Colossians 2:1-9

Some Dangers Indicated

Colossians 2:1-9 .

Why should Paul the Apostle enter into any "conflict" about people or concerning people whom he had never seen? It is to be remembered that the Apostle Paul is writing to persons who had never seen him in the flesh, whom he had never seen, and with whom he had only opened indirect communication by a fellow-labourer. Yet he says he has a "great conflict" for the Colossians and the Laodiceans and the dwellers in Hierapolis. Why this conflict? Why not let the people alone? Why not be concerned simply for those who are round about you? What is this passion in the sanctified heart that will go out to the ends of the earth, clothed in charity, burning with Christly ardour? If there be any persons who are strangers to this passion they cannot enter into the music of the Apostle's Epistle to the Colossians. They may call themselves practical people, they may find refuge in narrow maxims, such as, "Charity begins at home." Christianity knows nothing about such maxims. Christianity takes in all time, all space, all human nature; Christianity is not willing to sit down to the feast so long as there is one vacant chair at the banqueting table: Christianity never ceased to say, "Yet there is room"; specially is there room for those who least think of it, or who least suspect their fitness to occupy it. There is no room for the self-contented, the pharisaical; there is always more room for the broken-hearted, the self-renouncing, the Christ-seeking soul. Paul lived in conflict: on the other hand, we are amongst those who avoid everything like controversy, friction, and sharp, mutual confrontage. We love quietness. Yet we do not know what quietness is; we think that quietness is indifference, carelessness, indisposition to concern oneself about anybody's interests. That is not quietness, that is more nearly an approach to death: peace is not indifference, it is the last result of the operation of ten thousand conflicting forces. We are only at peace after we have been at war, and after we have accepted the music of the will of God.

What is this conflict? The term would seem to mean battle, antagonism, decisive and unchangeable hostility in relation to some other object. That is not the whole meaning of the word in this connection. In another verse the Apostle defines the conflict "striving," saith he, "in prayer." There is a conflict at the throne of grace, there is a time when man wrestles with the angel of God. It would seem from an outside point of view as if they were thrown together in deadly combat: which shall go down, the human or the Divine? the man or the angel? And the angel always allows himself to be thrown in that holy controversy, that he may bestow upon the successful combatant a new name, a new franchise, a sacred, blissful immortality. Until we so enlarge our prayers we shall not know what the privilege of prayer is. Confining our petitions to little concerns, to petty and immediate affairs, we shall never know the range and the sacred urgency and violence of prayer. We must pray, as it were, more for those whom we have never seen than for those who are nearest our personal love; there are so many things that may occur to our poor imagination to prevent our ever seizing with the right of Divine proprietorship all that lies beyond. Paul would not pray only for those who, like the Philippians, had been round about him and enriching him night and day; but for the citizens of Colosse and Laodicea and Hierapolis, for those who were far away from himself. But all men are equally near to God. Here we have Christian passion seen in its sublimest exercise; the man enlarging himself into a whole priesthood, a soul burning with love for souls he had never seen. Until the Church is thus large, inclusive, solicitous, involving the whole world in its prayer and its desire until this miracle is accomplished, we shall hold small controversies about the answerableness and the utility of prayer. How can men who have never prayed argue the question of prayer? How can they who have limited their prayers to small areas know the meaning of intercession, which so stirs the soul that it can have no rest until the last wanderer has returned to his Father? Pray more, and argue less.

Here occurs the name of the city of Laodicea the richest and proudest of the three cities in whose religious interests Paul is now most deeply concerned. Of the cities of Colosse, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, Laodicea was by far the strongest, richest metropolis. What do we know of it now? Where now its fame? Laodicea has become a term signifying lukewarmness, tepid zeal, a condition of the soul which is neither hot nor cold. Laodicean wealth, pomp, festivity, are all forgotten, and Laodicea lives only to represent the lukewarmness of men who have lost their first love. So may fame perish! "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." The man who is to-day most famous for the highest powers and the sublimest influence may fade out of human recollection, or may be buried with a nameless burial. We cannot live in yesterday's goodness, we can only live on to day's active piety; not what we did years ago, but what we are doing now, determines our character, and settles our fitness for heaven.

