I really would love to talk about v.18-23 & the whole self-made religion thing, especially in light of the ‘emerging’ ways church and christianity is being done…but I’m quite tired & would rather direct you to an article by D.A. Carson on this developing concern. (Excuse my rightwing-bias; I’m sure Ling-Ling can help us out with the other side of the story)
About v.16-17…
“Part of what the Colossians were going through was a judgment from people that were insisting they follow the Jewish Law. These Gentile Christians weren’t eating kosher foods, and weren’t following the Jewish calendar of holy days.
In reality, Paul could have simply said, “Look guys. The council at Jerusalem already decided that you Gentile Christians aren’t subject to the Jewish law.  As long as you abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication (Acts 21:25), you’re fine. But instead, He made a statement that is as deep as any in the entire Bible. He said that these things of Jewish Law…
Col. 2:17 …are a {mere} shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.This is fascinating! What does it mean? Jesus told the Jews,
John 5:39 “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me.”(Pastor Ron Daniel)
God in Christ is the source of our faith, and thus our justification…we are saved by grace & justified through faith alone….Made righteous, given a right legal standing before God, acquitted of all our wrong doings once and for all. And this righteousness is of God, and not of ourselves, for in our self-power and self-trying of striving to obey the law, we find ourselves complete miserable failures. In our natural unregenerate state, we have no ability to approach God…and even as Christians, by our own strength and striving we cannot fulfill the requirements of His law, unable to perfectly obey what God commands of us.
But God already knew before the foundation of the world, that we cannot live out the Christian lives ourselves. But God’s plan is this, to put the One who can live the Christian life, inside of the one who can’t live the Christian life, so that the One who can live the Christian life …will live the Christian life inside of the one who can’t live the Christian life!!
May it this be our goal: to stop trying & to start dying…to surrender to the power of Christ that is within us.
