SERIES: Colossians: Christ is the Answer
Lordship Living
SCRIPTURE: Colossians 2:6-10
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: In 1988 Dr. John MacArthur, evangelical pastor of a mega-church in southern California, wrote a book entitled The Gospel According to Jesus. In this extremely provocative treatise MacArthur argues that many fundamentalists and evangelicals have twisted the Good News of salvation by faith into an easy-believism. They have taken salvation too lightly by ignoring the warnings of Jesus that the cost of discipleship is high, the way is narrow so that few find it, and not all who call Jesus “Lord” will be accepted into the Kingdom. MacArthur teaches that there is no eternal life without surrender to the Lordship of Christ, and that nothing can be conceived as evidence of salvation apart from a life of obedience, a life that shows the fruit of transformed behavior. In other words, salvation is defined not by what one does to get it but by what it produces.
Not surprisingly, that book generated a good deal of debate and several additional books, as some who were criticized by MacArthur sought to defend themselves, clarify their views, and argue that MacArthur himself had abandoned the historic teaching of the church that salvation is by grace through faith plus nothing. There may be some overstatements in his book, but by and large I believe MacArthur has touched upon a much-needed corrective in our theology, and I applaud him for it.
Lordship Salvation, as MacArthur’s view has become known, is still controversial in some circles.[i] What is not controversial is the need for Lordship Living. If Jesus is Lord, and He certainly is, that has to affect everything else. Our text today, Col. 2:6-10, is a brief passage, but it is one of the clearest mandates in all the Bible to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ over our lives. Please give attention to the reading of God’s Word.
6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
If Jesus is Lord, then we must live “in him.” (2:6-7)
“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him.” There is no question but that the Colossian believers were truly converted—he acknowledges they had received Jesus. It is also beyond dispute that when they were converted, they received Him not only as their Savior but as their Lord—”you received Christ Jesus as Lord.” They had, in effect, acknowledged that He was master and sovereign of everything, for that’s what “Lord” means. But Paul is not principally concerned with their conversion; he is referring to their past conversion only as a means of influencing their present behavior. “Just as you received Jesus as Lord, so continue to live in Him as Lord.” The argument is, in effect, “If you treated Him as Lord then, why not now?”
Friends, maybe it’s time for each of us to think back to our conversion. Remember the submission we practiced? No matter what God asked us to do, we were eager to do it. Remember the sorrow for sin we experienced? Remember the humility we demonstrated? Remember the gratitude we felt? What we need today is a re-stirring of those initial responses we had to the Gospel. Why is it that Christians tend to grow cold and apathetic, and some even turn their back on Christ? I think the reason is that they have not come to grips with what it means to live “in him.” So Paul offers three characteristics of one who practices Lordship Living. First, he is …
Rooted and built up in Him. “Rooted” is an agricultural metaphor while “built up” is a construction metaphor, and though the metaphors may be mixed, they communicate well. Like a tree or a bush, we are to put our tap root deep down into the soil of the Savior.
Surely one of the most barren parts of the United States is the panhandle of Oklahoma (I hope there’s no one here this morning who hails from Guymon or Texhoma). I have driven through there in the month of August with the temperature around 110 and the only thing moving was tumbleweed. Tumbleweed has a single, rather narrow root which turns brittle with age. Its limited root structure results in a short life, then death, and eventual subjection to the winds. In contrast, the believer should be solidly “rooted” in Christ.
Paul probably had the imagery of Psalm 1 in mind here. Listen to that Psalm:
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Believers are to be rooted in Christ as trees are rooted in the earth. With trees, a general rule is that the visible spread of the branches of a tree is roughly equal to the invisible spread of the roots. The deeper and more widespread our roots in Christ, the greater the shade, fruit, and beauty we provide.[ii] But the metaphor of a building also adds important insight. As believers, our foundation is Christ and we are to build upon that foundation with lasting materials like gold, silver, and precious stones, rather than temporary materials like wood, hay, and straw. (1 Cor. 3:10-15)
Friends, the way to become rooted and built up in Christ is through prayer and meditation. Did you notice in Psalm 1: “in his law he meditates day and night”? I know of no other way, and I know of no shortcuts. If you see in your own life a tendency toward the tumbleweed syndrome—that’s when every hot wind just blows you away—you are seeing the evidence of insufficient time spent alone with Christ.
