Buried with Christ

Audio Player

This evening we’re back with the apostle Paul in his Letter to the Colossians. My title is ‘Buried With Christ’, and we’ve got to Colossians 2.20-23. Please take a look at that. You’ll find it on p1183 in the Bibles.

You have a nightmare. Something disastrous is happening. And then you begin to wake up. But there is that short period of time between sleeping and waking to negotiate. It’s a kind of dream twilight zone. At first, the dread still grips.

But then it gradually dawns that it was all a dream. That awful disaster isn’t in fact happening. You are, in reality, free of it. All you have to do is to wake up to that reality, shake the burden off, and get on with a new day with a spring in your step because things are nothing like as bad they were in that fear-filled dreamworld.

These verses are talking about just such a kind of twilight zone that we can find ourselves in, between the nightmare, fear-filled world of life without Jesus, and the real, freedom-filled world of life with Jesus. When we become Christians, we wake from that living Christ-less nightmare. But sometimes we fail to shake off the bad dream. We think we’re still in it. We bring our burdens with us into the daylight. And we start to act as if the nightmare is still our reality.

It’s as if the apostle Paul in these verses is grabbing us by the shoulders, giving us a good shake, looking us in the eye, and saying firmly, “Wake up! That’s a bad dream! It’s not real! Look around you at what’s real. Your burden has gone. You don’t need to be afraid. Jesus has set you free. Stop acting as if you’re still in that nightmare.”

The particular bad dream that Paul has in his sights here is what I’ve called in my outline ‘worldly religion’. The danger is that even as Christians we slide back into worldly religion, and begin to lose our freedom in Christ.

That’s what Paul is warning us (and the Colossian Christians) about in these verses. Let’s read through them again, and then we’ll take a closer look at them. Colossians 2.20-23:

20Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 24Such regulations indeed have the appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Don’t worry if you haven’t immediately got a grip on that. We’ll look at it piece by piece and get it clear. And I want to do that by working through the three headings that you can see there on the back of the service sheet. Here they are.

First, our old ungodly nature died with Christ. Secondly, our old ungodly nature is attracted by worldly religion. And thirdly, don’t be a slave to worldly religion when Christ has set you free.

Paul is talking to the young Christians in Colosse, and for them this worldly religion takes a particular form. As you read his letter it’s clear that there’s a bunch of people who’ve got in among them. They’re persuading them to think and do a whole load of worldly religion stuff that’s dragging them right away from Jesus.

Well, let’s take a closer look at what Paul has to say about that. We’ll use my headings as a framework.


First, OUR OLD UNGODLY NATURE DIED WITH CHRIST

It’s critical we understand what Paul means by those four short but rather shocking words: “… you died with Christ…” They come in the middle of verse 20 there:

Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world…

…and so on. Never mind about those ‘basic principles’ for now. We’ll come back to them. What does it mean to say that as believers we have died with Christ, to those principles or to anything else?

Well that becomes clear if you understand two things. First, the ‘you’ who died is the old, pre-Christian, you. And secondly, that old you died when Christ died in the sense that as a believer you are no longer a slave to all the things the old you was a slave to. Again, let me take those in turn and try and get this clear.

First, the ‘you’ who died is the old you. What do I mean by the old you? I mean you before you knew Jesus and he entered your life by his Spirit – the old, ungodly, Godless, Christ-less, sinful you. Paul has some strong words about that old us. He says we were the living dead. He doesn’t use exactly that phrase, and he certainly doesn’t have any kind of twentieth century horror film in his mind, but that’s what he means. It’s there back in 2.13 (we looked at this a couple of weeks ago if you were here then). Here it is:

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature…

You were dead. Not literally of course. Not physically. He’s not silly. He knows we were physically alive. But in relation to God, we were dead. He spells it out also further back in 1.21:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour.

So we were living dead because we were cut off from the living God; we were his enemies; we were behaving in evil ways opposed to God’s purposes for our lives; we were heading towards the wrath of God; and we were enslaved to the world’s ways of thinking and the world’s rules.

Now here me let say a word to those of you who are not yet believers. If I were you I’d probably be feeling rather offended by now. Am I really saying that you are one of the living dead, existing in a nightmare world? Let me make a few comments about that.

