The Bible says more than you've been told.

Week 22 | Issue #22 | Spiritual vs. Legalism Series (2 of 4)

Something is happening at Colossae. Somebody is teaching the Christians there a system. Paul does not just describe it. He quotes it, and you can hear the sneer in it.

Why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—"Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? — Colossians 2:20-22 (ESV)

Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch. Say it out loud. It sounds spiritual. It sounds serious. It sounds like somebody who really means business about holiness. Paul says it is worthless. And notice his reason. Not "you are trying to earn salvation." His reason is three words: human precepts and teachings. In Greek, entalmata kai didaskalias anthropon. Commands and doctrines belonging to men.

Paul’s whole point is that somebody made it up and taught it like God said it.

Read what Paul says those rules look like from the outside. They have "an appearance of wisdom." They promote "severity to the body." They look like discipline. They look like a church that takes sin seriously. A man following them looks more committed than the man who is not.

And then Paul drops the hammer: they are "of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." Zero. Not a little help. No value. Rules God did not give do not make anybody holier. They just make people look holier, and they give everyone involved something to measure each other by, fake piety.

This is not a Paul problem. Jesus ran into it first, and He called those practitioners as well. The Pharisees came after Him because His disciples were not doing a ritual handwashing.

And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? — Matthew 15:3 (ESV)

He does not say their tradition was silly. He says it had pushed God's actual command out of the way. Then He gives them an ugle example. There was a practice called Corban. A man could declare his money dedicated to God, and then use that declaration to get out of supporting his aging parents. The tradition had a loophole in it, and the loophole canceled the fifth commandment. Jesus finishes with a line we used back in Issue #6: "In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:9, ESV). Same charge Paul makes. Commandments of men. Taught as doctrine.

Now the honest question, does this mean a Christian cannot have standards God did not spell out? No. And Paul is the one who says so. Romans 14 is about exactly this. Some Christians in Rome ate meat, others would not. Some kept certain days, others did not. Paul does not call either group wrong. He tells them, "Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind" (Romans 14:5, ESV). Then he says the sentence that explains this whole issue for me:

The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. — Romans 14:22 (ESV)

There it is. Have your conviction. Hold it hard. Live by it. Keep it between you and God. The problem was never that a Christian should not have personal standards. The problem is the moment he hands his standard to somebody else with God's name stamped on it.

Here are some helpful concepts, and most arguments in churches happen because somebody does not understand them.

A command. God said it. Binding on everybody. Not negotiable, not softened, not adjusted for the culture.

A conviction. You decided it, before God, for good reasons, and you will answer to Him for how you live. Romans 14 protects this. Keep it between you and God.

A tradition. How we have always done it here. It may be wise. It may be useful. It may be worth keeping. It is not a command, and the second you preach it like one, you teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Most of the fights are category errors. A man takes his conviction, or his congregation's tradition, and moves it up a slot. Paul says that costs you nothing in holiness and gains you an appearance of wisdom. That is a bad trade.

Summaries, not direct quotes.

John Gill on Colossians 2:23: Gill treats the regulations as human inventions that gain a reputation for wisdom and devotion while doing nothing to subdue sin, and notes that they often feed the pride they claim to kill.

Albert Barnes on Colossians 2:20-23: Barnes reads Paul as attacking an ascetic system imposed by teachers at Colossae, and stresses that the appearance of wisdom is exactly what made it dangerous.

Matthew Henry on Colossians 2:23: Henry says such rules have a show of humility and devotion but are of no real use against sin, and warns that the will-worship they produce is the worship of a man's own choosing rather than God's.

Henry's phrase is the one to keep. Worship of a man's own choosing. That is this week's word.

Colossians 2:16-17 — "Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath" (ESV). Paul is specific about the kinds of rules in play.

Matthew 15:9 — "In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men" (ESV). The same charge in the mouth of Jesus.

Mark 7:8 — "You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men" (ESV). Note the order. The tradition did not sit beside the command. It replaced it.

