2:1 I want you to know what a feat I have for your sake and for the sake of those who are in Laodicea and Hierapolis, and for the sake of all who have not seen my face in the flesh,
Paul says that his labors and efforts in the Lord for the sake of strengthening the meetings are carried out not only for the meetings he knows, but also for those that he did not organize, and who have not even seen him in person. Paul was ready to endure the difficulties of the Christian field - and for the sake of brothers and sisters unknown to him.
Judging by what he reported about the meetings in Hierapolis and Laodicea, they also needed to be strengthened and encouraged by the word of the truth of God, for in the young meetings false brethren were sowing doubts about the correctness of the way of God - faster than Paul could go around the meetings visiting them.

2:2 that their hearts may be comforted, united in love for all the riches of perfect understanding, for the knowledge the mysteries of God and the Father and Christ,
On this text (highlighted part), some defenders of the doctrine of the Trinity build the theory that God the Father and Christ are one and the same God who took the form of Jesus on Earth.
Let's look at other translations:

World Bible Translation Center:
so that their hearts may be encouraged and united in love, and enriched in knowledge and perfectly comprehend the secret the truth of God - Christ,

New Testament, Institute of Bible Translation in Zaoksky:
“I want” both “you and” them to be courageous and bound by love “to each other in order to gain” all the wealth of perfect understanding and to know God's mystery - Christ "Himself".

New Testament translated by Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov)
so that their hearts may be comforted, united in love and for all the riches of the fullness of confidence, to knowledge the mysteries of God, Christ,

Good news. Modern translation of NT into Russian RBO:
And all this in order to instill courage in your hearts, uniting you with unbreakable bonds of love, until you achieve that fullness of conviction that knowledge gives God's mystery, that is, Christ.

Total: this text may have two meanings.
1) Paul says that the mystery of God lies in the revelation of Christ Jesus to the world, who has become the eternal father of everyone who has been redeemed from sin and death, as was prophesied about him:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; the government is upon His shoulder, and His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isa.9:6)

2) Paul says: the mystery of God is that Jesus would reveal to men the invisible Father and His plan for redemption from sin and death.

In any case, we are not talking about the fact that God the Sustainer, who sent His Christ into the world, is Jesus Christ himself.

So, Paul explains: if Christians fully understand the meaning and essence of the mystery of God’s spiritual economy in accepting all the nations of the earth into God’s people through the redemption of Christ, then they will not be alarmed by doubts in faith.

2:3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
It is in Christ Jesus, in his redemptive mission, that the plan of the Most High lies, previously hidden from everyone, but now revealed, for example, to the Apostle Paul, as well as to the rest of the apostles. Through them, all Christians have the opportunity to learn about the meaning of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for all humanity.

2:4 I say this so that no one will deceive you with insinuating words;
Paul instructs the congregation in order to warn against the appearance of insinuating speeches of false brothers, who have the ability to exhort so truthfully and sincerely that many new Christians, who did not yet fully understand the meaning of the coming of Christ, began to believe the false words.

2:5 for although I am absent in body, I am with you in spirit, rejoicing and seeing your prosperity and the strength of your faith in Christ.
Paul is concerned that the Colossians will not be deceived by false speech, and although he cannot come to them personally at the moment, nevertheless, in his mind and heart he is with them. The persistence of faith of these Christians in the correct understanding of the essence of the coming of Christ pleases Paul, and he would like this same confidence to always remain in them.

2:6,7 Therefore, just as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, [so] walk in Him,
7 being rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith as you were taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
Paul asks them not to deviate from that original knowledge, thanks to which they all believed in the atonement of Christ and were prompted to become Christians. A Christian’s steadfastness in faith (in the confidence of the correct choice of life’s path to God) has always depended and will depend only on how convinced they are of the essence of God’s plan to save humanity from sin and death.

2:8 Take heed, brethren, lest anyone lead you away with philosophy and empty deception, according to human tradition, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ;
Philosophy means “love of wisdom,” and if a person loves the wisdom of God, then such a “philosopher” is a desirable phenomenon.

But if someone loves what the people of this world consider wisdom, then such a person has loved “emptiness” - human ideas about God's truth that do not bring him any benefit in approaching God and understanding his place in God's plan.

Therefore, Paul warns the congregation about the danger of being carried away by the human imagination regarding the purpose of God and the role of Christ in it, which permeates many congregations. The danger was aggravated by the fact that those teaching a different gospel appeared in the congregations as true evangelists, without revealing themselves to be anything wrong, except for a distortion of the truth of God, imperceptible to newcomers.
Therefore, if you have superficial ideas about the truth, or if you take the content of religion lightly in principle, then you may unnoticeably get carried away by the human inventions widespread in the world.

2:9 for in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,
Through the knowledge of Jesus Christ it is possible to comprehend the fullness of the essence of the righteous man of God, created, although in a bodily (material) form, but in the image and likeness of God: after all, since the sin of Adam, man has been very far from reflecting in him the essence of God invested in him at creation (Gen.1:26)
Jesus Christ himself showed the true example of a righteous person, created in bodily form in the image and likeness of God. Through an acquaintance with Christ, all can have an idea of what a man of God looks like, how he acts, what interests him, and what he strives for. All who become like Christ in everything will achieve eternal life.

2:10 and you are complete in Him,
Due to the fact that in the assembly of Christ different parts of the body of Christ serve God, all together they form a single whole (the righteous body of Christ in its entirety, without missing “parts”)
If Christians imitate Christ in everything (abide in Christ Jesus, in his righteous body, in the congregation), then they also receive the opportunity to become God's righteous, then they too will have in themselves the fullness of the essence of God's man, formed in the image of God - following role model, Jesus Christ.

Who is the head of all principality and power. Jesus Christ is for a Christian the highest authority on earth for imitation and obedience: no other ruler on earth should have power over a Christian in terms of imitation and obedience to him.

2:11 In Him you were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the sinful body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ;
Thanks to the atonement of Christ, Christians who imitate him (their head over themselves) have the opportunity to circumcise their hearts, eradicating all desires, thoughts and actions that are not pleasing to God, turning into a new person, similar to Jesus Christ, the righteous man of God. In this case, it will be possible to say about them that they got rid of (put off) the old sinful body and acquired another one, capable of resisting sin even in this age.
(Paul shows along the way that the true teaching about Christ has nothing to do with circumcision of the flesh, imposed by some false brothers)

2:12 Having been buried with Him in baptism, you were also raised with Him by faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead,
The sinful flesh of a Christian seems to have died and been buried with Christ during his baptism into death for all sinners on earth. Therefore, becoming new people, Christians seem to be resurrected together with the risen Christ - for a new life in which the sinful flesh should no longer have power over them. They must believe in this: that God, by His power, is able to transform their inner world so that they feel renewed, different, able to fight sin and resist temptation.

2:13 and you, who were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our sins,
Thus, Christians, dead in the eyes of God because of sins, now, thanks to the atonement of Christ, have come to life in His eyes, for all the sins of the past have been forgiven them, and they have the opportunity to be reborn, to start a new life - “from scratch”, devoting themselves serving God, not sinful pastime.

2:14 having destroyed the handwriting that was against us, which was against us, and He took it out of the way and nailed it to the cross;
The new teaching that Christ brought into the world abolished the Mosaic Law.
God, allowing Jesus Christ to be executed according to the Mosaic Law, thereby “executed” the Mosaic Law itself, the handwriting that made all its performers sinners in the eyes of God, over whom sin and death ruled.
Why? Because the law, describing the types of sinfulness, forced people to constantly make sacrifices for sin and thereby showed that without these sacrifices, everyone remains sinners and enemies of God, everyone is in the power of sin and death, and, therefore, in the power of the devil.
But after the law was “nailed” together with Christ to the stake, it “perished”, and its power no longer extended to the new people of God: the new people of God were no longer obliged to make sacrifices for sins, thereby showing that they are clean. Christians redeemed by Christ were not considered sinners in the eyes of God.

2:15 having taken away the strength of the principalities and powers, he imperiously subjected them to shame, having triumphed over them with Himself.
This action of destroying the law, which emphasized the sinfulness of God's people, now showed a different picture: henceforth, thanks to the triumph of Christ's victory over sin and death (for he did not worship the devil even to death, and now he was resurrected) - sin, death and the devil himself (that those same ones superiors and authorities over sinful man) have lost power over God's people; from now on all these authorities disgraced by the triumph of the victory of God's son, for Jesus showed that it is possible not to bow to the devil even in the face of death.
For Christians, his example of perseverance in faith is a great reinforcement in resisting the devil and defeating sin.

2:16 So let no one judge you for food or drink, or for any festival, or the new moon, or the Sabbath:
If you don’t know that many false brothers encouraged Christians to fulfill the Mosaic Law, and Paul struggled with precisely this problem, then you might think that Paul called for eating, drinking and celebrating everything that was possible to celebrate.
But no, Paul, on the contrary, was talking here about the fact that the Christians of Colossae should NOT be embarrassed if they were reproached for NOT fulfilling the ritual instructions of the Mosaic Law, which the false brothers tried to involve this meeting in.

Since the Law of Moses has now been “killed,” Christians do not need to adhere to its ritual regulations for observance, such as ritual dinners (in the process of sacrifices); religious holidays, counting of the new moon, Saturday, etc.. This was encouraged by some zealots of the Mosaic Law - in addition to circumcision. If someone, for example, among the Jewish Christians, condemned them for not recognizing all this, in Colossae they should have understood that their righteousness before God did not decrease in the least from this.

new moons:
the first day of each new lunar month of the sacred Jewish calendar, which was declared to have arrived as soon as the crescent of the new moon appeared. The new moon (new moon) was celebrated as a holiday (with the sounds of trumpets and sacrifices). The law does not say anything about whether work was prohibited on the new moon, but judging by Am.8:5, work stopped on these days, as on Saturdays.

2:17 this is a shadow of the future, and the body is in Christ.
All the ritual Old Testament decrees for the Jews contained in the Law of Moses are only a shadow of that future, which became the present for Christians: the law warned of the coming of Christ and his redemption from sins (it was a shadow of the body of Christ). Now Christ has come and, since Christ himself (his body) exists, the shadow of the “body of Christ” no longer matters.

2:18 Let no one deceive you with self-willed humility and the ministry of Angels, intruding into what he has not seen, recklessly puffed up with his carnal mind
The translation of this text by V. Kuznetsova is clearer:
Good news. Modern translation of NT into Russian RBO
Do not allow yourself to be judged by people who adore humility, worship angels, and talk about their own visions. It is in vain that they boast of their intelligence; it is still earthly!

Those who talked about some supposedly spiritual visions from angels, about mysticism and fables, presenting as truth some of their own philosophical conclusions about the need to humble themselves before the heavenly angels, could look attractive to lovers of originality in understanding this world. Paul warned the congregation about such “teachers” who had nothing to do with the gospel of Christ crucified:

2:19 and not holding on to the head, from which the whole body, being united and held together by joints and bonds, grows by the growth of God.
If the “mentors”-philosophers were not carried away by the narrative that would clearly outline the decisive role of Jesus Christ, the head of the congregation, then their “fables” did not need to be perceived. The basis of the truth of God is in the atonement of Christ, and his spiritual body (the assembly of Christians) had to act harmoniously, in one mind, in unanimity. Only such a congregation had the opportunity to grow spiritually to the maturity of the example of the Son of God - Jesus Christ.

2:20,21 So, if you and Christ died to the elements of the world, then why do you, as those living in the world, adhere to the decrees:
21 “thou shalt not touch”, “thou shalt not taste”, “thou shalt not touch” –
Here Paul reprimands the Christians from Colossae, although previously he had only hinted that there was a problem in the congregation due to the substitution of religion.
He makes it clear that if the Colossians “buried” themselves for life in this world - for the sake of going through the Christian field, then there is no need for them to pay attention to anything else, for example, to the provisions of the Mosaic Law or prohibitions associated with superstition, mysticism, an ascetic way of life, etc., based on human speculation.

2:22 that everything decays through use, according to the commandments and teachings of man?
This translation option is more clear:
World Bible Translation Center
All this perishable will perish from consumption. By obeying such statutes, you are only following the rules and teachings created by men.

Even if they eat something “forbidden” or touch something “forbidden” - from the list of human prohibitions, then one way or another - it will still sooner or later “decay from consumption” - turn into nothing: the food will be digested in the stomach , and what is forbidden to touch will decay over time and become unusable. These are all the consequences of violating human prohibitions. It is much more important not to violate God’s prohibitions - this is what a Christian should think about.

That is, Paul exhorts the Christians of Colosseum to stop living the way this world with its decrees encourages them to live, for they are no longer of this world, since they belong to Christ.

2:23 This has only the appearance of wisdom in self-willed service, humility and exhaustion of the body, in some neglect of the saturation of the flesh.
All those types of righteousness that people establish for themselves, for example, an ascetic lifestyle, self-torture, renunciation of the joys brought by the satisfaction of natural needs, or sacrificial abstinence from food - all this has nothing to do with Christianity and the wisdom of God. The only role model for Christians is Jesus Christ: we look at his way of life, thoughts, feelings, deeds - and imitate him. Humanity has no other path to God other than the footsteps of Christ.