But there’s a second important characteristic of Lordship Living besides being rooted and built up:
Strengthened in the faith, as you were taught. Christianity is not just prayer and meditation; it also involves the intellect through the study of biblical truth. Periodically throughout the history of the church there have been mystical movements which demeaned doctrine in favor of what has often been called “spiritual formation.” Some today are saying, “Let’s get beyond theology and just concern ourselves with spirituality.” But Paul will have none of that. Instead, he urges them to return to their doctrinal roots. Growth does not discard the early truths of Jesus Christ for newer truth, as the heretics at Colosse were suggesting. Jesus is not a beginning, to be left behind by those who are more “mature.”
R. C. Lucas, Rector of St. Helen’s Church in London, spoke to his colleagues in the liberal Church of England from this very passage:
“This has something uncomfortably trenchant to say to Christian leaders. Did not many owe their first knowledge of Christ to evangelical truth? Yet how many now say that they have ‘grown out’ of such simplicities. But to grow beyond the saving truths as we were faithfully taught them is not to grow up in a way that can please God or profit the church. Such fancied superiority in knowledge calls for honest self-examination to see if true loyalty to Christ remains.” [iii]
Some of you have read the book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. In it author Robert Fulghum lists these astounding truths he learned by age 5:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
I would like to put a slight twist on that. “All I really need to know I learned in Sunday School:”
God is love.
Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
All have sinned.
The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
Love one another.
Serve one another.
I went to college, to seminary, and to graduate school, not to learn new truth but to be strengthened in the truth I was taught in S.S.
A third characteristic of the one who practices Lordship Living is that he is …
Overflowing with thankfulness. This is the third mention of thankfulness already in Colossians. Paul was convinced that a healthy Christian walk spills over with gratitude and praise. In fact, one of the first indicators of departure from God is a lack of thanksgiving. In speaking of the condemned pagan, Paul writes in Rom. 1:21, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
These verses we have just looked at make it clear that a grounded, growing, grateful believer will not become a casualty of spiritual warfare. And make no mistake—there is warfare out there, and to that Paul now shifts his focus in verse 8, as he defends the Faith against the attacks of false teachers. Here we find the second deduction we should draw from the Lordship of Christ:
If Jesus is Lord, then we must radically resist seductive philosophy. (8)
Verse 8 reads, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” These words are a call for radical resistance to the spiritual answers the world has to offer. Back in 1968 I was completing my second of four years in seminary. I became somewhat disillusioned after six straight years of ministerial study, much of it far too academic and not nearly as life-related as it should have been. I decided to drop out of seminary and applied to SMU to do graduate work in philosophy. I received a full scholarship and enrolled at SMU that summer.
Many of my friends and relatives viewed my new endeavor with concern. One sent me this verse:
“I’ve studied now Philosophy
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before.”
What was more challenging, my dear mother used to sign all her letters with Col. 2:8, (KJV): “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.” I think she feared that the mere study of philosophy would start me down a slippery slope, and frankly, if I had told her some of the things that went on in those classrooms, I think she never would have gotten off her knees. It was, of course, the height of the Viet Nam War and the summer when both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. There was unrest on almost every campus, and university philosophy departments were favorite hideouts for radical leftists and draft dodgers. Existentialism and nihilism were rampant and my own thesis adviser, Dr. Robert Jung, after lecturing frequently on the fact that the only serious philosophical question is, “Why not end it all?”, committed suicide.
