So, should we just scrap the rules?

Written by Marv Thiessen

Pastor Marv Thiessen

Calgary First Mennonite Church

January 31, 2010

 

SO, SHOULD WE JUST SCRAP THE RULES?

 

We’ve read together a part of Paul’s letter to the churches in Colosse and Laodicea that makes it sound like there was a good deal of rule-making going on in those churches. What those rules were and how they constituted false teaching is somewhat obscure to us even though it will have been completely clear to the original recipients of the letter. But it seems evident that there was false teaching going on and that it included lots of rules.

That seems like a good starting point for our examination of this text. It’s a starting point that is not foreign to Mennonite Christians. Our history includes plenty of rule-making. When I was a teenager in a Mennonite church in southern Manitoba, I’d say we received quite a few rules from the church that, while inspired by biblical thinking, could not be directly found in the Bible. Some were imparted by parents who had come to think fairly uniformly, perhaps due to the influence of the church, and some were imparted by the ministers as they preached their sermons. I’m not saying that the rules were bad or came from wrong intentions; I’m only saying that they were rules not given clearly in Scripture. We were told that listening to rock music was bad. We were told that going to theaters to watch movies was bad. We had a pretty clear sense that playing cards with regular playing cards was a bad thing. Dancing was out and smoking was not something Christians would do. Drinking alcohol was surely a sign that one was not a Christian. Females really shouldn’t wear makeup. And if all that sounds restrictive to you, in comparison with some more conservative Mennonites that lived in our area we were fairly progressive. They didn’t allow listening to the radio at all, not even the venerable CBC, never mind viewing television. They didn’t allow visible chrome on their cars. Musical instruments were bad. Girls had to wear dresses all the time. We looked pretty liberal in comparison.

These were all rules that were developed with strong regard for biblical teaching. The leaders who had taught in such a way that these rules developed as they did were people who desired that Christians take their Christian lives very seriously. They felt that these rules would help people be better followers of Jesus.

It’s a tricky business, this business of setting standards for how to live that aren’t made clear by the teaching of the Bible. It’s good to take seriously the idea that biblical teaching has things to say to us about how we live but it can be damaging to add too much to what is clearly taught about lifestyle matters in the Bible.

As we look at the text from Colossians 2, we want to understand what Paul was responding to in the churches that received the letter as best we can and then to ask how to best apply the principles set out there in our time.

I see two big ideas communicated by Paul in these verses. The first is a reaction against the way that people were being compelled to live by certain rules in the churches to which he wrote. Paul hints at the rules that are being given but doesn’t give a clear description of them. It’s entirely likely, given his discussion of symbolic circumcision in verse 11, that there was an emphasis on following Jewish laws of ritual circumcision. That there were Jewish overtones to the false teaching may also be seen in Paul’s reference to religious festivals and the Sabbath in verse 17.

In addition, it’s entirely likely that the beginnings of Gnostic thought are evident in what was being pushed in these churches. Gnosticism was a way of thinking in the early church that challenged orthodox Christian thought and was eventually judged as heresy. Gnosticism was a strongly dualistic religious teaching. Its proponents said that physical matter was bad and that the spiritual realm was good. Gnostic disdain for the material world, including the physical human body, may well be reflected in Paul’s statement that the rules to which he refers involve harsh treatment of the body in verse 23. The reference to the worship of angels in verse 18 may refer to the Gnostic idea that God couldn’t have direct contact with human beings because He was spiritual and humans were physical. The Gnostics overcame that perceived problem by teaching there were a series of less than divine beings through whom God could communicate with humans. Those beings may be what Paul is referring to when he speaks of the worship of angels. The Gnostics may also have placed Jesus in the less than fully divine category. If so, Paul's emphasis on Christ as divine makes sense as a counter to Gnostic thought. Gnostic thought also placed emphasis on special knowledge. Special knowledge beyond the gospel was necessary for salvation and the Gnostic leaders were the ones who had that special knowledge. That may be behind Paul’s reference to people going into great detail about what they have seen in verse 18.

