Always Enough

Sermon Transcript

If you had to think of the most common advertisements you see, what would come to mind? One of the first that came to my mind was car commercials. Every year, car companies release new models, and in every commercial, some new feature is highlighted: The door that opens when you stick your foot under it, the car that that just does the whole parallel park job for you, the pick-up truck with that extra step on the back. And what’s the commercial lead you think? You need this new car. That old one doesn’t have the extra step, after all! You should trade it in, and upgrade to something better. What do you need to be able to do in such a situation if you’re going to avoid buying a new car every year? You need to be able stop and say, “Wait, do I really need that?”

 

The Colossians, the people to whom the letter we’re focusing on today was written, were Christians. They had repented of their sins and believed in Jesus Christ for salvation. They now had Jesus, but was he enough? Or did they need something else? They too had marketers, only their marketers weren’t coming through TV sets trying to sell them cars. The marketers we’ll encounter in this passage were trying to sell them their need to not eat certain foods, observe special feast days, seek deeper spiritual experiences, and discipline themselves more severely. Do you ever wonder if you need more than Jesus? There are still plenty of voices today telling us we do, but don’t let anyone convince you that you need more than Jesus, and this passage gives us four reasons not to: He’s the fulfillment of the law, he’s the head of the body, he’s the deliverer from the world, and nothing else works.

 

He’s the fulfillment of the law

 

Our passage begins in verse 16 with this command to “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.” What does it mean to let no one pass judgment on you? If people judge you in their hearts, you really can’t stop them from doing so. If they choose to act on that by verbalizing their judgment to you or others, you can’t really stop them from doing that either. So what does it mean to let no one pass judgment on you? It means to not let it affect you. Don’t let it weigh on your conscience, don’t let it shape your thinking, don’t give it the time of day. You’ve maybe even heard someone say defiantly to someone else, “You can’t judge me!” Well God is telling us here to adopt that kind of attitude when someone judges us on questions of food or drink, or with regard to a festival, new moon, or sabbath.

 

He doesn’t tell us to adopt that attitude toward everything. He doesn’t say, “Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of murder, adultery, or theft.” If someone suggests to you that you did something contrary to what God does command, don’t say, “You can’t judge me!” But if someone tells you that you ate the wrong foods, then you absolutely should say, “You can’t judge me!” Why would anyone accuse you of eating the wrong foods, though? Well, in the Old Testament, the part of your Bible written before Jesus came, beginning in Genesis and ending in Malachi, God himself declared some foods clean, and other foods unclean, meaning his people were allowed to eat some, but not others. Furthermore, God handed down certain laws concerning festivals, new moons, and Sabbaths. There were feast days under the Old Testament law: The Passover, the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Booths or Tents; you can read about all of these in Leviticus 23. In Leviticus 23 you can also read of the weekly Sabbath, where on the seventh day of each week all Israelites were commanded to rest from their ordinary labors, and you have to go to the book of Numbers to read about the required sacrifices offered at each new moon, or what we’d call the beginning of each month (Num 28:11).

 

Some foods are clean and can be eaten; other foods are unclean and cannot be eaten. You must observe the Passover feast, the feast of trumpets, the feast of tents, and more. You must rest from your ordinary labors on the seventh day of the week. Those are all things God commanded, and yet now Paul says don’t let anyone judge you for not keeping them. How can he say that? Verse 17 tells us: These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Think of a shadow cast by a human: It’s in the shape of her body, it reveals something about what she looks like, but the shadow itself isn’t a human. So also the food laws and the church calendar revealed something about the things to come, but they aren’t the something. The things to come are the something, and those things are actually ours in Christ.

 

The “clean” foods pointed to the need for a clean heart, and God’s plan to one day give us that new heart. The festivals pointed to a whole new creation, in which we would eat in the presence of God as his people. The new moon sacrifices pointed to a better sacrifice that would truly pay for our sins and secure for us an eternal redemption. The sabbath day pointed to a better rest in which we would rest not only in God’s finished work of creation, but God’s finished work of redemption. These are the things that are now ours in Christ.

 

We saw last week that you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our trespasses (Col 2:13). What’s that? It’s the cleansing of the heart of which the laws calling some foods clean were only the shadow. We’ll see in chapter 3 that when Christ appears, we also will appear with him in glory (Col 3:4). What’s that? It’s the new creation of which the festivals and new moons were a shadow. In that day we will rest from our works, and even now, the work of our reconciliation with God has already been accomplished by Christ, and we rest in it when we believe in Christ. What’s that? It’s the inauguration of the rest of which the Sabbath was but a shadow.

