 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 230, Colossians Chapter 2, Verse 9 and 10. I'm the layman, Trey Strickliffe, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey, Mike. How are you doing this week? Pretty good. You're still sort of fondly reminiscing about the Naked Bible Conference. Oh, no. I mean, that's still sticking with me, you know? Just feedback. I've been getting an email. I mean, just overwhelmingly a super event, just, you know, it was awesome. Yeah. I appreciate everybody's email to me, thanking me and all the love that I got at the conference and later via email. I think it went as smooth as it could have gone out of the gates. For our first one, I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out. We had a couple of hiccups at the beginning of the live stream, but Finn is strong. I mean, we got the last five hours as about as good as it gets, but I learned a ton and it's only going to be better the next time. Yeah. And we're already, I mean, obviously we're not going to say anything now because really we have nothing substantive to say, but we're, you know, we're having conversations already about next year. Oh yeah, it's the planning has already started. It started before this one actually ended, but the wheels are, it didn't, the wheels didn't come to a grinding halt after this one, you know, the wheels are turning. No, but I crashed and slept for three days straight afterwards. I'm not going to lie. Oh no, I'm sure you did. I'm sure you did. It was fun. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you everybody again for taking the time and expense to come to our first conference and hopefully we'll keep doing it. Yeah. Yeah, we have good ideas going forward. So again, just like like Trey is saying, just thanks to everybody who came and we hope we'll get a lot of new people and a lot of some of the people that came this year, you know, for the next one. Yeah, I think it was cool that we were able to get some copies of your upcoming, an advanced copy of your Angels book. That was a, yeah, yeah, I feel, yeah, I feel blessed to that, you know, Lexham and Amazon and bookmasters, all the people who were involved in that, that more or less just had to say yes and push a button or two and get something into the mail. I was just thrilled that they actually showed up and we had them. So yeah, that was awesome. Yeah. And again, I had so much fun meeting everybody and talking to everybody. Mike, people came over from 34 states, including Puerto Rico and spread over four countries and we ended up live streaming to 12 countries. And that's just crazy. Pretty good for our first one out of the gates. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and, you know, while we're at it as far as stuff that we can either congratulate our audience with or offer to the audience, I want to bring this up now popped into my head. I was notified by Lagos this week that they are extending a new discount offer to our audience. So you can get base packages of Lagos Bible software for 25% off. I mean, that that's a significant discount. And they told me and I'm going to trust them for it because I don't it's not like I track all this, but they said it's the best online offer they've ever created for Lagos seven, Lagos version seven. So it's 25% off and the they added to this. You get five free books. So if you go to the episode page, you know, for this this current episode, there's going to be a link there and you follow the link. You get to pick five books. You know, of course, it'll require you to sign up if you don't already have Lagos so that the books will run on your computer. But then there's also a 25% discount there too. Yeah, and that URL is Lagos dot com slash partner slash Nekid Bible, and then you got to use the coupon code Nekid Bible seven. So Nekid Bible and the number seven. So, but I'll put it on the website. Yep. Get a base package and some free books, you know, why not? It's it is a good deal. All right, Mike. Well, it looks like for this episode we were inching towards chapter two. Yeah. We're inching, you know, you know, we had we had big clads for this episode a week ago, but those plans just sort of, you know, crumbled before my eyes. You know, it's just you never know until you actually get into something, how long it's going to take to really spend on it. So we're only going to do two verses again. We did like three last time. We're going to do two verses, Colossians two, nine and 10. But trust me, you're just going to have to trust me. We will get through chapter two in the next episode because most of what's left in Colossians after verse 10, there's verses 11 and 12, but we've actually had episodes on that before too, because they're about baptism. So basically after verse 10, that is ground that we have covered before, either with the old episode on baptism or the stuff about the the stoikaia that we talked about a couple of weeks ago or an even a little bit last week. And then the material, you know, actually from last week, all of that sort of bleeds through the rest of chapter two. So we will be able to finish chapter two next time. But they're in really to a significant extent. The stuff that we talked about last time and that we'll talk about this time really are the guts, not only of chapter two, but they are sort of foundational for just the whole general flavor of the entire epistle. So this is sort of the dense part of the forest, if you will, going through Colossians. So let's jump in here. I'm going to include verse eight because last time in the last episode, I made the comment that verse eight is again, sort of this summary statement about the elemental spirits of the world and that Paul says what he says in verse eight because of what he's going to say in verse nine. Well, we're here at verse nine and we're going to be hitting verses nine and 10 today. So I'm going to read Colossians two, eight, and then add verse nine and then we'll hit verse 10 momentarily. So Paul says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits. That's the word Stoikeia of the world and not according to Christ. For in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. Now, again, last time we wound up with verse eight. And again, the summary point was that Christ was superior to the Stoikeia, to these elemental spirits, as we read it in verse eight. And we looked at several Second Temple Jewish texts last time that would be classified as Jewish mystical texts due to their esoteric nature, essentially talking about supernatural powers over the elements of the world. You know, that we read a few examples of that, that this particular strand of Judaism, again, familiar from books like Enoch and Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls and whatnot, they reduced the time that sort of had the notion that spiritual beings, supernatural beings were assigned to natural processes and phenomena. And Paul's warning about not being taken in by some wisdom teaching philosophy concerning those ideas and those entities amounts to reminding the Colossians why that Christ was superior in all respect. So the backdrop to what Paul was saying that we covered last time was when you get into this issue of the elemental spirits, apparently at Colossae again, this harkens back to our very first episode of the Colossian heresy that it wasn't Gnosticism, wasn't what we think of as Gnosticism. That's going to come later that the movements again, the sort of movements is a good word for it, but the maybe systematized or fully developed religion that we think of today as Gnosticism that had not come along. And in our very first episode, we commented about how there are things in Colossians that have prompted some scholars to deny. Paul wrote the epistle because they were thinking that, you know, the subject matter of Colossians is dipping into all this Gnostic stuff, which was a century or two later. And so Paul couldn't have written this again. We, you know, we discovered it not only in that initial episode, but even last week that that just isn't coherent because you can find these things in Jewish texts from the Second Temple period again. And there's there's no obstacle there to Paul having written this epistle. And if Paul did write the epistle, which again is quite consistent with the Second Temple Jewish material of which Paul was a part and Paul knew well, then there's no need to deny Paul an authorship. And Paul can't possibly be talking about, again, the movements that we think of as Gnosticism. So, you know, we gave a few illustrations last time about what might have been, you know, sort of the Jewish context for the Colossian heresy, this exaltation of angels or worship of angels, is how scholars usually describe it. But to be a little more precise, the exaltation of worship or adoration or just assigning too much power and importance to elemental spirits, you know, other members of the supernatural world that aren't not only aren't God, but aren't Christ. And Paul wants to correct that. You know, Paul is, you know, building his argument. Look, these entities that, you know, you've heard about, and you're apparently getting enamored with it, Colossae, are inferior. They're inferior to Jesus. They're inferior to Christ. And so he, you know, he says what he says in verse 8, you know, don't get taken, you know, captive by this philosophy and empty deceit, you know, this other teaching. You know, don't let that side swipe you. Don't let that lead you off the path of following Jesus and the gospel and so on and so forth. You know, in other words, don't let that distract you from my message, from Paul's message. And of course, that was important because in Colossians 1, you know, he talks about that very thing about not being, you know, led astray, you know, you know, drawn away from the faith. And so he's leading up to verse 9 again. And this is where, you know, we're going to put a lot of emphasis today. And he makes the statement, you know, basically I said all that. And here's the reason. Here's the basis for it. Colossians 2, 9. For in him, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. In other words, Jesus is not beholden to the stoic care or any other supernatural entity. He's so far superior to them. He's so far above them. He is so far preeminent to them. Why? Because the whole fullness of deity dwells in him bodily. Again, this is sort of Paul's, you know, punch in the nose kind of statement. Now I want to take this apart a little bit. And I'm going to interact with a really, I think if you've had Greek, if you've had, I guess, at least a year of Greek, I would recommend this resource to you. And I'm going to interact with it here. It's a book by Murray Harris, Murray J. Harris called Prepositions and Theology in the Greek New Testament. Colin's subtitling of scholars always have to have a subtitle of their books. An essential reference resource for exegesis. What Harris does in this book is he hits on words that we might assign little importance to like prepositions. And basically goes through the New Testament showing how significant some of them are and how to do exegesis in light of something as simple as Greek prepositions. And he has a lot to say, not only about Colossians here, but really throughout the New Testament, it's really quite, it's a unique resource. It's actually, I think, better than some Greek reference grammars that I've seen. So I'm going to quote some sections of it and interact with it a little bit, specifically as he talks about some of these verses in Colossians. Now, let's just lead off with what he says here about Colossians 2.9. He writes, this verse, like Colossians 1.19, and let me just recite that to you so that you have that in your head as well. Colossians 1.19 said, For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and here in Colossians 2.9, For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. So very, very similar. So Harris says, this verse, like Colossians 1.19, speaks of Christ himself, not the believer, so that Greek, en auto, in him, does not have either of its most common meanings, that is, in union with him, and in corporate in him. Rather, it means this verse, this phrase in this verse, refers to Jesus himself, in his person. Okay, so when we think of in Christ, just to riff off this a little bit, we tend to hear a lot of preaching, or podcasting, or our own Bible study in Christ, and the discussion is usually about our being in him, our being members of the body of Christ, our being members of the Church, and that kind of thing. So the emphasis sort of becomes about us, and our standing, or our union with him. And what Harris is saying is, that's not in view here. When Paul writes for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, he isn't saying, Hey, because you're united to Christ, the fullness of deity dwells in you, the believer. I mean, think about that, that's a significant, that's the kind of thing a new ager might want to say, God and you, and all that kind of stuff. And that isn't the point, because it's not the point in Colossians 1.19, it's not the point in Colossians 2.9. There are reasons why Harris is referencing back to Colossians 1.19. He's saying, in him here, we have to be thinking about Jesus himself, who he is, not sort of who we are because of him, at least in this particular phrase. And he sort of proceeds to take the whole verse apart. For instance, he has the word dwells, katoi k, in Greek. He classifies as a timeless present. In other words, what's being talked about here is a permanent indwelling, something that permanently dwells continues to live. As in Colossians 1.19, Harris adds the phrase, panta ple Roma, that means all the fullness. Okay, that phrase, panta ple Roma, means not only all the fullness, but the entire fullness. There's no aspect of the fullness of God being accepted or exempted. He also adds the genitive word, theotitas. Again, maybe epixegetical, I'll just pause there, epixegetical means explanatory. That's academies for something that explains something else. So he's saying, Paul may have used this word, thrown it into to be explanatory, all the fullness, namely the fullness of the Godhead. But Harris believes it's more probably possessive, all the fullness that constitutes or characterizes deity. I would tend to agree. There are other translations to take the wording here. I grew up in the King James, I'm not going to look at the King James at this point, but I think the King James does say something about the fullness of the Godhead. I suspect again that Harris is correct that what he's really talking about is the fullness of deity, the whole concept of deity, everything that you could think of in its entirety. That's who Jesus is, that sort of thing. The full measure of deity is the way B-Dag puts this phrase. B-Dag is the Greek lexicon that, again, is the standard for scholarship, at least today anyway. So the Godhead in all its fullness or the full measure of deity, however you want to understand that, it's every drop of this concept we have of deity indwells Jesus bodily. That alone sets him as utterly superior to the Stoikea, utterly superior to any other supernatural being that anybody could imagine. So what Paul is saying, again, is, look, don't get led astray by all this talk about exaltation of angels and what you can do with angels and all this other stuff, the mystical relationship you can have with angels and your connectedness to what's going. Don't get led astray. Don't hand over Jesus for that stuff. Don't trade. It's a bad trade. It's a stupid trade because in Jesus all the fullness of deity dwells bodily. That last word bodily is Greek somatikos. It describes the permanent, and this is an interesting point that Harris makes. And if you think about it, it's one of those things that you might just not even be present in your mind. He says this bodily reference describes the permanent post-incarnational state of Christ. When we think of Christ in a term like bodily, we think of the incarnation. We think of Jesus' ministry when he's out walking around with the disciples, the incarnation, God become man, that sort of thing. But in this context, Paul's talking about a permanent indwelling of all that the deity is, is still indwelling Jesus bodily. It's post crucifixion. Harris uses the phrase post-incarnation because, again, incarnation refers to the birth, the things that characterize the life and ministry of Jesus while he was on earth before the cross. And just the wording here points out that Paul's actually talking about the state of Jesus now. It's just an interesting observation that's easy to not think about, easy to read over, or really not even have pop into your head. And Harris adds, the separation of katoi k, that's the verb for dwelling, from somatikos suggests that the two distinct affirmations are being made. One, that the total plenitude of the Godhead dwells in Christ eternally, and that this fullness now permanently resides in Christ in bodily form. It is true that before the incarnation, the play Roma, that's the Greek word for fullness here, it is true that before the incarnation, the play Roma did not reside in Christ bodily. Again, because before the incarnation, Christ didn't have a body. He had to be born of a woman. So it's true that the play Roma did not reside in Christ bodily, somatikos. It is not true that before the incarnation, the play Roma did not reside in him at all. See, that's where a lot of cults I'll break in here. That's where a lot of cults want to go. And they want to have Jesus be a created being and something lesser than God. And what Harris is saying is, look, the language here, since we have katoi ke, we have this present idea, this notion that whatever is being described in terms of this dwelling is ongoing. It's not a snapshot. It's an ongoing kind of thing, an ongoing kind of reality. And that reality is bodily. And we're talking about Jesus after the resurrection. He's saying, look, there's really only one way to sort of parse this. It has to mean that the characteristics of Godhead were with Jesus both bodily in the incarnation and also after the incarnation, this post-incarnational state. And that by virtue of its transcendence, this qualities transcendence of the incarnation, it exists after the incarnation. Harris is saying, we really need to realize that for Paul, this indwelling of all the fullness of God in Christ is sort of transcending time. It transcends these stages in what we think of as the life of Jesus. You know, it's an eternal sort of situation. And that again has to mean that even prior to the incarnation, apart from the incarnation, the play Roma, the fullness of God did dwell in Christ in some way. It wasn't bodily before the incarnation, but the fullness of who God was was in Christ even before the incarnation. So Harris is angling here for Paul's language, the logic of Paul's language, the way Paul is expressing this, as telegraphing again the notion that Christ is one with God. You know, it's not incrementally. He doesn't get it in stages. He's not a lesser being. In him dwells the fullness of deity bodily. And again, dwells being in the present tense and the context for that present tense being post-incarnation. So Harris is making a very simple observation. If this status of the fullness of God isn't dependent on what we think of as Christ's earthly ministry, it transcends that. And it's enduring. It's eternal. If it's eternal, then we have to apply it to all parts of Christ's existence, so to speak. So back to Harris, he says, Paul thus implies both the eternal deity and the permanent humanity of Christ. Now there's another kind of wild thought. I want to read that again. Thus Paul implies both the eternal deity and the permanent humanity of Christ. In other words, Christ didn't lose his humanity in the resurrection. He still has some sort of body. Now Paul makes this clear. He links Jesus' body with the body we will receive in 1 Corinthians 15, the celestial flesh idea that we've spent a whole episode on that with David Burnett before. But do you realize, again, that it's not like flesh. It's a body. It's celestial flesh. That doesn't mean it's non-human. It means it's more than human. Again, we've spent a whole episode on this in 1 Corinthians 15. But if you're going to say that, that means that Christ is not divorced now from his humanity. And neither will we be. We will, again, be in a new body, but it will still be human in some way. It just transcends the humanity that we know, that we can grasp, that we experience. And it's the same with Jesus, which is kind of a neat thought, because he never loses the status of being our brother. He never loses that status, that human connection. And Harris, back to him, he says, moreover, katoike, somatikos, that combination, dwelling and then bodily, implies that both before and after his resurrection, Christ possessed a soma, a body. That's the end of the quotation. We'll pick a few more things from Harris as we go. But just in that one verse, there's just a lot of theology packed into that. And not only is Christ shown to be preeminent over these exalted supernatural beings that we talked about last time, the stoike and stuff that we're going to encounter as we proceed, as we keep going through the epistle, not only is he preeminent to them, but this lays the foundation for his preeminence in other ways as well. And you get that just from this one statement and this one verse. So that's why a lot of people look at Colossians 2.9 as the climax, and we're only in chapter 2, of what Paul wants to say about Jesus. Now, the next thing that we want to do, and again, we're going to dip back into Harris here, is elaborate a little more on in him of Colossians 2.9. So again, we've noted that the verse is packed with theology, but we want to sort of drill down on this phrase, because this is a phrase, in him or in Christ. Really, there are different variations of this in the New Testament. You have in him, you have in Christ, you have in Christ Jesus. In Greek, it could be Ento, Christo, Jesu, and definite article doesn't have to be there. Sometimes it's just in Christ, not in Christ Jesus. But you get a whole range of these that all say the same thing, have the same idea in view anyway. And the in Christ idea, the in him idea, is a big deal theologically, because it occurs so frequently, especially in Paul's writings, but it has different contexts. So Paul doesn't always use it the same way, even though he uses it a lot. So we need to drill down here a little bit, again, just because a lot of people in the audience are going to be familiar with this whole discussion. And Harris says this, he starts off his discussion of in him. And in that discussion, you can also be thinking of in Christ, or in Christ Jesus, these similar phrases. He says this is a distinctly Pauline expression with about 170 examples. That's a lot. 170 examples in the Pauline corpus. If we include the phrases En auto, excuse me, En auto in him, and En ho, ho is a relative pronoun. So in him, just saying it another way, in him or in who, which, or something like that, when they refer to Jesus. So you get 170 times that Paul uses this sort of expression, even though he uses different words at some parts, some points, to communicate it. But 170 of these, from a theological viewpoint, Harris says Paul's use of En to crystal falls into two classes. So when Paul uses this phrase and phrases that overlap with it, sort of two categories. Number one, he uses it where Christ is an individual person distinct from others. And he uses it where Christ is a corporate person, including others. Now, just a couple of examples here. So the first one, using it where Christ is an individual person distinct from other people. If we go to Philippians two, five, have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. So Paul is specifically referring to the man, the person Christ, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. But Paul doesn't, you know, he uses it another way. The second category main category is Christ as a corporate person that includes others. So Romans eight, one, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So he's not talking about the man per se, the person again, who went to the cross. He's talking about the body of Christ and our inclusion in that corporate body. Okay, so Paul, fundamentally, you know, he'll use the phrase in him in Christ, but he's, you can sort of, you know, put those occurrences into the one of those two big buckets. Now, Harris says in the former case, that Christ, you know, using it of Christ as an individual person and Christ in Christ often bears the sense in personal intimate fellowship or that is joined closely to the exalted Christ against still referring to a person, but even in his exaltation. In the latter case, the references the spiritual body of Christ, since we just said. Now, Harris proceeds from that point on again, you remember his books about prepositions and their theology. So, so this phrase and Christopher in Christ or in him, he devotes a lot of attention to that in the book, and he writes from a grammatical standpoint, there's a range of uses, even though you got two basic categories referring to Jesus as a person and individual referring to Jesus corporately. Okay, from a grammatical standpoint, you get a number of uses, a range of uses, and the uses may be conveniently, even if somewhat arbitrarily grouped into the following six categories. A paraphrase will bring out the import of N, that's the Greek preposition N E N in the example cited. There's no rigid division between the categories. Some instances could appropriately be classified in one of the other categories, but he has he has six sort of semantic categories. And this is what scholars do, like if you take Greek, you know, in first year Greek, you're not going to get into this so much. But in second year Greek, it's about how, how do you use Greek for interpretation. And a lot of it is taking a preposition, in this case, N, and then an object down and Christo and looking at the usage of that and wondering about, okay, semantically speaking, you know, what, what, what might this phrase mean? It's very, you very quickly learn, especially in this case, that in Christ doesn't always sort of telegraph the same idea or the same information. And if this were a class in second year Greek, I would, as your professor, I would have you look up all of these instances, 170 of them or whatever, maybe I would just say N Christo, you know, make your homework assignment shorter, look them all up, and try to describe using whatever words that you want. Tell me how you would describe what Paul is getting at when he's trying to telegraph with this phrase. And that's what Harris is doing here in his book. So he has six, six usage categories for in Christ. And I'm going to read you the six, and I'm going to give you one example for each. And you'll, as you pay attention, you'll be able to sort of see how they're different. So one he calls Incorporative Union that Paul is trying, he's using the phrase in Christ to describe our incorporation in a, in a union relationship. And