Kaleo San Diego Church

INTRODUCTION

God is most glorified when man is most satisfied in Him. Man is most satisfied when God is most glorified. This is the beautiful truth that our joy and God’s glory are not at odds. We were created to make much of God not of ourselves. Worship is the fuel for our souls. We long and search for things to worship in our lives, and we long to stand in awe before something greater than ourselves. The problem with the human condition is that we long to be satisfied eternally and cannot find satisfaction without peace with God. Our sin keeps us from seeing God’s glory because we are blinded by self-worth, and self-sufficiency. We long for a pleasure and delight which will last in and out of difficult times. God answers this problem through His Son Jesus which came to show forth God’s glory and to us and call us to place our faith and trust, our desires and delight, our passions and pleasure in Him above all else. God deals with mans sense of deadness and lostness, mans sense of brokenness and confusion through the Gospel of Jesus that calls us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Our love and affection for God is considered by Jesus to be the greatest commandment from which all the law and prophets hang (Matt. 22:34-40). This strong statement that we should love God with everything we have, with all of our heart, mind, and soul, is impossible without the Gospel. Our affections for God are not even remotely adequate because we are unable to manufacture them apart from the source of all love, God. This is why the gospel and our affections are inextricably linked together. The gospel shows us the Jesus loved the Father with His entire being and since He has perfectly loved God we, by faith, can love God in Christ. We see our need for joy in God and know it only comes through Christ and so we go even deeper in our faith and trust for Christ.

And when satisfaction in God is marginalized, one of two errors occur and act as a replacement to that void. One of them is right thinking; you could call that doctrine, and right living, which you could call holiness or purity. When either of these displace affections, passion, satisfaction, zeal and joy, you are left with, and will usually choose one of two common errors. One is the error of intellectualism, a view that getting right doctrine becomes the barometer of your relationship with God. Or you have legalism, which focuses on right living and thus becomes the measure by which you determine the depth of your relationship with God. One focuses on the head- what you think, the other on the hands- what you do, but neither deal with the heart- how you emotionally respond to God.

As an aside, neither of these two errors need the intrusion of God’s grace to accomplish. Right thinking can be acquired by reading good books, and I’m sure there are quite a few that consider themselves Calvinists and have never tasted of the grace of God, and I’m sure there are many that can muster the outward morality which gives the appearance of piety, much like the Pharisees, yet has no true connection to the living God.

With these two errors, two additional counter errors are created to avoid falling prey into intellectualism and legalism. On the one hand, some have decided that doctrine and theology is foolish to pursue and so they abandon their studies and develop an anti-intellectual attitude that keeps its distance from the problem of intellectualism. And on the other hand, many have seen the carnage that legalism leaves in its wake, so we create counter problem called antinomianism or we label ourselves as living free in the grace of God. This view attempts to do away with any restrictions, imperatives, or clear commands from scripture so that we don’t return to Puritanic witch hunts.

All four of these views; intellectualism, legalism, anti-intellectualism and anti-legalism, are caused by a vacuum which is left when the affections, passions, emotions and pursuit of satisfaction in God are marginalized, denigrated, ignored, or outright removed from the life of a Christian.

Doctrine serves as the root of the tree, the trunk of it and all its branches are our affections, emotions, desires, delights, in God. As doctrine feeds us, or emotions should grow not diminish, and that growth supplies all that is necessary for the fruit of living which is purity and holiness.

Doctrine feeds our affections and our affections produce fruit. This fruit is sweet because it comes from a healthy tree. Whenever doctrine produces intellectualism, it’s because the doctrine is perverted or misapplied. Whenever we pursue right living without a heart which savors Christ, we end up with bitter fruit that only produces more bitter fruit.

Satisfaction in God, emotions for God, desires fixed on God, delighting in the glory of God, creates an atmosphere of pleasure fueled by God for His glory and our joy.

STUDY

Legalism

Verses 16-17 Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day-- 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

The heretics were telling Christians in Colossae that it was not enough to have Christ. They wanted to true Christians to take on the dietary laws prescribed by God in Leviticus 11 which were given to demonstrate Israel as God’s people and to keep them from certain diseases.

