READ: Col. 2:20–23: “Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world … according to the commandments and doctrines of men … these things indeed have an appearance of wisdom … but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.”
Paul makes an appeal here to the believers in Colosse. You have, after all, been buried with Him and also raised with Him (see v. 12). But then you have also broken with every earthly matter upon which to place your trust. Then surely you place all your hope in Christ, that He will bring you to full salvation? Then outside Christ you have nothing by which you can attain salvation, perfection, or glory.
If that is so, why then do you still impose regulations upon yourselves and place trust in them apart from Christ, as though you still lived in the world without Christ? How can you continue to live in that world if you have already been raised to a new life with Christ? The one excludes the other: worldly life does not fit the new life, and the new life does not fit worldly life.
Paul also writes of this in the letter to the Galatians. Gal. 4:9: “But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?” And Gal. 6:14: “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
How then can one expect to attain salvation through refusing food and drink? All these things are nothing more than human regulations. They are perishable matters, which have nothing to do with the spiritual fear of the Lord.
In Matt. 15:9 Jesus rejects the tradition of the elders as commandments of men, whereby they indeed speak the name of the Lord, but their hearts are not open to Him. What use is it to wash your hands while at the same time entertaining impure thoughts and acting sinfully?
Paul says in verse 23: one may indeed appear pious by observing all kinds of human regulations and rules, and thus maintain an appearance of wisdom, but it is self-imposed, without value, and directed only toward oneself.
May you enjoy everything that is available?
Singing: Hymn 40:2 (1984) / 52:2 (2014)