Romans 14:22 — "The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God" (ESV). The clearest instruction in the New Testament on what to do with a conviction you cannot prove from a verse.

There are two ways to be a legalist and most people only know about one. The first is trying to earn God's favor. We covered that last week.

The second is this one, and it is more common in churches that would never dream of the first. It is taking something God did not say and putting His name on it. Dress rules. Entertainment rules. Rules about relationship, clothing, modesty, about tattoos, about which version of the Bible is acceptable, about what school to go to, and about what a family's schedule must look like.

Some of those may be wise. A few of them may be the right call for you and your house. None of them is a command of God unless God commanded it, and the man who preaches it like one has done what the Pharisees did. Here is the test: Can you show it to me in the text?

If yes, preach it, and do not apologize for it. If no, then hold it, live by it, and keep it between yourself and God. A newsletter that spends every week telling other people to check the text does not get an exemption from that. Neither do we.

Certain people hear Colossians 2 and gets defensive. They have watched churches lower every bar in the name of grace. They have seen "that is just tradition" used to clear out things that were never traditions at all, but plain commands somebody found inconvenient. They have watched a generation talk itself out of modesty, out of reverence, out of soberness, one "where does it say that" at a time.

So when Paul starts quoting rules in a mocking tone, they brace. They should not. Read what Paul actually hits, and it is never a command of God. It is food rules, calendar rules, and body severity invented by teachers at Colossae. He is not touching anything God said.

Three verses earlier he is warning them to hold onto the head, which is Christ. Once a man cannot tell his tradition from his Bible, he will defend both with the same heat, and the people watching him will not be able to tell either. That is how a congregation ends up divided.

The other camp uses this chapter as a crowbar. Any standard becomes "commandments of men." Any older Christian with a conviction becomes a Pharisee. Colossians 2 becomes a verse that cancels verses.

Paul would not recognize it. The same man wrote three chapters of commands to the same church. Four verses after the "do not touch" passage he tells them to put sin to death, and then he lists it: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness. That is a rule list. Paul wrote it to the people he just rescued from rule lists. The difference is not that one church has rules and the other does not. The difference is who wrote them.

Colossians 2 does not say rules are bad. It says made-up rules do not work. They do not make a man holier. They do not restrain his flesh. Paul says so flatly, and he says it about rules that looked impressive.

So the sorting matters more than the volume. Command, conviction, tradition. Know which one you are holding. Everybody reads a chapter like this and pictures somebody else. The fundamentalist down the road. The denomination they left. The grandmother with the rules about card games. Paul wrote it to a church he loved, about teachers who were already inside. If this chapter only convicts people who are not reading it, nobody has read it.

The lesson: Can you show it to me in the text? If yes, preach it. If no, live it quietly and stop binding it. That is why tools like BibleWord.ai exist.

Transliteration: eth-el-oth-race-KEE-ah

Strong's Number: G1479

Definition: Self-chosen worship. Religion a man picked out for himself. Older translations say "will-worship."

This word appears exactly once in the Bible, right here in Colossians 2:23, and as far as anybody can tell Paul built it himself.

It is two words jammed together. Thelo means to want, to wish, to will. Threskeia means worship, religious observance, the practice of a faith.

Will-worship. Worship you wanted.

Think about how precise that is. Paul is not accusing these men of being irreligious. They are extremely religious. They have rules the rest of the church does not have, they are harder on their bodies than anybody else, and they are serious about it.

The problem is where the rules came from. They came from the worshiper.

That is the difference between worship and will-worship, and it has nothing to do with sincerity or effort. It is a question of authorship. God said this, or I decided this.

And notice Paul does not say will-worship fails to impress God. He says something worse. It is "of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." It does not even work on the man doing it.

That is the thing nobody expects. We assume extra rules at least help a little. Paul says they do not help at all, and then he tells you why in the same sentence. They have an appearance of wisdom.

Appearances are what they produce. Appearances are all they produce.

Until next time,