Cities in the Lycus River Valley Approximately 150 km from Ephesus, in the Lycus River valley there once stood three large cities - Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colossae. Once they were Phrygian cities, and in the time of Paul they were part of the Roman province of Asia. From each of them you could almost see the other two. Hierapolis and Laodicea stood on both sides of the valley of the Lycus River flowing between them at a distance of about 10 km from each other. The colossi lay 20 km higher on both banks of the river.

The Lycus Valley had two important features.

1. She was famous for her earthquakes. The ancient Greek geographer Strabo gives it a strange definition euseistos, what does it mean in Russian suitable for earthquake. Laodicea was repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes, but it was so rich and independent that it rebuilt itself without financial help from the Roman government. As John, the author of Revelation, put it about her, in his eyes she was rich and lacked nothing (Rev. 3:17).

2. The waters of the Lycus River and its tributaries were saturated with limestone, which settled throughout the area, forming amazing natural formations. Here is how Lightfoot describes the area: “Ancient monuments are buried, fertile fields are covered, river beds are clogged, streams are diverted, fantastic grottoes, cascades and stone arches are formed by this strange, capricious force, at once destructive and creative, that has quietly worked through the ages. Disastrous for vegetation, this inlay spread across the ground like a white shroud. Like glaciers on mountain slopes, even thirty kilometers away they attract the traveler’s eye with their white shine and add extraordinaryness to this unusually beautiful and impressionable landscape.”

Rich area

However, this area was rich and famous for two closely related crafts. The volcanic soils are very fertile, and all that was not covered with chalk deposits was magnificent pasture on which huge flocks of sheep grazed. This area was the largest center of the wool industry in the world at that time. Laodicea was especially famous for its production of high quality clothing. Dyeing was closely associated with this craft. These calcareous waters had some quality that ensured a particularly high quality of dyeing fabrics, and the city of Colossae was so famous for its dyeing craft that one of the dyes bore its name.

Thus, these three cities were in an important geographical and economically prosperous area.

Minor town

Once all three cities were equally important, but over the years their fortunes have changed. Laodicea became the political and financial center of the area; Hierapolis became a large industrial city and a famous resort. In this volcanic region there were many deep fissures from which hot steams and springs rose, widely known for their medicinal properties; thousands of people came to Hierapolis to bathe and drink its water.

At one time, Colossae was as large a center as the other two cities. Behind the Colossi stood the Cadmus mountain ranges and the Colossi dominated the passages to the mountain roads. The Persian kings Cyrus and Xerxes stopped there during their conquests, and the Greek historian Herodotus even called Colossae “the great city of Phrygia.” But for some reason this glory faded. The extent of that decline is shown by the fact that the location of Hierapolis and Laodicea can still be determined today. There are still ruins of some large buildings there, and in the place where the Colossi once stood, not a stone remains, and one can only guess where they stood. Even at the time Paul wrote his epistle, Colosse was only a small town, and Lightfoot says that it was the least important of all the towns to which Paul wrote.

But, in the city of Colossae, a heresy arose that could lead to the death of the Christian faith if it were allowed to develop unhindered.

Jews in Phrygia

To complete the picture, we need to add one more fact. In the area in which these three cities were located there lived many Jews. Long before this, Antiochus the Third ordered the resettlement of 2,000 Jewish families from Babylon and Mesopotamia to the regions of Lydia and Phrygia. These Jews prospered and, as often happens, many of their fellow Jews followed them into the area to share in their prosperity. So many of them came there that strict Palestinian Jews complained that so many Jews left the harsh conditions of the country of their ancestors “for the sake of the wines and baths of Phrygia.”

The number of Jews living there can be imagined from the following historical event. As we have seen, Laodicea was the administrative center of the region. In 62 BC Flaccus was the procurator there. He wanted to put an end to the Jewish practice of exporting money from the province to pay the temple tax, imposing a ban on the export of money, and only in his part of the province he seized about 10 kg of smuggled gold intended for the Jerusalem Temple, which was equal to the temple tax of at least 11,000 people. Due to the fact that women and children were exempt from paying the tax and, presumably, many Jews were still able to smuggle their money, we can estimate that the Jewish population of the area was about 50,000 people.

Church in Colossae

The church at Colosse was one of those that Paul did not found himself and that he never attended. He counts the Colossians and Laodiceans among those who did not see his face in the flesh (2,1). But, without a doubt, this church was created on his instructions. During the three years that Paul lived in Ephesus, the gospel spread throughout the entire province of Asia, and all its inhabitants, both Jews and Greeks, heard the preaching of the Lord Jesus (Acts 19:21). Colossae was located 150 km from Ephesus and, undoubtedly, this church was created during that two-year campaign. We do not know who founded it, but it may well be that it was Epaphras, who is described in the epistle as a colleague of Paul and as a faithful servant of Christ in the Colossian church, and was later associated with Hierapolis and Laodicea (1, 7; 4,12.13). If Epaphras was not the founder of the church in Colosse, he was undoubtedly a servant of Christ in this area.

pagan church

It is clear that the church at Colossae was composed primarily of pagans. Phrases like alienated and enemies (1.21) Paul usually uses it in reference to those who were once strangers to the covenants of promise. In 7:27, Paul says that God was pleased to show what the riches of the glory of this mystery are to the Gentiles, meaning the Colossians themselves. IN 3,5-7 he gives a list of their sins before they became Christians, and these are typical pagan sins. We can confidently say that the church at Colossae was composed primarily of pagans.

Threat to the Church

It must have been Epaphras who brought news of the situation in Colosse to Paul in the Roman prison. Much of the news brought was good. Paul thanks God for the news of their faith in Jesus Christ and their love for all the saints (1,4), for the fruits that their Christian faith brings (1,6). Epaphras brought him news of their love in the spirit (1,8). Paul is glad to hear about their prosperity and the strength of their faith (2,5). In Colossae, of course, there were problems, but they did not take on the nature of an epidemic. Paul believed that prevention was better than cure, and in this letter he caught evil before it became widespread.

Heresy at Colossae

No one can say with complete certainty what kind of heresy it was that threatened the existence of the church in Colosse. The "Colossian heresy" is one of the major scholastic problems of the New Testament. We can only turn to the message itself, collect the characteristic features given there and see if any heresy corresponds to them.1. It was a heresy that attacked the absolute primacy of Christ and the uniqueness of His sovereignty. No other epistle of Paul contains such exalted characterization of Jesus Christ, or such insistence on His perfection and completeness. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God; in Him dwells all completeness (1,15.19); in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (2,3); in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (2,9).

2. Paul especially emphasizes the role of Christ in creation. Everything was created by Him (1,16), and everything costs them (1,17). The Son was the instrument by which the Father created the universe.

3. At the same time, Paul makes every effort to emphasize the true humanity of Christ. In the body of flesh Christ accomplished His redemptive feat (1,22). All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily (2,9). For all His Divinity, Jesus was truly human flesh and blood.

4. There seems to be an element of astrology in this heresy. IN 2,8 Paul warns the Colossians lest anyone lead them astray to the elements peace, and at 2.20 says that if they are with Christ, that they died for elements peace. Greek word stoichea, translated here as element, has two meanings.

a) It is based on meaning a number of items. For example, it can mean a row, a line of soldiers, but most often it was used to designate the alphabet, the letters of the alphabet, so to speak, in order. This is where it got its meaning elements, components of objects. If this is how it should be understood, then Paul means that the Colossians are slipping into the position of elementary Christianity, when they should have matured in the faith.

b) We believe that the second meaning is more appropriate here. Stoihea may matter elemental spirits of the world, and, in particular, the spirits of the stars and planets. The ancients were haunted by the idea of the influence of the stars, and even the greatest and wisest men did nothing without consulting them. The ancients believed that everything was in the iron hands of fate, depending on the stars, and astrology claimed that it could give people secret knowledge that would free them from slavery and from these elemental spirits and demons. Most likely, the false teachers of the Colossians preached that in order to free people from dependence on these elemental spirits, something else was needed besides Jesus Christ.

5. This heresy attached great importance to demonic forces. The message repeatedly talks about superiors And authorities by which Paul designates these demonic forces (1,16; 2,10.15). The ancients believed unconditionally in demonic forces. In their minds, the air was literally swarming with them. Each natural force - wind, thunder, lightning, rain - had its own demonic authorities. Every place, every tree, every river, every lake, in their opinion, had its own demon. These demons were, in a sense, an intermediate link to God, and in another sense, barriers to Him, because in the minds of the ancients, most of them were hostile to man. The ancients lived in a world inhabited by a mass of demons and spirits. Obviously, the false teachers of the Colossians preached that in order to defeat demonic power, something else was needed other than Jesus Christ.

6. There was also a philosophical element in this heresy. Heretics captivate people with philosophy and empty seduction (2,8). The heretics of Colossae said that the simplicity of the good news must be supplemented by more subtle and difficult to understand knowledge.

7. In this heresy there was a tendency to insist on the observance of special days and holidays, new moons and Saturdays (2,16). 8. There was also a feigned ascetic element in this heresy. False teachers made food and drink laws (2,16). Their slogan was:"Don't touch, don't taste, don't touch" (2,21). This heresy intended to limit Christian freedom to the observance of various legal rites.

9. There was an antinomian current in this heresy. False teachers tried to instill in people a careless attitude towards the integrity necessary for a Christian, and frivolity towards bodily sins (3,5-8).

10. This heresy seems to have given some place to the veneration of angels (2,18). In addition to demons and demons, they also introduced angels as intermediaries between God and people.

11. And finally, in this heresy there seems to have been an element of what we might call spiritual and intellectual snobbery. IN 1,28 Paul states his purpose: to admonish all sorts of things person, teach any wisdom to present every person perfect in Christ Jesus. We see the phrase repeated every person and that Paul's purpose is to make every man perfect in any wisdom. It is fair to conclude from this that the heretics confined the good news to a select few and created an intellectual and spiritual aristocracy in the wide-open Christian faith.

Gnostic heresy

Was there any general heretical trend at that time that included all these aspects? There was such a movement - Gnosticism. Gnosticism arose from two fundamental ideas about matter. The Gnostics, firstly, believed that only the spirit is good, and matter is inherently vicious. Secondly, the Gnostics believed that matter is eternal, and that the universe was not created from nothing, contrary to the Christian creed of faith, but from this corrupt matter. Certain consequences inevitably followed from these fundamental provisions.

1. They influenced the doctrine of creation. If God is Spirit, then He is absolutely good and could not create from this vicious matter. Therefore God Not was the creator of the world. He poured out a series of emanations, each one farther from Him, until finally there appeared at the other end an emanation that was so far from God that it could process matter, and it was this emanation that created the world. But the Gnostics went even further. Due to the fact that each subsequent emanation was further and further from God, she, the Gnostics said, knew less and less about Him. As the number of series of these emanations increased, ignorance turned into hostility, and thus the emanation most distant from God knew nothing about Him, and at the same time was hostile to Him. From this it followed that the one who created this world knew nothing about the true God and at the same time was completely hostile to Him. And so, refuting this Gnostic theory of creation, Paul argued that God’s mediator in the process of creation was not some ignorant and hostile force to Him, but the Son, who knew the Father completely well and loved Him.

2. They also affected Jesus Christ Himself. If matter was completely corrupt and Jesus was the Son of God, then, the Gnostics argued, Jesus could not have had a body of flesh and blood. He was supposed to be some kind of spirit, a phantom. Thus, the inventions of the Gnostics went so far as to say that when Jesus walked, he supposedly left no footprints on the ground. And this, of course, completely deprived Jesus of His human essence and the opportunity to be the Savior of people. Refuting this Gnostic theory, Paul insisted that Jesus had a body of flesh and blood and that He saved people in a body of flesh and blood.

3. They touched on the ethical aspects of life. If matter is vicious, then it follows that our bodies are vicious, and if our bodies are vicious, then two consequences follow from this.

a) We must starve and beat our body and renounce it, lead a strictly ascetic lifestyle, suppress our body, denying it all its needs and desires.

b) But you can approach it from the completely opposite direction. If the body is evil, it does not matter what a person does with it; Only the spirit matters. And therefore a person can satisfy the desires of his body and it does not matter.

Thus, Gnosticism could manifest itself in asceticism, with the observance of all kinds of laws and restrictions; or, it could result in antinomianism, which justifies any immorality. And we see that both of these trends were propagated by the false teachers at Colossians.

4. It follows from this that Gnosticism claimed a highly intellectual way of life and thinking. Between God and man stands a long series of emanations, and to reach God man must laboriously climb a long ladder. To do this, he needs various mysterious knowledge, special training for the elite, and hidden passwords. He must know all this in order to lead a strict ascetic lifestyle, and someone who wants to lead such a strict ascetic lifestyle simply will not be able to engage in everyday activities. And therefore, the Gnostics believed, the highest religious spheres are open only to a select few. This idea of the need to belong to some kind of intellectual religious aristocracy corresponds to the situation that developed in Colossae.