The most important is this. It’s not me saying this, it’s the Bible. This is God’s perspective on our lives, not merely a human viewpoint. And as I’ve already mentioned, it’s not that you’re not alive. Of course you are. And your life is full of good things.

But you are numbering yourself among those who don’t know God the Father through faith in Jesus. You have no experience of the Holy Spirit in your life. So by definition, you are dead to God. You have no living relationship with God. And God is God. God is the creator, ruler, saviour, judge and redeemer of the universe.

To be alienated from him is a massive thing. It is a kind of living death, as the Bible says. From where I stand, the sooner you wake up and put your trust in Jesus the better. You may be even more offended now. That’s not my intention. But if someone is shaking the shoulders of a dreamer, trying to wake them up, it’s no good pretending that the dream is reality. That’s not going to help.

So, first, the you who died is the old, Godless, you. Secondly, that old you died when Christ died in the sense that as a believer you are no longer a slave to all the things the old you was a slave to. The old life that was a living death is over. You are reconciled with God. You are no longer heading for the judgement and wrath of God. You are no longer enslaved by the world’s rules. See what follows on from 1.21 that I read just now, vv21-22:

21Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. 22But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation…

And also from 2.13:

When you were dead in your sins… God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins.

That is the wonderful, waking reality. Our old, ungodly nature died with Christ. That’s point one on the outline.


Secondly, OUR OLD UNGODLY NATURE IS ATTRACTED BY WORLDLY RELIGION

Now, there are a few questions we need to consider if that’s going to make sense. For a start, I’ve just been stressing that for the believer, the old ungodly nature is dead. But if it’s dead, how can it be attracted to anything? To answer that, I need to introduce headless chicken syndrome.

It’s well known that when a chicken is killed by beheading, it’s still inclined to run around for a while before it finally keels over. Hence the saying, of course, about running around like a headless chicken when you’re being frantically busy but without thought and purpose. The headless chicken is dead, but it lives on temporarily.

There was even a famous American chicken called Mike who was decapitated in preparation for the stewpot, but who lived on for 18 months, without his head. But that’s another story.

And if you find the thought of that rather disgusting, I don’t blame you. But we should be much more disgusted by the sight of our own ungodly natures running around causing havoc in our lives even though they’re dead. Because that’s the way it is with our ungodly natures.

They’re dead, but like a headless chicken they live on for what in the perspective of eternity is the brief moment of time that remains of our earthly lives. And they continue to cause trouble. They fight against our new Jesus-centred, Holy Spirit empowered, God-pleasing natures.

What, then, do I mean by ‘worldly religion’? Worldly religion is religion that’s driven by what Paul calls here in verse 20 ‘the basic principles of the world’. It’s religion of rules and regulations, for instance those mentioned in verse 21:

“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”

It’s characterised by man-made religious practices and asceticism. Asceticism is abstaining from good things in order to receive divine blessings.

So what are these ‘basic principles of the world’ that Paul talks about that give rise to worldly religion? An alternative translation is ‘elemental spirits of the world’. Probably Paul has at the top of his mind the whole Satanic power structure of evil spirits that rules the godless world behind the scenes – similar to back in 2.15 where he says:

…having disarmed the powers and authorities, [Jesus] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

But maybe the uncertainty over what exactly he’s referring to is a good thing because really these ‘basic principles’ or ‘elemental spirits’ could be anything that people submit to as ruling their lives apart from Jesus.

Inevitably any systems that drag people away from Jesus have got Satan’s fingerprints on them somewhere. But for instance they could be evil spirits, or nature gods, or the multiple gods of the east, or feng shui or astrology. One feng shui website asks:

Have you been suffering with sickness, sore throat, bankruptcy, loss of wealth, legal problems, car accidents, accidents involving metal and just an overall feeling of bad luck?

If so, feng shui is the answer, it says. I quote:

The Chinese and millions of other people believe, live their lives by these natural forces.

I’m glad to say that by no means all Chinese live their lives by those forces. There are many of you in this fellowship who prefer to put their trust in Jesus.

