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Fullness of Life in Christ

   Colossians 2:6-19

   Good News Translation (GNT)

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  6  Since you have accepted Christ Jesus
   as Lord, live in union with him.
  7  Keep your roots deep in him, build your lives
   on him, and become stronger in your faith, as
   you were taught. And be filled with
   thanksgiving.
  8  See to it, then, that no one enslaves you by
   means of the worthless deceit of
   human wisdom, which comes from the
   teachings handed down by human beings and
   from the ruling spirits of the universe, and not
   from Christ.
  9  For the full content of divine nature lives in
   Christ, in his humanity,
10  and you have been given full life in union with
   him. He is supreme over every spiritual ruler
   and authority.
11  In union with Christ you were circumcised,
   not with the circumcision that is made by
   human beings, but with the circumcision made
   by Christ, which consists of being freed from
   the power of this sinful self.
12  For when you were baptized, you were buried
   with Christ, and in baptism you were also
   raised with Christ through your faith in the
   active power of God, who raised him from
   death.
13  You were at one time spiritually dead because
   of your sins and because you were Gentiles
   without the Law. But God has now brought
   you to life with Christ.
   God forgave us all our sins;
14  he cancelled the unfavorable record of our
   debts with its binding rules and did away
   with it completely by nailing it to the cross.
15  And on that cross Christ freed himself from the
   power of the spiritual rulers and authorities; [b]
   he made a public spectacle of them by leading
   them as captives in his victory procession.
16  So let no one make rules about what you eat
   or drink or about holy days or the New Moon
   Festival or the Sabbath.
17  All such things are only a shadow of things in
   the future; the reality is Christ.
18  Do not allow yourselves to be condemned by
   anyone who claims to be superior because of
   special visions and who insists on false
   humility and the worship of angels.
   For no reason at all, such people are all
   puffed up by their human way of thinking
19  and have stopped holding on to Christ, who is
   the head of the body. Under Christ's control
   the whole body is nourished and held together
   by its joints and ligaments, and it grows as
   God wants it to grow.

   Footnotes
   Colossians 2:15 Christ freed himself from the
   power of the spiritual rulers and authorities;
   or
   Christ stripped the spiritual rulers and
   authorities of their power.

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   Commentary taken from
   'The Applied New Testament Commentary'
   (Kingsway)

Fullness of Life in Christ

  Colossians 2:6-19

Just as we received Jesus through faith, so we must continue to live in him through faith. We were filled with joy, peace, and love, were we not?

Now, says Paul, keep on living like that!.
Human, or worldly philosophy, is all around us, but compared to the wisdom and knowledge that is in Jesus, the philosophy of the world is hollow and deceptive.

Even true Christians can be deceived by this.
Jesus is God Himself!  In him all the fullness of the Deity lives It is all His qualities taken together - such as, love, light, truth, power, wisdom, holiness, etc.

Through the Holy Spirit, we too can be filled with all the qualities of God. Compared with this, life apart from God is hollow and meaningless. Jesus is supreme; He is over every power and authority. He cannot be compared to any other.

In Jesus you were also circumcised.
In Paul's time, circumcision was the special outward sign of being a Jew. Here Paul uses circumcision as an illustration for the "cutting away" of our sinful nature, to be made holy in our hearts.

In baptism, we are cleansed of sin through faith.
Paul is using the examples of circumcision and baptism to describe the "cutting" or "washing away" of our old nature and its sins, so that we can begin a new life in Jesus.

Believers are buried ... in baptism.
Only when our old sinful self is dead can we receive new spiritual life. We see here the true meaning of spiritual conversion.

To become a Christian, one must first die, and then be born again. The same power of God that raised Jesus from the dead will also raise us from spiritual death into new life ...

Before we believed, we were spiritually dead.
Then, by His grace, God made [us] alive and forgave us all our sins. By His grace, through faith, we have received new life, eternal life.

The written code is the Jewish law, which is written in the Old Testament.
But God, because of His great mercy and love for us, cancelled the written code - Just as Jesus was nailed to the cross, so that written code and its condemnation have been "nailed to the cross" - that is, cancelled, rendered void.

But the law couldn't simply be cancelled; someone had to pay the penalty that the law demanded. Jesus, when He was nailed to the cross, the law was nailed to the cross with Him.

Jesus rose from the dead, and He disarmed and overcame all powers and authorities. We were once their prisoners; now we have been set free from their control.

In this way, Jesus made a public spectacle of Satan and his evil spirits - of these powers and authorities.

Jesus cancelled ceremonial law and all its regulations. However, some of the believers at Colosse were still observing these regulations.

They were judging and condemning those in the church who were not observing them. Paul says: Do not listen to those who teach falsehood!
Man is saved by God's grace through faith in Christ alone.

We have only one rule, one law, and that is to obey Jesus Himself. Man does not reach heaven by following rules, but only by following Christ.

Some of the false teachers at Colosse were saying that in order to be saved it was necessary to undergo some special hardship or humiliation. Along with that, these teachers said it was necessary to worship angels.

There is only one mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus Let us not be deceived.
False teachers have lost connection with the Head, that is, Jesus.

They do great harm in the church.
The church is like a body; it is essential, therefore, that each member remains under the control of the head, Jesus.

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