 

So why let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath? Because now you have Christ, and in him, you have all you need. In him you have the realities of which these things were mere shadows. Now I’m guessing not many of you feel any pangs of conscience about eating shellfish, not observing the Passover feast, or working on Saturday. But like the needle of a compass, even when you try to turn it, always tends to go back to north, so the human heart seems to gravitate to things like food laws and church calendars in addition to Christ. Probably the most obvious example is the Roman Catholic Church, which schedules a 40-day period each year called Lent, in which they forbid you to eat meat on Fridays, and requires the observance of various feasts throughout the year. In this they pass judgment on Christians in questions of food drink, and with regard to a festival or sabbath. If you do absolutely nothing for the invented seasons of Lent or Advent, you should feel zero guilt about that. The Gospel Coalition recently ran an article reporting how attempts to win people to Roman Catholicism are increasing online, and guess who their target audience is? Protestants—many of you in the room today. Don’t let them convince you that you need more than Jesus.

 

On a less obvious level, think about how much the wellness industry passes judgment on us in questions of food or drink. Eatingwell.com even has a list entitled the “clean-eating food list”—they’re literally declaring some foods clean! Now I know you’re thinking, “oh come on; that’s not about religion. They’re just trying to help you eat healthy” and if that’s all you’re taking from it, more power to you. But our hearts aren’t always so simple. Last week I quoted Rina Raphael, author of the secular book entitled The Gospel of Wellness, commenting on the wellness industry: “There is almost this secular salvation of, like, I will make myself fit. I will make myself well. I will make sure that I have all these incredible values about tending to myself…I make the argument that wellness acts like a deconstructed religion. It’s like a regulated framework instructing us how to live our lives.” She goes on to point out how wellness, including eating “clean foods”, can just become another way we delude ourselves into thinking we can control our lives. I remember a brother here telling me about a time someone confessed to him that she’d eaten a donut, and she was confessing it as though it was sin. What had happened to her? Healthy eating had become a law to her.

 

If you want to eat healthy, great. But pay attention to what a natural desire for health can do to your conscience. If you start to feel guilty for what you eat, don’t just let that go. Verse 16 of our passage shows us just how precious your conscience is. What’s the verse really telling you to do? It’s commanding you to not let the judgments of others in things like food and special days weigh on your conscience. We get so many different messages every day from the various media we take in, often telling us we need something more than Christ. Don’t let them in. If you start to feel guilty or incomplete for not being or having anything, examine it: Is this actually something God commands now that Christ has come, is it something he says I need, or am I letting someone else impose their standards on me?

 

In verse 18 we encounter another way in which people will try to tell us that we need more than Jesus, and in response we see the second reason not to let them convince us of that: Jesus is the head of the body.

 

He’s the head of the body

 

In verse 18 we see a similar command to verse 16: Let no one disqualify you, only here the things on which they insist are not just Old Testament laws God gave, but additional practices and experiences God never instituted. First we have asceticism, which is a kind of counterfeit humility—self-denial for the sake of self-denial, and you can see how this could fit nicely with something like food laws. 1 Timothy 4 tells us about the teaching of demons who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:1-5). People usually think of demons as wanting us to indulge our pleasures as much as possible, and certainly that is one of their strategies, but they are just as happy to get us hyper-disciplined if in so doing they can get our eyes off Christ. Ghandi denied himself various foods and sex with great rigor, and he had nothing of Christ.

 

We also read here that they insist on the worship of angels. It’s not clear whether this means they were promoting the worship of angels or calling people to join in the worship of angels, but they clearly were insisting on a deeper or higher spiritual experience than that available simply through faith in Christ. They’re saying, “Ok, you have Jesus, but have you really joined in the worship of angels?” They also go on in detail about visions. If someone told you God had revealed something to them in a vision, might not some part of you be more likely to listen to them? Roman Catholics have long claimed that visions of Mary are evidence of their legitimacy. I mentioned last week how one of the biggest Protestant churches in America, Bethel Redding, claims to encounter falling gold dust, angel feathers, and visions of a glory cloud in their services. What’s the message you get when you hear that? “You’re missing something”. Even less dangerous forms of Pentecostalism can create this same impression: If you haven’t been baptized in the Holy Spirit, if you haven’t spoken in tongues, you’re missing something, even though you have Christ.