5. We need to add one more thing. It is quite obvious that there was a Jewish element in the false teaching that threatened the Colossian church. The observance of holidays, new moons and Sabbaths was characteristic of Judaism, and the laws about food and drink were, in essence, Jewish Levitical laws. Where did this Jewish element come from? It is strange to note that many Jews sympathized with Gnosticism. They knew everything about angels, demons and spirits. But first of all they said: “We know very well that to comprehend God you need special knowledge. We know very well that Jesus and His good news are too simple, and this special knowledge can only be found in Jewish law. Our ritual and formal law is the special knowledge that gives man the ability to reach God.” And therefore, Gnosticism and Judaism often entered into a strange union, and it is precisely such a union that we find in Colossae, where, as we have already seen, there were many Jews.

It is clear that the false teachers of Colossians were infected with the Gnostic heresy. They tried to turn Christianity into philosophy or into Theosophy, and if they had succeeded in this, the Christian faith would have been destroyed.

Authorship of the message

One more question remains. Many theologians do not believe that Paul wrote the epistle. They put forward three theses.

1. They say that Colossians contains many words and phrases that do not appear in any other letter of Paul. And this is absolutely true, but it does not prove anything. We cannot demand from a person that he always write the same way and use the same language. It may well be considered that in the Epistle to the Colossians Paul had something new to say and new words to find for it.

2. They say that Gnosticism developed much later than the age of Paul, so that if the Colossian heresy was associated with Gnosticism, then it must have been written later than the age of Paul. It is true that the major writings of the Gnostics were written later, but the idea of two worlds and the idea of \u200b\u200bthe depravity of matter are closely connected with both the Jewish and Greek worldviews. There is nothing in the Epistle to the Colossians that cannot be explained by the Gnostic line, which had a long history in the ancient worldview, although, of course, its systematization took place later.

3. They say that the views of Jesus Christ reflected in the Epistle to the Colossians are far superior to anything found in the epistles, which undoubtedly belong to Paul. There are two answers to this.

First, Paul speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ. In Colosse, Paul was faced with a new situation, and in order to cope with this situation, he drew new answers from this unfathomable wealth. In the Epistle to the Colossians, Christology does outstrip everything written in Paul's earlier epistles, but this does not at all give us the right to say that Paul did not write it, unless we want to argue that his thought remained in one place all the time. It is fair to say that a person thinks out the meaning and content of his faith as circumstances force him to do so, and in the face of new circumstances Paul thought out the meaning of Christ in a new way.

Secondly, the germ of Paul's idea of Christ, set forth in the Epistle to the Colossians, is, in fact, contained in one of his earlier letters. IN 1 Cor. 8.6 Paul writes that we have one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and by him we. This phrase is the basis of everything he says in Colossians. The seed was already in his mind, ready to blossom as soon as new conditions gave it growth.

We need not hesitate to recognize that the book of Colossians was written by Paul himself.

Great message

Strange and surprising, the fact remains that Paul wrote a letter, in which the highest flights of his thought were reflected, to such an insignificant city as Colossae was then. But, in doing so, he stopped a trend that otherwise would have destroyed Christianity in Asia Minor and, perhaps, could have caused irreparable harm to the entire Church.

Taras asks
Answered by Yuri Tkachenko, 04/08/2013

Taras asks:"Colossians 2:16 So let NO ONE JUDGE YOU about what you eat or what you drink, or ASK WHETHER YOU KEEP Feast Days, New Moons, AND SATURDAYS.17 This is only a SHADOW of what was to come, the reality is -in Christ.Hebrews 10:1 For the Law is nothing more than a SHADOW of future blessings, and not the true image of them. The Apostle refers the Sabbath and others to the Law, why do you need this yoke. Warning Galatians 1:8 here is N. The covenant for us is the epistles of the apostles Christ's teaching is the basis of life"

Hello, Taras! Thank you for such a serious question.

In Colossians 2:16-17 there is a list (food, drink, holidays, New Mosics, Sabbath) and then it is said that this is a “shadow of the future”, however, the weekly Sabbath never pointed to the future, but always pointed to the past (to the creation of the world in past): "This is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever, because in six days the Lord created heaven and earth and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed."
1) The first thing to note is that the Sabbath in this text points to the past, to creation.
2) The Bible says this Sabbath is established "forever"

Then what Sabbath was Paul writing about? In the Old Testament we find several holidays that were called the Sabbath and pointed to the future, as a “shadow of future” blessings:

1) Yom Kippur (literally “day of covering”): “For on this day they purify you, to make you clean from all your sins, so that you may be clean before the Lord; this is a Sabbath of rest for you; mortify your souls: this is a decree eternal." (Read the entire chapter and you will see that it is all about Yom Kippur)

2) Every seventh year was also called a Sabbath: “Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in the produce thereof, and in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of rest for the land, a Sabbath of the Lord: You shall not sow your field, nor shall you prune your vineyard; "

3) Every fiftieth year was also called a Sabbath: “And count yourself seven Sabbath years, seven times seven years, so that in the seven Sabbath years you may have forty-nine years; and you shall blow the trumpet in the seventh month, on the tenth [day] of the month, on the day of atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land."

It is important to note that all these three Saturdays were combined into one and pointed to the future. How? The Jubilee Sabbath included the seven-year Sabbath because it began in the seventh year of the seventh week. And also the Jubilee Saturday included the Saturday - Yom Kippur, because the Jubilee year began on this holiday: "Also on ninth [day] of the seventh month This day, the day of atonement, let you have a holy assembly; humble your souls and offer a sacrifice to the Lord;" (This is the beginning of Yom Kippur) "and blow the trumpet on seventh month, on the tenth [day] of the month, on the day of atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land." Leviticus 25:9 (This is the beginning of the year of jubilee)

It turns out that these three Saturdays, these three holidays meet together once every 50 years and that they pointed to some event in the future. This is what they said in the words of the Evangelist Luke: “They gave him the book of the prophet Isaiah; and he opened the book and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, and has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach to the captives. liberation, sight for the blind, setting the tormented free, preaching summer of the Lord favorable. (In every Bible at the bottom there is a reference that this is the year of jubilee) And, having closed the book and given it to the minister, he sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them: Now this scripture has been fulfilled, heard by you."

So, the Bible says that there were Sabbaths that pointed to the future fulfillment in Jesus Christ, which Paul wrote about in Colossians 2:16-17

You also mentioned the law. Some part of the law also concerned future benefits, which, according to Paul, was abolished: " Law, having a shadow of future benefits, and not the very image of things, with the same sacrifices, constantly made every year, can never make those who come [with them] perfect."

Here the law is associated with animal sacrifice and this part is really abolished, because it pointed to the future of the Lamb, Who takes away the sin of the world.

The part of the law speaking about sacrifices was not abolished by Paul, but Daniel also predicted that with the death of the Anointed One, “sacrifices and offerings will cease”: “And the covenant shall be established for many for one week, and at the half of the week sacrifice and offering shall cease, and upon the pinnacle [of the sanctuary] shall be the abomination that maketh desolate, and the final and appointed destruction shall come upon the desolator." Daniel 10:27

So, the New Testament does not abolish the Sabbath, nor does it abolish the Ten Commandments, but only that part of the law that relates to rituals, sacrifices and offerings.

May the good God bless you and your family!

Read more on the topic "Saturday":

Interpretation of Colossians 2:16. Your Saturdays (holidays) and the Lord's

Often people familiar with the Bible try to prove the fact that the New Testament abolished the Sabbath with the following text:

“Let no one therefore judge you for food or drink, or for any festival, or for the new moons, or Saturday» (Col. 2:16).

However, in this case we again encounter poor knowledge of Scripture. The fact is that the Jews called Saturday Not only seventh day of the week. The Jews had (and still have) both special Saturday - Shabbatot Meyuhadot - holiday days on which it is prohibited to work. For example, you cannot do any work on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and on certain days of the Feasts of Unleavened Bread (Passover), Pentecost (Firstfruits, Weeks), Trumpets and Tabernacles:

“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, the Passover of the Lord; and on the fifteenth day of the same month, the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord... first day let you have a holy assembly; don't do any work … on the seventh day also sacred assembly; don't do any work» (Lev. 23:5-8, Lev. 23:16,21, Lev. 23:24,25, Lev. 23:34-36).

« On the ninth day of this seventh month, the day of atonement, let you have a holy assembly; humble your souls and offer sacrifice to the Lord; you shall do no work on this day For this is the day of atonement, to make you atonement before the Lord your God; and every soul that does not humble itself on that day will be cut off from among its people; and if any soul do any work on this day, I will destroy that soul from among his people; You shall do no work: this is a statute forever throughout your generations, in all your dwellings; this is a Sabbath of rest for you, and humble your souls, from the evening of the ninth day of the month; celebrate from evening to evening your Saturday» (Lev. 23:27-32, see also Lev. 16:29-31).

Notice in verse 32 Saturday of rest in a ritual holiday day of cleansing(Redemption) named "Saturday yours» . And then in verse 38 of this chapter it says that all of the above days of rest are installed above weekly Saturdays: « Except Saturdays Lord's» (Lev. 23:38, see also Lev. 23:3). We see here original division Saturdays of the Lord (weekly) and national holiday - yours Saturdays: the second were only supplemented by the first.

According to the Law of Moses, the Israelites were required to strictly observe the festivals established by God. Three times a year - on Passover, Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks) and the Feast of Tabernacles - Jews were to gather in Jerusalem (see Deut. 16:16). On these days, a special service was arranged for God in the temple and additional burnt offerings were offered. Also in every the Sabbath and the new moon (the first day of the new month), in addition to the constant burnt offering, were required additional offerings and burnt offerings:

« And on Saturday you shall offer two lambs of the first year without blemish, and for your grain offering two tenths of an ephah of fine flour...: this is the Sabbath burnt offering on every Sabbath, on top of continual burnt offering... And in the new moon you shall offer burnt offerings to the Lord: two bulls of the herd, one ram, and seven lambs a year old without blemish, and three tenths of an ephah of fine flour.”(Num. 28:9-13).

Naturally, all Old Testament offerings and burnt offerings symbolized Christ. Jesus fulfilled the ritual part of the law (see Matt. 5:17), replacing both sacrifices and offerings to God once:

“Therefore Christ, entering the world, says: You did not desire sacrifices and offerings, but you prepared a body for Me» (Heb. 10:5).

That is Saturday , mentioned in Col. 2:16 listed with words holiday And new moons, can only be perceived in context holiday Saturdays and ritual serving the Lord on the seventh day of the week. Indeed, according to the following text, the listed Old Testament symbols are already fulfilled Jesus - "it is shadow of the future, and the body is in Christ"(Col. 2:17), and the weekly Sabbath, as we discussed above, was not reflected in the ministry of Christ.

The phrase occurs more than once in Scripture holiday, new moons, Saturday, where the Sabbath is associated with ritual service:

“The former tabernacle ... is an image of the present time, in which gifts and sacrifices are brought, which cannot make the offerer perfect in conscience, and which with food and drink, and various washings and rituals, relating to the flesh, were established only until time corrections" (

Comments on Chapter 2

INTRODUCTION TO THE EPISTLE TO COLOSSIANS

CITIES IN THE LYCUS RIVER VALLEY

About 150 from Ephesus, in the valley of the Lycus River, there once stood three large cities - Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colossae. Once they were Phrygian cities, and in the time of Paul they were part of the Roman province of Asia. From each of them you could almost see the other two. Hierapolis and Laodicea stood on both sides of the valley of the Lycus River flowing between them at a distance of about 10 km from each other. The colossi lay 20 km higher on both banks of the river.

The Lycus Valley had two important features.

2. The waters of the Lycus River and its tributaries were saturated with limestone, which settled throughout the area, forming amazing natural formations. Here is how Lightfoot describes the area: “Ancient monuments are buried, fertile fields are covered, river beds are clogged, streams are diverted, fantastic grottoes, cascades and stone arches are formed by this strange, capricious force, at once destructive and creative, that has quietly worked through the centuries. "Destructive for vegetation, this inlay spread over the ground like a white shroud. Like glaciers on mountain slopes, they attract the traveler's eye from thirty kilometers away with their white shine and add extraordinaryness to this unusually beautiful and impressionable landscape."

RICH AREA

Thus, these three cities were in an important geographical and economically prosperous area.

MINOR TOWN

At one time, Colossae was as large a center as the other two cities. Behind the Colossi stood the Cadmus mountain ranges and the Colossi dominated the passages to the mountain roads. The Persian kings Cyrus and Xerxes stayed there during their conquests, and the Greek historian Herodotus even called Colosse “the great city of Phrygia.” But for some reason this glory faded. The extent of that decline is shown by the fact that the location of Hierapolis and Laodicea can still be determined today. There are still ruins of some large buildings there, and in the place where the Colossi once stood, not a stone remains, and one can only guess where they stood. Even at the time Paul wrote his epistle, Colosse was only a small town, and Lightfoot says that it was the least important of all the towns to which Paul wrote.

