Colossians 2:8 Commentary and Bible Study

And then down to verse 8 – ‘Beware lest any man spoil you.’ The spoils of battle. And the idea of the word spoil there, lest any false teacher steals you away, makes spoil of you. That is the sense. ‘Through philosophy.’ Well there is nothing the matter with philosophy as such – the concern, the explorations of ideas. But the word translated philosophy here means simply lover of learned sounding things, not necessarily true things. There are people who love long words for the sake of it, who love complex ideas for the sake of it. And they bring these things, false things, deceitful things into the Christian faith, and they dazzle people and fascinate people, and so draw them away from the doctrine of Christ. Beware, watch out, lest any man make spoil of you through a love of pompous and elaborate sounding arguments and vain deceits, futile deceits.All ‘after the tradition of men.’ The Judaizers are in mind. ‘After the rudiments,’ – or ‘the elements’ as the margin says – ‘of the world, and not after Christ.’ The broad meaning of this is – a lot of error is fleshly, not spiritual. So people, and this is what the Judaizers were doing, are bring back things you can do and handle and touch, rites and ceremonies. Things you can watch, things that can impress you, very much like the Charismatic movement today that thinking it is spiritual. They want tongues, tingling that go down the spine, and strange experiences and miraculous healings. It is about something I can see, something that will bolster my faith, something tangible, something physical. The warning is here that often error is taking people back to the elements of the flesh, and the rudiments of the world, elements of the world. Things can you can see and handle, rather than faith in Christ. When I pray, I must raise my hands, I must do movements, bring dance into worship. Always be suspicious of the physical brought into worship.