one of his verses would be, one of his examples would be 2nd Corinthians 517. Consequently, if anyone has been incorporated into Christ, now, you know, the Greek text is going to say consequently, if anyone is in Christ, but again, Harris told you he's going to sort of amplify and paraphrase to communicate the idea that, you know, the semantic idea that the phrase really is getting at. So he has 2nd Corinthians 517, this is the way he renders it to bring out the idea of Incorporative Union in this category. Consequently, if anyone has been incorporated into Christ, if anyone is in Christ, if anyone has been incorporated into Christ, he's a new creation. There's a new creation. So you become a new person because now you've been identified with, incorporated into the body of Christ, identified with Christ. Okay. 2nd category, Harris labels this as agency. Let me read it again. Another example, Ephesians 432, be kind to one another, tenderly affectionate and forgiving each other just as God through Christ forgave you. Again, the Greek text would say just as God and Christ, just as God in Christ forgave you. Well, in Christ, what does he mean by God in Christ forgave you? Harris says, well, Paul's really describing agency, the means by which, or the means on account of which, God forgave you or just as God through Christ forgave you. So Christ was the means by which you were forgiven by God. Again, just sort of paraphrasing it to bring the idea out. 3rd, Harris calls his 3rd category mode. Okay. There's something to do with the mode of something happening. When Paul uses the phrase end Christ, he's actually describing something that has to do with the mode or the means of something happening, how it happens or describing kind of awkwardly what it looks like. So Romans 12, 5. Now again, literally it would say in Christ we form one body and we are many. And Harris expands that to communicate the idea this way. He says, by our union with Christ, we form one body, though we are many. So how do we form one body? Well, what happens is we are united to Christ. That is the mode by which the other statement can be made that we form one body. 4th, cause. Right away, you're going to think that cause could have been used for one or two of the other earlier ones. And Harris admits that. Some of these could be one or the other. And again, in a second-year Greek class, it's the kind of thing you do. You sort of experiment with the text interpretively. And then you know, it's not just, oh, I like this one and not that one. Again, as your professor, I would say, well, that's an interesting choice. Does Paul use that phrase in connection with some of the other things in the verse elsewhere? And if he does, does your choice here align with that one there? Does that disqualify it? Is Paul talking about two different things? If you're talking about two different things, why would he couple the same words with that phrase in two places if he meant something different? Getting to sort of probe where you land, testing it for its coherence. Again, this is what you do in an exegesis class. This is what you do in a Greek class. You're thinking about the text. So Paul's 4th, not Paul's, but Murray Harris' 4th category here is cause. Here's the verse I'll reference for it, Romans 6-11. In the same way, consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God because of your union with Christ Jesus. So again, consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God and Christ is just, what does that mean? Again, that's what Harris is trying to say. Well, we need to think about what that might mean. And again, he thinks that it describes a causal sort of event. So in the same way, consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God because of your union with Christ Jesus. Now, by the way, and I'll come back to this, that category cause is where he puts Colossians 2-10, but we'll come back to that. 5. Harris' category is location. Philippians 2-5. In your relations with one another, adopt this attitude that was also in Christ Jesus. Here's how Harris would render it. In your relations with one another, adopt this attitude that was also displayed in Christ Jesus. Now, he has this labeled as location. And here, he's thinking about, Harris' argument is that Paul is thinking of Jesus as a person here. Jesus lived out, he displayed the kind of relationships that we should have, so he modeled them for us. That set of relationships is perfectly exemplified and modeled in this one person, in this person, his identity, who he was and how he lived. So that's why he labels it location. 6. And lastly, sphere of reference. Harris says, in this usage, n Christo is equivalent to the adjective christianos, which means the adjective Christian. And 2 Corinthians 12-2. I know a Christian man. I mean, in Greek it would be, I know a man n Christo. I know a man in Christ. And if you read the rest of the passage, we did a whole episode on this too. Paul is really referring to himself. And so it's appropriate to translate this. I know a Christian man. I know a man who's a Christian. Again, speaking of himself here, so that's sphere of reference. Now, you get six categories. If you want sort of deep literature on this, I mean, I'd say go read Harris' book. But Harris actually references the work of JDG Dunn, a book called The Theology of Paul the Apostle. It's a 1998 title. So if you want more reference, you can go to that. Now, recall that Harris had said earlier in relationship to Colossians 2-9 that he said, we need to interpret this in light of Colossians 1-19 because they're very similar. So Colossians 2-9, for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells. This verse, like Colossians 1-19, speaks of Christ himself, not the believer. Again, we read that from Harris earlier. And it does not have either of its most common meanings that is union with Christ or incorporation in Christ. Rather, it means it's speaking of Jesus himself. Now, of these six usage categories, Harris lands on cause for verse 10 and brings out that choice by the following rendering. Now, again, Harris has already talked about how if you go to Colossians 2-9, again, just to re-reference this fullness of deity idea that in him, in the person of Christ, in him, Christ himself, the whole fullness of deity dwells. That's Colossians 2-9. And then we turn to verse 10. And Harris, again, thinks that we should think of this causally. So in him, verse 9, the fullness, everything that is God, the fullness of deity, nothing lacking dwells bodily. Verse 10, he would render it this way. You have your completeness as a result of being in him. Now, I'm going to read you Colossians 2-10 in ESB. You have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. Again, Harris is saying he prefers this kind of rendering. And I'll admit, I kind of like it too. It makes good sense to me. Speaking of the Colossians now, verse 9 is about Jesus himself, in him dwells the fullness of God bodily. Now, he turns his attention to the Colossians. You have your completeness as a result of being in Christ who is so on and so forth. The rest of what Colossians 2-10 says, who is the head of all rule and authority. So in other words, what Christ did is the cause of your completeness. Your completeness is a result of what he did. He is the cause of your own completeness. He is the cause of your filling. That is, this one who is superior to the Stoikeia, and follow his argument to the Colossians. He is shooting at their exaltation of other supernatural beings. He is saying, the one who is superior to the Stoikeia, he is the one who is the head of every ruler and authority. That one has completed you. This means on one hand you lack nothing with respect to your spiritual status because of what Jesus did and your inclusion in him. His corporate body, which by virtue of him being entirely filled individually with the fullness of deity, means that your status is that of belonging to God, belonging in his family. Harris actually comments a little bit on this. Here's how he explains his thinking, and again, the way he nuances Colossians 1.19 and Colossians 2.9, and then this thought with Colossians 2.10 about the fact that the Colossians also have their completeness because of what this one who in whom dwells the fullness of the God had bodily, that's why we're complete. Our status is a result of who he is, and who he is is everything God is, and that means by definition that he is superior to every other supernatural being. That one did something, i.e. the cross, the result of which was our status, our standing, our inclusion in the family of God. You see, Paul is leaving no room at all for a contribution of any other supernatural entity. Unneeded, unnecessary, superfluous, just not even on the table. Harris, again, just to pick up a few more of his comments, he points out again in his discussion. There's just some interesting things here. He goes back to Colossians 1.19 and he asks, the verses, in him, again, all the fullness was pleased to dwell. That's what the verse literally says, in him was all the fullness pleased to dwell, and you have to ask, well, who's fullness? See, in our English Bibles, we'll have something like, in him was all the fullness of God pleased to dwell. The word God doesn't actually appear in Colossians 1.19. You get it from some of these other verses. You get what Paul's talking about. That's what Harris discusses. He's like, don't be fooled here either. Don't be fooled here either, because we know he's talking about God because of what happens later in chapter 2. This is the kind of passage that can be used, can be twisted. If we're thinking of in him corporately, then a newager who actually knows a little bit of theology enough to be dangerous can say, Paul's talking about how we're all deity now. We're all God. No, he's actually not. Or he can turn around and say, well, God's not really in this one verse. In him, all the fullness was pleased to dwell, fullness of what? And he can go off in another tangent and say, well, Jesus wasn't really filled with deity. He was filled with something else, maybe virtue or wisdom or something like that. And so no, no, you have to take Colossians 1.19 and Colossians 2.9 and 10. You gotta let Scripture interpret Scripture. And you don't go off into crazy town where Jesus is something less than Colossians 2.9 says he is. You fixate on Colossians 1.19 and try to make him something less than Colossians 2.9 says. And you also don't want to make yourselves, individual humans, more than you are. We're not gods. That's not the case. We are who we are as a result of what the one who is God, the one in whom all the fullness of God dwelled bodily and still dwells bodily. We are who we are because of something he did. We get the result of that. He's the cause, our status is the result. Again, it's a lot of theology just packed into just two verses here. Harris, he has a few of these summary statements here. Colossians 1.19, in him that is in Christ the personal God in all his fullness was pleased to dwell comprehensively, not just at the incarnation. And in him there dwells in Colossians 2.9 the whole fullness of deity in bodily form. Again, there's a completeness aspect of it. There's a permanence aspect of it. There's an eternal aspect of it. All these things that Jesus is, and again because of who Jesus is, we reap the result of him doing something for us on our behalf. Again, it's not something. I hope you get to a point like this where you see sort of the cosmic significance in Paul's head of what happened at the cross. It's just utter stupidity to think that our works contribute to that. It's glad you came along and did that thing or didn't do that other thing because all this stuff about Jesus, your works just tipped the scales in your favor, just tipped it right over the edge there. You made it because you pitched in. It's just nonsense. It is so foreign to New Testament theology. It's hard to even find words for how nonsensical the idea is that what we do somehow supplements this person who lacks nothing of what God is. It's just absurd. At the end of the day, it's just absurd. But again, we've devoted a lot of time on this podcast to talking about how Christians just struggle with it. And they do. They do. Colossians 2, 10 again just so that doesn't get lost here. Harris viewing that as this cause and effect kind of thing. You Colossians have your completeness as a result of being in him, being in Christ. What Christ did was the cause of your completeness in your filling and he's superior to everything. I want to take a bit of a rabbit trail. It's not really a rabbit trail, but I want to focus here a little bit on one term to wrap up the episode. And that is the term play Roma. Now, this term as you've already, if you're paying attention, you've already heard me use it in relation to Colossians 2, 9 and 10. In him draws the fullness, the play Roma of the Godhead bodily. This term was what led a number of people to say that Colossians was written later after the time of Paul, again to situate the book in the era when Gnosticism as a sect or as a theology, a school of thought, however you want to put that. This term play Roma was what prompted a lot of people to move that direction to situate Colossians in that era and therefore divorce Paul, Paul is the author from it. And the reason for that is because this term play Roma shows up in the Nag Hammadi, not just the Nag Hammadi Gospels, but the Nag Hammadi texts that are the core scripture writings of Gnosticism and the Gnostic movement, if you will. And so when those texts were discovered, and we get the Gnostics talking about the play Roma all over the place, and then the term occurs here in Paul, and it occurs in other places in the New Testament, too. People were just led to think, well, like we got these Gnostic texts and they're in Coptic, but at least the Gospel of Thomas, there's some fragments in Greek, and they date carbon 14-wise, like to this second, third century for the Nag Hammadi stuff anyway, and the Greek stuff that move it back even a little further, because now we know that the Coptic is a translation of Greek. So they're thinking, Paul, there's no lived into the next century when this stuff we know existed, so Paul couldn't have written this stuff somebody else did. And therefore, if somebody else wrote Colossians, think back to our first episode on Colossians where we talked about the context for the book and the Colossian heresy. If somebody besides Paul wrote this later, that means its Christology is later than Paul. Its Christology is later than the Book of Acts. Its Christology is later than the disciples. See, that allows scholars to say, well, the historical Jesus. At the time, nobody thought he was God. Nobody thought this stuff about Godhead and Trinity, and all that stuff comes later. When the Christians have to respond to what the Gnostics are saying, and then they come up with this Jesus deity stuff. It's kind of an insidious path of thought. You have to realize where these ideas come from and what they mean. This is why, in this case, something like authorship is a big deal. It's really why Second Temple literature is a big deal, because if you didn't have Second Temple literature to show that basically everything that Paul is talking about, Colossians, comes from Jewish texts, not Gnostic texts, the desert of Egypt somewhere, but it comes from Jewish texts that predate Paul by a couple centuries. Unless you have that material, then it's just like his word against her word. It's just one opinion over against the other. The Second Temple stuff is really important data. These are really important data for establishing the fact that you do not have to divorce Paul from writing this book. That is significant because therefore you don't have to divorce its Christology from the original New Testament era. It's really important. This word, Pluroma, the presence of this word in Gnostic texts and in the New Testament, it was part of this discussion. Now, I'm going to reference an article for you again, and this isn't something we could just post on our episode page. Scholarship, serious New Testament scholarship and serious Gnostic scholarship for that matter has shown that the presence of the word Pluroma in Colossians is not a coherent argument for pushing the date of Colossians forward in time to the Gnostic era. That is not a good argument. It is not the case that Colossians has to be situated in and among Gnostic movements because this word appears. There's a major study on that. It's by a guy named P. Derek Overfield. The article is entitled Pluroma, A Study in Content and Context. It's for the journal New Testament Studies, Volume 25, Number 3, 1979. All the people out there pump in YouTube videos about Gnosticism and Paul and denying the Christology of the New Testament. If they weren't dim bulbs or weren't uninformed, they could have read this article and known they were wrong. But that's not what happens on YouTube and the internet. We all know that. This is why I try to alert you to things, alert you to scholarship. You can get this article. I have to put it in a protected folder. I can't just post it online willy nilly. Again, if you subscribe to the newsletter, you'll have access to this folder and this article. If you're interested in this subject, please take a look at it. Don't post it somewhere else. Just use it for your personal study. It's like we would do if in a classroom situation here. It's an important article. I'm going to read you the first couple paragraphs of this particular article just so that you know where he's going. The author writes, the object of this paper is to show from both a study of content and context that there is no integral relationship between the so-called technical or Gnostic use of the word play Roma as it is found in the second century Christian heretical sex and the use of the word in the New Testament. The method employed in this essay is as follows. Firstly, an attempt will be made to define and explain the technical use of the word. This will involve us in an examination of some of the extant material of the second century Gnostic sex. Secondly, by means of a brief examination of sources that both pre and post date the first Christian century, we shall demonstrate that there is a non-technical use of the word that was fairly widespread in this period. In the third section of the essay, we will expound all the New Testament verses which contain the substantive play Roma. The fourth and final section will be concerned with the use made by the Gnostics of the actual verses examined in the third section of the essay. In this fourth section, we will attempt to prove what we believe the second part of the essay will suggest and the third part will offer as at least a quite acceptable alternative explanation, i.e. in other words that the use of the term play Roma in the New Testament is not in any way related to the use of the same term by the heretical sex. Again, this is a significant study of this issue. It's going to run quite contrary to a lot of the nonsense you're going to get online and whatnot about Paul and play Roma and Gnosticism and Colossians and all that. You need to be aware that this data, this material exists. Now, just to wrap up here, just a few sort of statistics, a few short comments about play Roma in the New Testament and its immediate context, just not drawn from this article but drawn from the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology edited by Silva. Again, it's a resource that you should all have. It's a major work and pretty current work on New Testament word studies. If you look at the Septuagint, for instance, the Septuagint and the New Testament use play Roma in a non-technical sense. In other words, when you find the Septuagint, which obviously predates the New Testament period and of course predates the Gnostic period, when you see play Roma used there and in the New Testament, it's not used in the way that Gnostic literature would be using it. You say, well, I would understand that if you tell me how Gnostic literature uses it. Well, play Roma in Gnosticism. Again, if you want sort of a visual presentation of this with some slides, you can go up to YouTube and put my last name in there, Hyzer and maybe Da Vinci Code and Gnostic cosmology. Years ago, probably pushing 10. Well, that's not 10 years. Eight years. Maybe seven, eight years ago, I did a lecture series on Gnosticism and one of the lectures was Gnostic cosmology. In a nutshell, when a Gnostic thought of the play Roma, you have to realize in Gnostic theology, the God of the Bible is not the true God, like the ultimate God. The God of the Bible is an evil entity, an evil guy. The higher ultimate God is the good one and the God of the Bible is a bad guy. So that's a fundamental item. Now, the ultimate good God supposedly sort of either pinched off pieces of himself or used dispersed parts of himself into the universe and created other supernatural beings called Aons. There are lots of Aons. Sophia was one, the Logos was one, the Christos was one, okay, all these terms. They're different supernatural entities, but they are derivative from this non-personal force or something like that, the ultimate God in Gnosticism. If you put all the Aons in the same room, so to speak, if they rejoined themselves collectively, they would form the fullness. They would form the play Roma. They would reunite and reassemble themselves into the ultimate God, this God force thing in Gnosticism. That's what Gnostics mean by play Roma. That's a very technical specific field specific, sect specific meaning of the term. And what the author of that article said and what the New International Dictionary New Testament theology and exegesis says is, look, play Roma was a common term. It meant lots of other normal things. Just because it was used, doesn't mean that the writer is thinking about this Aon thing, the Aon meeting of the ages or something. That's not what he's thinking. So if you go look in the Septuagint and the New Testament, just to read a little bit from that dictionary, in the Septuagint, the noun play Roma is found only 15 times, including five times in the Psalms, almost always for Hebrew mellow, which means full or fullness. And the alternative noun, play Rosas occurs nine times. And that is used to translate several Hebrew terms. The Koumaran writings mainly use the Hebrew mellow to denote the completion of a period of time. Times up. Time is full. Okay. And also in the pregnant eschatological sense that all existence and events are fulfilled, they are brought to completion according to a firm plan that is already fixed by God. In the time of salvation expected at the end, God will fill his land with the rich bounty of blessing and all the wealth of the nations will be brought together at Jerusalem. And then, the entry quotes a few density scrolls to that effect. The noun play Roma in the New Testament is found 17 times, mainly in the Pauline Corpus 12 times and otherwise three times in Mark, and also in Matthew 9, 16 and John 1, 16. The term is used with a variety of senses, again, as any lexicon would show you. A Paul uses it to speak of fulfillment, things being, you know, brought to fruition. We use the expression come full circle. Everything is complete now. So Paul uses play Roma in that way in certain passages. And the dictionary entry, you know, gives us a few of these. I'll just jump back in here. But when the set time had fully come, okay, the fullness of time, you know, passage in Galatians 4, 4 and 5, the word play Roma shows up in there. He's not talking about a bunch of eons getting together. I guess it's not a Gnostic use. When the fullness of time had come when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law that he might receive adoption to sonship. Again, the apostle doesn't mean that does not merely mean that a particular period of time has expired, or that an appointed time has arrived. Rather, he indicates that in the divine economy of salvation, human time has reached its full measure. Likewise, in Ephesians 110, he links the divine economy, administration or plan, with the play Roma, okay, the fullness of time. And just gives you an idea of how Paul is using this. Now, Paul also uses it of the fullness of Christ, like we just said. We just spent time on Colossians 2.9. All the fullness, all the play Roma of deity lives and bodily form in Christ. What is in view here, the dictionary continues, is entirely related to Christ's death and resurrection. Again, it has nothing to do with a bunch of eons floating around in outer space or wherever, that if you could call a meeting, you know, if you did roll call, then you'd have the play. It has nothing to do with that. Okay, it's about, you know, what is in view here is entirely related to Christ's death and resurrection. For this reason, believers have been brought to the fullness in him, Colossians 2.10, being reconciled through faith renewed and made to participate in his triumph, Colossians 2.11-15. Many have thought that these comments are Paul's answer to the specific Gnostic features of the Colossian heresy. It is true that play Roma was a technical term in later Valentinian Gnosticism, but various scholars have shown that the expression in Colossians 2.9 cannot be equated with the Gnostic hierarchy of beings lying between God, the ultimate God, and the world. It must mean the sum of total divine attributes in Paul. To be sure a sweeping rejection of any relation to Gnosticism would be erroneous as well. I mean, you know, the Gnostics are going to pick up this term. So by virtue of them picking up the term and other mystical schools again picking up the idea, it's not that you can completely divorce everything, you know, but Gnosticism as a school of thought does not exist yet. It strands, as we said in our very first episode, the ingredients in the recipe that will produce Gnosticism. There's this kind of language, okay? But you don't have, again, the Gnostic Cosmic Hierarchy in view. So I just wanted to throw that out, again, just about the word play Roma. If you want to do, again, more research on that, you can access the article, please subscribe to the newsletter. And again, what we're trying to do here on the podcast, and I think this episode was illustrative again, just like the last one was, is there's a lot going on in any given verse of the New Testament, but in the old, of course, for that matter, but this is a good test case, as were the preceding verses, where there's just so much going on, that's below the surface, that I think it's useful to help, you know, to illustrate how scholars sort of take something apart and, you know, kind of the discipline of how things are thought about. So I think that's useful, again, for us in this audience, we're not going to do this in every podcast episode, we're going to finish chapter two next time, which means we'll be, you know, going through a lot more material in one episode than just camping on two verses and a couple phrases, but it's useful to realize that the different layers, the depth that scholars can, you know, can and do work in to try to produce relevant, useful material. And so we want to expose you to their method, you know, kind of what you do when you're in the seminary, you're in graduate school, and then also the resources that emerge from that kind of resource or that kind of, you know, work, you know, the resources that emerge from all of that labor to work in the text. So again, Paul, you know, leading up to these two verses very intentionally, and I think we can see for good reason. Okay, Mike, I don't think anybody's complaining that we're spending entire episodes on two or three verses. Trust me, I bet if everybody could get one hour on each verse individually, they would probably prefer that. So nobody. Yeah, they might want that. You're right. Absolutely. Well, good deal. Okay. I look forward to finishing up chapter two next episode and still coming off the high of the conference. Again, I just can't thank everybody enough for, for coming to that. It's very humbling. Mike, it was thrilled. Yeah. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, it was fun. All right. Well, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com. We're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 231, Colossians chapter 2, verses 11 and 12. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, you know what tomorrow is, or I guess? Yes, I do. And? I do indeed. It's the first day that you lose for an entire year. It's the first day of the defense of the Fantasy Football Championship. That's what it is. In a short 16 weeks, I will regain that title, I promise. Keep dreaming. Keep hope alive, Trey. Keep it alive. Pugs are going down. The draft is, we're talking about our Fantasy Football draft for the Naked Bible Fantasy Football League. You know, Maury has been hard at work. You know, he's been working, you know, some higher math problems. You know that movie, Rain Man? Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. The autistic savant. Well, I have an autistic savant pug. And so whenever he opens his eyes, that's who I'm going to pick. Wow. See, I don't have to rely on an autistic pug dog for my picks, because actually no football. So I just. And you lost last year, didn't you? You lost in my pug last year. Right. But I won the year before. So I thought maybe I'd let you share. I'm sure you lost a lot of tears over it. Yeah. Gosh, you're a lot of grief. And I also created one of those survival leagues. It's Free. It's on Yahoo. So if anybody's interested, you can go find that out on the Facebook page, the podcast page, or the Naked Bible Group, or just shoot me an email at trace-tricklandgmail.com. I'll send you a link if you want to play with Mike and I. And I think there's probably a dozen or so people that have signed up, but it's free. Just where you pick one team a week. You can't pick the same team twice. And if you pick incorrectly, you're eliminated. So it could be a two-week thing, or it could be an entire season thing. So we'll see how good your predictions are. Yeah. Well, again, just for the sake of listeners, that's different than our fantasy football league. But yeah, I'll jump in and try that this year. I guess I'm going to have to start introducing you as the champion because I will concede, you know, you did win it. You're the reigning champion. So you, you, you've earned it. So I guess the pugnacious pugs just still, still basking in their glory. Oh my gosh, do you know how many people right now love us talking about fantasy football? I wonder how many people talking about pugs, you know, so people probably don't even know I'm on the show that is fast forward till you start talking. This is actually a good distractor because you introduced the episode as Colossians two, 11 and 12. And for anyone who is listening, they thought, well, weren't you guys going to finish, you know, like Colossians chapter two today? The answer is no, no, but I've failed again. And so I've given up plotting it. Please, I promise you, Mike, people would would would rather you do one hour per verse. I guarantee it. So we're not all right. Well, we have thrown that to the wind. We have thrown planning to the wind. More content, the better. We're back to two verses again. So complaints. All right. Well, that's good. That's good. Well, it is Colossians two, 11 through 12 today. And I think a number of people in the audience sort of knew this was coming because of the content of these two verses, this whole reference of Paul to circumcision and then some circumcision made without hands and then baptism, like what in the world's going on with that? To start us off, I'm going to read Colossians two. I'll start in verse eight, again, to pick up where we've already been. And I'm actually going to read through verse 15, because again, we want to, the stuff needs to be contextualized. In this case, I think we're going to see at a few points where if we ignore what went before, and if we ignore what comes after these two verses, we can really sort of veer off into some bad theology, the land of bad theology. So let's just read Colossians two, eight through 15, to jump in here. Paul writes, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority in him. This is verse 11. In him also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. And you who were dead in your trespasses and uncircumcision, the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by trampling over them in him. So that's again Colossians 2, 8 through 15. And we want to focus today on verses 11 and 12. Last episode was verses 9 and 10. Of course, before that was 6 through 8. And we're confronted right away with what in the world is going on in Paul's head using referencing circumcision and baptism. Again, I'm going to qualify it by saying apparently. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to make some initial observations. There are points of explicit clarity in this passage. In other words, the text just sort of states things right up front, very forthrightly. You know, stuff that's just really hard to miss or mess up. There's some of that. And then there are other points that require some digging and some careful thought. We're going to start with the clear stuff with this explicit clarity in certain respects and stuff you'd have to work hard to miss. So first I would say the content of verses 9 through 10 provides a means to eliminate some of the interpretive alternatives that we're going to talk about when we get to verses 11 and 12. For instance, let's just think about verses 9 and 10. In him, that is in Christ, there dwells the entire fullness of deity. That is the Godhead in all its fullness, the entire measure of deity, as we talked about last time, in bodily form. So in Christ, there dwells the entire fullness of deity in bodily form. And you, your Colossians out there, have your completeness. This is verse 10. You have your completeness as a result of being in him, in Christ. In other words, what Christ did was the cause of your completeness. It's the cause of your filling, this idea that you are fully in Christ. Your fullness, your completeness as a result of what Christ did. Now, just think about the content of that, verses 9 and 10, that our filling is complete means that our filling or completeness in Christ isn't supplemented or capped off by baptism. It's either complete, like Paul says it is, or it's not. He talks about the Colossians being complete in Christ before he encounters anything about baptism. And again, if baptism adds something to it, then Paul just goofed in verses 9 and 10. You're either complete or not. Your status in the family of God is either complete in what Christ did or it isn't. And Paul says it's complete. So that's pretty much obvious thing number one. Secondly, when you get into Colossians 12, I'm going to telegraph here a little bit the content of verse 12, Colossians 2.12, links our completeness in Christ to our having been raised with him. In other words, when we get to verse 12, Paul's going to be talking about having been raised, which is an heiress passive verb. Having been raised with Christ, that's the same language that we just read in verses 9 and 10. So it ties into verses 9 and 10. And since our completeness is found in the work of Christ on the cross, he's not talking about baptism and completing us. When Paul gets to this completion language in verse 12, or actually this being raised language in verse 12 in the powerful working of God, and then he goes on in verses 13, 14, 15 with your dead and trespasses, but now you're forgiven. Your record of debt has been canceled. Your sins are forgiven. All its legal demands were nailed to the cross. When he starts doing this, when he starts talking about the cross, that is the work of Christ. That is the thing that made you complete back in verses 9 and 10. And so we can't, or we shouldn't, read verses 11 and 12 with the circumcision baptism stuff as a competition or as some sort of alternative statement to these ideas. Because Paul gives us the ideas of our completeness in verses 9 and 10. He is going to be talking about the work of Christ on the cross in verses 13 through 15. And in the middle there, he hits the baptism circumcision stuff. And he's not going to contradict himself in those two verses against what he has said in verses 9 and 10 and verses 13 and 15. So we need to keep this in mind. All of these trajectories that are begun in verses 9 and 10 are completeness in him, in Christ. What did Christ do? Well, what he did on our behalf to enable us to be forgiven, to have our trespasses forgiven, to have the record of debt canceled, didn't involve baptism. And it certainly wasn't linked to his own fleshly circumcision. What that was was what happened on the cross. And so that needs to inform how we read verses 11 and 12. It's going to help us eliminate certain things from how we interpret what's going on in verses 11 and 12. All of this is important, this being made alive. I mean, just look at verse 13. God made us alive together with Christ. Well, the whole making alive of Christ is a reference to the resurrection. It's not baptism, it's the resurrection. And then again, the language of the cross there, I hope you get the idea. We're looking at these two verses 11 and 12 today, but we can't dispense with what has gone before and what has fallen. Again, we just have to keep these things in mind. Last little item here. Not only do we have the content of the sense of being in Christ, verses 9 and 10, what in Christ is, the basis of our being labeled that way. If you can even go back to verses 6 and 7, we've received him, we're planted, we're rooted, we're built up in him, we're established in him, all this kind of stuff. What does that mean? Does that mean in his character, you know, the stuff he taught? No, it's a reference to what he did on our behalf, and that's a reference to the cross. You get to verse 15, and he starts talking about disarming rulers and authorities, putting them to open shame. Well, that's actually consistent with what happened on the cross as well. Okay, we have Jesus die on the cross, and even more specifically, that isn't what disarmed the rulers and authorities, again, the spiritual powers of darkness. What undid them was his resurrection, and this thought, again, we're going to devote a whole episode to this next time around, because we will be hitting verses 13 through 15 in the next episode at least. This whole notion of linking the resurrection to the defeat, the delegitimization of the rulers and authorities, again, the spiritual powers of darkness, linking that to resurrection, we specifically find in 1 Peter 3, if you've read the Unseen Realm, you know this already, but the whole idea of baptism, which corresponds to this, I'm reading 1 Peter 3 now, 21 and 22, Peter says, baptism which corresponds to this, well, what's the this? Well, the this is a few verses preceding in verse 18, Jesus being put to death in the flesh and made alive in the spirit. It's the death and the resurrection. That's what baptism corresponds to. Okay, what happened on the cross? It's an analogy, it's a visible analogy. So baptism which corresponds to this now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through what? Through your baptism? No, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him. Now, in Unseen Realm, I talked about baptism, you know, playing off, again, this analogy or this typology with Enoch, but this language about appeal to a good conscience really referred to a pledge of loyalty, you know, and I quote B. Dagg, which is the major lexicon on that, that semantic nuance of the term. Can you can go back and look at that in Unseen Realm if you care to investigate the basis for what I'm saying here? That's fine. That's why I wrote it. But baptism, again, this appeal to the conscience connected with baptism. This is a loyalty pledge. That's really what baptism is. It describes a decision. A loyalty pledge is not something passive. Okay, you have to make a decision to be loyal. Again, this is going to help us contextualize this comment that Paul made about disarming the rulers and authorities, because when Peter talks about disarming the rulers and authorities and links baptism, loops baptism into that discussion, he's talking about a loyalty oath that is a decision. It's not passive. It's not something somebody does for you. It's an active decision that looks back at the cross and the resurrection. Another way to look at 1 Peter 3 is that Christians who are baptized are not viewing baptism as what defeated the dark powers, but they're looking back on the death, verse 18, 1 Peter 3, 18, the death, and then the resurrection of Christ. That's what defeated the powers. And baptism, again, is typologically going to signify that. Well, again, Peter is going to be consistent with Paul. And so we need to have these things sort of lurking, you know, running in the background of our heads when we look at Colossians 2, 11, and 12. So there's some clear stuff in verses 9 and 10 about our completeness in Christ. Again, that we're not partially complete. That's an oxymoron. Okay, you're either complete or you're not. And Paul says we're complete in the work of Christ. And this work of Christ is what gives us forgiveness of sins. It's what cancels the record of our debt. It's, you know, it nails those things to the cross. It disarms rulers and authorities. All of that, again, needs to be kept in mind because what's nestled in between here are verses 11 and 12. And again, if I could be so bold, I think in a number of respects, there are a lot of Christians out there, there are a lot of, you know, denominations out there that I think just really don't handle this very well. And we actually devoted a whole episode on baptism in the, now the distant days of the podcast, all the way back at episode five. I mean, we're into the 230s now. So all the way back in episode five, we looked at Colossians 2, 11 and 12 specifically in regard to the baptism question. And really, there are other episodes there that revolve around baptism. If you listen to them all, you'll find out that a lot of the denominational distinctions and the creeds, they articulate salvation really well in places. And then they'll just sort of undermine some of these statements in the way they talk about baptism, which is really unfortunate. It creates confusion. And I've been in denominational churches before, and I've seen in real time, as it were, people confused by this language. It's just unnecessary. So I would recommend that listeners go back and catch episode five. But I'm going to actually quote from the transcript a little bit here because, you know, in that episode, I talked about, again, what I think is this sort of a careless application of observing a link between baptism and circumcision. So that old episode presumed, it sort of spoke to a person that presumed or embraced the idea that what Colossians 2, 11 and 12 are talking about, what those two verses are talking about, is a reference to water baptism. That's assumption number one. And you must say, well, Mike, what else could it be? Look at the verse. Having been buried with him in baptism, what else could it be? Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. But way back in episode five, I presumed again for the sake of the episode that we're talking about water baptism. Since water baptism is sort of this initiatory for all sorts of Christian contexts, this initiatory right or ritual at the end of which, you know, you become part of the community, that it was very easy for many people to see if they're thinking, you know, water baptism, they would be thinking about circumcision literally as well. And so that whole episode number five was about, okay, if you're going to make this assumption, if you're going to presume water baptism here and a link with circumcision, how do we think about that? How should we think about that? And my take was pretty simple. If you're going to link circumcision and water baptism as respectively the sign of the Covenants, the Old Testament, that would be the Abrahamic Covenant, and then the New Covenant, you know, which was fulfilled in Christ, okay, if you're going to do that, you know, these things, circumcision and baptism are the sign of the Covenants, and therefore these things, circumcision and baptism are sign acts that put the recipient into the community, you know, the people of God as it were, then you need to be consistent. And what I meant by that in that episode, and now of course, is that if you're going to make this equation and you're going to look at it literally, water baptism and physical circumcision, you know, we're analogous to each other, then you should not say anything about baptism that you cannot say about circumcision. Your assumption is that baptism has replaced circumcision, and if you're following this trajectory, and Colossians 2, 11 and 12 is often the proof text for that idea. So you have to ask yourself a couple of questions if you care about consistency between the signs. Example, first question, what did Old Testament circumcision accomplish? And what didn't it accomplish? Number two, Old Testament circumcision obviously wasn't performed on women, so what did it mean for women? And how does that translate to any equation with baptism? Women were omitted. So how does the analogy work? You got to ask yourself some fundamental questions. And again, if I could be so bold, I think a lot of the context for some of the denominational statements and creeds and whatnot, they weren't thinking about these questions. They were thinking about other questions. There was some sort of immediacy, typically a response to what the Catholics were saying in the context of their affirmation. So I get that, but these are important questions. I'm going to quote from episode five. Here's how I handled this issue then. And I'm doing this because I want new listeners to, again, you can go back and listen to this series on baptism at the beginning of the history of the podcast. That's good. But I want new listeners to get some take on, if these two verses really are about water baptism, and now we have this reference to circumcision again, if you're going to look at it literally and you're going to fuse those two things, how should you be thinking about them? So I want to at least expose the audience to that. Then once I'm done here quoting from episode five, we're going to go off and take a deeper dive into how do we think about these verses, if indeed water baptism is in view? Because there are things to cover here that we'll do today that I did not do in episode five. And then we'll really shift gears. I'll throw you a curveball by what else this might be that isn't literal water baptism later in the episode. So from episode five, and if you're looking at this literally, literal water baptism analogous to literal circumcision, these two questions in mind, what did circumcision do? What didn't it do? What about women? Here's what I wrote, or what I said here. This is the transcript. First, circumcision neither provided nor ensured salvation. So we're hitting this first question, what did circumcision do and what didn't it do? It neither provided nor ensured salvation, nor did it lessen anyone's sinful impulse. The Old Testament story is dramatically clear that most circumcised Israelites apostasized, they turned to idolatry, which prompted the curse of Yahweh in the form of the exile. The fact that Israelite men were circumcised meant nothing with respect to their spiritual inclination or destiny. In fact, Paul specifically denies such an equation in Romans 4, where he labors to make the point that Abraham was justified prior to circumcision because he believed. Second, circumcision was not practiced on women. This may seem obvious, but female genital circumcision was and still is practiced among some cultures and religions in the Middle East. The fact that circumcision was only practiced on men in Israel should inform us that the cutting right itself did nothing with respect to one's ultimate spiritual destiny. Otherwise, women would not have been excluded. In other words, if this is the path to heaven, you're deliberately excluding women. Circumcision back to the transcripts. Circumcision did mean something to Israelite women, though the same thing I would suggest that it meant for men. For both male and female Israelites, the sign of circumcision was a physical, visible reminder that their race as Israelites and their very lives and the lives of their children began as a supernatural act of God on behalf of Abraham and Sarah. Circumcision was a constant reminder of God's grace to that original couple, to enable them to have a child. And to their posterity, undergoing circumcision did not bestow salvation. It was a reminder of the supernatural grace of God, in this case directed at a people whom God had chosen in love to give them the revelation of who he was and how to be rightly related to him. Additionally, for males, circumcision granted the recipient admission into the community of Israel, the community that had exclusive truth of the true God. This truth included Yahweh's covenant relationship with Israel and their need to have circumcised hearts. In other words, they needed to believe in Yahweh's promises and worship him alone. In ancient patriarchal Israel, women were members of the community through marriage to a circumcised man or by being born to Israelite parents. Intermarriage with foreign men, in other words those not circumcised unless not part of Yahweh's covenant community, was forbidden. This was a prohibition that maintained the purity of the membership and that purity was directly related to the spiritual significance of circumcision. Let me stop there. The significance was as you are now put into a community that has the truth about the true God. It didn't mean you were going to heaven when you died. You had to believe in your own heart. You had to have the circumcision of the heart as well. You had to believe that Yahweh was who he said he was. He was the God of all gods and that he had entered into a covenant with you, with your people. You had to believe that message, the content of that message and not worship any other God. Never turn somewhere else. This is salvation by trusting in the act of grace of this true God that you were able to learn about in your community because that God had chosen to give his revelation to that community alone. Circumcision lets you in that community, but you still had to believe and that applied both to men and women. Men and women were reminded of all of that plus their supernatural origins as a people by virtue of circumcision. Back to the way I put it in podcast number five, to summarize, membership in the community was important for a specific reason. Only this community had the truth, what Paul calls the oracles of God in Romans 3-2. Only Israel had the truth in regard to the nature of the true God among all gods and how one could be rightly related to him. In other words, only Israel knew about the way of salvation. Yahweh had created this human community with the goal of giving Israel truth, the way of salvation. This exclusivity is what it meant in Old Testament theology to be elect or to be chosen. Election was not equated with salvation. Since again, vast multitudes of quote-unquote elect Israelites were not saved from God's curse in response to their unfaithfulness. Every Israelite member of the exclusive community had to believe in the covenant promises and worship only Yahweh, trusting that relationship to result in an afterlife with their God. Circumcision merely meant access to these truths. And then I wrote, now let's apply this to baptism. It's easy to see how the meaning and significance of circumcision connects to baptism, whether one's position includes baptism of infants or not. Baptism of an infant makes that infant a member of the believing community, a local church. Hopefully, that church will teach the oracles of God. It will teach the way of salvation so that the child will hear the gospel at one point and believe. The hope would be the same for an adult recipient when Abraham and his entire household, even his servants, were circumcised. The account does not tell us who believed in Abraham's God and who didn't. The assumption was that as the members of his household observed God's blessing on Abraham and Abraham's faithfulness, then they too would believe in what was going on. Membership in the family of God would both foster and sustain faith. These were God's goals for the Old Testament people of God, the nation of Israel. The same is true of the people of God today known as the church. The sign and right have changed, but the theological point is the same. So that's the end of the transcript for episode five. So in other words, as an adult, believers baptism, this is how I was baptized. I had come to Christ, now we're going to get baptized. It's an outward enactment of what I am professing to believe. I could still go to heaven if I had never been baptized because I believed because my completeness to quote Paul in Colossians 2 is in Christ. It is not in my baptism and baptism doesn't supplement it because that would mean I'm really not complete. Paul would contradict himself. But the reverse is not true. I could go through the baptism and if I didn't really believe, if I went off and worshiped some other God, if I rejected the Gospel, don't expect me in heaven. So as an adult, again, this is what we're talking about, the relationship between these two things, salvation and by faith and baptism, for an infant. The infant is not being saved, their eternal life is not guaranteed by their baptism. The parents don't believe on behalf of the infant. The infant must make a choice as he grows up. He or she grows up. They're going to hear the Gospel again because they've been put into a community. Hopefully, again, the church that they have become now part of through this ritual act of baptism will teach them the true Gospel and they will believe it. They must believe the Gospel. It's not believing, well, at 9 o'clock, way back 15 years ago, I was baptized, saw men. No, that is not the Gospel. They must believe the Gospel. The baptism just puts them into a community where the Gospel will be taught. Again, that's the idea. At least, that's what should be the idea. So again, if you're going to go off on that perspective of Colossians 2, 11, and 12 that we're talking about water baptism and it has something to do with circumcision, you need to think well about the two sides of that equation and they need to be consistent. They can't be mutually contradictory. So that's what episode five was about. But now we need to go a little bit beyond that. I've already tipped my hand here and say that it's possible that Colossians 2, 11, and 12 has nothing to do with water baptism. Most people assume that it's a wet passage. Theologians like to call these things wet passage or not a wet passage. Is it water baptism or some other kind of baptism? It might be about water baptism, but it also might not. We need to jump into both of those things. But again, for the sake of our own consistency, I want to stick with thinking about it as water baptism, just again for the sake of continuity here. And we'll get to what it might be later on. Now, these are some of the harder things that we have to think about. It's going to take a little bit of concentration because there's a lot involved here. Yes, it'll get into some, it'll get into nuts and bolts. It'll get into grammar and verbs and participles and all that stuff. And I want you to see again why this is a difficult topic, especially if you are thinking water baptism here. So we have the statement, again, in Colossians 2, that in him, in Christ, the Colossians, and that's both you and Gentile mixed together, were, quote, circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. That's verse 11. Let me just quote it to you in the ESB. In him also, you were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. Let's just stop there. That's half of verse 11. Now, many commentators in these statements, this circumcision verbiage here, many commentators see a swipe here against the Jews generally who placed confidence in their literal circumcision. That's not unreasonable since Paul's opponents were Jews who are teaching several things that contribute to what is generally called the Colossian heresy. So it's no shock to include pride in physical circumcision among the things that irked Paul. That's reasonable. Physical circumcision had no importance for Paul when it came to the question of eternal life. Alternatively, a non-literal circumcision, the circumcision of Christ, that's the second half of verse 11. That idea, a circumcision not made with human hands was a different story. That was important to Paul. So let me read the whole verse. It's just verse 11 now. In him also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh, the circumcision of Christ. Now, it's obvious here that the circumcision of Christ does not refer to the physical circumcision of Jesus when he was eight days old. That wasn't part of his work as Paul has described prior to verses 11 and 12 and as Paul is going to describe again once we get past verse 12. It's not part of the work of Christ. Scholars really don't have any struggle here because that's kind of obvious. The fact that Jesus lost his foreskin when he was eight days old, that has no bearing on his accomplishment of our salvation, forgiveness of sins, nailing it to the cross, all that stuff has nothing to do with it. So there's no struggle there. Rather, the phrases circumcision of Christ and not made with human hands points us in the direction of the Old Testament concept, the Old Testament concept of the circumcision of the heart. And you get this in a number of places. For instance, Deuteronomy 10-16 circumcised there the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. Deuteronomy 30 verse 6. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul that you may live. Those aren't the only two references but they give you a good idea of what this concept is about. Circumcision of the heart was about faith, was about faith in the true God, loving the true God. You can't love the true God unless you believe in the true God. It's this set of ideas. So in the first part of verse 11, in him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. Paul reminds the Colossian believers that something had happened to their heart. Whether Jew or Gentile, they'd had a change of heart about Jesus being the Messiah, being their Savior. I would say this is a reference to their conversion, to their belief in the gospel, their embracing of the gospel of Christ, their embracing of his message. This change of heart then is linked to the next phrase, the putting off of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Now there's a lot more disagreement about that phrase. That set of phrases that end verse 11, form the second part of verse, second half of verse 11. How do we define putting off the body of flesh? Putting off here is actually a noun, not a verb. It's actually a prepositional phrase in the putting off of, in other words, in the removal of. The scholars have devoted a lot of attention to asking a fundamental question here. So Paul's talking about this in the removal of the body of the flesh. Think about that. Just think about these words. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, which refers to belief, a new heart. In him you got a new heart by the removal of the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ. We have to ask ourselves, whose body is being put off here? A lot of Christians read that because of some wording elsewhere in the New Testament that refers to putting off the old man. In other words, like repentance from dead works or repentance from a wicked lifestyle. But there's ambiguity here. There's no possessive pronoun. It doesn't tell us whose body it is, the removal of the body of the flesh. So what is that? You've got two options. One is that the body of flesh that was removed in connection with this change of heart, the spiritual circumcision, points to the actual body of Jesus on the cross. In other words, it would be a reference to the crucifixion, the laying down of Jesus' life. The second is the one that's more familiar to us, that the body of the flesh is the body of each Colossian believer. In other words, they're turning from disobedience to embrace Jesus, their repentance, their departure from their old life. In other words, they lay their own body down, they turn from sin, they repent. So whose body are we talking about? In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. And again, that last part might help us think about it too. Circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, you had a change of heart by the removal of the body of Jesus from the cross by the circumcision of Christ. In other words, that becomes the means by which your heart was changed. Are we really talking about the actual body of Jesus? Or do we read it by saying you had a change of heart by the putting off, the putting away of your former lifestyle? Or by changing of your, not necessarily your lifestyle, but you changed from your disobedience. In other words, one of these options puts sort of the emphasis on the cross event. That's the first one that the putting off of the body refers to the body of Jesus. And the other one sort of puts the emphasis on the individual, the Colossians, or you and me, that Paul is talking about something that we did. So it's either something Jesus done the cross or something we did. They're obviously related. The options are related. But scholars have disagreed about which one of these things does Paul have in mind in this verse. So taking that into consideration, here's how the two interpretive options might sound just by way of summary. We could read verse 11 this way, in him, in Christ also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. Your heart was changed in or by virtue of Christ laying down his life. Again, the reference would be to the cross, the cross event. Or we could read it this way, in him, in Christ also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. In other words, your heart was changed by repenting from sin. Again, the preference here is the change of heart, the individual heart of the believer turning from the old man and going a new direction. The two options, as I noted, are closely related. Though the former, I think we have to admit, puts more weight on the cross. For me, that's kind of the key to deciding, at least again for myself, which one is more coherent? Which one is more consistent? Let's ask it this way, which one is more consistent with the concept of being in Christ and our completeness in Christ, in verses 9 and 10. In verses 9 and 10, I think we have to point out here, Paul's not giving us in Colossians 2 some sort of chronology, or as the Reformed theologians would like to say, abstractly, not in specific reference to this passage, but just more abstractly, the orto salutis, the order of salvation. That's a term that takes tries to take terms like justification, regeneration, faith, belief, all these things that all these ways salvation is described and tries to actually reconstruct a chronology like what happens to you first, then next, then next, then next. I think that's kind of a pointless pursuit. It just creates problems. It creates more problems than it answers. Anyway, Colossians is not trying to give us a chronology. It doesn't say, oh, well, verse 6, you receive Christ the Lord, so walk in him, and then you need to be rooted, then you need to be built up, and then you need to be established, and then down in verse 9 or verse 10, then you'll be the complete in Christ, and then you need to be baptized, or maybe the spiritual circumcision, and wait a minute, then we hit verse 13, it's back to being dead in trespasses and being alive together. In other words, the chronology gets messed up in a couple of places there. It just sounds odd to try to make this sort of a chronological order, and it sounds odd because it is. The verses 9 and 10 are not a chronology. Verses 13 and 14 are really going to be talking about the same set of ideas that Paul talked about earlier. They're just different ways of talking about the same reality. If we're complete in Christ, verse 10, that's true. It's because we've been rooted and built up in him. We've embraced him, we've accepted him, we've believed in him. That's what roots and builds us up. It's just another way of talking about our salvation in him, and it's our complete salvation. All these things are what God has done, and remember, all these verbs or many of the verbs are passives, something done to us by an external actor, i.e., God, through the work of Christ. If we're completing Christ, we've been rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, then our change of heart must also be a work of Christ. That just, I think, makes really good sense. In my head, when Paul talks in verse 11 about the putting off of the body, the removal of the body, the flesh, is it possible that he's talking about either the removal of Christ from the cross and then he'll rise from the dead, or is he talking more generically about the cross event? In other words, is he rooting his discussion there in verse 11 on what Jesus has done, as opposed to a decision we made? I think both are possible, but for me, the first one just sounds a little bit better, that we're still locating all of this on what happened on the cross. Now, that takes us to verse 12, and here's where we hit a bunch of things to think about. It's kind of a horn at its nest, but if we think about focusing on the cross, if we think about focusing on the completeness that we have in Christ, if we think about what follows in verses 13 through 15 about our sins being forgiven at the cross or because of the cross, nailed to the cross, and the cross and the resurrection are what defeat the rulers and the authorities, if we think about those things, then hopefully, we will not be confused about baptism talk if we presume that verse 12, and it's baptism talk, is talking about water baptism. Hopefully, we won't be confused, but again, I've already confessed, I think a lot of people are. So, let's go to verse 12. We have an heiress to passive participle, so in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, you had a change of heart. By the removal of the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried, that's our heiress passive participle, having been buried with him with Christ in baptism, in which also you were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. Now, notice right away in verse 12, our faith is not in our baptism. Our faith is in the powerful working of God who raised Jesus from the dead. Just a clue, something to keep in mind, but here's the key question when we get to this, when we get to this language about verse 12, how do we take the having been buried with him in baptism phrase? Now, it can either be and has been by many scholars and commentators. The participle here can either be viewed temporarily, that is, it has something to do with timing or in some other way. Let's just think about the temporal aspect. Participles are verbal adjectives. They describe something, that's what an adjective does, but with an activity, that's the verbal part, verbal adjective. And they relate to the other verbs in a given sentence, temporally. In this case, we could have the having been buried with him in baptism can either be simultaneous, temporally simultaneous to the earlier verb, that even the other verbal elements here, it can either be temporally simultaneous or temporally prior. Now, let me give you a little quote from Wallace, just so that you know that I'm not making this up. Dan Wallace and his Greek grammar be on the basics, exegetical syntax, the New Testament Wallace is a major Greek marion. He says, time and participle is relative or dependent. Well, in the indicative verb in the indicative mood, it is absolute or independent. The heiress participle, that's what we have here. For example, usually denotes antecedent time to that of the controlling verb. But if the main verb is also heiress, in this case, it happens to be, this participle may indicate contemporaneous time. So again, we either have the buried with him in baptism, either happening at the same time as our earlier verb, where we were filled in him, we were circumcised with circumcision made with hands, made without hands, and so on and so forth, all of that. Do we have those things happening at the same time as the baptism, or is there some other relationship here, some other antecedent time? Those are the first two things to look at. Some scholars also see a causal relationship here that the participle having been buried with him in baptism is somehow causally related to that other stuff. We'll get to that in a moment. But if we're looking at verse 11, as the cross, as the cross event, remember we had two options there. You can look at verse 11, the removal of the body as either the cross event or your own repentance. Let's start with the cross event. If we're looking at verse 11 as a reference to the cross, then here's just going to show you some of the ways you could read verse 12 in light of that assumption. You could read it this way. Again, you could read these two verses together this way. I think you're going to start to see where different views of baptism emerge from this. In him, as in Christ also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. Your heart was changed. This is an heiress passive indicative verb. You were circumcised. Your heart was changed by virtue of Christ laying down his life, the removal of the body of the flesh, the removal of Christ's body from the cross, the cross event. You were circumcised. Your heart was changed by that event. And now here's where we get into the participle, when you were buried with him in baptism. That's the simultaneous time. So your heart was changed because of the cross when you were buried with him in baptism. Here's the subsequent, the antecedent time approach. Your heart was changed by virtue of Christ laying down his life, having been previously buried with him in baptism. But that makes it sound like the baptism preceded the change of heart, doesn't it? If you're going to go causal, the baptism language here is somehow causal in relationship to the other verb, you'd read it this way. In him, in Christ, your heart was changed by virtue of Christ's, Christ's laying down his own life, the removal of Christ's body from the cross by means of being buried with him in baptism. In other words, baptism was a means to the change of heart. It was sort of, it was sort of causative. Baptism played some role in causing your heart to be changed, even though the thing that affected the change was what happened on the cross. You can really see here that when you start to play with the interpretive possibilities of the participle, the action of the participle in its relationship to the action of the main verb, you were circumcised with the circumcision being without hands. In other words, you were converted. You had a change of heart about Jesus. You start to play with that activity and then the activity of baptism. You can see where you get ideas like baptism or regeneration. You can see where you get views like baptism has some role in our conversion. It's very easy to see how these things could be drawn out of the text, but the problem is. The problem is twofold. One, is this consistent with circumcision? We've already assumed in our discussion here that verses 11 and 12 are about water baptism. That's an assumption we've made. If we make that assumption, then we've also assumed that circumcision, the physical circumcision, was analogous to this. Yes, we know it's about circumcision of the heart here, but Paul wouldn't have been using a word like circumcision if he didn't want our minds to think about the physical ritual. We've assumed that it's water baptism and we've assumed that it's linked in some way to circumcision. Was it circumcision? Did that cause salvation? Did it happen at the same time someone believes? Of course not. It's very obvious. If you want to exclude the question of let's be consistent between how we view circumcision of baptism and if you just want to only look at verses 11 and 12, well then you can play with it. You can massage it. You can come out with baptism having a role in salvation. The other problem, the second problem with doing that is you're ignoring what comes after verses 13 through 15, where it's very clear that the basis of the forgiveness of our sins is the cross event. These things were nailed to the cross. The record of our debt was canceled at the cross. It's because of the cross that principalities and powers, rulers and authorities are defeated. If you've read on scenery, you know how baptism in 1 Peter 3 commemorates that, the defeat of the dark powers. You know all about that if you've read the book, but that isn't what caused their defeat. The baptism isn't what caused their defeat. Again, what I'm trying to get at here, maybe awkwardly, is you cannot isolate verses 11 and 12 and cut off the next three verses, cut off the preceding verses, and then forget about the analogy with circumcision, thinking about both sides of the analogy consistently. I should say you shouldn't do that. People do it all the time and they come out with views of baptism that contradict clear articulations of the gospel, and that bugs me. I'll confess, that bugs me. It's something we should not do, but in order to not do these things, we have to be thinking about the questions and a lot of people never even get to the questions. That's what we want to cure here. We want to help people think about whatever the way they practice baptism. We need to be doing this in a consistent way that honors Old Testament theology and that honors the supremacy, the complete sufficiency of the cross event. That's what we need to do. That's how we need to frame the discussion. Again, you can just see how people can just go off the rails here, but you can also hopefully see how to think about these things no matter what your traditional practice of baptism is. We just need to honor Old Testament theology. We need to honor the cross. God doesn't change his mind. Back then, it was all works, works, works, works, works... Boy, I hope you were circumcised. No, Paul specifically denies that in Romans 4. So we need to be consistent with what has gone before and we need to be consistent with the cross event and place the onus, the supremacy, the efficacy on the cross, not on what happens in water baptism. Now, all of that presumed that we see in verse 11 a reference to the cross, Okay, a reference to the cross event. But what if we don't do that? What if we go with the other option that this removal of the body is about putting off our old lifestyle? In other words, what happens in our own repentance? If we look at it that way, then how do we combine that idea with the participle of being buried with him in baptism? Again, it's going to give us some options. So let's look at a couple of them. So if we don't see a reference to the cross event, but we do see a reference to the putting off change in our inner lives, we would read something like this, in him that is in Christ also, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. In other words, you had a change in heart in or by repenting from sin. And so now let's add the buried with him in baptism. So in him, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, you had a change of heart when you were buried with him in baptism. And that sounds odd because that makes it sound like you planned your repentance really carefully to coincide with your baptism. That just doesn't sound right. It sounds really odd. You could say, well, you had a change of heart, got that circumcision that was not made without hands, you had a change of heart by repenting from your sin, having been previously buried with him in baptism. So in other words, you got baptized and then repented while I, okay, I guess that can happen. But you see it just sounds kind of weird if you take that second option that the removal of the body is not about the cross, but the removal of the body is your body, your old man. It gets you into some really kind of strange territory. You could say it this way. In him also, you had this change of heart in or by repenting from sin because there's the causal element, because you were buried with him in baptism. In other words, the baptism in some way led to the acceptance of the gospel. Now we're really kind of on shaky theological ground. So because you were baptized, you changed your life. Well, okay, I guess people can look at their baptism as sort of a beginning point, but what does that have to do with the change of, what does it have to do with actual conversion? You know, it kind of puts you back to this thing where I'm planning to be converted. I'm planning to accept Christ when I get baptized. I know, again, I guess that happens with some people. Again, in the whole world of people coming into Christ, like, yeah, I sure, I guess that could have happened. But it just sounds really kind of odd and it gets really kind of flaky if you're talking about infant baptism here, because, you know, let's be honest, you're not talking about infants believing anything. So you've got to rethink the whole thing when it comes to infant baptism, which, you know, in the earlier in the podcast, you know, hopefully, you know, if you're going to treat baptism as water baptism and analogize it with circumcision, I mean, there's a way to think about baptism of infants that doesn't violate the exclusivity of the gospel. There is a way to think about that. And again, we've sort of gone over that turf here. And, you know, you could go back and listen, you know, to episode five and the other episodes of baptism to see how that might cohere. But for our purposes here, if we take, you know, this second alternative that the removal of the body is our own repentance, it just, you know, to me, it just has a lot less weight. It not only puts less weight on the cross, but it just, it gets a bit convoluted. Like, you know, having to merge your own repentance with your baptism when it's easier that if you're looking at the cross and you're assigning, you know, your conversion to the cross and having the removal of the body of Jesus from the cross, it's a reference to the crucifixion event. If that precedes the talk about baptism, you know, and your conversion on the basis of that precedes baptism, well, that just makes more sense, again, because it has the focus in the right place. Again, I'm not saying that it's impossible to think other thoughts, but you just get into some really, again, strange ideas, you know, when you get, get right down to it. Now, here's my wild card. What if Paul, though, isn't talking about water baptism here at all? What if he, you say, well, what can he possibly be talking about? He uses the word baptism. What else would he be talking about? Well, what about spirit baptism? And I'm not talking about the way the Charismatics have sort of muddled this thing. You know, some sort of thing that, some sort of zapping that happens to someone who's already a believer. Okay, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about New Testament spirit baptism, the way that the New Testament uses this language. For instance, Mark 1.8. Okay, there's a strong scriptural precedent for this, where John the Baptist says, I have baptized you with water, but he, okay, Jesus will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Okay, tell me, when did Jesus baptize anybody with water? He didn't. In fact, John 4.2 makes the specific point that Jesus did not baptize people in water. It says Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples. Okay, so the baptism of, that Christ is going to baptize with is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now, his baptism, putting that statement in Mark 1.8, in the context of Jesus' ministry, this baptism of the Holy Spirit is either the cross event, okay, because the cross event, his death barely, his resurrection is going to lead to the coming of the Spirit when he ascends. So it either refers to the cross event, which would fit really nicely here with what we've been talking about in Colossians 2, or it refers to the actual coming of the Spirit. Remember, if you've read Unseen Realm, there's a little section in the book about how four times Paul, well, let me put it this way, there are places in the New Testament, there are a handful of these, four or five of these, where the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Christ, those phrases are interchanged. And there are two places where Paul refers to Jesus as the Lord, who is the Spirit. So in some way, just as Jesus was, but or is, but isn't God, the Spirit is, but isn't Jesus. In Unseen Realm, I talk about this is the matrix of ideas from which Trinitarianism emerges. This is, but isn't kind of stuff, you know, we go back into the two powers in heaven, you know, the angel is, but isn't Yahweh and how that gets transferred to the New Testament, Jesus is, but isn't, you know, God, he is God, but he's not the Father. Well, here we have the Spirit. Well, he is the Lord. He is Jesus, but he's not. He's his own thing too. You know, it could be, again, Spirit, this reference to Jesus baptizing them with the Holy Spirit, it could be this idea that the Spirit, well, he, it's the Holy Spirit. And yes, that's an independent person, but it's also Jesus. You know, when Jesus says, Lord, I am with you always, even out of the end of the age. Okay, it's a reference to the Holy Spirit. That could be what it's talking about, the actual Pentecost event, okay, that followed the Ascension. So Spirit Baptism, again, in Mark 1-8, you know, refers to one of these two things, either sort of a more holistic view of the death, burial, resurrection, Ascension, the coming of the Spirit, or more precisely, you know, what happens at Pentecost. It's hard to know. But the point is that we have this concept of Spirit Baptism. It's the Spirit who baptizes believers into the body of Christ, that that is the non-literal collective, to use an unfortunate term, the universal body of Christ. Paul, our theologians like to talk about the universal church and the local church. The universal is not a great word, but, you know, we'll go with it because it's familiar here. You know, we're not universalists here, but I'll go with the terminology. It's the Spirit who baptizes believers into the mass collective, the universal body of Christ, the universal church. We get that in 1 Corinthians 12-13. Okay, this is another verse. Let me just get it up and I can read it to you. 1 Corinthians 12-13 says, For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit. So I'll read it again. For in or by, you can translate that word, one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves are free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit. It's 1 Corinthians 12. He's talking about the gifts given to the body of Christ, you know, to believers. So there is this thing, Spirit baptism in the New Testament, it relates to our entrance, our insertion into the believing community, the family of God, the body of Christ. It's not a subsequent zapping that happens to us later. Again, that's just sort of made up, you know, by tradition. That's just the way something else gets talked about, imprecisely. So what about that? What if Colossians 2, 11, and 12 is talking about Spirit baptism instead of water baptism? Now, this gives us again some kind of interesting possibilities. Now, all of that that we just talked about, that this could be Spirit baptism. You recall that what we were talking about is if we assume that, again, the reference to the removal of the body in Colossians 2, verse 11 there, that that refers to the crucifixion event, and our conversion, our heart is changed because of that. Then we get, you know, into this idea, well, okay, logically, then that would be the point when we were baptized into this corporate body of Christ. Spirit baptism makes a lot of good sense. If we take verse 11, again, as the removal of the body from the cross, again, looking at it, as a reference to the crucifixion event, well, of course, if this is the basis for our change of heart, yes, obviously, then the Holy Spirit comes and it dwells us, and we are put into the corporate body of Christ. We have a reference to spirit baptism. It's nice and smooth. It actually works really well. Now, what about if we view, though, the removal of the body as our repentance? Well, in that case, again, in Christ, we were, you know, we had this change of heart by virtue of our repentance from sin when we were put into the body of Christ by the Spirit. And so the repentance, if you read verse 11 that way, is simultaneous with our being put into the body of Christ by the Spirit. It's simultaneous with spirit baptism. Well, that can actually work. That actually works pretty well. What about the other temporal option, that we had this change of heart when we repented having been previously put into the body of Christ by the Spirit? Well, that doesn't work. Again, there's a disconnect there. So we would not be able to interpret the participle as temporally antecedent. So we have to wipe that one out. What about causal? We had this change of heart, and our change of heart was by our repentance from our sin, putting aside the old man, because we were baptized into the body of Christ, because we became part of the people of God by virtue of the Spirit. Again, that could work, too. Again, just depending on how you word things. So this is why, again, substantially, predominantly, if you ask me, again, how I think about Colossians 2, 11, and 12, I think it's much more cohesive to look at the circumcision talk as only the circumcision of the heart. Let me go back and read it in him also. You were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. I think if we make the circumcision non-literal there, that it actually refers to the circumcision of the heart. And then if we take that verbiage that way, we're not thinking about literal circumcision in the Old Testament, which means, and again, it argues for not taking the baptism talk in the next verse as water baptism. If we look at that as Spirit baptism, in other words, if we look at verse 11 as a change of heart, the circumcision of the heart, and then we look at verse 12 as Spirit baptism, it's just a whole lot easier to interpret these two verses in a way that is entirely consistent with what has preceded and what follows, because it's all about the cross and our response to the cross, at which point when we believe we are put into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Now I realize, again, I'm in the minority here, most people are going to look at this and think water baptism right out of the gate. And that's what we did with episode five way back when, and we rehearsed episode five here, if you're going to assume water baptism here, this sort of, you know, this rite of passage, this ritual event that is in some way, again, commemorative of or related to your faith in Christ, okay? If you're going to make those assumptions, then you're going to be assuming that the analogy that Paul brings up circumcision to be a literal analogy to this literal water baptism, okay? If you're going to do that, then there's a way to think about that, that honors what Paul has said about our completeness in Christ prior to these two verses, and that also honors what Paul talks about the basis of our forgiveness being the cross event in the verses that follow. You can do that. You can do that. It's workable, but again, you have to be really careful with it. But I think it's equally workable, and I think probably even easier, probably better. And I would say it might make a little more sense because of verse 11's emphasis on the circumcision made without hands, that he's not talking about literal circumcision at all, okay? I think it's a little easier to go that direction and look at this as spirit baptism. But, you know, either way, there is a way, again, to read this and, you know, not alter the meaning of the gospel, not alter the basis of eternal life of our forgiveness of sins as being the cross event and nothing else. Because again, you know, for those who want to go to the water baptism route, I think it's really important to ask yourself the crucial question. Well, if there's an analogy here to circumcision, what can I say about circumcision and what can't I say? And that is a question that largely goes unexamined. Just trust me on that. Very few people, even theologians, even stop to ponder that question. They never get into the fact that, well, you know, election really can't mean salvation in the Old Testament. You know, let's just restrict our discussion there because, you know, things can, you know, have my own take on what's going on in the New Testament. But in the Old Testament, it certainly can't because you had most of the Israelites who were circumcised to go off and worship Baal and other gods. So much for election. But people don't ask these questions. And that's the problem. The problem isn't sort of their effort to articulate the gospel and then try to talk about baptism. You know, not asking the earlier question creates confusion on the other side, especially in certain denominational contexts. So I don't want to portray them as being evil and sinister and whatnot. I'm saying there is a way to function within, you know, the certain denominational parameters. I would not include baptism or regeneration here, obviously. I think that's really off the deep end. But we can't have it supplementing baptism or, excuse me, supplementing the work on the cross or something like that because we're either complete or we're not. But there's still a way to talk about it. There's still a way even to include, you know, infant baptism again, just depending on how we articulate things. So I want to make that clear. The real problem here is, again, failing to ask the really important interpretive questions. So where does this leave us, you know, at the end of the episode here? Well, I would suggest three things here just to wrap this up. Let's make sure to talk about baptism in this or any other passage in light of what else is said in those same passages or related passages. In other words, let's stop proof texting. Can we just stop the proof texting when it comes to the issue of baptism? Can we just knock it off on all sides? It just doesn't do any good to pluck out a verse out of context and see, there you go. There's how we should think about this. It's just not that easy. And if you do that, you can really create a mess for yourself and you can muddle the mind of somebody else. So let's just stop the proof texting. Number two, I would say, you know, be open to spirit baptism in this passage and in a couple others that mentioned baptism because it does have precedent. I mean, John did say Jesus would do this. And since Jesus didn't baptize with water, Jesus did some sort of spirit baptism somewhere. Okay, we have to factor in. We got to take a look at the entire work of Christ and ask, well, where might that fit? Okay, it has that precedent from John and it has the idea of spirit baptism is specifically mentioned in other passages like 1 Corinthians 12, 13. So maybe that might be the way we want to read this passage. Maybe Romans 6 too. That's another one. Is it water baptism or is it spirit baptism? Who knows? I mean, these are the places that this question ought to come up, but unfortunately doesn't. And there are good illustrations of the fact that there's a lot of stuff to think about here. Even in passages that you think are like no brainers. Well, there aren't a whole lot of scripture passages that are complete no brainers. There's usually something to think about. And so be open to that possibility. And third, I would just say that by way of the summary of the content for today, you know, I'm left with the thought how many ways can Paul say Christ is superior to everything? How many ways can Paul say we're complete in the family of God because of the cross event? Not because of ritual purity, not because of circumcision, not because of observing laws and times and feasts and food do's and don'ts. You know, not how many ways can he say that we're complete? How many ways can he say that Christ is superior in him dwells the fullness of all that is God bodily? You know, how many ways can he do this? I mean, it's nonsense to think that we need any of that stuff. It's also nonsense to think that we need some metaphysical experience that involves other entities. Okay, because you know, Paul's going to go there in verses 13 through 15. I mean, he's going to keep keep beating this this drum. But here we go again. Again, this passage, we talked a lot about baptism and its relationship to the change of heart to conversion to belief. And we still went back to the idea of are we complete because of the cross event or not? I mean, Paul says we are. And that really ought to end the discussion. But unfortunately, again, either because of our tradition or the way we were taught or maybe some guilt or whatever it is, we somehow sort of drift away from the concept of the completeness there in verse 10. And I think we can add baptism to the mix. All right, Mike, it's what I like to see another episode content filled to verse an hour and a half. I love it. Well, let's hope you're not the only one. No, I guarantee I am not. But all right, Mike, well, I want to get us out on this because we got draft repair for tomorrow. So good luck to you, sir. I hope you draft horrible. I hope your laptop doesn't work. Maury is asleep and my internet goes. Hey, my internet goes down. I hope all those things happen to you. No, but good luck to you. Be warmed and be warmed and filled to. So there you go. All righty. Well, look forward to competing against you this year. So I hope everybody shows up for draft and everybody else out there is getting geared up for American football, which I'm sure our audience isn't. Just but have a shot. I don't care at all. Yeah. All right, Mike. Well, we just want to thank everybody for listening to the naked Bible podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the naked Bible podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.ermsh.com. You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 232 Colossians chapter two versus 13 through 23. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how you doing this week? Pretty good. Pretty good. You know what we should mention, Trey? About how good my team is? No, about how Yahoo rated your draft worse than mine. Oh, yeah, because that's because you always get like, you go by analytics and stuff. I don't do that. I go by gut feeling. That's why my gut tells me that your team's not as good as last years. Oh, boy. That's what my gut tells me. Oh, those are fighting words, sir. I'm actually, I'm pretty, I didn't get everybody that I wanted, but I'm pretty happy with my team. Again, of course, everybody's listening. We had our fantasy football draft. So again, Mike is predicted to do the best only because he just uses the analytics. And it's because more, more he was in an altered state through the entire draft. So that that was helpful. Well, that's good. Whenever he would twitch, you know, he, I picked the person's name when I was looking at when he twitched. So well, that's perfect. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to this Sunday this weekend. You know, this is probably my, I don't know what you call advice or whatever, but I watched the games. Just it's a good downtime. So I'm so glad it is year is is here is time of the year. Cause now I can just veg and watch football and not have to think about everything. That's exactly, that's exactly right. You know, you can just sort of put that's how I feel about it. Just sort of put your brain in neutral. Those alpha waves, you know, TV, calm you down. Yeah, I don't check my scores until the end of Sunday night. So, you know, I don't, I don't let it stress me out at all. Like I said, I just, I just put the brain on neutral. I love the stress. That's part of the fun. We'll switch in gears here, Mike. Colossians. What have we got? Colossians. Yeah. We are going to finish the chapter. I'm telling the truth. No, I've got to feed back. And trust me, Mike, everybody wants one episode per verse. So we're good. Right. Well, they're not going to get that today because most of what remains has already been discussed except with, well, there's one significant exception. And that's sort of where we're going to camp for this episode. But I can telegraph it in this way that the major theme of this episode, if we can use the word theme, is going to be the cross event, you know, specifically the resurrection and the ascension and the demise of the gods over the nations. That comes up in this chapter at specifically at verse 15. But from verses 13, you know, all the way, you know, to 15 and then beyond 15 to the end of the chapter, a lot of that stuff we've actually hit on in the prior previous, excuse me, previous, like two or three episodes. So we are, we will do some summary. In fact, let's just start with a little bit of summary, you know, just sharing a few thoughts in Colossians that lead up to this point and this point being defined as verse 13 because we ended last time with verse 12. First point, again, just by way of sort of a summary review is that Paul has been talking in this chapter and, you know, we'll include chapter one as well, but specifically in this chapter, that salvation was something done to the Colossians and therefore to us in response to or in connection with belief that is trust in the gospel, that Jesus was the Messiah. I mean, they had to have a change of heart about that. He was the Messiah, he was crucified, buried, rose from the dead, is now seated at the right hand of God. You get that nugget, that summary thought from verses six and seven, you know, which says, therefore, as you received Christ, Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. Having been rooted, we talked about how that was a perfect passive and something done to the, you know, the speaker from an external source, that source being God, of course, having been rooted and built up also a passive in him that is in Christ and established another passive in the faith, just as you were taught abounding and thanksgiving. Again, this is something done to you. Salvation is not about something you do, okay? You do to yourself or for your own benefit. It's something that when you believe, God, again, responds in a certain way and gives you a certain status. And, you know, later in the chapter, we're going to talk about today, it's, you know, forgiveness of sins, nailing your debt to the cross, all that sort of stuff. Secondly, salvation was procured by and is based on the work of one who is superior to every other heavenly power. That's a big theme in Colossians too. So, you know, Paul warns people about getting mesmerized by claims of access to God through some other supernatural agent. Specifically, is talk about the stoikaia, is what I'm zeroing in on here, verses eight through 10. Paul says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition. According to the elemental spirits of the world, the stoikaia, and not according to Christ. Well, why is Christ better? Why should we pay attention to Jesus and be fixated on him and not these other elemental spirits? Well, Paul answers that in verse nine, for in him, in Christ, not in them, the stoikaia, for in Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And your completeness was provided or enabled in Christ, who is the head of every ruler and authority. Again, a reference to Paul's vocabulary of spiritual powers there. So, that's a big theme. Don't get distracted or mesmerized by other supernatural agents and what is claimed about them because Christ is preeminent. Third, your completeness in Christ isn't obtained or supplemented by baptism or anything else. You're either complete, as Paul says in verse 10, or you're not. The statements of verses nine and 10 precede the baptism talk in verses 11 and 12. That matters. Our conversion, again, the circumcision made without hands, Paul talks about in Colossians 2.11, the circumcision of the heart. In other words, our change of heart was accomplished in him, in Christ, when we were buried in him by spirit baptism. Again, that's my take on it. I think that's the most coherent reading of this, that we're not talking about water baptism here. We're talking about spirit baptism. People can go back and listen to the previous episode for that. But the circumcision of the heart was accomplished in him when we were buried in him. We were put into Christ's body by spirit baptism. You can cross reference 1 Corinthians 12.13 for the same language, for the same author. It is because we are in him, we are in Christ, and because we were put into his body, that when he rose from the dead to, quote, Paul in Colossians 2.11 and 12, we were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. Our resurrection is because we are in him. So all of that being the case, now we move on to verse 13, again, which we did mention last time in our discussion of the putting off of the body. Verse 13 is a reference. It's going to use crucifixion language. And again, I think that the putting off of the body is best understood, not as a repentance of ours, but as a reference to Christ surrendering his own body on the cross. I think it's a reference to the cross event. And again, people can listen to the previous episode for why. So verse 13 here, Paul says, and you, again, he's addressing the Colossians at the beginning of the verse, you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. It's an obvious reference to people who are uncircumcised, to Gentiles. You Gentiles, you Colossian Gentiles out there, you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you were outsiders. You, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us. It's an interesting change of pronoun there, having forgiven us all our trespasses. So he's talking about non-physical circumcision or uncircumcision. Again, he's talking about their status as Gentiles, which was in part a physical thing, but it's also a spiritual thing because they don't have access to the truth of God. They are enslaved by the gods of the nations, the whole Deuteronomy 32 worldview. If that's an unfamiliar concept, again, I'm sorry, but I can't keep repeating unseen realm content in all these episodes. You have to read the book or at least maybe read the shorter version in supernatural or something. And we'll get into Deuteronomy 32 a little bit later in this episode so you can pick up some thoughts there. Or go to the podcast homepage and where it says, are you new? Click here. There's videos that explain this as well. But he's speaking to Gentiles. Again, they were outsiders. They had been put under lesser sons of God by God at the Tower of Babel event as a punishment. That's a spiritual status. It's not just a physical thing. And it's not even primarily a physical thing because circumcision wasn't an issue when God did that act at Babel. It's only going to come later when we get into Abraham and his descendants. It becomes the sign of God's covenant with them. But that all post-dates the punishment at Babel, probably not by a great deal of time, but it still post-dates it. So since Paul is talking about really a spiritual condition, it's consistent to view verses 11 and 12. Again, in my head, the same way that what he's talking about there is a circumcision made without hands. He's talking about a spiritual baptism. And he's not talking about literal rituals there. But again, for that, you can listen to the previous episode. Paul says they were made alive. Again, it's an heiress together with him. It's a reference to the death, burial, and resurrection. We were made to participate in that when we were put into the body of Christ. Again, spirit baptism is a key thought here. I want to focus a little bit on Paul's change of pronouns here because it is kind of interesting in commentators. Of course, serious commentators have taken note of this. And I think I have some good thoughts on it. But Paul says, you Colossians, this was your condition. And he says that he talks about that God made you alive together with him. And then he switches and says, well, having forgiven us all our trespasses. So he includes himself and he's a Jew in this. So what's going on here? Well, Marcus Bart in his anchor Yale commentary writes this. He says, the change of personal pronoun from you to us is noteworthy. And again, he had begun his comments about Gentiles now he switches. So back to Bart. Paul the Jew seems to include himself expressly in the proclamation concerning the forgiveness of sins. He thus says expressly that there is no forgiveness of sins for Gentiles without forgiveness for Jews. The former is a shareholder with the latter. The share which non Jews have in the inheritance of Jews finds expression in the change of the personal pronoun. Done, I think, I'll just read you. Done says in his commentary, his NIGTC commentary. He writes the significance of this, this pronoun change should not be lost sight of, especially in view of the indications, some of them already noted back in verse 11, that the most likely threat from an alternative philosophy in Colossae was perceived to be basically Jewish character. The significance is that Paul does not attempt to avoid such a Jewish characterization and perspective. He makes no attempt, as it were, to outflank the alternative philosophy by ignoring or striking clear of the Jewish character of Christianity's message. On the contrary, he reaffirms the Christian Jewish starting point that Israel was in an advantaged position over the nations by virtue of God's choice of Israel to be his special people. The difference is that the disadvantaged state of uncircumcision has been remedied by a circumcision not performed by human hands rather than by a circumcision in the flesh. Now that's the end of the done quote. That I like actually better than Bart's because Paul includes the Jew in this, and in so doing, he has already reminded or told his opponents, who are, again, basically, there's some sort of Jewish mysticism going on here. Well, the cure for this and the cure for both Gentile and Jew was a circumcision made without hands. That's the segue into the talk about the cross. Again, I think it's just noteworthy. We don't want to miss the fact that Paul doesn't have two paths of salvation. He has one path of salvation. He has one salvation trajectory. He includes Jews in what he says about the salvation of those enslaved under the gods of the nations. Okay, let me be more blunt here. The faith, Christianity, that the New Testament writers are communicating, their aim is not to make it as Jewish as possible as though to suggest or imply that there's some sort of Jewish path and Gentile path. What Paul says right here just by this simple switch and pronouns is that no, no, the way of salvation is exactly the same for Jew and Gentile. Any notion that we have to do Jewish things to either assist in our own salvation or achieve our salvation or that salvation just broadly, generally, is connected to Jewishness is false. It's specifically denied here by Paul. Again, just in that little switch of pronouns, you can see that Paul is not allowing for this two-path kind of situation, two-path talk. Now, Paul expands on what he's talking about here as far as the cross. As we keep going in verse 14, he says, all this in verse 13 happened to you. We were made alive together with him, having God has forgiven us all our trespasses. Verse 14, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. A done in his commentary, I liked what he said here. He says, the metaphor, this metaphor, is drawn from the legal world. The record of debt, which is the Greek term, kereographon, occurs only here in the New Testament. It meant literally a document written by the person responsible, a holograph or a receipt, as in its only occurrence in the Septuagint suggests. That's Tobit 5.3 and also in Tobit 9.5. This term is used. That's some sort of receipt. But here, it has the further sense of a certificate of indebtedness or bond. It's essentially a bill. There's a bill to be paid here. He cites the Testament of Job 11.11, which is a Second Temple pseudopigraphical text. The metaphor done continues, is probably adapted to the earlier Jewish idea of a heavenly book of the living. He cites Exodus 32, 32 and 33, Psalm 69, 28, Daniel 12, 1, Revelation 3, 5, as developed in apocalyptic circles into that of books where, indeed, of good and evil were recorded with a view to final judgment. That's the end of the done quote. We did a whole episode on this way, way back about the book of life. If you've just Googled drmsh.com or nakedbiblepodcast.com, book of life, you're going to find that episode. Done saying that that idea of God's recordkeeping, which was both good and bad, you have to listen to the episode. I can't rehearse the whole thing here, but it's not about storing up brownie points. It's just the idea that God notices everything. Nothing goes forgotten here. God has a record of everything, and that becomes the basis for condemnation. Have that record of debt to borrow Paul's language here canceled out by the cross, then you will be saved. The only people who are judged by God's records are those who are not in Christ. You can listen to that earlier episode. I like the way done tied this statement in here with the whole record books, heavenly record books idea. I think he has a good point there. It's essentially a bill. God has canceled this bill that stood against us with its legal demands. Then the rest of verse 14, this he set aside, this bill he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Again, just a side note here. I don't want to interrupt the flow of thought too much, but I'm going to throw this out because this has been the news in the last year or two. Just a side note, there's been a lot of talk recently about how the crucifixion of Jesus didn't include nails. Nails aren't specifically mentioned in the crucifixion scenes, but holes in the hands from nails are mentioned in the Gospels, John 20-25. I'm not sure why this is a big deal. It's probably clickbait, what I call archaeoporn on the media, the mass media, doing biblical archaeological stuff to get you to click on something so they can show you something else. We're trying to say, oh, you didn't realize that this idea isn't in the Bible or just to get people again to question what they've been taught. Again, I have a very low view of the archaeology, the pop archaeological media, as anyone who's read my blog knows. So I'm not sure why this is a big deal just generally, but if nails weren't used, here's the point. This wording in Colossians 2-14 wouldn't make any sense. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. I'm sorry, folks, but even though nails aren't listed in the description of the crucifixion scenes, there were nails. Paul surely would have been pardoned the pun, nailed for saying something that everyone hearing it would have thought, well, that never happened. Again, it's just a sidebar. The wording here would make no sense. And of course, you do have the reference in John 20-25 about the holes in the hands and so on and so forth. They don't get there by accident. So on to verse 15, he disarmed, again, continuing the thought. When God did this, this whole cross event, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Now, this is where I want to focus today. So I'm going to skip it for now and come back to it onto the rest of the chapter, but we're going to park on verse 15 in a moment. In verses 16-23, there are just some thoughts I want to highlight here. He writes, therefore, again, in light of all of this, all this stuff in Colossians 2, up to the first 15 verses here. And we did our little summary review to begin the episode. Now, these new thoughts about canceling the bill and whatnot. Paul says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. That's verse 16. Now, the context is clearly Jewish here. Sabbath can't be anything but Jewish. The other items could have a Gentile orientation and a little bit later in this section, Paul's wording. And again, commentators have pointed out that food questions and festivals, Gentiles did that kind of stuff too. But the reference here to the new moon and the Sabbath, again, it's clearly Jewish flavoring, at least at this point in this verse. Now, Mu, in his commentary, has some good thoughts on this section. I want to share them with you. This is Doug Mu, his Colossians commentary in the Pillar series. He writes, Paul enumerates two sets of issues on the basis of which the false teachers are passing judgment, food and drink, and the observance of special religious days. These are also just the matters dividing the strong and the weak in the Roman community in Romans 14. And in both passages, there is considerable debate about the source of such regulations. While Paul does not directly say so here, his reference to rules such as do not handle, do not taste versus 20 and 21, make it clear that the false teachers were advocating abstinence from some kinds of food and drink. Similarly, it is virtually certain that the teachers were advocating, advocating rather than criticizing observance of special days. In other words, they were insisting on these things. Back to Mu. Our text gives no information about just what foods or drink or kinds of drink were being prohibited. In Romans 14 and 15, the weak were avoiding meat, perhaps also the wine. The Old Testament law, of course, prohibits the eating of certain foods deemed unclean, but it does not generally prohibit any kind of drinking. Now he has a footnote here I want to read to you. He says, the law prohibits drinking only on certain specific occasions. The people are not to drink contaminated water, Leviticus 11, 34 and 36. The priests are not to drink wine when entering the tent of meeting, Leviticus 10, 9. And those who take a Nazarite vow are to drink no wine for the period of their vow, Numbers 6, 1 through 3. The Rehobites, Jeremiah 35, 1 and 19, also abstain from wine. So Mu quotes this again just to say, well, we don't have real specifics here and the Jewish law doesn't really forbid drinking wine except on some really narrow instances. But he still believes that this is, again pardon the pun, has Jewish flavoring here. And he continues with this thought. He says, however, both the Old Testament and Judaism reveal that many Jews living in Gentile environments chose to abstain from all meat and wine in order to avoid possible ritual contamination. This is probably the rationale for the prohibitions in Romans 14 and 15 and with explicit allusion to Jewish festivals later in this verse. It's natural to think this is the same here. Now I'll just stop with Mu at this point. I mean this is a legitimate observation because if you were a Jew living in a Gentile world, you couldn't necessarily know what you were eating and how it was prepared and all that sort of stuff. And so many of them would just not do it, even though they could, just to be safe on the safe side. And again, that makes some sense here in terms of what Paul might be picking up on and what the Jewish leadership again might be insisting upon back to Mu. He says, nevertheless, what is missing in Colossians in comparison with Romans is any direct reference to the Mosaic law or to divisions between Jews and Gentiles. So this context about being Jewish and living in a Gentile world, you'd think if that was specifically the point Paul would have quoted something here. So Mu's like, well, maybe not. I mean, we don't have any specific reference to the Mosaic law here. These omissions are especially significant. This is back to Mu in light of the fact that Paul explicitly mentions just these matters and some passages in Ephesians that are closely parallel to ones in Colossians. Remember, Ephesians and Colossians are these twin epistles. Mu continues, we should therefore at least keep open the possibility that the Colossian false teachers abstinence from food and drink had its origins elsewhere. He's saying that that's a possibility. Since many ancient Greco-Roman philosophical and religious traditions also featured prohibitions of meat and wine, although there is then universal agreement that the false teachers insistence on observance of days was influenced by Judaism, dispute remains over the degree and nature of that influence. Some interpreters think that the false teachers were representing what we might call a mainstream Jewish viewpoint, noting the importance of the observance of special days in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Others have thought that a sectarian Jewish viewpoint, such as found at Qumran, might be the background to all that Paul's saying here. Most interpreters, however, persist in thinking that the false teachers had integrated the observance of Jewish special days into a larger syncretistic system. On the whole, Mu concludes in this section, it seems best to view the practices in verse 16 as basically Jewish in origin and perhaps even orientation, while still recognizing they may have been taken up into a larger mix of religious ideas and practices. So that's the end of Mu's section that I wanted to read to you. Now, the Qumran reference there draws interest because of the other elements of Jewish mysticism that we've talked about that had some connection to these sorts of ideas found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically with astral spirits and the Stoikea. We talked a little bit before about how there was a certain asceticism at Qumran and there was obviously Jewish mystical teaching at Qumran. So this idea that maybe a Qumran sect or something like it is in view here, or something that borrowed from non-Jewish ideas and sort of mashed them with Jewish ones that kind of look like what's going on at Qumran, that's again worth having on the table as far as what might Paul specifically be shooting at. The larger point, of course, is going back to our very first episode on Colossians is that you don't need the book to be written after Paul and hence be non-Pauline to have all this stuff in view. It's already in the context of Paul's own lifetime and his own environment. Now, Paul will add to what he just said there about, don't want to disqualify you insisting on asceticism, worship of angels and all that. He's going to add a little bit of that in a moment in verse 18, but he says something that's, again, kind of interesting when you get to my spot here. He says, these things in verse 17 are a shadow. Again, this is the insistence about the food and drink laws or rules and then the new moons and festivals and sabbases. These things are a shadow, verse 17, of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Now, we've talked about this language before. It should also sound familiar if you listen to this series on Hebrews because the writer of Hebrews uses the same shadow language there. These things, food laws, feast days, Sabbath are a shadow, again, of heavenly things, things to come, the things that we're going to experience in glory when we are exalted with Christ. That's when we're going to experience the real, the realia, the full reality of what these earthly, temporary things were pointing us to. Now, Hebrews 8.5 refers to this kind of thing this way. It says, they serve a copy, again, the Jewish system there, the priesthood and whatnot. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was showing you on the mount. Again, this whole idea of this stuff is a shadow. Maybe I could use the phrase, a dim reflection, a good but incomplete or insufficient copy. The book of Hebrews actually uses that word too, the copy of the ultimate reality. Now, but here's the kicker. In verse 17, let me read it to you again. All this stuff that people might pass judgment on you about, the food and drink, the festival, new moon, Sabbath, these are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. The substance belongs to Christ. In other words, the things that these shadow items represent, the fullness of that is Jesus. So Jesus is by definition superior to these things. Again, there are not two paths of salvation. There is one, okay, for Paul, and it's Christ. Christ is superior to the stoikaia. He's superior to this law stuff. Again, let no man deceive you. Again, it's his message. This is also why, in the book of Hebrews, for instance, the writer equates belief in Jesus with the Sabbath rest of God. You can go back and listen to episode 182 for that portion of Hebrews. It's Hebrews 4. Christ is our Sabbath. He is the ultimate rest of God. This is what you get. Observing the Sabbath, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it unless you make it superior to Christ, unless you use, well, Jesus needs some help here, or I need some help completing my salvation. If you make it a salvation issue, if you somehow suggest that the cross event was inadequate in some way and now we need the Sabbath to be right with God, then you're wrong. You're just wrong. If you want to observe it, fine, if it draws you close to God, good. But as soon as you start doing the bait and switch, you're wrong. And Paul was pretty blunt about it. He's as blunt as the writer of Hebrews was. In verse 18, let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism, the worship of angels, going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind. Again, here we go with the mystical visions, the asceticism, the worship of angels. You want to go back and listen to the specifics of that in this series in Colossians go to episode 229. Verse 19, not holding fast to the head. I mean, this is the problem. You're not holding fast to the head, to Jesus, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows up with a growth that is from God. You know, to summarize it, your faith can't grow unless it's fixated on Christ, unless it holds fast to Christ. Don't get sidetracked with the shadow, with the temporary, with the copy, with the dim reflection of the ultimate reality. Get fixed on the ultimate reality. Get fixed on the ultimate point of reference, which is Jesus. Again, I don't think he could really be much clearer on this. Now, let's go to verse 20. If with Christ you died the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you not submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. It's verse 21, verse 22 now. Again, these are referring to things that all perish as they are used. They're temporary, continuing in verse 22. According to human precepts and teachings, these have, indeed, an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. That's the end of the chapter, end of verse 23. Here, again, as noted above, in our little food laws and feast days comments, Gentile thinking could be included in this here. Above, you get a specific reference to the Sabbath. Paul's language here, and I think one of the indicators that he might be including looping in Gentiles into this is in verse 20, where he references the elemental spirits of the world. Now, you could say, well, Jewish mystics, they would have assigned spirits to the elements of the world. We already covered that again, episode 229, but it's kind of interesting because earlier, and this is where we're going to camp in verse 15, when he referenced the rulers and the authorities, putting them to an open shame. He is referring there to the gods of the Old Testament, the Deuteronomy 32 worldview that are in control of the nations of the world. Maybe we can take this world language and include Gentile things, Gentile ideas in it. That has to be on the table. There's no way to conclusively exclude it, despite the Jewish flavoring here. This is why I like and read to you Moos comments about, we probably have some kind of syncretistic thing going on here. A Jewish sect mixed in with maybe some Hellenistic ideas, Gentile teachings, that sort of thing. Some group in Judaism at some point either took something like from Qumran, the Jewish mystical stuff, and then married it to Hellenistic or Greco-Roman ideas. This is what Paul is fighting against. Or they made up their own view of some sort of mystical encounter, mystical beings, whatever. Really, the point of origin of all this and where all the strands come from isn't really important. We have both a Jewish and a Gentile flavoring here. Those items are both on the table, which again, it makes it even more significant that for Paul, there is only one path of salvation that loops in both Gentile and Jew. He doesn't talk about two tracks. He talks about one. You who were dead in your trespasses and sins, you're on circumcision, all that kind of stuff. You Gentiles and he includes himself in the switch of the pronouns that we noticed earlier in verse 13. Everybody's included. Everybody's included. Jew and Gentile here. The solution is the same. I want to use this as a jumping off point into this whole subject matter that's brought up in verse 15. Let's go back to the victory statement in verse 15, the victory over the rulers and authorities. This is a good place, I think, to summarize the passages where Paul connects the resurrection and ascension, the cross event, let's just be as broad as we can here, to the defeat of the powers of darkness. Now, I've commented on this before in Q&A. I've commented on it before in a couple of other episodes, but I'm hoping, again, this will be sort of the episode that I can reference in the future as far as this subject matter. I have a whole chapter on this, this idea of the demise of the gods, the nullification of the gods in my forthcoming book on demons, what the Bible really says about the powers of darkness. Now, that's not the angel's book. The angel's book is its own thing. The demon's book is a separate book. It's a companion to the angel's book. I have no idea when the demon's book is going to be out, but I'm going to read you an extended portion of it because of this topic. Again, I'm not going to give you all of it. You're going to have to get the book whenever it becomes available. Again, who knows when that's going to be, but at some point in 2019, and you can get the whole treatment. The major passages on this are covered or touched on in that book. The major passages for this idea in Paul are 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 24, Colossians 2 through 15, which is where we are. Ephesians 1, 15 to 22. Ephesians 3, 7 to 10. Ephesians 4, 4 through 8. I actually have an extended discussion of that in the unseen realm, so you could just go as well and read that. 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22. That's also unseen realm turf. Romans 15, 8 to 12. There are a number of passages that I don't discuss specifically in the unseen realm that are relevant to this topic, and so I'm going to read you a lengthy excerpt here from the demon's book. I'm going to skip the Ephesians 4 stuff for sure, since that's an unseen realm, so let's just jump in. This comes right after I talk about Ephesians 4 in that book. So in Ephesians 4, 4 through 8, the New Testament draws on cosmic geographical thinking, draws on Psalm 68 specifically, to portray Christ's victory over the powers of darkness. Mount Hermon, which is the Mount of God in Psalm 68, that it was being reclaimed as Yahweh's possession, is an important focus point. So back to the paragraph. Jesus provoked darkness in Bashan and at Mount Hermon to set the circumstances of his death in motion. That's the gates of hell stuff, again, in unseen realm. The provocation was essential because his sacrificial death was essential. One cannot have a resurrection and an ascension without a death, and the resurrection and ascension are central to the re-enthronement of Jesus above all powers. In Ephesians 4, 8, Paul read Psalm 68, 18 as describing the conquest of supernatural evil, Bashan, which in turn led to the coming of the Spirit and the subsequent gifts to the body of Christ. The coming of the Spirit was, of course, contingent on the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ to the position of rule, the right hand of the Father. Paul more explicitly connects the finished work of Christ and the defeat of evil spirits, in this case the hostile gods enslaving the nation as the rulers and authorities, in passages like Colossians 2, 8 through 15. In verse 15, the cosmic forces, the rulers, R.K., and authorities, exusea, are disarmed and put to shame. The lemma R.K. is used to divine beings in the New Testament. I'm not going to read you all the verse references in this section. So the lemma R.K. is used to divine beings in the New Testament, including earlier in the same letter, Colossians 1, 16. The same is true of the lemma exusea, Colossians 1, 13, and you can compare that to Ephesians 2, 2. Paul is writing to a Gentile church and clearly has Gentiles in view, when he describes his audience as, quote, dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, verse 13. Jews, of course, share the problem of being estranged from God because of sin. Paul makes this clear with language like our transgressions and against us. He includes himself as a Jew in both the problem and the wonder of forgiveness. But Israel had no supernatural rulers and authorities to be disarmed. The nations did, per the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Two climactic accomplishments are noted here in Colossians by Paul. First, the record of debt that stood against us, Jew and Gentile, was canceled or set aside. Second, the rulers and authorities were disarmed and put to shame. The resurrection, verse 12, was the causative agent to both. For if there was no resurrection, the debt against us would still stand and we would not be made alive together with him. Scholars have been puzzled by the word choice in verse 15, disarmed. The lemma is Apec duomai. It is found only here and in Colossians 3.9 where it's translated typically put off, remove, strip off, the old self. It is obvious that the term would not point to the destruction of the rulers and authorities as Paul elsewhere has the powers of darkness actively engaged against believers in Ephesians 6.12. Now, the key word there is destruction. I'm going to argue that they have been nullified, delegitimized. They're not destroyed yet because that comes at the end. There are still principalities and powers that Paul has to fight and that we are in conflict with. Back to my paragraph here. Scholars find the idea of removal or stripping of something awkward here and it is if one lacks the Deuteronomy 32 framework as a reference point. Paul uses the same verb in Ephesians 4.22 when he reminds the Ephesians that they have put off the old self with its practices and I put on the new self. The putting off and putting on speaks of turning from the old way of life to something new. The cognate noun Apec dusis occurs only once in the New Testament in this very passage, Colossians 2.11. Now, what are we to make of this metaphorical term that essentially talks about removal? Applied to the rulers and authorities in Colossians 2.15. The idea of removal captures the nuance. While not destroyed, the supernatural rulers and authorities have been displaced or removed from the authority they held over the Gentiles. Who was it that removed this authority? The most high himself? On the basis of the death and resurrection of Christ. Loes, who is a commentator in the Hermioneus series, comes close to this idea when he writes that the rare verb means to take off to put aside. The middle voice, however, can also be used in an active sense. Then it means to strip. God through Christ put aside the old order of the rulers and authorities. He stripped them of their authority. So I'll just stop here for a moment. I like that grammatical observation from Loes there. I think it's useful and helps again frame the meaning of the term in relation to what actually happened to the powers of darkness. So back to the book, back to the demons book section. The point of Paul's declaration is that the ruling authority of the gods allotted to the nations, Deuteronomy 32.8 and again Deuteronomy 4, 19, 20, 17, 3, 29, 23, 26, that that ruling authority was declared illegitimate and null by the work of Christ. In the past, prior to Christ, the most high had a lot of the nations to the sons of God. Their authority was legitimate because they had been appointed by the true God. They were supposed to be in their positions. Psalm 82 tells us that these gods, sons of the most high, Psalm 82, 6, rebelled and became corrupt. Instead of ruling their people according to the sort of justice God desired, they enslaved them, ultimately becoming the objects of their worship and seducing Yahweh's own people into idolatry. Now because of the cross, their rule has no legitimacy. Gentiles would have understood the implications of this. As early writers like Plato understood the gods had been allotted to the nations. I'm going to read a little selection from Plato here. In the days of old, the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. Let me just read that sentence again. This is Plato. Again, this is in Deuteronomy 32. This is Plato. In the days of old, the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. There was no quarreling, for you cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper for each of them to have. We're knowing this that they would seek to procure for themselves by contention, that which more properly belonged to others. They, all of them, by just apportionment, obtained what they wanted, and peopled their own districts. And when they had peopled them, they tended us, their nurslings and possessions as shepherds tend their flocks, accepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of a vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure. Thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now, different gods had their allotments in different places, which they set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister and sprang from the same father, having a common nature and being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land, which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue, speaking of Greece. And there they implanted brave children of the soil and put into their minds the order of government. Their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of the destruction of those who receive the tradition and the lapse of age. I'll end it there. That's from the Dialogues of Plato. It's the Jewett or the Jowett translation in 1892, Oxford. Again, the Gentiles know this stuff. It's amazing that about the only people who don't get this worldview are people who are Christians today in the modern world. But again, this is important for understanding the supernatural framework of Scripture. Again, that's why I wrote Unseen Realm. If you haven't read the book, you need to read the book. But they get this, and Paul's declaration in Colossians 2.15 about the rulers and authorities being stripped of their authority, they're stripped of their power is important. And Gentiles would have picked up on what Paul was laying down. They understood the context. So back to my book here. I write, consequently, part of the good news of the gospel to those under the God's dominion was that they were free to turn from those gods and embrace Jesus. In fact, God was demanding their return to his family. The breach caused by the Babel Rebellion had been closed. The gap between them and the true God had been bridged. That the authority of the rulers and authorities was nullified by the most high does not mean that the supernatural forces of darkness allotted to the nations surrender their charges. Paul knew his Old Testament specifically that the final judgment of the gods was eschatologically connected to the day of the Lord. Nevertheless, their demise is in process. Paul's language about the cosmic rulers runs in parallel to what we saw in the Gospels with respect to the demons. Jesus' announcement that the kingdom of God had come was accompanied by exorcisms. The point wasn't that there were no more demons. Exorcism accounts and forms us quite clearly that both the demons and Jesus knew the fate of the powers of darkness was yet future. For example, in Matthew 8, 29, the demons cry out to Jesus, what have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? The phrase Before the Time points to a definite future destiny. Hagner, another commentator, captures the idea succinctly. I'm going to quote him. The demons' subsequent question, have you come here to torment us before the time, is interesting from at least two aspects. First, in it the demons recognize that at the eschatological judgment they will experience God's judgment and the end of their power. And second, they recognize that Kairos, that that time has not yet come. Jesus has in effect come too early and threatens their realm too soon for the eschatological judgment of demons, in any quotes a few other passages. This of course fits in with Matthew's perspective of realized eschatology. The kingdom has come but in advance of its fullest and final coming. That's the end of Hagner. Back to my section. In like manner, in declaring to Gentiles that the most high had invalidated the jurisdiction and dominion of their gods, Paul did not intend to claim their eschatological hour had come. Paul linked his mission of evangelism of the Gentiles to the restored spiritual fortunes of Israel. The final mystery of God's salvation plan would be known when, quote, the fullness of the Gentiles, unquote, had become part of the kingdom of God, leading to the salvation of Israel, Romans 11-25-26. Only when the full number of Gentiles were saved with the nations and their gods be finally judged. Again, but this is just a rabbit, this is me breaking in here to myself. But it's in process. Their authority has been nullified and as the kingdom of God grows, their sphere of dominion diminishes and shrinks. The issue with triumphing over the rulers and authorities in Paul's thought, in Paul's day, is that they have no more legitimate authority over the nations. The Gentiles have every right and God earnestly wants them to switch sides. There's no argument and it's important because if you could say, well, they're supposed to worship those other gods, don't you remember Deuteronomy 32, Paul? Again, this two-track salvation or the Gentiles can never be saved because they're under these other gods. All that kind of stuff Paul says, no, no. There's one path and because of the resurrection, their authority has been stripped by the same most high who gave it to them. We're done with that. By delegitimizing their authority, Paul legitimizes the authority of Christ, his own ministry. Now, I have a footnote at this and I want to read this specifically because again, I like, if you've read Unseen Realm, you know it isn't just Mike. There are just hundreds, maybe we're in the thousands of footnotes there. I don't know. But again, I'm not making stuff up. It's not just me. This isn't just my idiosyncratic reading of the Bible. That's the dirty little secret of Unseen Realm. There are no original thoughts in the book. It's all under peer review. Go check the footnotes and the sources. But I have a footnote here that reinforces that. I wrote, the full task of reclaiming the nations in Paul's mind meant the gospel had to reach all the nations listed in Genesis 10 that had been divorced by God at Babel. This was what lay behind his urgency to reach Spain, Tarshish, the most remote of those nations. Jewett and Kotansky take note of this point and I'm going to quote them. At the end of time, all Israel will be saved, Romans 11, 26. But this cannot occur until the fullness of the Gentiles has been achieved, Romans 11, 25. Reckoning backwards from this apocalyptic climax, Paul infers that current Jewish resistance against the gospel provides time for the Gentile mission. This is the reasoning behind the Spanish mission project that this letter seeks to advance. He's talking about the Romans there. For if the gospel can be brought to the end of the known world, the climactic conversion of Israel can occur and the Parusia can come as promised. That's Jewett and Kotansky. That's the Hermania-Romans commentary, which is a significant scholarly commentary. Again, this is biblical theology. It's just that we have such gaps in the way we think about Scripture that to some listeners, this might sound really new and even kind of odd. It's not. It's your Bible. Back to, again, my demon's book. Other sections in Paul's letters and other New Testament books connect the de-legitimization of the authority of the allotted supernatural powers of the nations to Christ's resurrection and ascension. Note the juxtaposition of the two themes in the following instances. 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 24. I'm just going to read the passages. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. There's the resurrection, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as an atom all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ, the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ, then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying, at the end destroying every rule, every RK, every ruler, and every authority, exusea, and every power, dunamis. Ephesians 1, 15 through 22. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ Jesus when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Verse 21, far above all rulers, all RK, and all authority, exusea, and powers, dunamis, and dominion, you know, thrones, coreates, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive. There's your resurrection in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waged in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water. That baptism, which corresponds to all that, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God. Again, if you've read Unseen Realm, this idea of a loyalty pledge to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven, there's the ascension, and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers, having been subjected to him. Now, not surprisingly, Paul's theology linking a rising Messiah to the release of the Gentiles from their false worship from the gods that enslaved them is anticipated in the Old Testament. Romans 15, 8 through 12, is suggestive in that regard. Here I'm going to read Romans 15, 8 through 12. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written, therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again, it is said, rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples extol him. And again, Isaiah says, and here's the one I want you to focus on. The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles. In him will the Gentiles hope. The key item in the passage is found in verse 12, which has the Messiah, the root of Jesse, arising. The lemma is anesthimi, to rule the Gentiles. Paul's source is Isaiah 11-10 from the Septuagint. In the context of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, assuming the rulership described by Isaiah requires withdrawing the authority of the sons of God allotted to the nations of Babel. Of the two Greek verbs, agero and anesthimi, used to describe the resurrection in the New Testament, anesthimi, and especially its cognate noun, anastasis, has received concentrated attention for its use in describing the resurrection of Jesus. Now I'm going to quote the New International Dictionary of New Testament theology and exegesis here. That entry in part says, the verb anesthimi occurs in the New Testament over 100 times, but almost all was in the Gospels and Acts. The only exceptions are Romans 15-12, 1 Corinthians 10-7, Ephesians 5-14, 1 Thessalonians 4, 14 and 16 in Hebrews 7, 11 and 15. Luke acts accounts for more than 70 instances. In approximately three-fourths of the occurrences, the meaning is general, not connected with the concept of resurrection. All occurrences in John but one, John 11-31, have to do with resurrection. Whereas Matthew never uses it this way, he prefers agero. Such a meaning occurs a handful of times in Luke and it is a bit more frequent in Acts, but in the epistles, it is found only three times. Ephesians 5-14, 1 Thessalonians 4, 14 and 16. In contrast, the noun anesthasis, which occurs 40 times, means resurrection in virtually every case. The only exception is Luke 234. Some have thought that agero, especially in the passage, is used predominantly for what happened at Easter, the awakening of the crucified one to life. While anesthamy and anesthasis refer more especially to the recall to life of people during the earthly ministry of Jesus and the eschatological and universal resurrection. There are, however, too many exceptions to that. Agero is applied to John the Baptist and to the dead generally and Paul applies it to both Christ's resurrection and the future resurrection of the dead in the same context. It would be more accurate to say simply that agero occurs more frequently than anesthamy in the sense of resurrection. That's the end of the quote. In other words, both of these verbs can and do refer to the resurrection and the noun form anesthasis is almost always one exception of 70 referring to the resurrection. So the anesthamy, anesthasis, this language is important. In the Septuagint of Zephaniah 3-8, we also see the combination of resurrection language, this kind of verbiage, these lemmas, with the reclaiming of the nations. It says this, Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, for the day of my rising up, anesthasis, the day of my rising up for a testimony, because my judgment is for the gathering of nations. In order to gather the kings, in order to pour upon them all my fierce anger, because in the fire of my zeal all the earth will be consumed. Zephaniah actually combines both the resurrection for applying this to the Messiah. Specifically, that's going to be the catalyst to gather the nations and then that gets combined with the final resurrection, the final judgment of the nations and their gods. Lastly, again, back to the book, Psalm 82 itself is part of the matrix of ideas that contribute to Paul's theology of the abrogation of the authority of the allotted powers. Recall that after castigating the gods, verses one through five, and sentencing them to die like humans, verses six and seven. The psalmist closed the divine council scene with a plea, quote, Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit the nations. Scholars have drawn attention to the fact that the Septuagint translator used, anesthami, rise up for this plea. It takes little imagination to see how these passages could be read in hindsight by Paul. After his dramatic encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus and his call to be the apostle to the Gentiles, the resurrection of the Messiah would be forever intertwined with the reclaiming of the once rejected nations. That's the end of the section in my demons, but I know that was long. But again, I wanted a place, and this seems like a good one, for the podcast's sake, to get that theme addressed because it just pops up in Paul's letters in a number of cases, and who knows when we're going to get to those other instances. As we wrap up this episode, Colossians 2, 13 through 23, again, our focus has been this theme. A lot of the other stuff we've hit before, Paul's reiterating the supremacy of Christ, the preeminence of Christ, to the shadow, the temporary, the copy, things of food laws and new moons and Sabbath, feast days, whether he's hitting at Jew or Gentile or both. Again, I think it would be certainly both, especially again when you factor in the Sabbath reference there. There are not two ways of salvation. There is one, and the one way is Christ, who is the substance. He's the ultimate reality of these shadow things, and he is superior to every other exalted power in the supernatural realm. And in fact, again, both Jew and Gentile will understand this when Paul says it. The cross event stripped away the authority of the rulers and the authorities over the nations. Now, the Jew should have heard that and thought, okay, Deuteronomy 32. I guess we're wrong. I guess they're not locked in. The same most high has just nullified their authority. The authority he gave them as a punishment to punish them, to estrange them. He has just nullified that authority. And so, yeah, Paul can take the message of our Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth to the Gentile. The path of salvation is exactly the same for them as it is for us. Of course, this is part of the matrix of ideas that Paul's opposition just didn't want to hear. They're trying to deflect attention away. They're trying to rebut it. They're trying to substitute something for it. And Paul's just having none of it. He's having none of it. And he takes them right back, again, to their own scriptures, to deal with the idea, again, that there's one path, Jew and Gentile, one means, one salvation. And everything that holds the Gentiles, either in their own mind or the mind of a Jew, everything that holds them at a distance has been stripped away. Okay, Mike. Well, we're going to take a break from Colossians next week. We've got an interview with David De Silva, and then another interview after that. But then after that, we'll jump back into chapter three with Colossians. And yeah, it's a good breaking point. Sounds good. All right, Michael, with that, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com. We're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 235, Colossians chapter three, verses one through 17. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you? Pretty good. Pretty good. Do you want to tell people about the fantasy football league, Trey? No, I'm not doing pretty good, Mike. It's been a rough year. I'm an offer. I haven't won a game yet. What is it, 0 and 3 today? Pretty rough. Pretty rough, Mike. It's only the beginning of the long season, so I'm not worried because my team's competitive. I've just been playing teams that seem to want to score the most points. That seemed to be better, right? Just playing teams that seem to be better. Unfortunately, that's true. I have an unfair advantage. I have Maury's leadership. Can I borrow him for next year? No, he is an exclusive property. Well, I'm not worried. It's like I said, we're just getting started this year, so plenty of time for me to make some moves and to come back. All I got to do is make the playoffs. Mike, get that six seed, and I'm in, and then anything can happen. Let the chips fall really may. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I've been in the same situation before, so I know that that is possible. But you've got a long road. It's a long road, so what can we say? Let's talk about something a little bit happier, and that's your angels book, Mike. How's that been going? It's out, and the reviews are starting to come in. Yeah, it's like upward to 50 reviews already, like in a week, a little over a week, which is pretty good. I don't know if that compares to unseen realm. I don't have that much of a memory, but a lot of good feedback. I've gotten some an email just from colleagues and whatnot that doesn't appear on Amazon. So far, a pretty enthusiastic response. It's actually helpful, even though I'm not, in the words of one person on Facebook, I'm not telling people how to make angels do stuff for them. If you haven't seen Lexham's commercial for your book and it's fantastic. I love it. Yeah, Mori is multi-talented. Not only is he a fantasy football wizard, but he's also quite good on screen. Yeah, that suit looks good for you. I think you need to wear that suit at the next conference. No, that suit is happily back where it came from, whatever place they rented that thing from. Well, we also can mention, speaking of conferences, Mike, the annual ETS and SPL conferences at the end of November or middle of November are coming up and we plan on doing a live Q&A in Denver, tentatively planned for that Friday, November 16th, but we haven't confirmed it, but that's what we're trying to target. So if you're in the Denver area, start to mentally plan to come out and see us in Denver in November. Yeah, once we lock that down too, I'm sure we'll have other details emerged too. Absolutely. All right, Mike, well, we're back into Colossians. Yes, we are. Colossians 3, 1 through 17. We're basically having a little more than half of the chapter today and we'll finish it up on the next following episode as well. So in this one, first 17 verses, there are really two trajectories that I want to sort of follow for this episode. And I'll just give them to you ahead of time, you know, sort of a preview here, but the two trajectories are the already, but not yet aspect of the Christian status and how discipleship is rooted in that status. And then secondly, the already but not yet status of Christ's kingdom rule. So based upon what Paul has said in the first two chapters, he's laid the foundation for sort of drawing out some implications. He's going to talk about, you know, Christian conduct in light of this. And so these are the two things that sort of pop out in Colossians 3, these two already, but not yet things, these things that are in process, but that are still moving toward an ultimate conclusion. So the Christian status and how discipleship is rooted in that status, and then the whole idea of Christ's kingdom rule presently, and then again, moving toward sort of an ultimate climax. So let's just jump into chapter three. I'll read the first four verses, and then we will get into some thoughts about it. Paul writes, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. So we'll stop there at verse four, and you can already get this flavor of stuff that's already, but then stuff that's not yet. Again, it jumps out in this passage. And that's really the first thing, you know, to really observe. This sort of paradigm, already but not yet, is in Paul's mind in a number of places, and in the mind of other biblical writers too. But it's kind of obvious here. You have died, your life is hidden. These are like present realities. But then Christ, who is your life, but when He appears, you're out there in the future, again, this already but not yet. So the already stuff, again, gets expressed even grammatically. There are certain heiress tenses. And again, for those who need to review, the heiress tense in Greek is sort of a snapshot. It views an action as an event, an action as a completed whole. So it's not an action continuing. It's not an action that needs something to be supplemented. It's not an action in process. Process isn't even in view. It just views the action as a whole, completed sort of thing. And there are perfect tenses. Perfect is sort of building upon the heiress idea anyway, where you have an event that has occurred in the past and it has ongoing ramifications. It's not that the event is in process, it's that there are certain things that extend from it, ramifications that extend from it, that move into the future, move beyond, I should say, that's probably a better way to say it, that sort of have implications beyond this completed event. So the phrase you have been raised with Christ, it's an heiress passive. And it's a completed event, completed action. And passive, that that happened because of an external force. You have died. Okay, there's an heiress. Again, your life has been hidden with Christ. That's a perfect and also, again, a passive. You have died as active. So you have two passes, one active, and you have two heiress and one perfect. So you have this already kind of thing going on. And then there are some already in the perfect tense that that phrasing your life has been hidden with Christ. You have ongoing ramifications, then when we hit verse four, then Paul's going to be looking to the future, the not yet stuff. And again, the not yet aspect is when Christ is manifested. This is talking about a future sort of thing. If you are looking in a reverse inner linear or some other kind of inner linear, that's an heiress passive subjunctive. You say, well, why wait a minute, it's an heiress. Well, it's an heiress because it's Paul's viewing an event again, that it's going to happen when it happens. That's a whole completed event. But the subjunctive mood in Greek is something we really haven't talked about on the podcast before. The subjunctive is the mood of unreality. Green grammar, the indicative mood is the mood of reality. Things that have already taken place are already in process. We've either watched them happen or are watching them happen. Subjunctive, is there some kind of contingency? It hasn't happened yet. There's something, some aspect that's either delaying it or it's out there. And that's what we have here. So yeah, when Christ comes back, it's a reference to the full orb of the event. And by the way, since it is a reference to the sort of completeness, you can't really parse this up into stages like a rapture to second coming, it's just a generic reference to the appearance of Jesus just generally broadly. So that's why we have that tense there. But it's subjective that there's a contingency. Other stuff has to happen before this happens. That kind of idea. So, you know, we get this out there in the future kind of thinking. And when that happens, you will also appear with him. There's our future tense, future passive. You will also be manifested. It would be the way to translate that in passive language. You will be manifested. You will be revealed or something like that when he comes back. So we've got already elements. We've got not yet elements in the first four verses. Now to unpack this a little bit more, just in terms of, you know, and try to keep it in simple terms and again, terms that, you know, relate to what he's going to get into as far as how this should affect your behavior. I mean, ultimately, that's where Paul's going. In other words, you have been given new life. Okay, your new life in Christ has already started. You're a new creation, kind of like 2nd Corinthians 517. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. So this language of Paul, you have been raised. You have died. Your life has been hidden. It's just another way of saying, you've been given new life. You're a new creation. And this life, this new life means that the old life is over. Okay, you have died. So you've been given new life. You're a new creation. And since you're a new creation, the old life is over with. Your destiny in this new life is not yet completely manifest. You're going to be experiencing the ramifications of that as time goes on. But ultimately, someday out there when Christ appears, then you will be manifest really for who you are in an ultimate sense. What's going on now is real. If you're a new creation, your life should be changing because of your new status. But your experience, again, is still in this world. You still struggle. You still have sin. Again, these things can't be avoided because you're still in this present reality. Even though you've had a status change, and ultimately, things will go full circle, and you will be manifested for what you really are, children of God, members of the council. Again, some of these other passages we've talked about in Colossians and then in prior in Hebrews, the previous two series, or the previous series in Hebrews and then this one. Another way of looking at it still is, as certain as Jesus' life and impending appearances, so your new life and appearance with him will be, and it is. Again, we have this already idea and not yet. When he is manifest, when the validity of his resurrection is manifest to everyone by virtue of his return, then your faith in him will be vindicated. Because you will be manifest with him as what you truly are. He's hinting at glorification here, obviously, in the return of the Lord. Believers returning with him, all this kind of stuff that is familiar to us eschatologically in the not yet part. But it's rooted in something that's already taken hold, a new status. Now, Mu, in his commentary, I kind of like some of the things he says here, I think are worth observing. He writes, this identification reflects the relentless Christological focus of Colossians. Again, Colossians is all about the preeminence of Jesus. The Mu continues, and it reminds us of Paul's autobiographical remark in Galatians 220, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live. There's your status change, but Christ lives in me. There's your ongoing. The life I now live in the body, ongoing. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. These verses, Mu says, reflect Paul's conviction that the life and destiny of the believer are inextricably bound up with Christ. He continues, our identification with Christ now real, but hidden. Again, because we have this futuristic idea, the not yet idea is still in the passage. Will one day be manifest? As John puts it, quote, dear friends, now we are, now we are children of God. And what we will be has not yet been made known. Let me just break in here. It's interesting that the same lemma that's used in Colossians 3-4. The Colossians 3-4 reference about appearing occurs in that passage. We are now children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known, not yet been manifest. That Greek lemma is the same as the lemma in Colossians 3-4 about being manifest, back to Mu. But we know that when Christ appears, the same verb again, same Greek lemma appearing when Christ is manifest, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. That's 1 John 3-2. Let me just break in again. There you have the already not yet, very plainly. We are children of God, but what we will be has not yet been manifest. It's exactly what Paul's saying here in Colossians 3. Back to Mu for a little bit, because Christ is now in us, we have the hope of glory, Colossians 1-27, and it is that same union expressed in the other direction that we are in Christ that will bring hope to its certain accomplishment. As the text in 1 John suggests, the believer's appearance in glory or in a state of glory will mean a final transformation into the image of Christ, and he references Romans 8-29. By means of resurrection, and he references 1 Corinthians 15-43 there. In Christ, God has restored the definitive and perfect image of God that was marred in the fall, and believers who are joined with Him will share that image. Again, this is about transformation, being conformed to the image of His Son. The whole concept of imaging is familiar to this audience by virtue of our discussion in Unseen Realm and in podcast episodes, being God's representatives. Again, Paul is getting the same set of thoughts just in a different verbiage. What Paul is talking about here is, first of all, the believer's destiny, glorification and everlasting life with Christ, because we are united to Him, we are in Him, we are in the body of Christ, all these phrases Paul uses. Secondly, he's talking about this new life, a thing true of us because of union with Christ means that our old life is over. We're dead. Our old life is over. Paul is going to proceed then to tell the Colossian believers that following Jesus, living in conformity to His will, means thinking that way. It means thinking that way about your old life. I mean, look at what Paul says elsewhere, just a few other passages. 