What does the Apostle desire for those whom he had never seen in the flesh? "That their hearts might be comforted." What do we mean by the word "comfort"? Perhaps we know more clearly our conception of the word comfort than we can explain it in terms. Every one will naturally think that he knows what comfort means: when you comfort a heart you soothe it, pacify it, pronounce a blessing upon it; you cause it to nestle warmly in your own heart, that thereby it may be warmed and stilled, and be led into a sense of deep and sweet tranquillity. That is not the meaning of the word here. The English language deprives us of the force of the word which Paul employed. Almost everywhere in the New Testament when you comfort men you do not lull them or soothe them: a comforting preacher is a rousing preacher. We speak of a Boanerges and a son of consolation; we think of the Barnabas of the Church as a very quiet man, singularly insusceptible to public excitement; a man who is always pronouncing beatitudes, and so exorcising the spirit of unrest as rather to bring upon the Church a spirit of slumbrousness, quietness, which sees God in his minor but not less tender aspects. That is not the meaning of the word "son of consolation." Barnabas was not a quiet speaker, Barnabas was not a man who pronounced beatitudes; "the son of consolation" meant that he was an exciting, inspiring, rousing, dominant preacher; encouraging the heart to new braveries, straining the soul to new tension, that it might give itself with larger and more perfect consecration to the service of the Cross. Thus words have been abased, impoverished, perverted; and men have been called sons of consolation who ought to have been described as dead asleep. When the Apostle prayed that the people might be "comforted,", he prayed that they might be encouraged, stimulated, excited; that they might have all their faculties roused up. Put on thy strength, and thus be comforted.

"Being knit together in love." Who knows the meaning of "being knit together"? Would it not signify close union, unanimous co-operation, perfect identity of feeling as between man and man throughout the whole Church? There is no objection to that definition, but that is not the definition of the term which the Apostle Paul used. This is rather a logical than a moral term. Paul would have all the people carried together in a common persuasion, parties to a common agreement, consenting to the statement of truth, as being the best possible presentation for the time being of that truth, knit together like a closely compacted and finely reasoned argument: yet not argument in a controversial and exasperating sense, but argument with love at the basis, love at the heart, love at the crown; the right kind of argument; not that overwhelms by mighty appeals only, but that persuades so as to gain the consent of head and heart and hand in the establishment and propagation of truth. Paul would have an educated Church in the right sense of the term; he would have all the Colossians "knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom arc hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." There is a full theology; there is a part of the Scriptures we never saw before: to this men are called, to this complete equipment and satisfaction are men to be persuaded. This mystery of Christ is not an acquisition which any man can attain to in a moment, this is not an education that can be completed in a day or two. With Paul, Christian thought was not something to be referred to once a week; he did not keep his Christianity locked up in the Church. All the other things were little: Christ alone was great. As for our business, our commerce, our adventure, all our civilisation in its largest and most impressive aspects, all that he reckoned among the et-cætera: the thing to be done was to be united to Christ, to God through Christ, to have Christ dwelling in the soul, and to be ready for all the elevation awaiting redeemed souls. We have inverted all that, we have made a classification of our own. If a man were to speak about Christ during the transaction of his business, he would be branded as a fanatic or a hypocrite. This is how we treat the greatest mystery in the universe. We appoint special times, and we abbreviate those times to the utmost possible extent, and we refer rather indirectly than distinctively to Christ as the Redeemer of the world. Paul could not live now. He would tear the Church to pieces. Nothing would surprise that ardent mind so much as to find certain persons calling themselves Christians. He would tear the Christian pulpit asunder, he would drive out many Christian preachers and teachers; as for the Church-roll, what would become of it under those burning fingers! Paul said, Christianity is all, or it is nothing. Paul said in effect, I can understand the man who curses God or denies God, or mouths the heavens in foul blasphemy, and I can understand the man who says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: for me to live is Christ: this one thing I do": but I cannot understand the man between, who is neither the one nor the other, or the man who makes his piety an investment, his Christianity an element in his social progress.