While we cannot say with certainty what the false teaching in Colosse and Laodicea contained, elements like those I’ve described seem most likely. It seems clear that the teaching downplayed the person and work of Christ and emphasized the following of a variety of rules. Paul reacted strongly to this teaching. In verse 8, he called on his readers to not allow themselves to be taken captive by this hollow and deceptive teaching which depends on human tradition rather than Christ. In verse 17, he called these rules a shadow of things. He may be referring there to Old Testament ceremonial law and if so, he is referring to them as being symbolic indicators of what Jesus would come to do. Then in verse 20 and following, Paul criticizes submission to these rules. They are developed by humans and are not God-inspired. They won’t last. They don’t have the power to help humans live better. Paul’s first big idea in this section, then, is to argue against the validity of the direction of the false teaching in these churches.

Paul’s other big idea in this section is to focus on where the power for better living for humans lies. Even if we hadn’t already read the text for this morning, if you had been here for the first two sermons in this Colossians series, you would already know what Paul would say in that regard. He pointed squarely toward Jesus Christ as he provided direction for the believers in Colosse and Laodicea about how to think and live.

Paul again speaks of who Christ is and what he has done in these verses. In verse 9, Paul, as he did in chapter 1, points to the divinity of Christ when he says that all the fullness of the Deity lives in Christ. This again establishes Jesus Christ as having supreme authority. When Paul speaks of what Christ did, he points to the death of Jesus. This is because that death disarmed the powers and authorities and was a victory over the powers. Paul doesn’t define the powers and authorities here. It seems most natural to think of spiritual powers of darkness, but this could also refer to the Roman powers of government, the agent that put Jesus to death. Through the death of Jesus, Paul writes, God forgave the sins of humans and canceled the idea that following a code of rules was how to gain right standing with God. Instead, the death of Jesus made it possible for humans to die to the sinful nature and to be raised to a new life of living faith in Jesus. Putting off the sinful nature was no longer something to be done by following rules, as symbolized by physical circumcision but rather something to be done by receiving new life from Christ and living in Christ.

With that in mind, Paul instructed these readers to respond contrarily to the wrong teaching that was making the rounds in their circles. In verse 6, Paul told the readers that they should be rooted in Christ and to be built up and strengthened in their faith in Jesus. Instead of thinking that their foundation for better living was in the following of rules, they needed to make sure that Jesus was their foundation. Then Paul told them in verse 16 to stop letting other people judge them by whether they followed their rules or not. In verse 18, he told his readers to not allow the false teachers to disqualify them for the prize. He seems to mean that these teachers would tell others that they didn’t measure up to God’s standards based on whether their listeners followed the rules they set out or not. The Colossians and Laodiceans should not allow that to affect their understanding of their position in Christ. Then, building on his earlier idea that the death of Jesus had put an end to the code of rules, Paul challenges the readers to remember their position in Christ. They died with Christ to this idea that following a host of rules would save them so why would they now submit themselves to the rules being propounded by these teachers. Paul’s second big idea, then, was to persuade the Christians in these churches to make sure that their basis for Christian living was in the life and teaching of Jesus and in his transforming work in their lives.

I think there are a variety of ways in which to apply this teaching in our current time. The first two continue the themes we have found in Colossians in our first two sermons. As Christians, we need to make Jesus Christ the root and foundation of our lives. We understand that Jesus was fully divine as well as fully human, and that receiving new life from him is the way to move into right standing with God and to negotiate the complexities of life. It may sound simplistic, but we are challenged to make Jesus the foundation of how we live.

The second application relates again to the idea that we live in a time of empire just as the Christians who received this letter did. The empire in which we live emphasizes military might, consumerism, and the primacy of technology. We are reminded that our salvation lies not in those ideas but in the new life that is made available to us in Jesus. We are reminded to deny that the ideas of the empire in which we live have the answers to how best to live life.