 

And Paul’s assessment of those who boast of their extraordinary spiritual experiences in verse 18 is that they are puffed up without reason by their sensuous minds. A mind set on the senses will be puffed up by reports of sensory experiences like visions. The thinking goes, “We may both have Christ…but I have more than Christ.” Here’s the problem, though, Paul says in verse 19: In seeking to have more than Christ, you end up letting go of Christ. He says these teachers who insist on asceticism, the worship of angels, and go on about their amazing visions, in holding on to them, no longer hold fast the Head.

 

I doubt they thought that’s what they were doing; they almost certainly didn’t say that’s what they were doing. They probably just thought they were adding on to Jesus, beefing up their spiritual lives with something more than him. But remember, you don’t need more than Christ; you need more of Christ. In looking for more than him, you actually end up with less of him, and set yourself on a path toward letting go of him altogether. Say you’ve got $100 to spend on a gift for someone you love, so you hop on amazon and start surfing. You find something you think they’ll like that costs exactly 100$, you stick it in your cart, but then instead of checking out, you go back to surfing. What’s that reveal? It reveals you don’t really believe the gift in your cart will be enough to satisfy the one you love. So you find something else and say, “I’ll just add it,” but here’s the problem: You only have $100 to spend. To add the extra gift, guess what you’ll have to do? Subtract the original.

 

So here’s the deal: You only have one life to spend. You can either spend it entirely on Jesus and believe that he is enough, or you spend it on other things, but you can’t add other items to Jesus and still hold on to him. So the Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 30, says, “Do those who look for their salvation in saints, in themselves, or elsewhere really believe in the only savior Jesus?” Answer: “No. Although they boast of being his, by their actions they deny the only savior, Jesus. Either Jesus is not a perfect savior, or those who in true faith accept this savior have in him all they need for their salvation.” Faith is an open hand, and once it takes hold of Christ, it cannot also take hold of something else without letting go of him. If you are here today and you are not a Christian, you may be tempted to think that you can take what you like from Jesus and combine it with what you like from other religions, and I just want you to see that’s not possible with Christ. You can reject him, or you can accept him, but you can’t add to him some other form of spirituality.

 

And you don’t need to! Those who in faith accept him have in him all they need for their salvation, because look at what he does according to verse 19: He nourishes his body so that it grows with a growth that is from God. So this isn’t saying that if you have Christ, you have no need to grow, as though the moment you believe you advance right to perfection. But it is saying that if you have Christ, you have all you need to grow. And notice how Jesus grows us: Not through asceticism and angel worship and visions, not through food laws and church calendars, but through the church itself, his body. We grow as we are knit together in love with the rest of his body. I’ve had the privilege of watching my oldest son grow from a newborn to a 6-year-old, and can I tell you how it didn’t happen? It wasn’t by his arm being separated from his body and growing on its own. His arm grew as it was knit to his shoulder, and his shoulders grew as they were attached to his neck, and his neck grew as it was attached to his head.

 

So the growth that comes from God happens in our lives as we are united to Christ, and in being united to Christ, we are also knit together with all those who are also united to Christ by faith. Some professing Christians engage with the church more like a t-shirt than like a member of the body. They pop in and pop out, like we take a t-shirt on and off, but they aren’t knitted together with the body. Over my son’s 6 years of life, he’s worn many t-shirts. He takes them on, he takes them off, and you know what unfortunately never happens? The t-shirts never grow with him, like his arms or legs grow with him. Why? Because they aren’t part of his body!

 

Let’s imagine two people: One we’ll call Marie, and the other we’ll call Ann. Marie says she’s a Christian, but just doesn’t feel like she gets much out of church. Often a hike on Sunday with her Bible feels to her like a better way to connect with God. She does have a few Christian friends she catches up with occasionally, but they aren’t members of the same church, and she enjoys various Christian podcasts published by Christian influencers she’s never met. Ann, on the other hand, also professes to be a Christian, but she made it a priority to join a church that values the preaching of God’s Word and involvement in one another’s lives. She helps her church set up for services on Sundays and is diligent to attend weekly. When the church offers extra services, she says no to other things to prioritize being there. She also attends a small group at the church and has spent years investing in relationships with a few of the ladies in it. Now she meets with two of them every other week for deeper accountability and encouragement. Most weekends they’re texting one another to see what they’re doing together that weekend. In her time at the church she’s sat through a few lame sermons, some awkward small group meetings, and even had to navigate conflict with some other members, but if you had to guess who was growing more: Marie, or Ann, who would you guess?