To this passion we must come back, or the battle is lost. There is no doubt on my mind that the Christian battle has been lost by lukewarm Christianity. The infidel has done us little harm, the atheist has made no progress; but the man who has undertaken to patronise Christianity, and who has choked it by his favours, has cost the Christ of God a thousand redoubled crucifixions. Why do you not give up Christianity? why have anything to do with it? Why crush it with your patronage? why choke it with your embrace? Renounce it, thus help it; curse it, and thus bless it. On the other hand, who can forget that to-day there are men as consecrated, as self-sacrificing, as probably ever lived since the days of the Apostle: missionaries abroad who are daily hazarding their lives for the Lord Jesus; missionaries who have no object in life but to exalt the Cross? A missionary is a continual rebuke to a domestic minister; the man who has gone out to the heathen to fight the devil on his own battleground, the man who has entered the densest darkness that there he might introduce the light of the Gospel, is a man who puts to shame ministers who study new adaptations of language to suit the perverted fancy and the perverted taste of persons who simply luxuriate in the intellectual enjoyment of Christianity. We need not humble our own age unnecessarily, yet he would be an unjust man who would assert broadly that the Apostle Paul would be satisfied with the representation of Christ which is to be found in the Christian Church this day.

Yet the Apostle has a word of warning; he sees two dangers ahead. The first is: "And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words." He is not indicating an open hostility, he has no fear of the great battle-axe, it is not a battering-ram that excites his solicitude; it is a process of beguilement. What is the meaning of that term? A process of leading away little by little, a short step at a time; an assent, a casual suggestion, one small omission of duty; and especially that wicked practice of attaching different meanings to the same words. There is a sophistry that is ruining the soul by allowing the use of a double dictionary, so that a word shall mean this under some circumstances, and something different under a totally different class of conditions. The Apostle will have men simple-minded, frank-hearted, meaning what they say, saying what they mean, living the white life; candidates enrolled in robes white as snow. "Enticing words" are words that lead astray; words that say, Unquestionably you are on the right road, and not for one moment ought you to think of leaving that road permanently; yet how much you might learn it you would turn aside one little step, to see this new flower, to hear this new bird, to behold this new sight. We are only safe in our steadfastness. Only he who says, No! broadly, proudly, ringingly, can be right. He would be called very narrow-minded, puritanical, pharisaical, self-righteous, legal, and so forth. He can bear all such descriptives because his own heart doth not condemn him. He says, I will not turn to the right hand or to the left, I will walk steadfastly towards the polar star. Happy he! "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not."

Another danger is indicated in the eighth verse: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit." What is the meaning of the word "spoil" in this connection? Suppose we read the text thus: Beware lest any man mar the beauty of your Christian simplicity or your pious excellence: Beware lest any man should blight that which is fair, or disfigure that which is proportionate. The sense would be good, but it would not be the sense of the Apostle Paul in this particular connection. Here we have a military phrase: Beware lest any man take you as spoil, take you at the spear-point, and lead you away the victim of philosophy and vain deceit. We might therefore read the text thus: Beware lest in the battle of life any man should so far conquer you as to make you a victim of philosophy and vain deceit; despoil you as an enemy besieging a town despoils its ramparts and takes its citizens in war. What is the spirit to which we may become thus subservient? It is called "philosophy and vain deceit" Christianity is not a mere philosophy. The theologians of a certain school, narrow and mechanical, have nearly killed Christianity. They will make a system of it, they will map out the heart of God into private garden-ground; it begins here, it ends there, and between the origin and the conclusion the life may be described thus. When men undertake to parochialise the infinite, they are no longer wise, they have become fools before God. Christianity is too big for any philosophy. Love cannot be scheduled. For want of knowing this the colleges, seminaries, and theological universities have very nearly blotted out the blood-stained ground called Calvary. We have now theories of God's love, systems and schemes and plans of salvation. What can stand against such mechanical treatment of the divine force of redeeming love? It is not to be measured. I will tell you what you may measure if you like measure the wind! There will I leave you: buy tape enough, buy miles of it, and borrow all you cannot buy, and when we meet again tell me the extent of the wind that blows through the space occupied by the earth. I will tell you what to measure measure the light! Make some new photometer that shall exactly, to one little inch, mete out the sunlight that fills the space round about us. Borrow and buy once more, and when we meet again tell me how much light there is in the space above and around. But do not measure God's love. Oh, the depth! said one; oh, the breadth, the length, the height! His arithmetic was lost, his geometry was dumb. Feel it; never attempt to express it adequately in words: respond to it as a passion; but never attempt to follow it as a decorated and erudite philosophy. Here is the greatest presence we know of, which comes every day and takes up no room. What a mystery is that! The greatest presence known to our senses takes up no space. A child requires his little inch of foothold, an insect casts its tiny shadow on the plant whose virtue is its food: but here is the greatest, sublimest, vastest presence know to our senses, and yet it takes up no room, does not rob the child of its foothold or the insect of its little area of operation. What is that greatest presence? It is the light. It is here and there and yonder, high as heaven, and yet it takes up no room, hinders no traveller, obstructs no progress, lives, moves, and blesses all, without asking for any hospitality or accommodation in return. So it is with the love of God. Measure the speech of man, fix its value, determine its limits; but when God speaks be silent that you may hear his music, "The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him." When a man becomes a philosopher, be sure he is nearly about becoming a fool. There is no word that plagues a man's vanity so much as "philosopher." He thinks he would like to be a philosopher; he does not know the meaning of the word, but it looks such a very ornamental word: it is so roomy, so capacious, so hospitable, that he thinks even he may find at least momentary accommodation under its sheltering roof.

