September 11 – Colossians 2:1-5

Main focus: Being knit together in love we can find true knowledge and reject false knowledge.

Most of Paul’s letters start with some sort of theology before getting to exhortation or application, and this week in Colossians 2:1-5 we start to see him shift from one to the other. In transitioning from talking about the preeminence of Jesus, he starts to discuss his specific concerns for the church at Colossae: the Colossian heresy.

To be perfectly honest, we don’t know a ton about this heresy or the exact false teachings that were being promulgated at Colossae. From what we can tell in Col 2:8-23, it seems as though this was either a single heresy that was a mix of mystical beliefs (cf. 2:18) and Torah observance (cf. 2:16) or there were multiple false teachers in the area who were spreading different teachings. Either way, these teachers seem to have boasted of having ‘true knowledge’ and the Colossians are being troubled with “arguments that sound reasonable” (2:4). Thus dealing with false sources of knowledge is a big theme in Colossians and Paul is seriously intent on pointing the church back to the true source of knowledge: Jesus.

Now that Paul is starting to deal with this heresy you can see how he’s been building up to it throughout his letter. For example, back in 1:9 we saw how Paul was praying that the Colossians would “be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” But he’s also been building to this in more subtle ways, showing how the message of the gospel is the “word of truth” (1:5) and the true source of hope (1:23) because it’s the proclamation of the preeminent Jesus who is above all things and holds all authority (1:15-20). All of this is leaning its weight onto what he says here: Jesus is the true source of wisdom, so we shouldn’t turn anywhere else.

We’ll get to that in our discussion together, what it means to live knowing that Jesus is the source of all wisdom and observing those false sources of knowledge that we tend to turn to. That first part is a world-changing sort of truth: in Jesus, and nowhere else, are the depths of all wisdom and insight. Meanwhile, that second part is deeply convicting. While we might not be turning to ascetic practices and angel worship like they were in Colossae (cf. 2:18), you and I turn to all manner of sources for insight into the world, ‘true knowledge’ to set our anxious minds at ease, ‘better’ or ‘new’ ways of navigating the difficulties of life. 

To be sure, what Paul isn’t saying is that you can’t get information from any source other than the Bible; note what he says in 2:2-3, that Christ is the source of all wisdom and knowledge. John Calvin famously said, “All truth is God’s.” So wherever we find knowledge and wisdom in the world, whether that’s how to change the oil in your car, ethical investment practices, or good gardening techniques, we know that all truth belongs to God. Really what Paul is after here are messages that conflict with God’s revealed truth in his Word. 

This could be things like the lie that our career or body image or partner determine our value on earth, or the allure of alternative religious practices that help us feel more in control and safe in the world (i.e. smudging, crystals, ‘law of attraction’), or the pressure to avoid condemnation by aligning your beliefs as closely as possible with worldly priorities. This could even be something like the seemingly Christian notion that having the right religious qualifications or Bible knowledge is what makes you acceptable. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all turn at times to these sorts of false sources of knowledge and wisdom, and Jesus would invite us to receive truth from him instead.

But interestingly, in the middle of this argument about the true source of knowledge, Paul talks about love. We’ll touch on this in discussion, why Pual wants us to have our “hearts…encouraged and joined together in love” (2:2). This is a key difference between the false knowledge in the world and true knowledge in Christ; at the root of true knowledge isn’t self-satisfaction, “I told you so,” or emotionless logic. It’s a person, and that person is filled with love for his people, and his love is the kind that mends what is broken and joins together what is separate. So we’ll finish asking ourselves how God himself helps us in the fight against our predilections for false wisdom. Taking into view everything we’ve read thus far in Colossians 1, we’ll see that it’s this preeminent Jesus who reconciles us and unites us to himself, binds us together with one another, and strengthens us to grow in his knowledge.