Colossians 2:18 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Colossians 2:18

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There was the ritualistic side to this heresy – go back to the Jewish ritual – and there was also a mystical side which we read about here. ‘Let no man beguile you of your reward’, and cause you to be backsliders, cause you to lose the blessings of the Christian faith by recruiting you into ‘voluntary humility’. What is that? Well, there was a system, a sort of hierarchy among these gnostic mystics. You could elect to be a follower and give up certain things, such as dietary things, or you could be a super member and give up a lot. You could voluntarily adopt greater humility. Of course, it was a put-on humility.‘And worshipping of angels.’ I am not fit, you would say to yourself, to approach God myself so I need angel mediators, and I shall select an angel and worship that and come to God using that angel as a mediator. Christ, you see, is displaced by these mystery religion heretics. Voluntary humility, worshipping of angels, ‘intruding into those things which he hath not seen’, imagining these angelic mediators. ‘Vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.’ He thinks he is so clever because by his technique and his conjuring up of angels and so on he is drawing near to God. He has made it all up. He has a foolish and wayward imagination, and this is Paul’s characterisation of the heretics who were troubling them.‘Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,’ his very earthly way of thinking. Now that is where Christianity becomes contaminated with mysticism. That is why when you worship, you want solid reading of the Scripture, you want truth to prevail, you want hymns – whether they are new or old – that are full of truth because your mind is on truth, telling God what he has told you about himself, affirming his great attributes, worshipping him, calling upon him in a sensible, intelligent way. That doesn’t mean ultra-cerebral. A thing can be very simple and still be intelligent. It means it’s coherent, you understand it and you mean it; you address God reverently and then your feelings respond to these glorious things you believe and God responds by strengthening your inner conviction that these things are true and that you are his in Christ. But you don’t feel his touch physically.

Application

You get voluntary humility in the Church of Rome and even in the Church of England, when it is ritualistic. We know there are Bible believers in the Church of England, but there are also Catholics in the Church of England, with all their fancy robes and their pious looks, all the little bows and the nodding of the head, this assumed piety and humility. Don’t let anybody cheat you out of true Christian joy by any affected piety and attitude. What do they teach? That is what matters.

We have a similar thing today. We have a certain amount of this touching the whole charismatic scene where people have visions and make up things and coming up with new doctrines. You can see the difference in worship. Mystical worship (even where it gets among Christians) is charismatic worship. Feelings come first – rhythm, as in the world. The unconverted person goes to a club, attracted by the strong rhythms. Sometimes a car draws up alongside you and all the windows are shut and you can feel the vibration of the music coming from that car. It is so loud, you think, how does he keep his hearing in there? It is all done to get the person worked up. You go to the nightclub and you mix it with drink or perhaps drugs and you get even more worked up. Now what do charismatics do? Well, how foolish, they are doing the same thing in a slightly sanitised way. They are thinking of Jesus, perhaps, but there is not much thinking going on. What is going on is the rhythm drug and the music and the decibels and the noise and the movement; we have got to move; we have got to be uninhibited and ‘release the Spirit’ (silly nonsense language which isn’t in the Bible). Then we will feel the presence of God and actually no worship is going on at all.

Questions

What is mysticism? It is nothing like as mysterious as it sounds. It is very, very common in the world. The term mysticism, as used in Christian theology, is the art or the belief that you can enter into unseen things, divine things, and you can feel them and know them directly, by some sort of technique. In fact, the Christian faith is not mystical, it is the opposite of that. Christ causes me to enter in and with my mind, not the feelings. With the mind I believe in him and I trust him, I have faith in him and I address him by faith. And if I believe in him and obey him and repent of my sins and I believe with my mind, with all my mind, then, God will assure me that these things are true. My heart will be assured, that is to say I will be certain and I will be so enthralled at the things that I believe and discover, that my feelings will respond. Now, my feelings or joy and peace and happiness, these things are a response to what I believe, what I have believed with my mind. Mysticism believes that if I use the right techniques, whether it is transcendental meditation or whether it is working myself into an ancient style frenzy and ecstasy, or whether it is by the drug of rhythmic music and swaying and body movements and projecting, projecting myself into the unknown, or whether it is by hours of meditation – by various techniques I can get myself into the presence of the divine. The key to mysticism is the idea of a direct touch – I can touch God or the divine and he can touch me and I shall sense and feel.

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Colossians 2:18 Commentary and Bible Study