the church.
Greg Whitesides
question – “Prove to me that God exists.” I told him that the claim of
Christianity was far crazier than that and that the reality of God demanded a
different way of knowing – “come to church with me,” I said. Paul makes the
startling claim that not only is Jesus the fullness of God but that the church
has also come to fullness in him. Moreover, he says, God made you alive. The
truth of Jesus Christ – the fullness of God should be incarnated into a
community which acts out the knowledge it has received toward one another and
all of creation. It’sabout a people who are freed from the powers that seek to
rule our lives, who act out the reality of what Jesus has done on their behalf.
Let’s be honest. Why do people leave the faith? They tend to
abandon not because of intellectual problems with the Bible but because faith
seems so irrelevant, judgmental, lacking in compassion or community. Because
the community fails to reflect the startling claim that it has come to fullness
in him, who is the head. What matters is not so much the “do nots” of religion,
the power we might hold over society, but the astounding reality that God has
made us alive together with him.
Conclusion: truth is
a community for Onesimus
Paul has been arguing that the truth has been made known in
Jesus Christ. He is the TRUTH – unapologetically, in its totality, and that he
fills the church that faithfully roots itself in him. The truth, that is
Christ, then incarnates, enfleshes in new relationships and exciting
possibilities of forgiveness, love, acceptance, even challenge to the prevailing
social order. It is the community that functions as God’s witness to the truth.
And this truth challenges other philosophies, religious traditions even social
and cultural practices. Nothing makes this more clear than Paul’s greeting and
closing instructions. Go to 4:9: Onesimus, a runaway slave, has the honor of
bringing Paul’s letter to the church and is commended as a “faithful and
beloved brother.” The slave is now your brother. If Jesus forgives us, if the
creator came into a world and dwelt among us, and died for our sins, then the
slave is your brother. Paul writing to Onesimus’ former master writes in the
book Philemon:
For this is perhaps why he was parted from you for a while,
that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, as a beloved
brother—especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. (Phil. 1:16). Let the word of Christ
be “in the flesh” in your life today. Amen.
