READ: Col. 2:16,17: “… let no one judge you …”
What Paul has thus far written about Christ and His accomplished work on earth must now also have its effect in the daily life of Christians. With Christ a new era has dawned. The promise with which the whole Old Testament was full, namely the necessity of a Redeemer in the Person of the Christ, has been fulfilled. Throughout the entire time of the Old Testament, God deemed it necessary to bring to fulfillment the mother promise which He had already revealed in paradise.
The Heidelberg Catechism says concerning this in Lord’s Day 6, Q&A 19, that God had the holy gospel of Christ foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law. Finally, He fulfilled it through His only begotten Son.
The Belgic Confession also speaks of this in Article 25: “We believe that the ceremonies and symbols of the law have ceased at the coming of Christ, and that all the shadows have been fulfilled; so that the use of them ought to be abolished among Christians. Yet their truth and remain for us in Jesus Christ, in whom they have been fulfilled ...”
Therefore, nothing further is needed from the visual instruction of the Old Testament, such as the purification regulations, the animal sacrifices, the Jewish Sabbath regulations with the Sabbath on the seventh day, and all kinds of additional prohibitions.
All these matters concerned only a temporary shadow, an image of what is now reality: Christ Himself and His accomplished work of salvation. Through attachment to the shadows, Christ is pushed into the background in Colossae.
Earlier, the Pharisees had already detached the earthly and temporary character of the regulations from their deeper shadowy meaning, namely their reference to the saving work of Christ. They came to feel themselves better than others through observing them. The Lord Jesus pointed this out in connection with the purification regulations (Matt. 23:25,26) and the observance of the Sabbath commandment (Matt. 12:1–12).
Can we also deal legalistically with regulations? Is there an example?
Singing: Hymn 19:4–6 (1984) / 23:4,5,6 (2014)