Walk, walk in the light

Categories: god

Tags: God, Christianity, Jesus, Christ, Advent

Date: 12 December 2012 10:08:24

Blogging through Advent 9

How to walk

Colossians 2:4-15

Don’t worry about philosophies

As mentioned in an earlier blog, St Paul was writing to the Colossians, a church which he didn't start, but which had problems with a heresy or bad teaching. You would expect him to face the problem head on. Instead he said this:

4 Now this I say that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech. 5 For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, rejoicing and seeing your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ. 6 As therefore you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, even as you were taught, abounding in it in thanksgiving. 8 Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ.

Verse 6, "As therefore you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, walk in him." The way to overcome a false teaching is not to spend all your time ranting against it. It isn't to dissect it line by line, word by word. It is simply to follow Jesus Christ and to keep on following him. If we do this we don't have to worry about philosophies that would take us away from our faith.

Don’t worry about principalities

Everything is about Jesus. Baptism is a sign that we have died in Christ and have been raised again with Christ. John, in his Gospel used the term "Born Again." That term is not used much in the Bible, but the principle is there. Paul explains it this way:

9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, 10 and in him you are made full, who is the head of all principality and power; 11 in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; 15 having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

The Devil has no longer any hold on us, Christ's death dealt with that.