But, with all due respect, Paul is not here attacking philosophy as an academic discipline. Philosophy simply means “love of wisdom,” and as a field of study, it deals with ultimate questions like “Who am I?,” “Why am I here?,” “Why is there something rather than nothing?,” and “How can I know?” and “How can I know that I know?” The answers to such philosophical questions can be Christian or pagan, but the study itself is neutral.
Paul clearly identifies the kind of philosophy that is dangerous, and frankly, it probably has much more to do with television and cults than with the philosophy departments of our universities. I’ll explain that a little later.
The first things we learn about the seductive philosophy which Paul denounces is that …
It is hollow and deceptive. The false teachers of our day, like those of whom Paul spoke, do not generally go out and win the lost; they “kidnap” converts from churches. The vast majority of members of cults today were at one time associated with a Christian church of one denomination or another. And why were these susceptible to being taken captive? First, many are ignorant of God’s Word because their churches didn’t teach Scripture, and secondly, false teachers are very deceptive and enticing. That should surprise no one, for after all, if you’re making a counterfeit bill, you don’t use yellow construction paper, cut it in the shape of a triangle, and put Batman’s picture in the middle. Deception always tries to look authentic, but underneath the surface, it is empty and hollow. [iv]
There is a major cult in our own day that is very similar to the Gnostic teaching Paul is here fighting. Its credo is expressed this way: “As God was, man is. As God is man can become.” This cult’s belief is that God was once a man, but because he lived a virtuous life, he was reincarnated to successively higher stages of life, until finally he became a god of his own planet, and then the god of Heaven.
Today thousands, even millions, are seeking to become gods! One is Gordon Hall, the Nautilus sports equipment tycoon, who said,
“We have always existed as intelligences, as spirits. We are down here to gain a body. As man is now God once was. And as God is now, man can become. If you believe it, then your genetic makeup is to be a god. And I believe it. That is why I believe I can do anything. My genetic makeup is to be a god. My God in heaven creates worlds and universes. I believe I can do anything, too.” [v]
His immediate goal is to be a billionaire by the time he is 38.
Gordon Hall is a highly intelligent man, yet deceived—by false teachers with false promises. It’s amazingly easy for otherwise intelligent people to rest their lives on what will ultimately prove to be nothing. We see them standing on street corners selling their literature. We read of them following their guru to another land. We see them attending religious pep rallies, where they are told that health and wealth are theirs if they will only believe in themselves.
These are the hallmarks of seductive philosophy: it is hollow and deceptive. [vi] Secondly, …
It is humanistic rather than biblical. Paul describes such philosophy as “depending on human tradition.” In other words, it was presented as ancient, and therefore profound and worthy of consideration. Friends, tradition and age alone doesn’t make anything worthy. C. S. Lewis had Screwtape say to Wormwood: “Old error in new dress, is ever error nonetheless.” [vii] The issue is not tradition, it is origin. Where did the philosophy these people were spreading come from in the first place? Well, it was clearly not from God. It was human tradition.
Now let’s face it, mankind is the highest of God’s creation. His intelligence has enabled him to accomplish some amazing feats in science and technology, in medicine and agriculture. But if you want to know answers to the ultimate questions about life and God and eternity, is it better to fall back on human tradition or to listen to God? Strangely, many choose the former.
Millions subscribe to the views of the Humanist Manifesto, particularly leaders in the media, entertainment, the arts, sociology, and psychology. That Manifesto says, “We believe that traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God and creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species.” Later it adds, “We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human need and interest.”
God’s revealed will on moral and spiritual issues is not even considered worthy of attempted refutation in our day and time—it is just ignored as irrelevant. As you all know it is rare for religion to even be found in a TV show; when it is, it is almost always in a distasteful role. Hollow and deceptive philosophy is invariably dependent upon human tradition rather than upon Christ.