Paul reminded the Romans that “the kingdom of God is not eating or drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). These laws are no longer in force as a rule of conduct because the identity of a believer doesn’t come through what they eat and drink but from Christ who is the bread of life. His body and blood are what we identify with. It doesn’t mean that the method of eating is wicked. One could continue to eat as they saw fit, but it wasn’t a way to gain favor with God.

Nor were believers under the obligations to celebrate Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Lights. Why? Because Christ fulfilled each of those festivals and we celebrate in Him. He is our Passover Lamb, He tabernacled among us and wandered the desert for 40 days, He is the Light of the world. Christ is the reality of the foreshadows. And, though the principle for Sabbath (taking a day in devotion to the Lord) I believe is still in effect, it isn’t a way to gain favor with God. Christ has won us eternal rest. Each day for us is a day unto God in union with Him and worship of Him. To argue over whether it is Saturday or Sunday, is to assume too much about what it signifies, which is a realization that we must stop our normal activities and take time to rest in worship of God. But, this isn’t a message about the Sabbath. Perhaps another time.

Some pastors would see this as an opportunity to talk about why you should or should not drink alcohol, or how we should or shouldn’t celebrate Christmas, or they might see this passage as an opportunity to teach on the Sabbath. This is not the intention of this passage. It is about legalism and barren religiosity. It is about a false gospel that has no real power or love for God. It is about a people that think they can take what God has done and add to His work to make it more personally satisfying to their religious sensitivities.

This message goes right at the heart of a false gospel which is not “good news” at all. This passage is as timely for Christians in our day as it was when it was penned because the same problems persists as a default mode of the human heart which says “if I do these things, then I’ll be accepted by God.” Even as Christians we struggle with the true Gospel because we want to revert to a mode of “religion” which demonstrates that on one hand we believe the Gospel, but at the same time still do not believe it fully.

If the true Gospel is “I am accepted by God through Christ, and therefore (much like the therefore in verse 16) I pledge my obedience and allegiance to Him alone.” We see then that the Gospel is not simply a way into the Christian faith, or to gain justification only. If we truly understand that the problem is sin, which is what we do when we are not satisfied with God, and the only way to have peace with God is through what Christ did in our place; “God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8), we rightly see ourselves in desperate need of what Christ accomplished and not what we have done through our own religious efforts. This Gospel truth doesn’t end upon our being forgiven of our sin, but continues through our whole life with Christ. We are not saved by the gospel and then work really hard to maintain our status, rather, we are saved by the gospel now, and continue to be saved by it as we grow in loving obedience to Christ. It is all a matter of what He did for us and how that scandalous reality is applied to our lives continuously by faith. This faith is given by God and so that we trust His work and plan for our lives and all of history. It is sinful unbelief that would cause us to work for what God says we cannot earn. It is unbelief that says we can be religious enough for God to find favor in what we do.

If you think you must become good enough, or do a certain number of good works in order to be saved and/or maintain your salvation status with God, we are in the same camp as those who Paul writes against. If, when you sin you feel as though you cannot come before God until you have met some sort of probationary period to regain your worthiness, you are thinking as a legalist/moralist and not someone set free through the Gospel.

If, when you think about the way God sees you, you can only think of your good or bad works, rather than thinking about your acceptance before God in Jesus Christ, you have attempted to make God’s love for you conditional upon what you have done rather than upon what Christ has done for you.

If you elevate Christian traditions (particularly moral traditions) to a status on par with the teaching of Scripture itself, you unknowingly have slipped into legalism.

If you require others to live in the same manner as you do, and yet you cannot find the behavior you are prescribing or prohibiting in Scripture, you hold to a false gospel that prescribes what the Bible has not. Moralism and legalism are really one in the same because they are both based upon human effort.

You see, for the legalist, morality serves the same function that immorality does for the antinomian, the “do what you want” religionist, and the “free-thinking” follower, namely, it serves as an expression of self-reliance and self-assertion. The reason some Pharisees tithed and fasted was the same reason some Berkley university students take off their clothes and lie around naked on Haight-Ashbury.

The moral legalist is always the older brother of the immoral prodigal. They are blood brothers in God's sight because both reject the Gospel mercy of God in Christ as a means to a right relationship with Him and use either morality or immorality to express their self-sufficiency and self-determination. Paul has just told us in our last message (verses 11-15), that Christ is fully sufficient for salvation, fully sufficient for forgiveness, and fully victorious over our enemies. It is the dark depths of the human heart that looks at Christ and says “I’m sufficient in my own strength or freedom to act as my own savior.”