Here’s another example of worldly basic principles at work. On 22 July there was a wonderful full eclipse of the sun, visible in India. I heard on the radio a pregnant Indian woman saying that her astrologer has warned her that this could cause discord in her baby’s life if she wasn’t careful. She should not go outside; she should not cross her legs. Another Indian mother-to-be, a software worker, said:

My mother and aunts have called and told me to stay in a darkened room with the curtains closed, lie in bed and chant prayers.

In the context of western materialistic atheism, these basic principles could be natural selection as a mechanism that rules us and rules out God, or chance or genetics.

Submission to the control of these basic principles of the world inevitably leads to rules and regulations in an attempt to appease them in some way.

Very often these rules are some form of asceticism – rules that require us to abstain from good things so that we can win divine favour and blessings by our behaviour.

And very often these rules and regulations relate to what we eat and drink.

“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”

The first of those (“Do not handle”) could possibly refer to sex. And sexual behaviour often is caught up in these rules. There’s an overreaction against the disastrous and distasteful sexual excesses of an unspiritual culture. All sex comes to be seen as defiling. Priests shouldn’t get married. Celibate monks and nuns are holier and closer to God than those who are married.

But Paul has probably got food and drink at the top of the agenda here. Over and over again worldly religious systems have rules and regulations about what you can and can’t drink and when you can and can’t drink them. That’s true of forms of Christianity that are losing sight of Jesus just as it’s true of other religious systems.

And these kinds of religious rules and regulations are very attractive to that ungodly old nature that still runs around inside us like a headless chicken. Why do we find them so seductive? Verse 23:

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body…

They look so wise! Superficially, they’re so impressive and super-spiritual. Surely somebody who manages to fast rigorously including depriving themselves of chocolate is more spiritual than someone who eats a normal healthy diet and enjoys their food? Surely someone who never touches alcohol as a spiritual discipline is going to get closer to God than someone who enjoys the occasional beer? It stands to reason! But what reason? Worldly reason! Which brings me to my final point.

First, our old ungodly nature died with Christ. Secondly, our old ungodly nature is attracted by worldly religion.


Thirdly, DON’T BE A SLAVE TO WORLDLY RELIGION WHEN CHRIST HAS SET YOU FREE

Verse 20:

Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules…?

All those elemental spirits and basic principles of the world and spiritual systems and rules and regulations for winning favour and working our way closer to the divine have nothing to do with life in Christ.

Take Paul’s example of religious food laws. They might look wise and super-spiritual. But they don’t work! Why? Look again at verses 22-23:

These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom… but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

How could what we do with food be the key to a relationship with God? It’s generally dead by the time we eat it. We just digest it and eject it to rot in the ground. By our very use of it we destroy it. How could our fate depend on it? Something that’s dead can’t give life.

How could these rules be the key when we’ve made them up ourselves with no reference to God? He’s the one who knows how he wants us to approach him. If we ignore what God has to say and make up our own rules, why should we expect them to be any use? They aren’t.

And the greatest irony of all is that this kind of super-spiritual self-discipline doesn’t even restrain our old ungodly nature. In fact it does the opposite. It encourages it to pride. It makes it run around even more like a headless chicken. Speaking about one who lives by such rules, someone has put it well:

… these ascetic practices… serve only to inflate him with pride and fill him with vain knowledge and so bolster his ‘flesh’, that is, his unrenewed ego, which is puffed up by this experience. [R.Martin, ‘Colossians’]

These sorts of rules and regulations promise freedom but in fact they enslave us.

Of course, this is not a licence for immorality, or gluttony or drunkenness. None of that is fitting for one who has been forgiven and set free by Jesus. We’ll see more of that when we get into chapter 3.

But let’s be clear about one thing. It’s time to wake up from that bad dream. We must not live our lives in that half-waking, half-dreaming twilight zone. We must not let ourselves slip back into the nightmare. Paul spells it out in 1.19:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things… by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Jesus is the one who brings us back to God. It’s what he’s done, not what we do, that counts. It is in him we trust. It’s on him that we depend. Don’t be a slave to worldly religion when Christ has set you free.

Back to top