The Hope of Glory: 100 Daily Meditations on Colossians by Sam Storms

Author:Sam Storms [Storms, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2008-02-03T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 56: Don't Let Them Judge You

Colossians 2:16-17

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations - "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" (referring to things that all perish as they are used) - according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.

There is a sense in which divine grace will always be a threat to human nature. Why a threat, you ask? Because grace undermines our efforts to justify ourselves. Grace runs counter to human pride and that impulse we all feel to boast in our own accomplishments. Grace requires that we defer all praise to God. Grace undermines our best efforts at establishing a list of requirements and prohibitions that we can impose on ourselves and others as the condition on which we gain acceptance with God. Grace demands only one thing: that all glory and honor and credit be given to Jesus Christ for what he has done, not for what we have done. And human nature instinctively hates that.

That is why wherever the gospel of grace is preached, legalism rears its ugly head. Once you declare that God has graciously provided everything we need in the person and work of Jesus Christ, you can rest assured that fallen human nature will rise up in protest and try to sneak in somewhere a rule or regulation that we, in our strength, can fulfill, or an observance or ritual that we, without God's enabling power, can perform that will enhance our spiritual standing or gain some reward that will put God in our debt.

The Colossians had heard and received, by grace, the gospel of grace. They had turned from self-reliance and prideful self-justification to rest wholly in the all-sufficiency of what God had done for them in Jesus Christ alone. But there were some folk in Colossae, as there are similar folk everywhere in our day, who refused to leave well enough alone. We know what they were up to because of Paul's passionate, indeed heated, exhortation: don't let them judge you! (Col. 2:16a).

The focus of these false teachers was multiple and varied, but in verses 16 and 17 Paul mentions two things in particular.

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