But, in the city of Colossae, a heresy arose that could lead to the death of the Christian faith if it were allowed to develop unhindered.

JEWS IN PHRYGIA

The number of Jews living there can be imagined from the following historical event. As we have seen, Laodicea was the administrative center of the region. In 62 BC Flaccus was the procurator there. He wanted to put an end to the Jewish practice of exporting money from the province to pay the temple tax, imposing a ban on the export of money, and in his part of the province alone he seized about 10 kg of smuggled gold intended for the Jerusalem Temple, which was equal to the temple tax of at least 11 thousand people. Due to the fact that women and children were exempt from paying the tax and, presumably, that many Jews were still able to smuggle their money, we can assume that the Jewish population of the area was about 50 thousand people.

CHURCH IN COLOSSIES

The church at Colosse was one of those that Paul did not found himself and that he never attended. He counts the Colossians and Laodiceans among those who did not see his face in the flesh (2,1). But, without a doubt, this church was created on his instructions. During the three years that Paul lived in Ephesus, the gospel spread throughout the entire province of Asia, and all its inhabitants - both Jews and Greeks - heard the preaching of the Lord Jesus (Acts 19:21). Colossae was located 150 km from Ephesus and, undoubtedly, this church was created during that two-year campaign. We do not know who founded it, but it may well be that it was Epaphras, who is described in the epistle as a colleague of Paul and as a faithful servant of Christ in the Colossian church, and was later associated with Hierapolis and Laodicea (1,7; 4,12.13). If Epaphras was not the founder of the church in Colosse, he was undoubtedly a servant of Christ in this area.

PAGAN CHURCH

It is clear that the church at Colossae was composed primarily of pagans. Phrases like alienated and enemies (1.21) Paul usually uses it in reference to those who were once strangers to the covenants of promise. IN 1,27 Paul says that God was pleased to show what the riches of glory in this mystery are to the Gentiles, meaning the Colossians themselves. IN 3,5-7 he gives a list of their sins before they became Christians, and these are typical pagan sins. We can confidently say that the church at Colossae was composed primarily of pagans.

THREAT TO THE CHURCH

HERESY IN COLOSSIS

1. It was a heresy attacking the absolute primacy of Christ and the uniqueness of His sovereignty. No other epistle of Paul contains such exalted characterization of Jesus Christ, or such insistence on His perfection and completeness. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God; in Him dwells all completeness (1,15.19); in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (2,3); in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (2,9).

3. At the same time, Paul makes every effort to emphasize the true humanity of Christ. It was in the flesh that Christ accomplished His redemptive feat (1,22). All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily (2,9). For all His Divinity, Jesus was truly human flesh and blood.

4. There seems to be an element of astrology in this heresy. IN 2,8 Paul warns the Colossians lest anyone lead them astray to the elements peace, and in 2,20 says that if they are with Christ, that they died for elements peace. Greek word stoichea, translated here as element, has two meanings.

a) It is based on the meaning - a number of items. For example, it can mean a row, a line of soldiers, but most often it was used to designate the alphabet, the letters of the alphabet, so to speak, in order. This is where it got its meaning elements, components of objects. If this is how it should be understood, then Paul means that the Colossians are slipping into the position of elementary Christianity, when they should have matured in the faith.

7. In this heresy there was a tendency to insist on the observance of special days and holidays, new moons and Saturdays (2,16).

8. There was also a feigned ascetic element in this heresy. False teachers made food and drink laws (2,16). Their slogan was: "Don't touch, don't taste, don't touch" (2,21). This heresy intended to limit Christian freedom to the observance of various legal rites.

10. This heresy seems to have given some place to the veneration of angels (2,18). In addition to demons and demons, they also introduced angels as intermediaries between God and people.

11. Finally, this heresy seems to have contained elements of spiritual and intellectual snobbery. IN 1,28 Paul states his purpose: to admonish all sorts of things person, teach any wisdom to present every person perfect in Christ Jesus. We see the phrase repeated every person and that Paul's purpose is to make every man perfect in any wisdom. It is fair to conclude from this that the heretics confined the good news to a select few and created an intellectual and spiritual aristocracy in the wide-open Christian faith.

GNOSTIC HERESY

1. They influenced the doctrine of creation. If God is Spirit, then He is absolutely good and could not create from this vicious matter. Therefore God Not was the creator of the world. He poured out a series of emanations, each of which was further from Him, until finally at the other end there appeared a g. emanation that was so far from God that it could process matter, and it was this emanation that created the world. But the Gnostics went even further. Due to the fact that each subsequent emanation was further and further from God, she, the Gnostics said, knew less and less about Him. As the number of series of these emanations increased, ignorance turned into hostility, and thus the emanation most distant from God knew nothing about Him, and at the same time was hostile to Him. From this it followed that the one who created this world knew nothing about the true God and at the same time was completely hostile to Him. And so, refuting this Gnostic theory of creation, Paul argued that God’s mediator in the process of creation was not some ignorant and hostile force to Him, but the Son, who knew the Father completely well and loved Him.

3. They touched on the ethical aspects of life. If matter is vicious, then it follows that our bodies are vicious, and if our bodies are vicious, then two consequences follow from this.

a) We must starve and beat our body and renounce it, lead a strictly ascetic lifestyle, suppress our body, denying it all its needs and desires.

4. It follows from this that Gnosticism claimed a highly intellectual way of life and thinking. Between God and man stands a long series of emanations, and to reach God man must laboriously climb a long ladder. To do this, he needs various mysterious knowledge, special training for the elite, and hidden passwords. He must know all this in order to lead a strict ascetic lifestyle, and someone who wants to lead such a strict ascetic lifestyle simply will not be able to engage in everyday activities. And therefore, the Gnostics believed, the highest religious spheres are open only to a select few. This idea of the need to belong to a certain intellectual religious aristocracy corresponds to the situation that developed in Colossae.

5. We need to add one more thing. It is quite obvious that in the false teaching that threatened the Colossian church, the Jewish element was called in. The observance of New Moon holidays and Saturdays was characteristic of Judaism, and the laws about food and drink were, in essence, Jewish Levitical laws. Where did this Jewish element come from? It is strange to note that many Jews sympathized with Gnosticism. They knew everything about angels, demons and spirits. But all they said was, “We know very well that to understand God requires special knowledge. We know very well that Jesus and His good news are too simple, and this special knowledge can only be found in Jewish law. Our ritual and formal for-that special knowledge that gives a person the ability to reach God." And therefore, Gnosticism and Judaism often entered into a strange union, and it is precisely such a union that we find in Colossae, where, as we have already seen, there were many Jews.

It is clear that the false teachers at Colossians are infected with the Gnostic heresy. They tried to turn Christianity into philosophy or into Theosophy, and if they had succeeded in this, the Christian faith would have been destroyed.

AUTHORITY OF THE MESSAGE

One more question remains. Many theologians do not believe that Paul wrote the epistle. They put forward three theses.

First, Paul speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ. In Colosse, Paul was faced with a new situation, and in order to cope with this situation, he drew new answers from this unfathomable wealth. The Christology of Colossians is indeed superior to anything written in Paul's early epistles, but this does not give us the right to say that Paul did not write it, unless we want to say that his thought remained in one place all the time. It is fair to say that a person thinks out the meaning and content of his faith as circumstances force him to do so, and in the face of new circumstances Paul thought out the meaning of Christ in a new way.

We need not hesitate to recognize that the book of Colossians was written by Paul himself.

THE GREAT MESSAGE

THE STRUGGLE OF LOVE (Col. 2:1)

The curtain rises briefly before us and we can take a penetrating look into the heart of Paul. He goes to great lengths [in Barkley: to fight] for the sake of Christians, whom he has never seen, but whom he loves.

He puts the Laodiceans and the inhabitants of Hierapolis on the same level as the Colossians and speaks of those who did not see his face in the flesh. He thinks about the Christians living in these three cities in the Lycus valley - Laodicea, Hierapolis and Colosse - and imagines them in his mind's eye.

The word translated in the Russian Bible as feat, [in Barkley: struggle] in Greek - a very impressive word - agon, from which our word comes agony. Paul fights hard for his friends. We must remember that when Paul wrote this letter, he was in a Roman prison awaiting trial and most likely condemnation. What then was this struggle about?

1. It was a struggle in prayer. He must have wanted to go to Colossae himself. He must have longed to look the false teachers in the face, to destroy their arguments, and to bring back those who were straying from the truth. But he was in prison. The time had come when all that could be done was to pray; he had to trust

To God what he could not do himself. Thus, Paul fought in prayer for those he could not see. When time, distance and circumstances separate us from those we want to help, there remains one more opportunity to help - in prayer.

2. But it may well be that there was another struggle going on in Paul’s soul. He was human and had normal human problems. He was in prison, awaiting the trial of Emperor Nero, which most likely ended in death. It would be easy to be cowardly and sacrifice the truth for one's safety. Paul knew well that such desertion would have disastrous consequences. If the Christian churches knew that Paul had denied Christ, it would completely discourage them and it would be the end of Christianity for many. He fought not for himself alone, but also for those whose eyes were fixed on him as a leader and father in the faith. We would do well to remember that in every situation someone is watching us, and that our actions either strengthen or destroy their faith. We never fight only for ourselves; The honor of Christ is always in our hands, and the faith of others is in our care.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE ORTHODIOUS CHURCH (Col. 2:2-7)

This is Paul's prayer for the Church, and in it we see the great hallmarks of a living and faithful Church.

1. This is the Church comforted hearts. Paul prays that the heart of his fellow men comforted were encouraged. Paul uses the word here paracalane. Sometimes this word means comfort, Sometimes - exhort, persuade, but behind all this there is always an idea - to give a person the ability to confidently and courageously face a difficult situation. One Greek historian uses it in a very interesting and meaningful context. One Greek detachment completely lost its sense of spirit. The commander sent an officer to talk to them and reawaken their courage, and now the group of discouraged people was again ready for heroic action. That's the significance here paracalane. Paul prays that the Church will be given the courage to cope with any situation.

2. It must be a Church whose members united in love. Without love there is no true Christianity. It is not the methods of church governance and rituals that are important; they differ in different eras and in different places. The distinctive feature of the real Church is love for God and for fellow human beings. When love dies, the Church dies.

3. It must be a Church whose members armed with all wisdom. Paul uses here for wisdom three words.

a) B 2,2 he uses sinesis, which is translated - understanding. We have already seen that sinesis - critical knowledge. This is the ability to evaluate any situation and decide how to act in it. When it is necessary to act, the real Church has practical knowledge of how to act.

b) Paul says that all treasures are hidden in Jesus wisdom And management Wisdom - Sophia, A knowledge - gnosis. These two words do not repeat one another, there is a difference between them. Gnosis - it is a power, almost instinctive, to understand the truth when we see and hear it. A Sofia - it is the power, by wise and clear arguments, to consolidate and exalt the truth after it has been intuitively realized. Gnosis - it is that by which a person realizes the truth; Sofia - it is what gives a person the ability to justify the hope that lives within him.

Thus, the real Church has a discerning wisdom that gives her the ability to do the best in every situation; a wisdom that can instinctively recognize and realize truth when it is seen, and that can make truth intelligible and accessible to the thoughtful mind and show it to others.

All this wisdom, says Paul, hidden in Jesus. Paul used the word apokruthos. Paul's very use of this word is a blow to the Gnostics.

Apokruthos - This hidden from view, concealed, and that's why secret. We have already seen that in the Gnostic view, salvation requires a mass of refined knowledge. They presented this knowledge in their books, which they called apokruthos, because they were inaccessible to ordinary people. By using this one word, Paul says: you Gnostics hide your wisdom from ordinary people; We also have our knowledge, but it is not hidden in books incomprehensible to humans; it is hidden in Jesus, and therefore open to all people, wherever they are." Christian truth is not a hidden secret, but open to all.

4. The real Church must have the power to prevent anyone from seduced her with insinuating words. Expression insinuating words translated as Pythonology. This is a word from the judicial dictionary that characterizes the persuasive power of the arguments of the trial lawyer, which could give the criminal the opportunity to escape a fair punishment. A true Church must be so firmly in possession of the truth that it will not succumb to any tempting arguments.

5. In a real Church there must be improvement and firmness. These two words are taken from a military dictionary. Improvement - it's in the Greek text taxis, What means line, or a special arrangement in order. The church should be like an organized army, where each person has his assigned place, always ready to carry out the command. Hardness, in Greek - stereoma, What means strong bastion, stronghold. This word describes an army built in an indestructible square, which stands firmly and cannot be moved from its place by an enemy blow. There must be discipline, order and unyielding firmness in the Church, like a disciplined and well-trained military unit.

