OUR FATHER BRINGS INCREASE WHEN WE CLING TO CHRIST

In Colossians chapter 2 verses 11 - 23, the apostle Paul summarises the absolute reversal that Christ achieved for us believers through His death on the cross and his burial and ressurection.

Whereas we were once dead in our tresspasses with an inssurmountable list of charges against us, Christ, in His victory over death, cleared off the charges against us and revivified us when our trespasses were taken away and nailed to the cross and, in a cosmological triumph over the heirarchy of the kingdom of darkness that enforced the legal claims against us, defanged and humiliated them such that they were rendered impotent regarding their rule over us. 

11 In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

Paul, having established that believers have been extricated from under the dominion of the kingdom of darkness and freed from the regulations of the law and traditions of men, adjures us not to be subjected to rules related to food, drink, festivals and sabbaths which were merely shadows that pointed to the ultimate ministry of Christ. 

Paul cautions us against heeding those who claim to have seen visions and then, in their inflated sense of themselves,  teach others to practice false humility and to worship of angels. In doing so, they lead people away from cleaving to the head of the body who is Christ and from whom only can a healthy life of the body of believers be gained.

16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. 18 Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.

Believers who have died with Christ and are thus free from the governing principles of the world, should therefore not be ruled by the regulations and doctrines of men for even though some of these artificial strictures appear rooted in wisdom , they have no ability to free us from the proclivities of the fallen nature.

20 Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— 21 “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” 22 which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? 23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

Amen.

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