The Church That Was Too Religious

By Neil Earle

What?

Too religious?

How can there be such a thing. Or can there be?

Yes. Yes, there surely can. Take St. Paul’s new church in the small city of Colossae, for example. The scholar Lightfoot said Colossae was the “most unimportant town to which Paul ever wrote a letter.” But Colossae, on the banks of the Lycus River in what is today southeastern Turkey was a prosperous little place. The flocks of sheep that roamed the pastureland made it a center of the dye industry, it even gave its name to this process.

Christ In You – The Hidden Payoff!

One of the letter to the Colossians key phrases is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Just how is Jesus Christ superior to the elements of the world – any physical system that gets its hold on people?

One way is through his marvelous transforming work from within.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good” encourages the Bible. Pastor Doug Smith speaks of a colleague “who lived in grace, who was comfortable and relaxed in the presence of God, assured of his acceptance by God and so went about his life overwhelmed by the certain fact that God liked him…and loved him. You enjoyed being with him because he himself was at home with God. He never argued theology. He just went about living it.”

Neil Earle with the late John Stott (right) who cited Charles Simeon.
John Stott reported on the humble confessions of the cleric Charles Simeon: “Allow me to state to you what have sometimes been my feelings while seated in this chair by myself, shut in with God from the world around me…I find myself with my God instead of being shut up in an apartment in hell, although a hell-deserving sinner. Had I suffered my deserts I should have been in those dark abodes of despair and anguish. From all this I am delivered by the grace of God, though I might have been cut off in my sins, fifty-five years ago.

“While engaged in these thoughts they sometimes overpower me. Give me to be with a broken-hearted Christian and I prefer his company to all the rest.”

A humble Christian is poor in spirit and meek in his demeanor because he knows he has been forgiven. Thus humbled, the Spirit of God is able to flow through him because there is so little Self to block its free flow. And where the Spirit of God is there is love, joy and peace – and who doesn’t want to be surrounded with that, today and every day?
Even today, the Mayan calendar makes the news. Courtesy freedigitalphotos.net.

Religious Influences

Just a few miles away lived 10,000 Jewish residents in the city of Laodicea, which was significant for this letter. Paul wrote to a church he had not personally planted or visited. The converts there were apparently brought to Christ by Paul’s assistant Epaphras (Colossians 4:12). This may be one reason why the new Christians – recent converts from paganism – were a bit confused as to how much of the Jewish legacy was applicable to Christians. After all, the Galatian churches had been seduced by the prominent fact that circumcision dated back to Abraham (Galatians 5:6).

But there were also certain astrological influences around in Colossae. These Paul seems to have grouped under his “elements of the world” phraseology (2:20). This strange religious brew may be the background to what some call “the Colossian heresy” and others “the Colossian tendency.”

Centrality of Christ

Scholars admit that while the central message of Paul’s letter to the Colossians is the preeminence of Christ in all things (1:18), the problem Paul is addressing is not as clear-cut as usual. He clearly rebukes in his letters the legalistic teachers in Galatians, the prophecy addicts in Thessalonica, and the multiple problems that beset the pesky Corinthians.

But it is possible to discern that the situation in Colossae had developed from an excess of religious practices. With even circumcision showing up again (2:11), it is clear that Paul’s references to Sabbaths and holy days as well as “the elements of the world” define what he lumps under the umbrella of “philosophy” in Colossians 2:8. It was the claim to “special knowledge” and “secret rites” that was part of the problem in Colossae.

“Philosophy” is defined as “the teachings handed down by men”” in the words of Today’s English Version (TEV). The Greek expositor William Barclay felt sure that those “elements of the world” in Colossians 2:20 referred to the human tendency to worship the physical – the stars (astrology), trees, even rocks like the ka-aba in Mecca, and geographic formations such as holy mountains and sacred sites. Many have agreed with Barclay. They add that Paul was definitely including the Jewish system of holy days tied to the New Moon, sunset times and astronomical and calendrical matters as well as the pagan rites of the gentile world.

Ancient people feared the heavenly bodies and worshipped them – part of the "elements" Paul wrote against. Courtesy freedigitalphotos.net.