6. The Real Church must live in Christ. Its members are to walk in Christ; their whole life should be spent in His tangible presence. They should be rooted and approved in him. There are two pictures associated with this. The word translated as rooted characterizes a tree deeply rooted in the soil. The word translated as approved used of a house built on a solid foundation. Just as a great tree is rooted deep in the earth and receives its nourishment from it, so the Christian is rooted in Christ, the source of life and strength. And just as a house stands strong because it is built on a strong foundation, so the Christian life is strong against any storm because it is based on the power of Christ. Jesus is both the source of the Christian life and the foundation of its strength and solidity.

7. The Real Church strengthened in the faith as she had been taught. She never forgets the teaching about Christ that was taught to her. This is not at all a frozen orthodoxy, in which any bold thought is heresy. How far Paul was from this thought is shown by the fact that in the Epistle to the Colossians he finds new aspects in his thinking about Jesus Christ. But it does mean that there are certain fundamental and unchanging beliefs. Paul may seek and break new paths in his way of thinking, but he always begins and ends with the constant thought that Jesus Christ is Lord.

8. The Real Church full of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is an inseparable feature of the Christian life. As Bible commentator Lightfoot puts it: “Thanksgiving is the highest manifestation and final result of all human behavior, whether it be manifested in words or in deeds.” A Christian is always thinking about how to express in words and show through his life his gratitude for all that God has done for him. The Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus was not a Christian. This old, lame, short slave, who became one of the greatest moral teachers of the ancient pagan world, wrote: “What can I, a lame old man, do but sing hymns to God? Indeed, if I were a nightingale, I would sing like a nightingale ; if I were a swan - like a swan. But I am a rational being and therefore I must sing hymns of praise to God. This is my task: I do this and will not leave it as long as it is given to me to do this, and I invite you to join me in this song" (Epictetus: "Conversations", 1.16.21). A Christian will always praise God, from Whom all good deeds come.

ADDITIONS TO CHRIST (Col. 2:8-23)

For us, this passage is undoubtedly one of the most difficult of all that Paul wrote. For those who heard or read it for the first time, everything was completely clear. The problem is that this passage is full of allusions from beginning to end to the false teaching that threatened to destroy the church at Colosse. We do not have exact information about what kind of teaching this was. And therefore all the hints and references are unclear, and we can only speculate. But every phrase achieved its goal in the minds and hearts of the Colossians.

This passage is so difficult that we propose to analyze it a little differently than all the others. We first brought it in its entirety, and will select the main ideas from it, because from them the main directions of the false teaching that agitated the Colossians are visible, and after we have examined it as a whole, we will study it in more detail in short passages.

It is quite clear that the false teachers wanted the Colossians to accept, so to speak, addition to Christ. They taught that Christ alone was not enough, that He was not unique, and that He was only one of the manifestations of God, and that therefore one must also know and serve other heavenly powers in addition to Him. WE can note five such additions to Christ that the false teachers insisted on.

1. They wanted to teach people some additional philosophy (2.8). It seemed to them that the simple truth that Christ preached and which was preserved in the Gospel was not enough, and that it needed to be supplemented with a skillful pseudo-philosophical system, which was too difficult for ordinary people, and which only intellectuals could understand.

2. They wanted people to also accept astrological system (2.8). We have seen that there are doubts about the meaning implied here, but we believe that elements of the world - these are most likely the elementary spirits of the universe, in particular the spirits of the stars and planets. These false teachers preached that people were still under the influence of the spirits of the stars and planets, and that in order to be freed from it, people needed special knowledge beyond what Jesus could give.

Z. They wanted to introduce Christians circumcision (2.11). Faith alone was not enough for them; to this it was necessary to add circumcision. The sign on the flesh was supposed to take the place of the heartfelt relationship, or at least complement it.

4. They wanted to introduce ascetic rules and norms (2.16,20-23). They wanted to introduce all possible rules and regulations regarding what a person could eat and drink, and what days he should observe as holidays. They were going to bring back all the ancient Jewish laws and norms, and even more.

5. They wanted to introduce worship of angels (2.18). They taught that Jesus was only one and many mediators between God and man, and that all these mediators should be worshiped.

As you can see, it was a mixture of Gnosticism and Judaism. Intellectual knowledge and astrology were borrowed directly from Gnosticism, and asceticism and observance of rules and regulations from Judaism. We have already seen that the Gnostics believed that various special knowledge, in addition to the Gospel, was necessary for salvation, and some Jews united with the Gnostics and declared that nothing less than Judaism could provide this necessary knowledge. This explains why the teachings of the Colossian false teachers combined the beliefs of the Gnostics and the practice of Judaism.

The main thing is that false teachers taught that Jesus Christ and His teachings are not enough for salvation. Now let's look at this passage piece by piece.

OLD CUSTOMS AND STARS (Col. 2.8-10)

Paul paints a vivid picture of false teachers. He talks about those who captivates[from Barkley: carries away like his prey]. In Greek it is sulagogain, and can be used in relation to a slave trader who carried away the people of a conquered country into slavery. In Paul's view it was an amazing and tragic thing that people delivered and redeemed from the power of darkness (Col. 1:12-14), may decide to go into a new and terrible slavery.

These men promoted a philosophy that they argued was necessary to complement the teachings of Jesus Christ and the words of the Gospel.

1. It was a philosophy the source of which lay in human traditions. Gnostics generally claimed that their particular teaching was verbally expressed by Jesus, sometimes to the Virgin Mary, sometimes to Matthew, and sometimes to Peter. They said that there were some things Jesus never told the crowd, but only told them to a select few. Paul charges these false teachers with the fact that their teaching is the work of men; it has no basis in Scripture. It is a product of the human mind, and not the message of the Word of God. Thus, Paul does not at all slide into the position of fundamentalism and does not submit to the tyranny of the written word, but he believes that a teaching cannot be Christian that deviates from the fundamental truths of Holy Scripture.

2. This philosophy is associated with elements of the world. This phrase has been discussed a lot, but its meaning is still not entirely firmly established. In Greek element - stoichea, and this word has two meanings.

a) Literally it means things lined up in a row. This word, for example, means a line of soldiers. But its most typical meaning is the letters of the alphabet, undoubtedly because they can be placed in a row. Due to the fact that stoichea Means letters of the alphabet, it can also matter initial teaching of a subject. It is possible that this is the meaning of the word here. Perhaps Paul is saying, "These false teachers claim that they are giving you advanced and profound knowledge. In fact, it is elementary and primitive knowledge, because it is, at best, the knowledge of the human mind. But true knowledge, the true fullness of God, is in Jesus Christ. If you listen to these false teachers, you will not only fail to gain deep spiritual knowledge, but you will slip back into elementary learning, which you should have abandoned long ago."

b) But the word stoichea there is also a second meaning - elemental spirits of the world, especially the spirits of the stars and planets. Even today there are people who take astrology seriously. They wear amulets and read newspaper strips that tell them what the stars predict for them. But we cannot even imagine what importance was attached to ancient ideas about the influence of the elemental spirits of the stars. At that time, astrology was, as someone put it, the queen of all sciences. Even such great men as Julius Caesar or Octavian Augustus, such cynics as Tiberius, or even-tempered ones like Vespasian, did not take any steps without consulting the stars. Alexander the Great believed unconditionally in the influence of the stars. Men and women believed that the stars determined their entire lives. If a person is born under a lucky star, everything is fine; if he was born under an unlucky star, he should not expect happiness in life; In order for any enterprise to have a chance of success, it was necessary to observe the stars. People were slaves of the stars.

There was only one way to escape fate. People who knew the right passwords and the right formulas could get rid of the fatalistic influence of the stars, and most of the mysterious teaching of the Gnostics was precisely knowledge that, according to them, made it possible to get rid of the power of the stars and, most likely, this is what the false teachers in Colosse also offered . They said, "Jesus is all right; He can do a lot for you, but He cannot help you come out from under the stars. Only we have the knowledge that can give you the ability to do this." Paul, like others of his age, does not deny the existence of these elementary elements of the world, but answers: “You need no one but Christ to overcome any powers of the universe, for in Him is all the fullness of God, and He is the head of all principality and power because He created them."

Gnostic false teachers offered additional philosophy, and Paul insists on Jesus' triumphant ability to overcome any power in any part of the universe. You cannot believe in the power of Christ and the influence of the stars at the same time.

GENUINE AND FAKE CIRCUMSTANCE (Col. 2:11.12)

False teachers demanded that Gentile Christians also be circumcised because circumcision is the sign of God's chosen people. God, they asserted, said to Abraham: “This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you: that all your males shall be circumcised.” (Genesis 17:10)

Throughout Israel's history, there have been two schools of thought regarding circumcision. Some said that circumcision alone was enough to establish the right relationship between man and God. It makes no difference whether an Israelite is a good person or a bad one; all that matters is that he is an Israelite and that he was circumcised.

But the great spiritual leaders of Israel and its great prophets took a different point of view. They insisted that circumcision was only an outward sign of a person who had inwardly dedicated himself to God. They talked about the circumcised and the uncircumcised heart (Lev. 26:41; Deut. 30:6; Ezek. 44:7); about the uncircumcised ear (Jer. 6:10). In their minds, circumcision was not an operation performed on the human body, but a change in a person's life. Circumcision is indeed the mark of a person consecrated to God, but consecration does not consist in the circumcision of the flesh, but in the removal from his life of everything that is contrary to the will of God.

This is how the prophets answered many centuries before Paul, and this is how Paul now answers the false teachers. He tells them, "You demand circumcision, but you must remember that circumcision is not simply the removal of a man's foreskin, but the removal of all that part of his humanity which causes conflict with God." And then he continues: “Any priest can perform circumcision of the foreskin, but only Christ can perform this spiritual circumcision, which is cutting off from human life everything that prevents him from being an obedient child of God.”

But Paul goes further. In his mind, this is not a theory, but a fact. “This has already happened to you in the act of baptism,” he says. There are two things to always remember about Paul's view of baptism. First, in the early Church people converted to Christianity directly from paganism. They consciously and deliberately left one way of life and adopted another; Moreover, the act of baptism was a conscious decision. This, of course, was before the baptism of children, which could only arise when a Christian family was formed.

Baptism in Paul's time had three characteristics: it was a baptism adults; baptism took place after training and education courses; and, if it were possible, it was baptism full immersion. From here the symbolism of baptism is clearly visible: when the water closed over the head of the convert, he seemed to die, and when he rose from the water, he seemed to rise to new life. At the same time, part of his being seemed to die and disappear forever. He was a new man raised to new life.

But it should be noted that such symbolism could come to life only under one condition: if a person firmly believed in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, if a person believed in the effectiveness of the actions of God, who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and can do the same with him. For the Christian, baptism was truly a dying and resurrection, because he believed that Christ died and rose again, and that in the act of baptism he came into contact with the experience and knowledge of his Lord.

“You speak of circumcision,” says Paul, “but true circumcision is when a man dies and is raised with Christ in baptism, and when not part of his body is circumcised, but his whole sinful being is circumcised, and he is filled with new life and the holiness of God Himself.”

JOYFUL FORGIVENESS (Col. 2:13-15)

Almost all great teachers thought in images and pictures. Paul also uses a number of vivid pictures here to show what God has done for people in Jesus Christ. Paul wants to show that Jesus did everything possible and everything necessary, and that there is no need at all to talk about any other mediators who would be needed for the complete salvation of people. Here we have three main pictures.

1. The people were dead in their sins. They, like the dead, no longer had the strength either to overcome their sins or to atone for them. By His accomplishments, Jesus Christ freed people both from the power of sin and from its consequences. He gave people such new life that it can only be compared to the fact that He raised them from the dead. In addition, according to the old belief, only the Jews were chosen by God and dear to Him, but this saving power and authority of Christ reached even the uncircumcised pagans. The accomplishments of Christ are mighty accomplishments because He breathed life into dead men; these were merciful and gracious accomplishments, because they extended to those who had no reason to count on the grace of God.

2. But the picture becomes even more vivid. Jesus Christ destroyed the handwriting about us that was against us. Paul uses two Greek words that define the whole picture.

A) Handwriting[from Barkley: list of misdeeds and sins]. This is in Greek - Cheirographon. Literally it's autograph, and its specific meaning is a promissory note signed by the debtor in confirmation of the amount of debt. It was almost exactly the same as what we call a formal promissory note. Human sins have compiled a huge list of debts to God, which, one might say, people themselves specifically acknowledged. The Old Testament repeatedly shows the children of Israel hearing and accepting God's laws and incurring curses on themselves if they did not keep them. (Is. 24:3; Deut. 27:14-26). In the New Testament we see pictures of pagans who do not have the written law of God, like the Jews, but the law of their hearts, and a voice speaking in them (Rom. 2:14.15). People were debtors to God for their sins, and they knew it well. An indictment was drawn up against them, the correctness of which they themselves admitted, a list of sins and misdemeanors, which they themselves signed and pretended to be correct.

b) Exterminate. This is in Greek - Exaleifane. To understand this word means to understand the amazing mercy of God. The ancients wrote their documents either on papyrus, a kind of paper made from the heart of reeds, or on parchment, made from animal skins. Both were very expensive and, of course, they could not simply be spoiled and thrown away. The ink of the ancients did not contain acids, and therefore did not eat into the paper, but lay on the surface. Sometimes, to save money, the scribe used papyrus or parchment on which he had already written before. To do this, he took a sponge and erased what he had written. Because the ink was only on the surface of the writing material, it could be erased as if it had never been there. In His amazing mercy, God has so completely and irrevocably put an end to the lists of our misdeeds and sins, as if they had never existed; not even a trace remained of them.

