“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
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– things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.
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, 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.
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, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with use)–in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?
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.” Colossians 2:9-23.
Notice all that Christ has done for you: “in Him you have been made complete”, “in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism”, “you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead”, “He made you alive together with Him”, “having forgiven us all our transgressions”, “having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross”, and “He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him”.
These glorious truths should stun us as to how great and complete a Savior our Lord Jesus Christ is! So to speak in a temporary figurative sense, we should be struck dumb, paralyzed, in the fear of the LORD when we truly realize and believe how little that we can do for ourselves and how much Christ has done for us.
We should not seek to determine what we should do to perfect ourselves. We should not seek another judge to measure and prove our progress toward perfection, whether it be the Law, religious authorities, our peers, or even our own conscience. Rather, we should trust Christ and His work for us as revealed by Scripture. We should not need the following Colossians 2:16-23 which starts: “Therefore no one is to act as your judge …”. But, Paul knows how strong we tend to desire a judge to measure our own righteousness, and so he continues to warn the Church in Rome, the Church in Galatia, the Church in Colossae, and us today through his letters to them.
Romans 7:6-8 most clearly shows that these warnings do not just apply to obscure Jewish rituals and other ceremonial laws that we have no temptation to obey in proving our own righteousness. These warnings also apply to the Ten Commandments. “But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.” Romans 7:6-8.
We must come to grips as to what it really means to be dead to the Law, what it means to be released from the Law, and what it means to not be under the Law. These repeated phrases in Scripture occur too often to ignore. However, in my opinion as a layman, there is too little preached and too little written about what that means. Instead, there is too much preached and too much written that tries to belittle what that means whether by stating that the Law just refers to only obscure Jewish rituals and other ceremonial laws or whether by too simply concluding that we obey the Law out of gratitude.
What does it mean to be dead to the Law? Why is it so important as shown by the repeated warnings in Galatians? We can only have one master. Either we trust Christ or trust the Law to make us righteous. Here is the provision and progression. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. ” Galatians 3:24-26. (Emphasis added).
However, if we neglect this provision and progression and if we turn back to trust the Law to make us righteous by using it, including the Ten Commandments as our judge or as our yardstick to measure our progress to perfection, even as good as the Ten Commandments may be, then we will find that continuing relationship will produce sins of every kind as stated above in Romans 7:6-8. How can it be stated more strongly than Galatians 5:4? “You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.”
We should “serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter” and trust the Holy Spirit to produce the fruit of the Spirit which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” Galatians 5:22-25.
In conclusion, we should trust Christ and rest in these Scriptural truths of what Christ has done for us and continues to do for us through the Holy Spirit. In Christ, we have been made complete. Amen!
Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions 