The Fullness of the GODHEAD

COLOSSIANS stands in the same relation to Ephesians  as Galatians does to Romans.  Like Galatians, Colossians is polemic,  that is, written to combat error.  The error against which Paul warned in Colossians later became known as Gnosticism.  Besides the Gnostic teachings, Jewish ideas were being entertained in the church at Colosse.  Paul’s answer to this subtle mixture was the supremacy of Christ. 

                The Gnostic heresy, a philosophy based on the notion  that matter is evil, concerned itself with the origin of the universe and that nature is evil.  The Gnostics watered the gospel down to a mere philosophy.  Their great goal was for knowledge.  On this they put their emphasis, rather than on faith.

                The Gnostics assumed that, since God is good and evil exists, and since (according to their assumption) evil is inherent in matter, thus, God could not have created evil matter.  Between God and matter they placed a series of created emanations such as, spirits, and angels.

                The Gnostics’ idea was that one of these spirits came from God, then another was created from this one, and so on until there was one far enough away from God to have the power to create evil matter and yet not contaminate God.  The bottom aeon or spirit was called Demiurge.  The god of the Gnostics was not the God of the Bible, who, according to them, was only one of the emanations. 

                Confronted with the Person of Christ, the Gnostics placed Him either at the bottom of the list of spirits or somewhere in the center.  In other words, they interpreted Christ in the light of their pagan philosophy.  Some denied the humanity of Jesus, others took an opposite view, maintaining that whereas Jesus was an ordinary man until His baptism, at that time, the aeon Christ came upon Him and remained with Him until just prior to His death on the cross.

                The Gnostics’ view that matter was essentially evil, caused them to take divergent views of ethical problems.  Some argued that since the body was evil it should be subdued, and the result was asceticism.  The Essenes, and to some extent, the Stoics, followed this line.  Others took the view that the only way to overcome sensuality was to indulge bodily cravings to the full, even to excess, exhaustion, and satiety.  This view was especially directed toward sex indulgence.  The Epicureans were examples of this.

Grafted into this pagan philosophy was a form of Pharasaical Judaism.  The narrowest view of 2

Jewish ritualism, insisting on circumcision, dietary laws, observance of feasts and fasts, and the whole cumbersome apparatus of ceremonial religion, was wedded to the original Gnostic heresy and  presented as truth to the Colossian Christians.  This special form of knowledge was presented as a “mystery,” a secret available only to the initiated to be received by revelation and not by scientific deduction.  Much of this type of “teaching” has been revived by present-day cults.  Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, wrote an inspired “nonsense” across the whole thing. 

The Magnificence of Jesus

                There are few more magnificent passages in the New Testament than Colossians 1:15-18, in which Paul sets forth the Deity of Christ.  He showed that all the divine personality, power, and purposes are centered in Christ.  “All fulness” is in Him.  He is the Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe, yet He died to reconcile men to God and therefore has every right to expect that those who trust in Him will “continue in the faith” and not be “moved away.”  He is indeed The Fullness of the Godhead!   Paul made known the true mystery:  “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1: 26-27).  In the New Testament, of course, a “mystery” is something which can be understood only by the initiated (the saved).   It is an open secret, a truth once hidden but now revealed, a truth which would have been unknown without special revelation from the Holy Spirit.  Thus, Paul cut right across the Gnostics’ pretentions of “mysteries” by showing that all true believers are initiated into the true mysteries.