Colossians 2

Absent in Body, Present in Spirit// Revelation 3:14–22

¹For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me face to face, ²that they may be encouraged in heart, knit together in love, and filled with the full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, ³in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

• COL 2:1[FIELD NOTES]See the Laodicea Field Notes page.
• COL 2:3[FULFILLS]His character marked by wisdom and knowledge ← IS 11:2

⁴I say this so that no one will deceive you by smooth rhetoric. ⁵For although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I delight to see your orderly condition and firm faith in Christ.

Alive with Christ// Ephesians 2:1–10

⁶Therefore, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in Him, ⁷rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

⁸See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition and the spiritual forces of the world rather than on Christ. ⁹For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form. ¹⁰And you have been made complete in Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.

• COL 2:8[NOTE]PHILOSOPHY. Paul is not against thinking. He quoted Greek poets, Acts 17:28. He is against any system that takes you captive and leaves Christ out. If a teaching makes Jesus smaller, it is empty, no matter how smart it sounds.

¹¹In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of your sinful nature, with the circumcision performed by Christ and not by human hands. ¹²And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.

• COL 2:11[FULFILLS]God would circumcise the hearts of His people so they would love Him ← DT 30:6MEDIUM

¹³When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses, ¹⁴having canceled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross! ¹⁵And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

• COL 2:13[NOTABLE]The debt is a handwritten IOU, a list of everything we owe God. Paul says God did not just stamp it paid. He took it away and nailed it to the cross. Many preachers picture the sign nailed over Jesus' head that listed His crime, John 19:19, with our list nailed there instead.
• COL 2:15[DEMONIC]Christ disarmed the powers and triumphed over them by the cross

¹⁶Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath. ¹⁷These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ. ¹⁸Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you with speculation about what he has seen. Such a person is puffed up without basis by his unspiritual mind. ¹⁹He has lost connection to the head, from whom the whole body, supported and knit together by its joints and ligaments, grows as God causes it to grow.

• COL 2:16[NOTE]A SHADOW. Food laws, festivals, New Moons and Sabbaths were a shadow, 2:17. Jesus is the body that casts it. So do not let anyone judge you over these things. Seventh day Adventists and some others say Paul means the extra holy day sabbaths of the Law, not the weekly Sabbath.
• COL 2:18[NOTE]WORSHIP OF ANGELS. Scholars still debate what the Colossian teachers taught. It seems to mix Jewish rules, special visions and praying to angels. The habit lasted. About AD 363 a church council in Laodicea banned calling on angels, and in the 400s Theodoret said Phrygia still had chapels to the angel Michael. Some scholars read it as joining the worship that angels give God in visions.

²⁰If you have died with Christ to the spiritual forces of the world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its regulations: ²¹“Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!”? ²²These will all perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. ²³Such restrictions indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-prescribed worship, their false humility, and their harsh treatment of the body; but they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.