Then, I thought it could be profitable to talk about following religious rules. Please understand me. When I started out this sermon talking about rules that the church of my teenage years seemed to set out for living, I was discussing rules that are not set out in the Bible. The Christian church has always taken biblical teaching and has given advice about how to live based on biblical teaching. The advice need not be clearly taught in the Bible but may be extrapolated from the teachings of the Bible. When I call it advice, I recognize that it can quickly move from wise ideas about how to live to rules that dictate how we should live.

When that happens, I think there’s a tendency to create problems for people. Recently, I’ve read some books about relationships and one of the chapters in one of the books discussed the human tendency to rebel. Those authors seemed to think that it is inevitable for humans to rebel and indeed it is a necessity. I questioned their ideas to an extent but I thought there was something important in their ideas even for us when we think about living the Christian life. If Christians spend their lives living life the way that other people say they should, they may be setting themselves up for a time when they throw aside those rules and turn away from Christian life in general. As a result, I think we need to be careful about the way we communicate expectations about Christian life. When the Bible teaches lifestyle choices clearly, we can say so clearly. When it doesn’t, but we are inclined to develop principles for living from the biblical teaching, we need to be careful to say that we are talking about what we think is wise for life and not make hard and fast rules. I also think that when we adopt the standards of our faith community, we need to make sure that we are making those our standards, that we will live by those standards because we’re convinced that it’s the best way to live and not because others are pressuring us to live by those standards. Living by other people’s "shoulds" may become problematic.

Now, I think there’s a danger that what I’ve just said could be taken individualistically, perhaps even in a post-modern way. "Don’t let anybody tell you how to live because that is your decision and yours alone and there is no one right way to live." That’s not what I want to say. I think it’s important that we Christians choose to submit ourselves first to biblical teaching and second to the faith community in which we live. We should discern together what is wise for Christian life and listen carefully to the discernment of the community. But, in the end, we each need to willfully choose to adopt that discernment as our own and want to live that way.

Finally, in thinking about applications from this teaching for our lives, I refer to the opening verses of chapter two, verses we haven’t read today. There Paul spoke of his purpose as he struggled for the people in Colosse and Laodicea. When he wrote to them, he intended to encourage them and to help them to achieve unity in love. He wanted these things for them so that they would know Christ, who was the answer to the struggle that was going on in their churches due to the divergent teaching they were hearing. Paul wanted his corrective to what was happening in those churches to bring about better communal life for the church. He wanted them to experience unity and love for each other. It’s not hard for us to imagine that there was disunity and anger in the community as people judged each other and declared some people out of bounds. Paul wanted them to get past that in order to accept each other on the basis of the work of Jesus in their hearts. I find it interesting that Paul puts his statement in the order that he does. He wants loving unity for them in order that they may know Christ. I wonder if Paul is saying something quite profound about how humans come to know Christ. It happens best when they live in a loving and supportive community of faith. The application for us then is to be a community of faith that loves each other and doesn’t quickly ostracize each other over whether we follow the rules correctly or not. People in the church will grow in their Christian faith better if they are loved and accepted than if they are criticized and judged. How the church lives together will have great impact on the lives of people inside and outside the church. This affects how the church perceives rules by which to live.

In the title for this sermon, I asked whether we should just scrap the rules. Paul taught the Christians at Colosse and Laodicea to be wary of setting rules. When rules become the basis for one’s spiritual life and the reason for which one believes he or she is right with God, then dangerous things occur. As a result, we need to be careful in the church about how we communicate matters of lifestyle choices. But we don’t throw out all rules. We hold on to what the Bible teaches clearly about lifestyle. And we talk together as a community of faith about how to apply biblical principles to our lifestyle choices. We give our attention to the wisdom that develops in our community and adopt principles for lifestyle with the wisdom of our community in mind and decide to live willingly by those principles. All the while, we recognize that we can’t throw out principles for lifestyle choices when we say that rules are not the basis for our Christian life precisely because our faith and life decisions are rooted in Christ.