The New Legalism
THE NEW LEGALISM
COLOSSIANS 2:20-23
Do we live a rule-book Christianity?
Having exposed the worship and doctrines of the false teachers, the apostle now turns to their practical demands. These resulted in a new type of legalism, against which Paul directs the same basic criticisms urged against legalism in Galatians. In Christ we have died to legalism. The Christian is to exalt Christ and be controlled by him as he expresses his will within the life of the believer, not by regulations imposed from outside.
Paul’s argument begins with the fundamental truth that believers have been identified with the Christ who in his death triumphed over the powers hostile to God (2:20; see also 2:15). Why, then, should they seek to live as if they were still enslaved to these powers? Rules and regulations belong to the structures of the world. So long as a person has no life beyond this structure they are subjected to rules prescribed for them. But in Christ the church has been transferred to a sphere of freedom (see 1:13) in which the old restrictions are recognized as useless. Paul mockingly repeats the slogans of the local teachers (2:21). These counsels were offered as the means of attaining a higher state of holiness. Yet they all refer to things which waste away through use (2:22) and bind human beings to the sphere of ordinary existence. Paul directs three telling criticisms against the new legalism:
Approaches like fasting and rigorous discipline of the body had the appearance of wisdom, but involved submission to a piety which had its origin in the human will. The proud claim of visions (2:18) indicates that these practices encouraged conceit, blinding the Colossians to the truth that only God must redeem and mature them. In this light, the prohibitions and spiritual disciplines adopted at Colossae were actually a subtle form of fleshly indulgence (2:23). Christians are free to use the world precisely because Christ has freed them from the world.