Today we want to look at Colossians 2:16-18 (NKJV). Paul is correcting a fundamental flaw in the believer’s thinking that is taking them backwards in their relationship with Christ.
Colossians 2:16-19 (NLT) So don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths. For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ himself is that reality. Don’t let anyone condemn you by insisting on pious self-denial or the worship of angels, saying they have had visions about these things. Their sinful minds have made them proud, and they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body. For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it.
Paul is making it very clear that all the laws and rituals that are in the Old Testament were put in place to foreshadow what was to come when the Messiah Christ Jesus appeared. All the laws, all the festivals, all the holy days, everything the prophets spoke about were all fulfilled in Christ Jesus. They were all shadows. Christ is the reality.
TWO WAYS A SHADOW IS FORMED
A shadow is formed on a surface when something stands between a light and the surface. The shadow shows the shape, silhouette of the real thing. The laws and the rituals in the Old Testament were symbolic representations of things that were to come. They were symbolic acts that had spiritual meaning and experiences attached to them.
The sacrificial offerings didn’t begin with Moses. The first recorded sacrifices were done by Cain and Abel. Obviously they learnt it from their parents who were probably practicing bringing offerings to the Lord. Noah, Job and all the patriarchs of old made offerings unto the Lord. Moses got the revelation from God on how a corporate people could do what was already being done in an informal way by the godly people of old.
The first recorded tithing wasn’t during Moses time. Abraham was the first recorded person to tithe. Moses just formalised the process.
The laws and the rituals of the old testament were meant to be silhouettes, foreshadowing the coming of christ
The other way a shadow is formed in a place is when it is caused by something preventing light from reaching that place. A taller building blocking the sun from a part of your house for instance. That room never sees the sun and so potentially can get cold and mouldy. Man had taken the laws and rituals of God which were meant to draw people closer to Him and turned it into something that were restricted and preventing people from getting closer to Him.
Instead of foreshadowing Christ, man interpreted the laws and the rituals to the point they were blocking Christ from the people and the laws became a stumbling block and hindrance to God
Paul was speaking of the latter when he said that all the religious requirements stood between us and God casting a shadow.
Colossians 2:17 (MSG) All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.
WHAT ARE THESE SHADOWS PAUL WAS TALKING ABOUT?
The things Paul referred to as shadows are things presented as required “supplements” (in addition to Christ) for a relationship with God. During Paul’s time some Jewish leaders were saying believing in Jesus was a good start but after that you need to be circumcised, and follow the laws of Moses. Otherwise you will not be saved. I call it the Jesus plus theology. Jesus plus the supplements. Jesus is not enough nutrition for you, you need to take some supplements. You need to do some additional things to continue to be saved. The shadows Paul was talking about were the commandments and doctrines of men.
Colossians 2:20-23 (NLT) You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the spiritual powers of this world. So why do you keep on following the rules of the world, such as, “Don’t handle! Don’t taste! Don’t touch!”? Such rules are mere human teachings about things that deteriorate as we use them. These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline. But they provide no help in conquering a person’s evil desires.
Mere human teachings he calls them. Note some of the words he uses – “seem wise” – “REQUIRE strong devotion, pious self-denial, bodily discipline”. What these men were really saying was:
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LOOK AT ME I’M “DOING” HOLY – dietary and religious observances
Colossians 2:16 (NLT) So don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths.
There seems to be a strong drive in recent years to return to Jewish practices. This seems to be a Western church phenomena. After living in the Western world for more than fifteen years now, I think I have an idea why there is a draw towards Jewish cultural practices. The European folk in the Western world have lost their cultural identity. With all the movements that are going on, Europeans have been relegated to being white. All the other races have their own languages and cultures unique to them but the European only speaks English and does not really have a distinct culture. This is especially true in the UK, US and countries like New Zealand and Australia. Some seem to be drawn to Eastern religions and adapt cultural practices similar to Hinduism or Buddhism. For the christian European however that is not an option. So the Jewish culture and practices become a natural draw card as these practices are from the Bible. I have no qualms about anyone wanting to adopt Jewish culture and practices as long as they know the festivals and practices that they are adopting are cultural and not Christian.
Let me elaborate further with two examples. Recently there was a group insisting that the Sabbath must be practiced on Saturday and the church meeting on Sunday has been influenced by the Emperor Constantine and the Roman Catholic church. While these thoughts may be amusing but they carry a very dangerous tone when we begin to insist that worshiping Jesus on a Sunday contradicts the Bible and is an offence to God simply because we are not meeting on a particular day ie. Saturday. My second son lives in the same city as me and my wife. He comes for dinner every Thursday for most of the time. What if one day he decides to visit us on a Tuesday and someone stands at the door and says to him, “its not Thursday, you can’t go and see your mom and dad. You can only visit them on Thursday.” Imagine how furious I would be when I found out that someone had the audacity to prevent my son from coming to see me. My son of course will walk right through him and come right in because he knows he can come see us any day, any time. Our home is his home. Sabbath on a Saturday is the shadow. Worshiping Jesus is the substance.