 

And would we generally assume that Ann is growing more because she got something more than Jesus that Marie didn’t have? No! But through the church, through her preaching, her worship, her ordinances, her people, Ann was getting more of Jesus, as he, the head of the body, nourishes it and causes it to grow with a growth that is from God. The church isn’t some optional add-on to Jesus. The church isn’t Jesus’ t-shirt; it’s his body. And if you are in Christ, you are knit together with his body. Does your engagement with your local church reflect that? In him we have all we need to grow to maturity, and we grow to maturity as we are knit together with his body. Don’t let anyone convince you that you need more than that.

 

He’s the head of the body, and next we’ll see that he’s the deliverer from the world.

 

He’s the deliverer from the world

 

In verse 20 Paul asks, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?” Here he tells us that if you believe in Christ, you have died with Christ. Jesus Christ is God, true God, who became truly man. As a man he was tempted in every way, yet never sinned. But on the cross, he died the death sinners deserved to take the punishment for sin upon himself, so that whoever would believe in him would be forgiven of their sins rather than punished for them. Then he rose from the dead to eternal life, so that whoever believes in him is not only forgiven, but given the gift of eternal life. That means that if you are in Christ today, who you were by nature is now dead—you died with Christ, and a new you is now alive in Christ. We’ll get to the new you next week when we look at Colossians 3, Lord willing, but for now notice what that means for your life in the world. If you have died with Christ to the elemental spirits of the world, they no longer have power over you! He has delivered you from the world.

 

We don’t know exactly what the “elemental spirits” are, but they seem to be the forces or spiritual beings that exert power over the world. Think about your pre-Christian life, or your life now if you are not a Christian: What were the things that really controlled you? Look at your decisions, how you spent your money, to what you gave your time, your attention, your focus, what stressed you out, what got you excited. Wasn’t it something in this creation, in this world? For me it was the opinions of my friends, and I submitted to their regulations: Wear these clothes, don’t wear those, talk like this, don’t say that, hang out with these people, don’t hang out with them. Of course, those things weren’t written down anywhere, and they usually aren’t, but like the compass, our heart tends to gravitate toward them. For you it may actually be another religion in which you grew up, or it may be your parents, a love interest, money, and a host of other things.

 

But do you see that if you have died with Christ, if you have become a Christian, you have been set free from these things? That “you” is dead with Christ, and a new “you” is risen with him. Imagine someone born in North Korea is delivered from there, brought to South Korea, adopted by South Korean parents, and thus becomes a citizen of South Korea, renouncing their North Korean citizenship. Some North Koreans may still try to get such a person to submit to the laws of North Korea, but they are no longer bound by them. They are citizens of a new nation. And so also, our citizenship is now in heaven. With Christ we died to who we were by nature, and so why still submit to the laws that used to govern us?

 

Even God’s law given before the time of Christ was given to regulate the old creation, not to bring about a new one. And certainly laws about not handling, tasting, or touching, mentioned in verse 21, all have to do with things of this old creation, as verse 22 points out: They refer to things that perish, like food, and according to human precepts and teachings, not divine revelation. Any religion, even one that claims the name of Christ, that gives a lot of focus to things that pertain to this creation—food, buildings, special days, rituals, clothing, incense, images, pilgrimages, any religion especially that tries to mandate participation in such things, is one to stay away from. It is a form of religion in which I can keep some pretty manageable rules without ever having to trust Christ for salvation or surrender the things in my heart that I love more than him. It’s a kind of bargaining with God: I do these things, and then I get to basically keep control of my life otherwise. And so it is what human precepts and teaching comes up with, and often the promoters of such religion have nothing deeper to which to appeal than human tradition.

 

Not all appeals to tradition are wrong. Some modern people make the mistake of thinking that if something is old, it must be wrong; time to move into the future, where there will be inevitable progress. That’s foolish; the gospel of Jesus Christ itself is now thousands of years old, and has been handed down to us by humans. But it didn’t originate from humans. It originated from God, who became man in Jesus Christ, and who then revealed the mystery of the gospel to apostles like Paul, who then proclaimed not their own ideas about God, but God’s very word, and wrote down what God revealed to them in the Bible. So we don’t want to assume old means bad, but we also don’t want to assume that old means good. Error can have a long tradition too. The idea that the sun revolved around the moon had a long tradition. We should respect tradition, but the tradition of humans is not our final authority. We’ve been delivered from the world, and our head is Christ. Don’t submit to the world’s regulations.