Thirdly, Paul makes clear concerning seductive philosophy that …
It is spirit-oriented rather than Christ-centered. And when I speak of spirit-oriented, I am not talking about the Holy Spirit, but rather about angelic or demonic spirits. The words Paul uses to describe such philosophy is, “it depends upon the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” How do I get spirit-oriented out of that? The overwhelming majority of biblical experts tell us that “basic principles” should probably be translated “elemental spirits.” This term was used of the signs of the Zodiac and the spirits that were thought to control the planetary spheres and thus men’s lives. Paul here argues that these spirit forces were behind the seductive philosophy of the false teachers. They desired to bring the Colossians back into the bondage they experienced before Christ.
Certainly, this is true of the non-Christian cults in our present day. Read the history of their founders and you will regularly see evidence of supernatural, occult intervention and direction. This is also true of the entire New Age Movement, which is gaining much ground today. Shirley MacLaine is paying homage to demons when she advocates channeling and spirit-guides and crystals and mantras. The entire astrology movement, along with horoscopes and signs of the Zodiac, are clearly included in Paul’s denunciation of “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”
The reason, of course, that allowing oneself to be taken captive by seductive philosophy is so wrong is that it ignores Christ, and the reason that’s so foolish is given in verse 9: “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ.” The pursuit of humanism would cut them off from the very source of fulfillment. And that brings us to the third major deduction we can draw from Lordship Living:
If Jesus is Lord, then we must seek fulfillment the only place it is found. (9-10)
“Fulfillment” may be the Holy Grail of our day. It used to be youth, then wealth, more recently thinness. But I think what is sought more in our society today than anything else is fulfillment, a sense of purpose, wholeness, and well-being. Unfortunately, it is being sought in all the wrong places; it was so in Paul’s day as well. So the Apostle offers an astounding truth about Jesus Christ, which serves to show why the search for fulfillment apart from Christ is so futile: “For in Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.”
All the fullness of deity lives in Christ. The Jews found it hard to think of God dwelling with men. At best, the shekinah, or glory cloud, in the tabernacle was but a representation of His presence, a symbol of His nearness and availability. When Jesus of Nazareth claimed oneness with God it created great offense. But here Paul affirms that the Godhead dwells in Jesus.
This one statement forever destroys the Gnostic’s notion that the fullness of God comes only through emanations and angelic mediators. Jesus was God in a human body. He wasn’t just godly; He wasn’t just divine; the completeness of deity dwelled in Him. We can see the power of God in His creation; we can see the truth of God in the Scriptures; we can see the love of God in a newborn child; but it is only in Jesus that we see the face of God, the full character of God, the very nature of God.
This truth is magnificent in itself. It ought to steel us against being taken captive by deceitful, empty philosophies. But there is something else which is utterly breathtaking: Jesus Christ, full of Deity, fills us.
We have also been given fullness in Christ. Christ can hold all the fullness of Deity; we cannot. However, believers are full of his fullness. Imagine yourself for a moment standing on the shore of the Pacific Ocean holding a pint jar and allowing the ocean to rush into it. In an instant your jar is filled with the Pacific. But you could never put the fullness of the Pacific Ocean into your jar.
Thinking of Christ, on the other hand, we realize that because He is unique and infinite, He can hold all the fullness of Deity. And whenever one of us finite creatures dips the tiny vessel of our life into Him, we instantly become full of his fullness! Unfortunately, many of us dip our jars into polluted ponds and then wonder why there is no fullness, no fulfillment, no sense of wholeness in our lives.
I am rapidly coming to the strong conclusion that the greatest threat to spiritual fullness in Christian families and Christian children is not the ACLU or the Playboy philosophy or public schools or secular psychology or the National Organization of Women, or liberal politics—it is a screen that we pay good money for and voluntarily bring into our homes, which seduces us little by little with the hollow and deceptive philosophies of the world. Unfortunately, many of us pay additional good money every month to tap into even more seductive options for that screen.