The “elements” are of the world, worldly. The Anglican teacher N.T. Wright summarizes: “The regulations of Judaism were designed for the period when the people of God consisted of one racial, cultural and geographical init, and are simply out of date now that this people is becoming a world-wide family…Now that the reality has come there is no point in clinging to the shadows. And the reality belongs to Christ” says Wright in explaining Colossians 2:14-17 (Tyndale Commentaries: Colossians and Philemon, page 120). “Of the world” references anything tied to this present world system, including principalities and powers.

So here was a teaching going around Colossae that eventually led to the worship of angels and other so-called intermediaries in the heavenlies. The bottom line for the false teachers is “Jesus us not enough. You need something extra and you can get it of you submit to the right program.” The religious eccentricities in Colossae Paul resisted in the best way Christians know how – a supreme focus on the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ for salvation.

One reason we worship Jesus and him alone.

We see this at work early on in the letter.

The Science of the Godhead

Colossians 1:9 begins his counter-focus on the true wisdom of God. “All wisdom and spiritual understanding,” Paul is cited as saying in the New King James Version. The Christians there are encouraged to be “increasing in the knowledge of God.”

Writers such as St. Paul have been called “the patron saints of thought in the Christian religion.” Christianity, Paul knew, was a way of life but also a way of thinking about Christ. Respected theologians such as Charles Spurgeon and James Packer have written about “the science of the Godhead” which includes such fascinating investigations as the Incarnation (how God became man) the Trinity (how God is three and yet one) and how to discern and follow the invisible teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The carnal “don’t touch” regulations in Colossae tied into the physical matters were being squeezed into a system portrayed as more important than God’s revelation in Christ.

There is the problem. But how does it apply to us today?

Many ways. Here are a few.

Some Pitfalls

1. An over-emphasis on stringent religious practices as a means of salvation. The Sabbaths and feasts Paul mentioned had a divine origin in the early history of Judaism but…anything can be overdone. The Passover, for example, for Christians is not as important as its living, breathing fulfillment in Jesus Christ himself.

There was much superstition attaching to Herod's Temple by the first century.

That is why Paul said to have Christ, to be in relationship with him is more meaningful than indulging in a ritual (Colossians 3:16). As Ralph Martin writes about the Sabbaths in Colossians: “The root principle needs to be noted… Paul is not condemning the use of sacred days and seasons…What moves him here is the wrong motive involved when the observance of holy festivals is made a badge of separation and an attempted means of securing salvation out of fear and superstition. It is bad religion that Paul attacks” (Colossians: The Church’s Lord and the Christian’s Liberty, page 90).

Exactly. All festivals and seasons are tied to the rotation of the heavenly bodies and are elements of this world. So let the worshipper beware and not let the rite obscure the God who is being worshipped whether at Christmas time or Passover.

2. The Health and Wealth Gospels. This is the prevalent false teaching that “God wants you healthy and rich.” Say some: “If you are sick you are breaking the laws of good health, write to us and we can show you what they are or send you something to make you better.” This is a common pitch. But nothing is more “of this world” than health and illness. God wants us well but he also wants us in his kingdom and sometimes it is through much tribulation we enter the kingdom. That includes health trials that even men of God such as Elisha, Timothy and Trophimus suffered.

3. Overweening environmentalism. Of course Christians should be stewards of the good earth but Jesus said we are of more value than sparrows. Some people seem to equate environmental principles with religion. Environmentalism is indeed a worthy cause in most cases but not to be elevated to the status of an unalterable belief system.

4. Angel Mania. In the 1990s a virtual angel plague broke out in the Western world. Of course the Bible mentions angels and their study can be illuminating indeed but not to the extent that it became in that decade. Praying to angels is condemned in Scripture. Be advised.

5. Charismatic excesses. Paul wished we would all speak in tongues (but preferred that we speak well to outsiders). There are churches that say you cannot be a true Christian unless you speak in tongues but…that is pushing a Biblical principle way too far. There is no evidence of Jesus speaking in tongues and John the Baptist worked no miracle.

John Stott (right) signs book for Neil Earle.

Song services that have as their goal the “working up” of the Spirit are tied to our physical and emotional selves and are as suspect now as they always were across church history. Again, sin is often not the thing but the wrong use of the thing, as St. Augustine advised 1600 years ago.

You can fill in the blanks. It is so easy for principles of the New Age movement to become subtly engrafted on Christianity. We don’t need circumcision, angel worship or the Jewish calendar. We need the bracing and refreshing message of the letter to the Colossians which teaches: “God’s secret…is Christ himself. He is the key that opens all the hidden treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 3:2-3 TEV).