 

And, finally, don’t let anyone convince you that you need more than Jesus, because nothing else works.

 

Nothing else works

 

Why does the compass of our hearts tend to gravitate back to food laws, special feast days, ritual, visions, and so on? Because verse 23 affirms that they do in fact have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body. These things look spiritually impressive to us. Ghandi’s self-denial, Bethel’s glory cloud, a priest’s vestments…the natural man assumes that if you’re really spiritual, that’s what it will look like. But God is after something different, something bigger. God’s big picture goal in our lives is not to get us eating certain foods, dressing a certain way, or observing certain days. It’s one of the many ways Christianity is different from other religions—in Christianity, externals are subordinated. It’s in the Bible we read that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). God is after the heart, the internal, or as this passage puts it, “stopping the indulgence of the flesh”.

 

Now when you hear the word “flesh” in the Bible, don’t just think, “body”, as though the indulgence of the flesh just refers to sensual pleasures like alcohol, food, and sex. Flesh more often means our sinful nature. As our flesh is natural to us, so is sin, but sin is something inside us, something that affects not only our bodily appetites, but our thoughts and affections. Envy is a work of the flesh according to Galatians 5, but it’s totally internal. And it’s down there, in our hearts, that regulations like “Do not taste, do not touch, do not handle” have no power. Verse 23 says they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh, because your sinful desires don’t need to be disciplined or re-habituated; they need to be killed, and it’s only in Christ that they can be.

 

This is contrary to human precepts and teachings; no doubt. It was contrary to the human precepts and teachings in Paul’s day too. Take Aristotle for example, one of the greatest philosophers to ever live, who predated Paul by centuries. Aristotle taught that humans were driven by a desire for good, but that we are often deceived as to what is truly good and instead settle for temporary, lesser goods. His solution, then, was to train us to desire what is truly good by cultivating good habits—i.e., if you want to become courageous, you become courageous by doing courageous things repeatedly until it becomes second nature, and, to extend his logic, if you want to become self-controlled, you repeatedly “do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” until it becomes second nature. But what Aristotle missed was the reality of sinful flesh. He missed that there is hostile to the supreme good—God himself, that makes us want to indulge our flesh instead, and what verse 23 is saying is that all the habits in the world can’t change that.

 

If you are here today and you are not a Christian, clean eating, meditation, yoga, therapy, and a well-scheduled life may improve your physical and mental state, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. They cannot provide the heart change that you need most. And if you become a Christian, they don’t then magically start working on your heart. So also fasting during Lent or praying a rosary may have an appearance of wisdom, but they do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh. J.C. Ryle was a pastor and bishop in the church of England in the 1800s. In his day there was a big push to reprioritize human traditions like the church calendar. He didn’t object to the church calendar and tradition per se, but here’s what he said about such traditions: “I only say that these things do not constitute Christian holiness. I will go even further. I will say that the history of the last three hundred years in England does not incline me to think that these things, however well meant, are conducive to real holiness…Things have come to pass in England that thousands of Churchmen are making the whole of religion to consist in externals. Against such a religion, as long as I live, I desire to protest…It ought never to satisfy a Bible-reading Christian. It is the religion that the natural heart likes, but it is not the religion of God…If this is Christian holiness, we may throw our Bibles to the winds.”

 

Denying yourself certain foods for the health of your body can be a wise stewardship of your body. Enjoying a big meal with family and even gathering for worship on widely recognized holidays like Christmas and Easter can be enjoyed as a gift from God and used as an opportunity to proclaim Christ. But if you think those sorts of things are an important part of growing in the holiness for which God calls, I feel sorry for you. And I don’t intend that in a paternalistic or patronizing way; I just mean that there is something so much better available to you in Christ. He is the fulfillment of the law, he is the head of the body, and if you are in him today, he has delivered you from the world and its way of doing things. Don’t try to grow in Christ using the world’s methods. Having begun with Christ, don’t try to be perfected by food and drink, festivals, new moons, sabbaths, or angelic visions. They have an appearance of wisdom, but they do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh. It is as you continue in Christ, the head, with his body, that you will grow with a growth that comes from God. Don’t let anyone convince you that you need more than him.