God, Paul continues, took this indictment and nailed it to the Cross. They say that in ancient times, if any law or regulation was annulled, it was fixed on a board and nailed through with a nail. But it is unlikely that this is what Paul meant here. Most likely, the idea behind this is this: the indictment against us was crucified on the Cross of Jesus Christ. He was executed and eliminated permanently, never to be seen again. It seems that Paul was looking for examples from human activity to demonstrate that God's mercy had finally brought an end to the condemnation that awaited us.

This is truly grace.

Before Christ came, men were under a law which they transgressed and broke, because no man can keep it perfectly. And now the law has been abolished and mercy has taken its place. Man is no longer a criminal who has broken the law and has no choice but to wait for God's judgment; now he is a lost son of God who can return home where he will be forgiven by God's mercy.

3. Another great picture flashes into Paul's mind. Jesus took away the power of the principalities and powers and subjected them to shame with authority. As we have seen, the ancients believed in various kinds of angels and primitive spirits and demons. They believed that many of them seek to destroy people and are guilty of the fact that people are possessed by demons, that they are hostile to people. Jesus has the victory over them forever. He took it from them strength; in Greek there is a verb with the meaning remove weapons and armor from a defeated enemy.

Jesus broke the power of these demons once and for all, exposed them to public disgrace, and led them captive in His triumphal procession. This is a picture of the triumphal procession of a Roman general. A Roman commander who won an important victory received the right to march in a triumphal procession through the streets of Rome. He was followed by kings, leaders and peoples he had conquered, publicly branded as his prey. Paul imagines Jesus as victorious, having achieved a kind of cosmic victory; in His triumphant march are the forces of evil, defeated completely forever, and everyone can see it.

In these vivid pictures Paul shows the completeness of the work of Jesus Christ. Sin is forgiven and evil is defeated; is anything else needed? No, the knowledge of the Gnostics and their intermediaries cannot give anything - Jesus has already done everything.

REGRESSION (Col. 2:16-23)

This passage is thoroughly intertwined with the main ideas of the Gnostics. Paul warns the Colossians not to adopt their habits and customs, because this would not be progress, but regression in faith. There are four Gnostic customs behind this.

1. Asceticism Gnostics (2,16.21). This teaching covered a lot of norms and rules regarding what you can eat and drink and what you cannot eat and drink. In other words, this was a return to all Jewish food laws with their lists of clean and unclean foods. As we have seen, the Gnostics generally considered matter to be vicious. If matter is bad, then the body is bad. If the body is vicious, then two mutually exclusive consequences follow from this.

a) If the body is inherently vicious, then it does not matter what we do with it. Since it is vicious, it can be used or abused as you please; it doesn't matter.

b) If the body is vicious, it must be kept in a depressed state; he must be beaten and starved, his impulses must be fettered. That is, Gnosticism could result either in complete immorality or in cruel asceticism. Paul is speaking here against rigid asceticism.

Paul says, “Have nothing to do with people who equate religion with laws about what you can eat and drink and what you cannot.” Jesus Himself said that it makes no difference what a person eats or drinks. (Matt. 15:10-20; Mark 7:14-23). Peter also had to learn to stop talking about clean and unclean food (Acts 10). Paul uses an almost crude threat, in which he conveys in other words what Jesus has already said. He says: "Everything decays through use" (2,22). He means the same thing that Jesus meant when he said that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the belly and is cast out. (Matt. 15:17; Mark 7:19). Food and drink play such an insignificant role that they decompose as soon as they are consumed. The Gnostics wanted to make a system of rules and regulations about food and drink out of religion; Even today there are people who care more about the rules of food than about the mercy of the Gospel.

2. Gnostic and Jewish observance of days (2.16). They observed annual festivals, monthly new moons, and weekly Sabbaths. They established lists of days specifically dedicated to God on which certain things were to be done and other things were not to be done. They identified religion with ritual.

Paul's criticism of this emphasis on days is quite clear and logical. Paul says, "You have been saved from all this tyranny of legal rules. Why do you want to enslave yourselves again? Why do you want to go back to Jewish law and leave Christian freedom?" The spirit that makes Christianity a system of norms and rules has not yet died.

3. Special Visions Gnostics. IN 2,18 it speaks of a false teacher who "invades what he has not seen." It's a wrong translation. The correct translation would be: "flaunting what he saw." The Gnostics boasted of special visions that were allegedly not accessible to the eyes of ordinary men and women. No one will deny the visions of the mystics, but there is always a danger that a person will begin to think of himself that he has achieved that degree of holiness that allows him to see what ordinary people cannot see; and the danger is that people so often see not what God sends them, but what they themselves want to see.

4. Serving the angels (2.18.20). As we have already seen, the Jews had a widely developed doctrine of angels, and the Gnostics believed in all sorts of mediators between God and man, and both worshiped them, while Christians know that only God and Jesus Christ should be worshiped.

Paul makes four criticisms about this.

1. He says that all this is the shadow of the future [in Barkley: the shadow of truth]; the real truth is in Christ (2,17), In other words, a religion based on eating certain types of food and drink and abstaining from other types of food and drink, based on the observance of the Sabbath. This is only a shadow of real religion; real religion is brotherhood with Jesus Christ.

2. Paul talks about self-willed humility (2,18.23). When speaking of the worship of angels, the Gnostics and Jews justified it by citing the fact that God is so great, high and holy that we can never gain access to Him and must be content with praying to the angels. But Christianity preaches precisely the great truth that the path to God is open to the simplest and most modest person.

3. Paul says that all this can lead people to reckless arrogance (2.18.23). A person who meticulously observes special days and all food laws, and practices ascetic abstinence, is in danger of imagining himself to be a particularly good person and beginning to look down on other people. And one of the basic Christian truths is that none of those who imagine themselves to be good are, in fact, a good person, and even less the one who considers himself better than everyone else.

4. Paul says this is a return from Christian freedom to non-Christian slavery (2,20) and that, in any case, this does not free a person from carnal lusts, but only keeps them on a leash (2,23). Christian freedom is not the result of limiting desires by all sorts of rules and norms, but the result of the dying away of evil desires and the emergence of good desires, thanks to the fact that Jesus Christ is in Christians, and Christians are in Jesus Christ.

Commentary (introduction) to the entire book of Colossians

Comments on Chapter 2

Read it [the Epistle to the Colossians], meditate again and again on its inspired thought, expressed in inspired language; let the light and power of this thought fill your soul and be embodied in your life - this will enrich you both in earthly life and in eternity. R. K. H. Lenski

Introduction

I. A SPECIAL PLACE IN THE CANON

Most of the letters of the Apostle Paul are addressed to Christian communities in large or important cities, such as Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi. Colossae was a city whose best days were behind it. And the local Christian community did not play any significant role in the history of the early Christian church.

In short, if it were not for the inspired Epistle addressed to the Christians who lived in this city, Colossae would be known today only to students of ancient history.

Although the city was not particularly important, the message that the apostle sent there was very important. Along with chapter 1 Ev. from John and chapter 1 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in chapter 1 of the Epistle to the Colossians the dogma of the Divine nature of Christ our Lord is beautifully set forth. Since this teaching lies at the basis of all Christian truths, the significance of this Message cannot be overestimated.

The Message also contains instructions regarding human relationships, false teachings, and life in Christ.

There is nothing to suggest that until the nineteenth century anyone questioned the fact that the Epistle to the Colossians was written by Paul, so overwhelming is the evidence for its authorship. Particularly convincing external evidence. The epistle is quoted, often citing Paul as its author, by Ignatius and Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian and Origen. Both Marcion's canon and Muratori's canon accept the authenticity of the Epistle to the Colossians.

TO internal evidence refers to the simple fact that the author himself three times speaks that he is Paul (1:1,23; 4,18), and the contents of the Epistle correspond to these statements. The presentation of doctrine, followed by practical instructions to Christians, is typical of the apostle. Perhaps the most convincing evidence of authenticity is the clear connection with the Epistle to Philemon, which is unanimously accepted as being written by Paul. The five people mentioned in this short letter are also mentioned in Colossians. Even such a critic as Renan was impressed by the parallels with Philemon, and he had doubts about the book of Colossians.

Regarding the first point, in the Epistle to the Colossians some of Paul's favorite words are replaced with new ones. Salmon, a conservative British theologian of the last century, objected to this argument: “I cannot agree with the contention that a man writing a new work has no right, under penalty of loss of individuality, to use a single word which he has not used in one of the previous ones.” essays". (George Salmon, A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament, p. 384.)

As for the doctrine of Christ in Colossians, it is consistent with the doctrine set forth in Philippians and the Gospel of John, and only for those who are inclined to believe that the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ did not appear until the second century. under the influence of paganism, this doctrine will present some difficulty.

As for Gnosticism, the liberal Scottish scholar Moffatt believed that the early stage of Gnosticism recorded in Colossians may well have existed in the 1st century. ( New Bible Commentary, p. 1043.)

III. WRITING TIME

It is possible that the Epistle to the Colossians, as one of the prison letters, was written by Paul during his two-year imprisonment in Caesarea (Acts 23:23; 24:27). But since the evangelist Philip received Paul there, it seems very unlikely that Paul, who was such a courteous and amiable Christian, would not have mentioned him. It has also been suggested that the Epistle was written during the Ephesian imprisonment, although this is much less likely.

The most likely time for the writing of this letter and Philemon is the middle of Paul's Roman imprisonment, around 60 AD. (Acts 28:30-31).

Fortunately, as is usually the case, understanding this book does not depend on knowing all the circumstances in which it was written.

IV. PURPOSE OF WRITING AND TOPIC

Colossae was a city in the province of Phrygia, part of the region now known as Asia Minor. It was located 16 km east of Laodicea and 21 km southeast of Hierapolis (see 4.13). It was also located 160 km east of Ephesus, at the entrance to a gorge passing through the Cadmian mountain range (a narrow valley nineteen km long), on the military road leading from the Euphrates to the west. The colossi stood on the Lycus (Wolf) River, which flows west and joins the Maeander River near Laodicea. There, the water of the hot springs of Hierapolis mixes with the cold water of Colossae, giving rise to the mild, warm climate of Laodicea.

Hierapolis was both a health and religious center, while Laodicea was the main city of the valley. In pre-New Testament times, Colosse was a larger city. Its name may be related to the word “colossus” (“colossus, giant”), referring to the fantastically shaped limestone formations located near it.

We don't know exactly how the Good News reached Colossae. At the time Paul wrote this letter, he had not yet met with local Christians (2:1). It is generally believed that Epaphras brought the Good News of salvation to this city (1:7). Many believe that he was converted to Christianity by the Apostle Paul during the latter's three-year stay in Ephesus. Phrygia was part of proconsular Asia, and Paul visited there (Acts 16:6; 18:23), but was not in Colosse (2:1).

We know from the Epistle that the church at Colossae was beginning to be threatened by false teaching, which in its mature form became known as Gnosticism. The Gnostics boasted of their knowledge (Greek: gnosis).

They declared that their knowledge was superior to that of the apostles, and tried to create the impression that a person could not be truly happy unless initiated into the deepest secrets of their cult.

Some adherents of Gnosticism denied the humanity of Christ. They claimed that "Christ" is the Divine influence which descended from God upon the Man Jesus during His baptism. They also believed that Christ abandoned Jesus before the crucifixion. As a result, according to their teaching, Jesus died, but Christ did not.

Some varieties of Gnosticism taught that between God and matter there are different levels, or ranks, of spiritual beings.

They came to this in an attempt to explain the origin of evil. A. T. Robertson explains:

"The Gnostics primarily thought about the origin of the universe and the existence of evil. They accepted as an axiom that God is good, but also understood that evil nevertheless exists. According to their theory, evil is an inherent property of matter. However, the good Lord is not could create matter that carries evil. Therefore, they postulated the existence of a series of emanations (eons), spirits, angels between God and matter. The idea was that one eon emanated from God, another eon - from this eon, and so on, until the turn of the emanation was approaching, which was sufficiently distant from God so as not to “compromise” Him by creating evil matter, but at the same time close enough to Him to have the power to create.”(A.T. Robertson, Paul and the Intellectuals, p. 16.)

Some Gnostics, believing that the body was inherently sinful, lived by asceticism, a system that involved self-denial and even mortification of the flesh in an attempt to achieve a higher spiritual state.

Others went to the opposite extreme, indulging all their carnal desires and arguing that the body has no influence on a person’s spiritual life!