You know, our children may hear foul language at school or in the neighborhood, but they will know it’s wrong when they never hear that language in their home or among their Christian friends; they can make that distinction. But when they hear it coming over the TV, and mom and dad are just sitting there with no reaction, what does that say to the child? How is the child supposed to process that through his moral computer?
Our children hear in S.S. and from their parents that sexual promiscuity is wrong, but when it’s constantly played out in graphic detail before their eyes on TV in their very homes, eventually they inevitably build up a tolerance for such behavior that will do them in at a vulnerable time.
No, friends, the Apostle Paul is not taking aim at philosophy departments here in Col. 2, or if he is, it is only secondarily. He is taking aim at those of us who have received Jesus Christ as Lord but have compromised that Lordship by allowing ourselves to be seduced by the humanistic, deceptive, and demonic philosophy that permeates our society. Some of it we cannot avoid without becoming hermits, and that’s not God’s way. But much of it we can avoid, and we must. We must begin to submit everything to the Lordship of Christ—what we watch, what we read, what we hear, what music we listen to, what we believe.
Conclusion: In the book of Jeremiah, chapter 2, verse 13 the Lord Himself speaks:
My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Jesus is the spring that never runs dry; why look elsewhere for a drink? I entitled this entire series on Colossians as “Christ is the answer.” In no other passage is that message clearer than in our text today. He is the answer because He is Lord.
DATE: February 9, 1992
Tags:
Lordship salvation
Thankfulness
Philosophy
Demons
[i] I have read nearly everything produced from this controversy and have basically concluded that both sides have some excellent points, and both have some weaknesses. They certainly agree on far more than they disagree on. For example, both sides honor the Bible as the authoritative and inerrant Word of God; both believe that Jesus is indeed Lord; both believe that salvation is a gift and is not earned; and both are trying to reach the lost. But they differ on the emphasis that should be given to the Lordship of Christ when preaching the Gospel. Though at times it has generated more heat than light, the controversy over Lordship Salvation has probably been a healthy one for the Church, all things considered.
But I can just about guarantee you that you will never pick up a book in which MacArthur and Ryrie will be found arguing over Lordship Living. While there are passages which might be interpreted either way on the question of whether a person can be truly converted without accepting the Lordship of Christ, I know of no passage which allows a person once converted to live other than under the Lordship of Christ. Lordship Living is a clear biblical mandate.
Billy Graham writes,
“No man can be said to be truly converted to Christ who has not bent his will to Christ. He may give intellectual assent to the claims of Christ and may have had emotional religious experiences; however, he is not truly converted until he has surrendered his will to Christ as Lord, Savior and Master.” (Quoted by Hughes, 60-61).
Charles Spurgeon, the 19th century’s greatest preacher, observed:
“It is interesting to notice that the Apostles preached the Lordship of Christ. The word Savior occurs only twice in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 5:31, 13:23). On the other hand it is amazing to notice the title ‘Lord’ is mentioned 92 times; ‘Lord Jesus’ 13 rimes; and ‘The Lord Jesus Christ’ 6 times in the same book. The Gospel is: ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.'” (Quoted by Hughes, 61).
[ii] R. Kent Hughes, Colossians and Philemon: The Supremacy of Christ, 62.
[iii] R. C. Lucas, Fullness and Freedom, 92.
[iv] Hughes, 64.
[v] The Arizona Republic, January 7, 1986, A-2.
[vi] Interestingly, however, the most deceptive of the cults are often the most solicitous of ethical values and family life. That was true in Paul’s day as well. The spiritual confidence-tricksters Paul warns of did not encourage a godless or immoral way of life–the error of such teaching would have been immediately obvious to young Christians. Rather they combined a very restrictive lifestyle with their false teaching, producing a huge religious Venus Fly Trap. Just take a quick glance at next week’s passage—verses 16-18:
“Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink . . . Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.”
Do you know any cults that follow that description? I sure do.
[vii] C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters.