Colossians 2:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Colossians 2:20

Comments

Verse 20 comes back to the ritualism again. Are you drawn, he asks in so many words, to all their rites and all their ceremonies? That is fleshy religion. ‘Touch not; taste not; handle not.’Of course, it is a good thing for Christians to abstain from excess and from luxury, but they do not for a moment think that this earns the favour of God or deserves a place in heaven. That would be legalism. It is a good thing to live modest and reasonable lives with self-control and curbing of excess appetites, but this was entirely different, this constant outlawing of various foodstuffs and so on. That is all the kind of thing you expect from the church of Rome, from fleshly ritualistic religion.You are saved, says the apostle, and your condemnation has gone, and the inevitable total dominion of sin over you has been broken. Why then would you want to earn your salvation all over again? If this false teacher comes and says, ‘You need to go through the Jewish ritual,’ you say, ‘Why?’ And he will say, ‘So that you can find your way to God.’ And you will replay to him, ‘But I am there, I am already saved, I don’t need that, I have trusted in Christ, I am released from that, I have died to that sort of thing. I have also died to the world, so the things that used to be so interesting to me and that gripped my whole being; I am now cut off from those things. They have no compelling force over me because I have died as far as they are concerned.’ It is very, very graphic language.

Application

Am I dead with Christ? That is a grand way of looking at conversion. In what sense are Christians dead? In what sense have we died with Christ? Well, because he died to bear the punishment of our sin and we have trusted in that and that alone, we have died to condemnation and we have died to the dominion of sin. Always remember those twin things. I have died in the sense that I am no longer subject to condemnation because of my sin – it is gone. I was under condemnation but that person who was condemned by God, that was me. I died when I trusted in Christ and I was given a new life, no longer under condemnation. The person that I was, utterly dominated by sin, died together with Christ, and I was given a new life. Yes, sadly, I am still a sinner but nothing like the dominion that sin used to have over me.

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Colossians 2:20 Commentary and Bible Study