Tertullian said, "Just as Christ was crucified between two thieves, so this doctrine of justification is ever crucified between two opposite errors." What Tetullian is saying is that there were two basic false ways of thinking, each of which robs us of the power of the gospel by focusing our attention on something other than the true Gospel. These "thieves" are moralism on the one hand, or relativism on the other hand.

The true Gospel gives us a God far more holy than a moralist can bear (since your morality is only a filthy rag before him) and far more loving than a relativist can imagine (since his love cost him dearly).

We should never enter into a debtor’s ethic with God. It is foolish to think we can pay Him for righteousness or pay Him back for grace. God is offended that we would attempt to buy His gift. It is insult to God to attempt to appease Him or please Him apart from faith in His Son. It is faith in all that He is for us in Jesus that causes the ground of gratitude and joy in our hearts, which spills out into the way we live. The Gospel works inside-out, legalism is outside-in.

Legalism is the religion of human achievement. It attempts to gain spirituality by adding works to Christ. It makes strict adherence to man-made rules the measure of your spirituality. But we are complete in Christ and we are not to let anyone act as your judge. We are to never sacrifice the freedom Christ has won for us for a set of traditions or man-made rules which bind. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom. 10:4).

Legalism is useless because it not only perverts the true Gospel, but it also has no power over the flesh. It is dangerously deceptive because you can be inwardly rebellious and assume personal righteousness based upon what you don’t do or by what you do.

The dietary laws, festivals, sacrifices, and Sabbath-day worship were all things which are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. The shadow has no reality because the reality is what makes the shadow. Jesus Christ is the reality to which the shadows pointed. For food regulations Jesus is “the bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:41). There is no need for Christians to observe the Passover because “Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7). What reason would there be for demanding Gentiles to observe the Sabbath when God has granted them eternal rest (Heb. 4:1-11)? Any continued focus upon a shadow once the reality has come is pointless.

True spirituality doesn’t consist merely with keeping external rules and regulations, but having an inner heart transformed and renewed by the Gospel which unites us with Jesus Himself.

Mysticism

Schaeffer on the New Mysticism

Verses 18-19 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

Mysticism can be defined as the pursuit of a deeper or higher personal spiritual experience. It is a belief that spiritual reality is only perceived apart from the human intellect and natural senses. It tries to find truth internally and places great emphasis on feelings and intuition, or other internal sensations. It doesn’t desire or pursue objective truth centered upon facts, or assume that we can know such facts by any reasoning. It is mostly an irrational and anti-intellectual approach which is more akin to Kierkegaard’s leap of faith that Biblical truth.

The kind of mysticism in theology today is such that God is nothing more than a connotation word. Grace is something that we use to describe an indefinable and unknowable favor with this concept of God. Most current thought about God could be considered mysticism because it isn’t terribly concerned about definitions or truth the way the Bible defines it. Most talk about God today is really talk about how man has spiritual experiences to something unknown and in their view knowable only by blind-faith which is detached from objective truth or reason. Jesus existence is a great narrative story, but the story is important, it’s how it makes you feel that is important. This sounds more like post-modern art where the picture is only important in as much as it elicits a reaction to the observer. The problem is that when we are talking about God, we are talking about ultimate reality, not personal speculation, or emotional or existential longings. God is not God because man envisions Him in his spiritual longing. God is God apart from our opinion about Him or rejection of Him. He stands as true reality and all who attempt to define their own reality only find themselves deeper in mysticism and fantasy apart from truth.

False teachers had claimed a mystical union with God and wanted men to follow them in their new found way to commune with God. Paul tells them not to allow them to keep defrauding them of their prize. The heretics thought they could act as referees and disqualify Christians in Colossae for not following their hyper-spiritual activities. Sounds like many Pentecostal churches today where you are strongly encouraged to speak in tongues to demonstrate you are truly a Christian.

These mystics had a false sense of humility which was no more than pride masked with spiritual make-up. They were delighting in their humility which is usually a poor sign. If you are proud of your humility, chances are you are not all that humble! This was an ugly form of pride.