At Colossae there appeared to be traces of two other errors: antinomianism and Judaism. Antinomianism is the doctrine that a person who has received God's grace should not control himself, but can fully indulge in his carnal desires and passions. Old Testament Judaism turned into a system of rituals with the help of which man hoped to achieve justification before the face of God.

The misconceptions that took place at Colosse are still alive today. Gnosticism was again reflected in the movements "Christian Science", Theosophy, Mormonism, in the sect "Jehovah's Witnesses", "Unity" and others. Antinomianism is characteristic of anyone who claims that because we are under the grace of God, we can live as we please. Judaism, as Hebrews and other parts of the NT show, was originally a divinely given revelation whose rites and rituals were meant to symbolically convey spiritual truths. But over time it became a religious cult, in which the form itself was considered worthy of reward, and therefore its spiritual meaning was often ignored. It is currently followed by numerous religious movements that teach that man can earn God's favor and reward from Him through his own works, while ignoring or denying man's sinful nature and his need for salvation, which only God can give him.

In the letter to the Colossians, Paul masterfully counters all these errors by showing the divine glory and work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This letter is strikingly similar to Paul's letter to the Ephesians. However, similarity does not mean duplication. In Ephesians the author sees believers seated in Christ in heavenly places. In Colossians the believers are on earth and Christ, their great Head, is in heaven. Emphasis in Epistle to the Ephesians is done so that Christian located in Christ.

Epistle to the Colossians talking about Christ in a Christian, about the hope of bliss. At the center of the Epistle to the Ephesians is the Church as the Body of Christ, “the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). Consequently, the unity of the Body of Christ is emphasized. Colossians chapter 1 affirms the headship of Christ and the need for us to hold fast to the Head (2:18-19) and be submissive to Him. Fifty-four of the 155 verses in Ephesians are similar to verses in Colossians.

Plan

I. TEACHING ABOUT THE PERFECTION OF CHRIST (Ch. 1 - 2)

A. Greeting (1,1-3)

B. Paul thanks the Lord and prays for Christians (1:3-14)

B. Glorification of Christ, Head of the Church (1:15-23)

D. The mission entrusted to Paul (1:24-29)

D. The fullness of Christ in contrast to disastrous errors - philosophy, pharisaism, mysticism and asceticism (2:1-23)

II. THE CHRISTIAN'S DUTY TO THE ALL-PERFECT CHRIST (Ch. 3-4)

A. New life for a Christian: putting off the old man and putting on the new (3:1-17)

B. Behavior appropriate for a Christian in the family (3.18 - 4.1)

C. The life of a Christian in prayer and witness in word and life (4:2-6)

D. Brief information about some of Paul's companions (4:7-14)

E. Greetings and instructions concerning the Epistle (4:15-18)

D. The fullness of Christ in contrast to disastrous errors - philosophy, pharisaism, mysticism and asceticism (2:1-23)

2,1 This verse is closely related to the last two verses of chapter 1. In them, the apostle Paul described the efforts he makes to lead every believer to maturity in Christ through teaching and preaching. Here we are talking about efforts of a different kind. They are described as prayerful feat. And this feat is accomplished for the sake of those whom he has never met. From the very first day he heard about the Colossians, he prayed for them and also for those who lived in the next town Laodicea, and about other Christians whom he had not yet met (see Rev. 3:14-19, which describes the sad state of the local church).

Verse 1 is a comfort to those who have never had the opportunity to do public service. According to this verse, we do not need to be limited by what we can do in front of people. We can serve the Lord in the silence of our rooms, on our knees. If our service is visible, its effectiveness largely depends on our private prayers.

2,2 Here is the exact content of Paul's prayer. The first part of the prayer goes like this: so that their hearts may be comforted. The souls of the Colossians were threatened by the teachings of the Gnostics. That's why console yourself here means to be strengthened in faith. In the second part of the prayer, Paul asks that they be united in love. If Christians live in brotherhood, full of happiness and love, they will be able to resist powerfully the furious attacks of the enemy. Also, if their hearts are warmed with love for Christ, He will reveal even deeper truths to them. That the Lord reveals His secrets to those who are close to Him is a well-known principle of Scripture. John, for example, was the apostle who reclined at the breast of Jesus, and it is not a coincidence that it was he who was given the great revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul next prays that they may enter into every wealth of perfect understanding. The deeper they penetrate into the Christian faith, the more firmly they will be convinced of its truth. And the more firmly Christians become stronger in their faith, the less will be the danger that they will be led astray from the true path by contemporary false teachings.

In the NT the expression “full” or “perfect” certainty is used three times.

1) Complete faith - we trust in the Word of God, His revelation (Heb. 10:22). 2) Perfect understanding - we know and we are confident (Col. 2:2).

3) Perfect hope - we have confidence in the outcome (Heb. 6:11).

Paul's prayer culminates in these words: to know the secrets of God and the Father and Christ. He still has in mind the truth about the Church: Christ is the Head of the Body, and all believers are members of the Body. But he especially emphasizes one aspect of this mystery - the headship of Christ. He is concerned that Christians will recognize this truth.

He knows that if they realize the greatness of their Head, they will not be led astray by Gnosticism or other false teachings that threaten their souls.

Paul wants the saints to resort to the help of Christ, to use His capabilities, to turn to Him with every need. As Alfred Mace puts it, he wants them to see that Christ "...abides in His people, possessing all the attributes of the Godhead and infinite, inexpressible, immeasurable resources, and therefore they have no need to look for anything outside of Him. "To whom God has been pleased to show what the RICHES of glory is in THIS MYSTERY for the Gentiles, WHICH IS CHRIST IN YOU, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). This truth, realized in all its power, is a sure antidote to Laodicean pride, rationalistic theology, traditional religion, demon-possessed spiritualist mediums and every other form of opposition or deception."(Alfred Mace, no more complete data available.)

2,3 In Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. The Gnostics, of course, boasted of an understanding far superior to anything found in the pages of Divine revelation. Their wisdom complemented what could be found in Christ or Christianity. But here Paul says that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ the Head. Therefore, believers do not need to go beyond what is written in Scripture. hidden treasures in Christ are hidden from unbelievers, and even for a believer to penetrate into them, it is necessary to know Christ intimately.

"Christ abides in the believer as the Head, the focus and the source of strength. Thanks to the immensity of His incomprehensible treasures, the all-surpassing riches of His infinite greatness; thanks to His Divinity, thanks to all that He has accomplished - creation and redemption; thanks to His universally recognized personal moral qualities, He displaces an entire army of professors , writers, mediums, critics and everyone who rallied against Him." ("Favorites")

There is more to this verse than meets the eye. All things abid in Christ conducting. He is the embodiment of truth. He said, "I am the way and the truth and the life." And nothing true will ever contradict His words or His deeds. Difference between wisdom And conducting is often explained as follows. Maintaining is an understanding of the truth, while wisdom- ability to apply learned truth.

2,4 Since all wisdom and all knowledge are in Christ, Christians must not allow themselves to be deceived insinuating words false teachers. If a person does not have the truth, he tries to attract followers by skillfully constructing his preaching. This is what heretics always do. They construct arguments based on probabilities and build their system of doctrine on the basis of inferences. But if a person preaches the truth of God, he need not rely on eloquence or sophisticated argumentation. Truth itself is the best argument in its favor and, like a lion, will defend itself.

2,5 This verse shows how well aware the apostle Paul was of the problems and dangers the Colossians faced. He speaks of himself as a military leader who is inspecting an army lined up awaiting inspection. Words "improvement" And "hardness"- military terms. The first describes the formation of the soldiers, and the second describes the cohesive flank they formed. Paul rejoices as he sees (though with spiritual, not physical, sight) how the Colossians hold fast to the Word of God.

Therefore, just as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. The semantic emphasis here apparently falls on the word "Lord." In other words, they recognized that in Him is all completeness. In Him was everything not only for salvation, but also for their Christian life. This is why Paul urges Christians to continue to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ. They must not turn away from Him by accepting the teachings of men, no matter how convincing they may seem. In a word "walk" often describes the life of a Christian. It implies action and moving forward. It is impossible to walk and still remain in the same place. This is what happens in the life of a Christian: we either go forward or backward.

2,7 Paul first uses an agricultural term and then an architectural term. Word "rooted" reminds us of what happened during our conversion. The Lord Jesus Christ is a kind of soil, and we put our roots into it, receiving food from Him. It emphasizes how important it is for our roots to go deep into the soil - so deep that when hostile winds blow, we can stand (Matt. 13:5.20-21).

Paul then uses the image of a building: established in Him. Here the Lord Jesus is likened to the foundation on which, as on an eternal rock, we are all built (Luke 6:47-49). We rooted in Him once and for all, but establish ourselves in Him constantly.

And strengthened in faith. Word "fortified" can also be translated as "confirmable". This means that this is a process that continues continuously throughout the Christian life. Epaphras taught the Colossians the basics of Christianity. As they progress along the path of Christianity, these precious truths will be continually strengthened in their hearts and lives. Conversely, 2 Peter 1:9 indicates that lack of progress in the spiritual life leads to doubt and loss of the joy and blessings of the Good News.

Paul concludes the description by saying: abounding in it with thanksgiving. He does not want Christians to merely accept doctrines coldly and rationally; on the contrary, he wants their hearts to be captivated by the beautiful truths of the gospel, so that they will be filled with praise and gratitude to the Lord. Thanksgiving for the gifts of Christianity - a wonderful antidote that saves from the poison of false teachings.

Arthur Way puts verse 7 this way: "Like trees, be rooted deep; like a building, rest on a strong foundation, feeling His presence near you; be (as you have learned) steadfast in your faith and full of gratitude."

2,8 Now Paul is ready to go directly to the errors that threatened the believers in the Lycus Valley, where Colossae was located. Be careful, (brethren), that no one captivates you with philosophy and empty deception. False teachings seek to deprive people of true values without offering anything substantial in return.

Philosophy literally means "love of wisdom." In itself it does not bring evil, but it becomes evil when a person begins to seek wisdom other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Here this word describes an attempt to understand with one’s own mind what can only be comprehended through Divine revelation (1 Cor. 2:14).

And such an attempt is evil, since it puts the mind of man above God and worships the creation more than the Creator. It is characteristic of modern liberals with their vaunted intellectuality and rationalism. Empty seduction The apostle calls out the false and worthless teachings of those who supposedly reveal certain secret truths to a small number of initiates. In reality, there is nothing behind these statements. But they attract followers by playing on human curiosity, as well as vanity, which is flattered by including followers among the “chosen few.”

Philosophy And empty seduction against which the apostle fights, act according to human tradition, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ. Human tradition here means religious doctrines invented by men and having no real basis in Scripture. (Lore, or tradition, is the consolidation of a custom that originally arose for reasons of convenience or corresponded to a particular situation.) Elements of the world denote Jewish rituals, rites and sacraments, with the help of which people hoped to achieve God's favor.

"The Law of Moses lived up to its purpose as a symbol of things to come. It was a preparatory school to prepare the heart for the coming of Christ. To return to it now would be to play into the hands of the false teachers who conspired to use the already rejected doctrine to supplant the Son of God."(Bible Society Daily Notes)

Paul asks the Colossians to test any teaching by whether it agrees with the teaching Christ. Phillips's translation of this verse is noteworthy: "Take care that no one spoils your faith by resorting to speculation and high-flown nonsense. At best, they will be based on man's ideas about the nature of the world and ignore Christ!"

2,9 It is fascinating to see how the Apostle Paul continually brings his readers back to the Person of Christ. Here is one of the most subtle and clear Bible verses on the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Notice the deliberate concentration of evidence that Christ is God. First, His Divinity is mentioned: for in Him dwells... The deity is corporeal. Secondly, we are confronted with what someone has called the "amplitude of Divinity": for in Him dwells... the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And finally we have what is called the absolute fullness of Divinity: "For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."(This is an excellent response to various forms of Gnosticism that deny the Divinity of the Lord Jesus, such as Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Oneness, Theosophy, Christodelphianism, etc.)

Vincent says, "This verse contains two distinct statements: 1) the fullness of the Godhead dwells eternally in Christ; 2) the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him in His human body." (Marvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, II:906.)

Many of the false teachings mentioned above would acknowledge that some form of Divinity resided in Jesus. But this verse identifies with Him all the fullness of the Divine, and this fullness dwells in Him as a man. The point of Paul's argument is clear: If the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ is so complete, why are there teachings that disparage or ignore Him?

2,10 The apostle still strives to impress upon the minds of his readers the all-sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ and that they in him perfect before God. The truth in verse 10 flows from the truth in verse 9, and this is a beautiful demonstration of God's mercy. In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and the believer is complete in Him. Of course, this does not mean that a Christian is endowed with the fullness of the Godhead. The only Person in relation to whom such a statement has ever been or will be true is the Lord Jesus Christ. But this verse teaches that the Christian has in Christ everything necessary for life and godliness. Spurgeon gives a good definition of our perfection. He says that we are 1) perfect without performing Jewish rituals; 2) perfect without the help of philosophy; 3) are perfect without fabricated superstitions; 4) perfect, regardless of human merit.