Another controversy is the church celebrating Good Friday and Easter. They say it is a pagan festival and should not be celebrated by the church. I find it difficult to believe that pagans want to celebrate Jesus Christ dying on the cross to save sinners and then rising from the dead on the third day. But I digress. They tell us we shouldn’t celebrate Good Friday but instead should celebrate the Passover. This is exactly the point Paul was making. Passover is the shadow – what happened on Good Friday (the day we have set aside to remember Christ’s death on the cross), that’s the substance. The Passover is a celebration of remembrance of the time Israel was delivered out of Egypt into a journey to the promise land. A real event for the Jews and they are commanded to remember that for eternity. What a marvelous deliverance it was. But as marvelous as that experience was, it was foreshadowing something coming for the whole of mankind. The Christ was coming to deliver the world from the bondage of sin and demonic oppression. Once Christ came the shadow was no longer necessary. The substance is Christ – His death and His resurrection. That’s why we celebrate Good Friday. We celebrate Christ the substance who died on the cross for all mankind. That’s the reality, no longer a shadow.
That’s why we no longer celebrate the Seder meal annually but celebrate the Lord’s table as often as we can. The night before Jesus died on the cross, he was celebrating the passover with them. He was probably having a meal similar to the Seder meal today. As the host he was meant to go through the dishes that were representing all the experiences the Jews had in Egypt. But the Gospel writers only record him taking two of the items on the table – the bread and the wine. Why? He told is why.
Matthew 26:26-28 (NLT) As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body.” And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, “Each of you drink from it, for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many.
No longer do we celebrate the shadow of what is to come. We now celebrate the reality of what has happened. Christ is the substance. His body, His blood is now the reality. He is sufficient. He sustains us. He cleanses us from all sin.
Now back to Colossians 2. What those who were insisting on were to follow the laws and rituals which were mere shadows.
LOOK AT ME I’M “DOING” HOLY”. LOOK AT ME I’M “BEING” HOLY
Colossians 2:23 (NLT) These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline. But they provide no help in conquering a person’s evil desires.
After “doing” all these things. After “being” all these things. You are still fighting your demons of anger, lust, unforgiveness, bitterness. Why? Because your are living in the shadows. Shadows cannot deal with the inner root problems of evil desires. The only thing that can transform us is a genuine, faith based relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord – not following rules and rituals.
The problem with chasing shadows is they present a faulty image of god. God becomes a mere illusion.
MOVING OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Get rid of the middle man
Paul speaks against any human intervention standing in the way of our direct access to Christ – “let no one judge you”, “let no one cheat you” (Col 2:16, 18). the Hebrews author is even more explicit.
Hebrews 8:6-13 (NLT) But now Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises. If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it. But when God found fault with the people, he said: “The day is coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt. They did not remain faithful to my covenant, so I turned my back on them, says the LORD. But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the LORD: I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the LORD.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already. And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” When God speaks of a “new” covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete. It is now out of date and will soon disappear.
Here we see a clear exhortation to no longer depend on an intermediary, whether it is a human being or whether they are a set of rules and rituals. God wants us to go to Him directly.
Go directly to the source – Christ Jesus
We need to grasp what access we have through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Paul uses these phrases – we are “circumcised in Him”, we are “buried with Him”, we are “made alive together with Him” (Col 2: 11-14). There is no longer the need for a priest to bless us. Go directly to Christ and receive His blessings. There is no longer the need to observe a certain Holy Day to experience God. Go directly to Jesus and you will experience God in His fulness.
It is all Jesus – Christ is the substance – no supplements required
Again I reiterate – we need to know what Christ has done for us on the cross.
Colossians 2:13-15 (NLT) for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.
Col 2:19 (NLT) For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it.
He has set us free once and for all from the bondage of sin and from the oppression of the evil one. No more condemnation. No more guilt and shame. Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
You are living in the shadows if you depend on any other source apart from Jesus Christ. Time to come out of the shadows and into His marvelous light. Let me close with this final passage from Galatians.
Galatians 3:5-7 (NLT) I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ. In the same way, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God.
Have we put our faith in things we do, in our own effort, in things that are mere shadows? Could that be the reason we are not seeing the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit and the working of miracles? Could it be that the Gospel we are preaching is void of the power of God because we are focusing on human effort to get to God?