It wasn’t only that they were prideful about their experiences, they also worshipped angels and denied an essential of the Gospel that it is Jesus alone who is the mediator between God and men (1 Tim. 2:5).

Worship of angels was and is a heresy. This dangerous mysticism plagued the Phrygian region for centuries. In A.D 363 a synod was held in a sister city of Laodicea to stop so-called Christians from abandoning the church of God and going away to invoke angels. This problem continued all the way up to A.D. 739.

The Bible forbids angel worship but one wouldn’t know that unless they were familiar with Scripture. In Revelation 5:11-12, John writes “I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.’”

When John tried to worship an angel, he was rebuked for doing so: “I fell as his feet to worship him. And he said to me, ‘Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God’” (Rev. 19:10, 22:9).

The heretics were also spouting off about the vision they had seen. They based their support on something that couldn’t be verified and was purely subjective to the person. Much of the charismania we see comes from such promises of visions. But we don’t need that to verify our ministry because “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1-2).

Paul warns these Christians not to be intimidated by these claims. These heretics were not the spiritual elite but were inflated in pride by their “fleshly minds.” They were devoid of the Holy Spirit and were not “holding fast to the head,” that is, Christ. He is the One “from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.

Spiritual growth comes from union with Christ (John 15:4-5). Our tendency is to move from God’s objective word which bears witness of what Christ has done, and shift our attention to our experience. This plague has threatened the church through history and has troubled many weaker brothers and sisters in Christ.

Most of the mysticism today comes from philosophy (on a secular level) or within the charismatic movement- where Scripture is a distant second in importance to visions and revelations.

Christ is sufficient and we can know Him in His word (doctrine) and we can have a true knowledge of Him which is not based upon our experience or opinion.

Asceticism

Verses 20-23 If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, 21 "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" 22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)--in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? 23 These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

Asceticism is defined as- 1:The doctrine that through renunciation of worldly pleasures it is possible to achieve a high spiritual or intellectual state 2:the trait of great self-denial (especially refraining from worldly pleasures) 3:rigorous self-denial and active self-restraint 4: The doctrine that the ascetic life releases the soul from bondage to the body and permits union with the divine. Extreme self-denial and austerity.

An ascetic is someone who tries to live a life of rigorous self-denial. In addition to practicing legalism and mysticism, the Colossian heretics were trying to gain righteousness through self-denial.

The history of the church has been littered for centuries by individuals or groups who teach that poverty is a means to spirituality (and in our day prosperity is viewed as a means to spirituality).

We have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world. Why would we want to submit ourselves to its slavery, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” Through our union with Christ, we are set free from these man made rules and regulations which are designed to promote spirituality. To practice these principles, is to adopt a worldly set of religious practices based on elementary principles.

This is the early beginnings of Gnosticism, which is expressed in a form of dualism which was full blown by the 3^rd century. The view that the body was evil eventually found its way into the church. God may call missionaries to self-denial of modern conveniences, but not as a way to gain favor or increase spiritual life. Asceticism is useless because it focuses attention on things “destined to perish with the using.” Again this is an echo of the issues of food and drink as a means of righteousness with God. There is no spiritual value in keeping the commandments of men.

The reason asceticism doesn’t work, is because it is unable to deal with the problem of sin. It has “the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, it is of no value against fleshly indulgence. It makes a person appear spiritual, because of its emphasis on humility and poverty, but it servers only to gratify the flesh and is the ultimate form of self worship. It is vain to try to appear more holy than others. Men would rather stick hooks in their flesh and starve themselves that give their sins to Christ and give up their self-righteousness. It is godless, self-sufficient pride. We should not be intimidated by false philosophy, false humility, legalism, mysticism, or asceticism. They are broken cisterns that can hold no water. We hold fast to Christ because He holds us through His Gospel. We have “been made complete” and no longer need to try to complete ourselves so that God will love us more.

Speak about modern asceticism which is prevalent in our time and culture and is expressed through emotional flogging or even overly critical analysis of their spiritual activities (I have the read the bible for 2 hours and then pray for 4 hours, etc..) When this doesn’t flow from a place of affections, it is nothing more than an ascetic form of legalism.

0 Comments | Login to Post Comments

Comment:

Name:

• Calendar
• Agenda