The One in whom we are all perfect - the head of all principality and power. The Gnostics were very keen on discussions about angels. Later in the same chapter Paul mentions this. But Christ is incomparably higher than all angelic beings, and it would be ridiculous to pay attention to angels when the object of our admiration and affection can be the Creator of angels and we can enjoy communion with Him.

2,11 Circumcision- a typical ritual of Judaism. This is a minor surgical procedure during which the foreskin of a male infant is removed. The spiritual meaning of circumcision is the death of the flesh or the renunciation of the evil, corrupt and unregenerate nature of man. Unfortunately, the Jewish people, while observing the letter of the ritual, neglected its spiritual meaning. Trying to gain God's favor through rituals and good deeds, they seemed to be saying that there is something in man that can appease God. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The verse we are studying does not refer to physical circumcision, but circumcision the spiritual thing that everyone who has believed and trusted in the Lord Jesus undergoes. It's clear from the words "by circumcision made without hands."

This is what this verse teaches: Every Christian is circumcised. circumcision of Christ. Circumcision of Christ refers to His death on the cross on Calvary.

So when the Lord Jesus died, the believer also died. He died to sin (Rom. 6:11), to the law, to himself (Gal. 2:20), and to the world (Gal. 6:14). Circumcision was not made by hands in the sense that human hands have nothing to do with it, man cannot participate in it. He cannot deserve or earn it. This is the work of God. Thus it was decided sinful body of flesh. In other words, when a person receives salvation, he is identified with Christ in His death and gives up all hope of earning or meriting salvation through any fleshly effort. Samuel Ridout writes: "The death of our Lord delivers us not only from the fruit, but also from the root that bore that fruit."

2,12 Paul moves from the topic of circumcision to the topic baptism. Just as circumcision means the death of the flesh, baptism symbolizes the burial of the old man. We read: “Having been buried with Him in baptism, you were also raised again in Him through faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.” The essence of this phrase is that we not only died with Christ, but also buried with Him. This symbolized our baptism. Burial occurred at the moment of conversion, but it was expressed when we publicly declared ourselves Christians by stepping into the waters of baptism. Baptism is a burial, a burial of all that we were as children of Adam.

By baptism we acknowledge the fact that there is nothing in ourselves that can ever please God, and therefore we put the flesh away forever from the sight of God. But it doesn't end with the burial. Not only are we crucified with Christ and buried with Him, we are also raised with Him to live a new life. All this happens at the moment of conversion. And this happens faith in the power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.

2,13 Now the Apostle Paul applies all of the above to the Colossians. Before their conversion they were dead in their sins. This means that because of their sins they were spiritually dead before God. Of course, their souls were not dead, but there was no movement in them towards God, and they could not do anything to deserve God's mercy. They were dead Not only in sins but also, as Paul says, in uncircumcision their flesh. Uncircumcision often used in the NT to describe pagan peoples. The Colossians were pagans. They did not belong to the people chosen by God on earth - the Jews. Therefore, they were far from God and gave full rein to the flesh with all its base passions. But when they heard the Good News and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, they were made alive with him, And All their sins were forgiven. In other words, the Colossians' way of life had truly changed. Their history as sinners was completed, and they were now created again in Christ Jesus. This was life on the other side of resurrection. Therefore, they had to say goodbye to everything that characterized them as carnal people.

2,14 Paul continues the letter by describing another aspect of the work of Christ. Having destroyed the handwriting that was against us by teaching, which was against us, He took it out of the way and nailed it to the cross. The handwriting that was against us stands for law. In a sense, the Ten Commandments were against us, because they condemned us for not keeping them exactly. But the Apostle Paul means not only the Ten Commandments, but also the ritual law given to Israel. This ritual law regulated everything related to religious holidays, food and other rituals. They were part of the prescribed religion for the Jews. They predicted the coming of the Lord Jesus.

They served as prototypes of His Personality and His exploits. Dying on cross, He took it all from Wednesday pinned him to cross and canceled, just as an account is canceled when the debt is paid. Meyer says: “With the death of Christ on the cross, the law that condemned people lost its punitive power, since Christ in His death suffered the curse of the law for man and became the end of the law.” (Meyer H.A.W., Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistles to the Philippians and Colossians, p. 308.) Kelly sums it up succinctly: “The law is not dead, but we are dead to it.”

Here Paul uses an expression that probably refers to the ancient custom of nailing up a written certificate of payment of a debt in a public place as a sign that the creditor no longer has any claims against the debtor.

2,15 By His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection and ascension, the Lord Jesus also gained victory over the evil ones forces, subjecting them to shame And triumphing over them. We believe this describes the same triumph as Ephesians 4, which says that the Lord Jesus took captivity captive. His death, burial, resurrection and ascension were a magnificent triumph over the hordes of hell and Satan. At the moment of his ascension, He passed through the very domain of him who is the prince of the powers of the air.

Perhaps this verse will be of particular comfort to those who were demon worshipers before their conversion and are now overcome by the fear of evil spirits. We have nothing to fear if we are in Christ, because He took away the strength of the principalities and authorities.

2,16 Once again, the Apostle Paul is ready to put his statements into practice. What follows can be summarized as follows: The Colossians were dead to all attempts to appease God with their human nature. Not only did they die, but they were buried with Christ and raised with Him to new life. Therefore, they had to break forever with the Judaists and Gnostics, who were pulling them back to what the Colossians were dead for.

So let no one judge you on food or drink, or on any holiday, or the new moon, or the Sabbath. All human religions bind people with rituals, rules and a religious calendar. Such a calendar usually includes celebrations celebrated once a year (holy days), monthly holidays (new moons), or weekly holy days (Saturdays). Expression "let no one judge you" means that it is unfair to condemn a Christian for, for example, eating pork or not observing church holidays. Some false religions, such as spiritualism, require their adherents to abstain from meat. For centuries, Catholics were not supposed to eat meat on Fridays. Many churches require abstinence from certain foods during Lent. Others, such as Mormons, argue that a person cannot be in good standing as a member of the church if he drinks tea or coffee. For example, Seventh-day Adventists insist that a person who wants to please God must keep the Sabbath day. These restrictions do not apply to a Christian. You can read more about the law, the Sabbath, and Pharisaism in the commentary on Heb. Matthew 5:18; 12.8 and Galatians 6.18.

2,17 Jewish religious rituals were a shadow of the future, and the body is in Christ. They were established in the OT as a symbol of the future. The Sabbath, for example, symbolized the rest that would be given to all believers in Jesus Christ. Now that the Lord Jesus has revealed Himself, why should man continue to follow the shadows? This is the same as admiring only a portrait in the presence of the person depicted in it.

2,18 It is quite difficult to understand the exact meaning of this verse because we do not know the teaching of the Gnostics in its entirety. Perhaps what the apostle means here is that these people pretended to be so humble that they allegedly did not even dare to turn directly to God. Perhaps the Gnostics taught that people should turn to God through the mediation of angels, and thus in their imaginary humility they did not worship the Lord, but to the angels. They have a counterpart in the modern world - the Roman Catholic Church, which claims that a Catholic cannot even think of praying directly to God or the Lord Jesus, and therefore their motto is: "To Jesus through Mary." It seems that this is false on their part. humility and worship of the created being. Christians should not allow anyone to deprive them of what they have been given by resorting to such unscriptural traditions. The Word clearly states that “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

Next, the Apostle Paul uses a rather unclear expression: intruding into what I did not see.(The word "not" is omitted from the NU text, but the meaning is almost the same. Whether they actually saw anything or not, it was all worldly emptiness.)

The Gnostics claimed that they had comprehended the deepest secrets hidden from everyone, which can only be learned by going through a rite of passage. Perhaps such secrets include so-called visions. Imaginary visions are an important component of such modern heresies as Mormonism, Spiritualism, Catholicism and the teachings of Swedenborg. Those who were among the few initiates naturally boasted of their secret knowledge.

Therefore Paul adds: recklessly puffed up with his carnal mind. They looked down on others, and the impression was created that a person could become happy only by becoming familiar with these innermost secrets. We will pause here to emphasize that much of the above is characteristic of secret religious societies today. A Christian who lives in constant fellowship with his Lord will have neither the time nor the inclination to join such organizations.

When looking at verse 18, it is important to note that the various religious practices observed by these people were performed by them without permission. They didn't rely on Scripture. They did not obey Christ in their actions. They recklessly puffed up with the carnal mind, because they did what they wanted to do, regardless of the Lord, although from the outside their behavior seemed humble and pious.

2,19 And not holding on to the head. Here the Lord Jesus is spoken of as Head bodies. To hold the head is to live with the knowledge that Christ Chapter, draw everything you need from His inexhaustible source and do everything for the glory of God. This means turning to the Lord for support and guidance and constantly communicating with Him. Paul explains this in the following expression: “from which the whole body, being joined and held together by its joints and bonds, grows by the growth of God.” Different parts of the human body connected compositions and connections. The body, in turn, is connected to the head. The body needs the head, since it controls and guides it. This is precisely what the Apostle Paul emphasizes here. Members of the Body of Christ on earth must find their full satisfaction in Him and not allow themselves to be carried away by the persuasive arguments of false teachers.

Expression "holding to the head" emphasizes the need to lean on the Lord every moment. The help sent yesterday is not enough for today. It is impossible to grind grain with water that has already overcome the dam. It must also be added here that when Christians actually hold to the Head, the result will be spontaneous action, coordinated with the actions of other members of the body.

2,20 Words "Elements of the World" used in this verse in relation to rites and sacraments. For example, the rituals presented in the OT contained elementary knowledge about the world and taught the fundamental principles of religion, its alphabet (Gal. 4:9-11). Paul may also be referring to the rites and sacraments associated with Gnosticism and other religions. In particular, the apostle has in mind the asceticism that came from Judaism, which had already lost its position in the eyes of God, or from Gnosticism, or some other false religion that God never didn't admit it. Since the Colossians died with Christ Paul asks why they still want hold on such resolutions. After all, to do this means to forget that they have broken ties with the world. Some may wonder: If Christians are dead to ritual, why do they still retain baptism and communion? The most obvious answer is that the teaching of these two sacraments of the Christian church is contained in the NT. But they are not means of achieving grace by making us more fit for heaven or helping us to merit God's reward. They are rather signs of obedience to the Lord, symbolizing, respectively, identification with Christ and the memory of His death. They are not so much laws to be observed as a high honor bestowed upon us that brings joy.

2,21 This verse will be clearer if we begin it with "such as." In other words, in verse 20 Paul says, “Why do you, as those who live in the world, hold fast to statutes such as (v. 21) “don’t touch”, “don’t taste”, “don’t touch”.

Oddly enough, some argue that Paul is here ordered the Colossians must not touch, taste or touch. This, of course, is exactly the opposite of what is meant in this passage.

It should be mentioned that some authorities, such as William Kelly, believe that the word order of this verse should be: “Thou shalt not touch, taste, or even touch.” Such an order would describe the increasing severity of asceticism.

2,22 Paul develops and explains his point in verse 22. These prohibitions come from man, as indicated by the expression "according to the commandments and teaching of men." Is the essence of true religion to be concerned with food and drink, and not with the living Christ Himself?

Weymouth translates verses 20-22 as follows:

“If you have died with Christ and are no longer accessible to the elementary concepts of this world, why, as if your life still belonged to this world, are you subject to such purely human precepts and teachings as: “Touch not this,” “Thou shalt not eat that?” , “Don’t touch that thing over there,” referring to things that are meant to be used and then thrown away?”

2,23 Such orders established by human religions only create a form of wisdom in self-willed service, humility and weariness of the body. Unauthorized service means that people choose their form of service not according to the Word of God, but according to their own ideas of what is right. They seem devout, but this is not true Christianity. We have already explained the meaning of the word "humility"- they pretend to be too humble to turn directly to God, and therefore resort to angels as intermediaries. Exhaustion of the body refers to the practice of asceticism. A person believes that through self-denial or self-torture he can achieve higher holiness. Such confidence is characteristic of Hinduism and other mystical religions of the East.

What is the value of all these actions? Perhaps it is best expressed in the final part of the verse: in some carelessness about the saturation of the flesh.(In the translation of Bishop Cassian: “... not to any honor, but to the satiation of the flesh.”) All these actions play perfectly for the public, but cannot curb saturation of the flesh.(Even well-intentioned promises to yourself to be moderate in food and alcohol usually do not bring results.)

Any false system ultimately cannot make a person better. By giving the impression that the flesh can do anything to earn God's favor, they are unable to control its passions and lusts. The Christian's position on this issue is this: we died to the flesh with all its passions and lusts, and from now on we live for the glory of God. We do this not out of fear of punishment, but out of love for the One who gave Himself to us. It is well expressed by A. T. Robertson: "It is love that makes us truly free to do right. Love makes our choices easy. Love makes duties beautiful. Love makes us joyfully follow Christ. Love makes the service of virtue free."

Interpretation of Paul's letter to the Colossians. Bible online Colossians 2 interpretation