My lord Bacon saith, "A little learning inclineth to atheism, but great learning bringeth men to the footstool of God." If we could have a complete philosophy or scheme of wisdom, that indeed would be welcome to all minds; but for any man to describe philosophy as having a beginning and end, is for that man to indicate in the plainest terms that he knows nothing about it. If Christianity were only a philosophy, it would be like ten thousand other propositions, schemes, or suggestions.

What, then, is Christianity? It is a life, an experience, a passion, a Cross. The men who are ruining Christianity are the men who are comparing it with other religions. They give Mahomet a place, and Confucius a place, and Buddha a place, and Christ a place, and Socrates a place. This is not the position which Christianity will accept. Christianity is distinctive, it is sui similis , it is like itself; "only itself can be its parallel." It exists in its own unity, personality, identity; not as a thing schemed out and scheduled forth by clever managers of words, but life that loves, and lives in sacrifice. Will you therefore come to the aid of the Cross by simply saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner"? When you tried to understand the Cross, you lost your salvation; the moment you said, Now I will put this into logical form, then you limited the Holy One of Israel. Yield yourselves to all the influences of God, and go whither the Spirit drives you, and you will find that in the end you have come into the summerland of heaven. There are those, of course, who are great in insisting upon definiteness. They will be ruined by the very definiteness which they adore. There is something grander than definiteness of the mechanical kind, and that is definiteness of assured love of Christ. Let a man say, I cannot explain Christ, I cannot argumentatively defend Christ against many cunning users of words, but, my God, thou knowest that I love him and he is a Christian; all the rest will come, by patient continuance in well-doing, by noble moral self-discipline; by living in the spirit of the Cross of Christ, he will come little by little to know more of the doctrine of Christ. Thus will his education be completed.

Prayer

Almighty God, we pray thee to show unto us more and more of thy truth; then we shall know that our life is increasing more and more, and by the increase of life we shall be able to confirm and enjoy the increase of truth. Forbid that our information should exceed our enthusiasm; may they both go together; may all we know burn with a sacred ardour; may our lives be as shrines of the Holy One, which men seeing may take knowledge of, and draw near, and hear from our lives some message from on high. We bless thee for all thy love; no tongue can tell its amount, its tenderness, its spontaneousness; we feel it, but cannot express it in words; we can say with our whole heart, God is light, God is love, God is goodness. May we hold fast to these truths, and grow up from them as from roots, until we become great fruit-bearing trees, glorifying God, not only in the vastness of our growth, but also in the abundance and richness of our fruit. Our prayer we say in the dear, sweet name of Christ Jesus, Lamb of God, Saviour of man. Amen.