2 Corinthians 5-17 have already alluded to this one. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Again, your old life is dead. You have to think this way, moment by moment, day by day. This is actually what Scripture means by the renewing of your mind. My old life is over. I'm a new creation. Colossians 2-20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. And then Romans 6-5-6, for if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. Again, this is why Paul will attach. He proceeds to attach a series of commands to what he's just said in Colossians 3-1-4. Now, if you actually look at what follows, and we'll include Colossians the first four verses in this, but here are the imperatives. Again, if you have Bible software, you can run a real quick search for the imperatives. The imperative is the boot of command in Colossians 3. And this is what you get. Here are the imperatives in these first 17 verses. Verse 1, seek the things that are above. Verse 2, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Verse 5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you. And then he lists a whole bunch of struggles of the flesh, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry, so on and so forth. Verse 8, but now you must put them all away. So put away another command. Put away these old things, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Verse 9, do not lie to one another. Again, that he picks that one out as an old behavior. Verse 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility. In other words, do the opposite. You're a new creation. And set that in your mind. My old life is over. I'm a new creation. Verse 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your heart. So let rule as the command. And here's another command in the same verse. Be thankful. And then verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, so let dwell. So we have seek, set your minds, put to death, what's earthly in you. Put away, again, all these old behavior patterns. Don't lie to one another. Put on the new behavior patterns. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Those are the commands. And be thankful. Those are the commands in the first 17 verses. And they extend from this status change. And if we can just boil it down, Paul's talking about a status change. Your old life is gone. You're a new creation. And again, that conclusion is based upon the first two chapters of who Jesus is and his exclusive ability to cancel your debt of sin. Nail it to the cross. We've talked about all this. The fact that he is exalted above all other powers, both good guys and the dark powers, again, that would seek to enslave you and what he did on the cross, the cross event. Because of all that stuff that we've covered in the first two chapters, Paul transitions in chapter three to what a lot of people would call practical stuff. Personally, I think the first two chapters are practical. There's nothing more practical in biblical theology. If you're actually thinking theologically, that shouldn't be a conundrum. Again, it tends to be an excuse to not think about that stuff and then just get to the preachy stuff. Again, that's not where Paul's head is. Paul draws his conclusions about conduct on the basis of theology and the basis of what he's just talked about doctrally. And some of that stuff is pretty heady stuff. We've spent a number of weeks in those two chapters. So these commands really, again, extend from your status change. The commands describe decisions that you have to make now, states of mind that believers need to cultivate. And if that's done, states of mind, again, behaviors that will be manifest in our lives and our conduct, these decisions or states of mind reinforce or demonstrate the idea or reality that our old life, the life we live that led to everlasting death and that would cut us off from everlasting life. That's what the old life could produce, temporary gratification, everlasting death. And so we have a new status and our state of mind needs to involve all that. My old life is over. I'm a new creation. So the commands are actually ways to remind ourselves of the real life that awaits us, what our destiny now is and how our old life hastened self-destruction and anger and misery to everyone around us in some way. In the reverse, again, the idea of putting on our decisions that we have to make to cultivate positively. So, I mean, all of this is about, again, like I said a few minutes ago, what Paul's saying here is kind of unpacking the idea of being renewed in your mind, again, decisions to make both negatively. Don't go back to the old life and positively. Put on these new things and states of mind. Again, you're doing this not to earn brownie points with God. You're doing this because you're thankful. There's verse 15, the command to be thankful. You're doing this because you're thankful for what has been done for you. Again, we're not earning brownie points with God. We're not working our way to heaven. We're not hoping our perfection or near perfection does the job. It's not in view at all. Again, first two chapters, it's about the preeminence of Christ in the cross event. That's what does it. That's what changes your status. And as we've said many times, God loves you when you had the awful, terrible status. While we were get sinners, Christ died for us. But what changes our status is what Jesus has done on our behalf and Paul is saying, look, because of all that stuff, verse one, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Again, just set your mind on things that are above. Verse two, so he's talking about decisions and a state of mind. And this is ongoing. It's not a once and done deal. There's an already status that you have. And there's a not yet point of manifestation, point of ultimate reality, point of ultimate transformation that's still out there. But let's talk about his list a little bit, the things to avoid. This is how Paul does this in the chapter. When he gets to verse four, where we just ended, then he starts going into put to death there for what's earthly and use sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is adultery. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these two, you once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander. I'm seeing talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. Then he transitions again to some more positive things. So let's talk about the negative things that he lists there. Now Mu points out this. Again, I like the way he puts this. He says, the list of sins that we find in verses five and eight have parallels in a number of other New Testament texts and are sometimes matched by comparable lists of virtues on the other side, like in verse 12. Scholars have dubbed these respectively vice lists and virtue lists, again, for lack of a better category. And they have argued that they represent a literary form that the New Testament writers have borrowed from their environment. Whether this is the case or not, Mu says, what's more important for the interpretation of Colossians three is the degree to which the vices listed here reflect actual problems in the Colossian community. The list of sins in verse five focus on sexual sins, while the one in verse eight singles out sins relating to interpersonal relationships. The virtue list of verse 12, along with many of the positive exhortations of verses 13 through 17, also focus on community relations. That's the end of the Mu quote. Regarding the sexual sins that are listed in this section, O'Brien in his commentary, his word biblical commentary has a little thought here. He says, five sins are identified with the earthly members, fornication, impurity, lust, evil desire, and covetousness in general. And it's interesting that he says about that list, those five things, there is a movement from the outward manifestations of sin to the inward cravings of the heart, the acts of immorality, overtly and uncleanness due to the inner springs from which they come. Now again, that's O'Brien. Again, that's a good observation. And he's right. The list here moves from the stuff that people see to the stuff they don't see and stuff that's lurking inside. And Paul's saying, you've got to deal with all of it. You've got to put off these things because you've had a status change and your old life is dead. It's gone. So you need to be thinking in this mode, thinking in these terms. The reality of your status change needs to run through your head every day and even throughout each day because that, again, is going to lead you to be sort of on the page you need to be on, thinking about what it is that pleases God and what doesn't please God, what it is that destroys you and other people around you and what doesn't. Again, this is a mental and a spiritual and ultimately a behavioral transformation based upon, again, the content of the theology Paul's been getting into. Now I want to take a little bit of a rabbit trail here. Again, just I'm going to track through these terms, the terms for sexual sins here. There's a few things that are worth observing here. The first one in verse five, sexual immorality is how ESV translates. It's the Greek term porneia. Note that porneia is different than adultery. Adultery is a different Greek word altogether. This porneia, just generally speaking, is a term that should not be exclusively restricted to ritualized sex like in pagan religious practices, like engaging with temple prostitutes. That certainly is included in it. Again, if you're married, then it transitions to adultery, but if you're not married, it's still a sin. But it's wider than this ritualistic idea, even though that's a big part of it. In John 8.41, for instance, we see evidence of this where the Pharisees accused Jesus this way. They say, you are doing the works of your father. You're doing the works your father did. Jesus says, this is what you guys are doing. You're the father, the devil, and a lot of stuff. They said to him, well, we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God. They accuse him of being born out of wedlock. It goes back to the Joseph Mary situation, which has nothing to do with temple prostitution. Porneia again extends beyond that. I actually blogged this at one point on my website because this seems to be a kind of trendy thing, even in evangelicalism now, to restrict porneia, to temple prostitution. I guess it seems like, I hope not, but it seems like to legitimize fornication. It's completely wrongheaded. I wrote this on my website. If you read the context of the passage, John 8.41, verse 41 is an accusation levated Jesus by the Pharisees. What do they mean by tarnishing Jesus this way? They are charging. He was born out of wedlock. He's the out of wedlock child of Mary and Joseph, and it isn't hard to see why they'd do that. Matthew 1.18-25 clearly tells us Jesus was not Joseph's child and that Joseph found Mary pregnant before he and Mary had been married. They were only betrothed or engaged. Joseph stayed with Mary for the duration of her pregnancy, even though people knew they were only betrothed. No doubt they were ridiculed and held in contempt. Matthew 1.25 also clearly tells us that Joseph had no sexual relations with Mary until after the birth of Jesus. Again, it says that explicitly, again, which would also be a time, which would also be time enough for the traditional betrothal period to have elapsed. It runs its course and everybody can see she's pregnant. The charge that Jesus was the child of fornication, pornea, very clearly tells us that pornea refers to sexual intercourse before marriage. Again, at least in that context it does. That was the whole point of the Pharisee's jibe. Jesus was illicit. Again, that's their dig at him. Next term in the list is impurity, akatharsia, which refers to any kind of moral corruption. It's applied to sexual sins. Mu has a footnote to legitimize that, to validate that, that akatharsia is paired with pornea in other passages. 2 Corinthians 12-21, Galatians 5-19, Ephesians 5-3, Revelation 17-4. Again, it's very clear that this is also sexual in its orientation. Passion, the next term, pathos in Greek is lust. Again, it is often in a sexual context, not exclusively, but it does show up. Romans 126 is an example. 1 Thessalonians 4-5. Evil desire generally in James 1, 14, and 15. This is the same term, but again, other passages can very clearly have a sexual flavor to it. Covetiousness, which is idolatry. It's kind of an interesting description. Why would covetousness be described this way? Mu says this, the Greek term, pleonakia, literally, if you want to verbalize that, to want more. Covetiousness or greed. Mu says it's the last item in the list, likewise, usually, that has the general sense of an inappropriate desire for more. But this general sense would, of course, include the uncontrolled desire for more and greater sexual experiences. It's tacked onto the end of these other words that have a sexual orientation. Mu continues, Philo claimed that the first commandment prohibits money lovers, and he cites a reference in Philo. And the New Testament frequently highlights the love of material possessions as offering a particularly enticing and entrapping alternative to the love of God. Now, let me stop there. What Mu's going to do here is he's going to transition into talking about why the association with idolatry. What is it about one thing more? Greed, whatever the object of greed is, whether it's sex or money or something else. What's the connection with idolatry? And he's saying, Philo and other writers make this connection too. So this isn't unusual for the New Testament. Back to Mu, he says, Ephesians, as usual, offers the closest parallel to this verse. For of this, you can be sure, no immoral, impure, or greedy person, such a person is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God, it's Ephesians 5-5. The word used in the Ephesians text for idolatry occurs along with immoral person, pornos, and greedy person play on ectase in I Corinthians 5, 10, and 11, and with an immoral person in I Corinthians 6, 9, and Revelation 21, 8, 22, 15. Clearly then, we are dealing with a customary cluster of terms and ideas. Jewish writers habitually trace the various sins of the Gentiles back to the root problem of idolatry. And especially this was true of sexual sins. Putting some other God in the place of the true God of the Bible leads to the panoply of sexual sins and perversions that characterize the Gentile world. Paul reflects this tradition here, sexual sins arise because people have an uncontrolled desire for more and more experiences and pleasures. And such a desire is nothing less than a form of idolatry. That's the Mu Quote. I think that summarizes the contents pretty well. Again, that's all in verse 5. When you get to verse 8, there's another list of sins. Paul says, you know, but now you must put them all away. Here's another list to put away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Again, as commentators have pointed out, and I referenced a couple. First list is sexual in orientation. The second list is really about interpersonal relationships. To quote Mu again here, I like the way he puts this as well. Determining the exact reference of the five items that follow depends first on deciding, just with the concluding prepositional phrase, from your lips, modifies. Okay, but I'll just read it from the ESV. Again, from your mouth, from your lips. ESV has, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your lips, from your mouth. So Mu says, the T-N-I-V, again, prefers lips to mouth and translations disagree. The word there, of course, obviously is used to connote the speaking function of the mouth. If it modifies the verb, if it modifies the verb to put away, then all the sins listed here will have to be some sense since the speech. Put away from your mouth all these things. Anger, wrath, malice, so on and so forth. Now, Mu's actually going to sort of object to that. He says, but giving this extended meaning to these words does not have good lexical support. Let me break in here. What he's basically saying is, look, depending on how you take the grammar, if from your mouth modifies all of these terms, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk, obscene talk is kind of obvious. Slander's kind of obvious. What about anger, wrath, and malice? Well, if they all modify from your mouth, then we have to define these in terms of speech to know what specific sins Paul is talking about. But Mu's saying, that's probably not that defensible. And you can see why, because anger, rage, and malice can be expressed in other ways. You could punch somebody in the face. That demonstrates anger. You don't have to say a word. So back to Mu, he says, more likely then, from your lips should be attached to the end of the list only as a way of reinforcing the last two, which are kind of obvious, slander and obscene talk to use the ESV translation. On either reading of the syntax Paul's concern, though, is especially that Christians would avoid unnecessarily critical and abusive speech. It means at least that much. But with the first three, Paul's probably not restricting it to just speech. Anger, wrath, and malice, again, Paul would know that they can be expressed in other ways. None of them should be part of a Christian's life. What about this obscene talk item? Because I know people are going to have questions. And I've actually gotten emails about this too. Like, should Christians swear and all this kind of stuff? Again, I guess it's a reasonable question to ask. I mean, I just grew up in a Christian environment where you just didn't do that. I didn't do it. I don't do it because I grew up with so much of it. It just kind of turned me off. But you know, people have this question. So what about the term? Mu writes this, the Greek word behind filthy language literally means shameful words. And it's rare occurring only here in biblical Greek. It seems to have the general use of obscene language and probably in combination with slander refers to the use of coarse language when defaming another person. And again, you could you could go out to a lexicon like B-Dag for that, Lydell Scott, again, you're gonna, you're gonna see this term used in a defamatory sense. So it doesn't quite, you know, overlap with what we would think of as maybe crude language or scatological language. Scatological is, you know, in reference to body parts and body functions. It doesn't clearly have a one-to-one overlap with that kind of stuff. It actually, again, most likely refers to using language that is defamatory in some way, or maybe pejorative would be another word. Now, you can certainly use those kinds of words in defamatory and pejorative ways, you know, and that would be what Paul is targeting. But it seems that that's actually what's more in view with this vocabulary choice and not just being crude. That's not an endorsement of being crude, obviously. But again, for the sake of, you know, what Paul would have had in his head, this would be language, again, the whole list really, I mean, is going to include this thought or be included in this thought. You know, what Paul's really angling for is tearing somebody down, you know, and there are a variety of ways you can do that. You can do that delicately. You can do it crudely. Paul is opposed to both. I mean, this is not what Christians do, you know, to defame and tear down and just ridicule, you know, all these sorts of things. You know, this is what Paul's concerned with, not whether you might, you know, have an expletive, you know, that refers to a body part or something like that. I mean, if it's aimed at someone in a defamatory way, well, then that's really what's, what is in view here in Paul's head. Again, it's not an endorsement of the other, but in terms of vocabulary, you know, what he's targeting is the treatment of other people. Now, on the positive side, Paul gets into this when he hit verse 12. Paul writes, But put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ, okay, which is not technically the Bible, by the way, I'm going to break in here, because Jesus didn't write anything. But it really refers to what Jesus taught, the record of Jesus teaching, I guess we could say to him. Let the word of Christ, let Christ's teachings dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. That's through the section through verse 17 that we're going to cover today. So there's a lot in there. A number of these verses could be commented on, but we're going to be selective here for the sake of the episode. Verse 16, let the word of Christ, again, let Jesus' teachings. And that includes his example as well, not just such as verbal teachings. Let what Jesus taught, either by word or example, dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms with thankfulness in your hearts to God. The imperative there is obvious, let dwell. Again, this should be something that you internalize and that you let influence your thinking. We're talking about renewing of the mind, mental transformation here, because that's going to influence your outward conduct. So being renewed in the mind, so that's what let dwell is getting at. And then he adds these participle. So what you should let dwell, that's the imperative. Inside, in your thoughts is what Jesus taught. Again, either word or deed, just his teaching. And then that you have these three sort of participles that extend from the imperative or that are connected to the imperative teaching, admonishing and singing. And these three participles explain how we let Jesus' teaching and example dwell in us richly. We do that through teaching, we do that through admonishing one another, and we can also do that with music. Again, that just helps us internalize things. And obviously, this is a verse that people are familiar with in all the debates over church music, and should we do this, should we not do that? And both the endorsement and the critique of what happens in worship, church worship. I think you can reduce the passage to a fairly simple question, but it's also kind of a profound question. And that is, does your church worship, in other words, does what you sing, the music performed, does it actually teach and admonish? And there's no particible in here for make you feel good. Or even does it encourage you or uplift you? Now, you know, the point is not that it's wrong to have music that encourages or uplifts, but the point is that it is scripturally misguided to not have music that teaches. I mean, you need music that has some content to teach you. It teaches you the content of Jesus' teachings. It's consistent with the content of Jesus' teachings. And then it also exhorts you to follow his example. You know, I'll be the first one to say I've heard a lot of music in church, and some of it immediately comes to mind that hits those targets really well. And then there's others that doesn't hit them at all. You know, it's really about creating a spiritual buzz. And okay, you know, I understand that that's that can be important. That can play a role, you know, in our motivation and, you know, pick us up and be an encouragement and whatnot. But if that's all you're doing, if that's all you're doing, then you are missing the mark of what Paul describes here, you know, that helps you internalize what needs to be internalized. So again, I think it's a it's a simple point, but it's also a pretty important point. So that in a nutshell is is the first part of our episode, you know, where Paul is talking about the already but not yet in terms of your personal status as a believer. Okay, you're already dead. Your old life is over. You've had a change of status. And, you know, now in the here and now, we need to be transformed in our minds. And he's going through all this, you know, we need to set aside the old life, we need to be transformed in our minds. Here are some ways to do it. Here are some things to avoid. Because we have a destiny at some point, again, who we are is going to be manifest. What we believe the validity of what we believe is going to be displayed is going to be manifest. So we need to keep all these things in mind. The second thing I want to hit on in the episode is the already but not yet status of Christ's rule to his kingdom rule. Now I have flirted with this topic on a couple of other episodes, but I decided I'm going to take this episode as sort of a place where this lives now so that we can easily reference it, you know, to people who ask or people can pass it on and say, here's where Mike talked about XYZ topic in a little more detail. And this whole idea of Christ's kingdom rule, and this is tied to the defeat of the principalities and powers. So again, we flirted with this topic already in a couple episodes and, you know, outside the series and Colossians and other episodes, but this will be a place where we can camp a little bit on the topic. So back to the beginning of our passage, Colossians 3-1, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Okay, he's on a throne, so you've got to be ruling something. You don't sit on the throne and not rule things. Okay, this is imagery that speaks of rulership. And you know, how do we parse this? Well, I want to zero in on just one aspect of Colossians 3-1, this reference to seated at the right hand of God. Okay, just that simple idea, that simple phrase. That phrasing shows up in other places in the New Testament. Some of them are Pauline, some of them are other writers. And it's just kind of interesting when you track on that one phrase, where you wind up. Okay, let's just, I'm just going to read through some of these passages. Ephesians 1, 15 through 22, this is Paul. Paul writes, For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might. Here's verse 20. Okay, all that, the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above every ruler and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, this age, there's your already, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So you get an already, but not yet. And along with that, there is the supremacy, the rulership of Christ above every ruler, authority, power and dominion. Again, this is Pauline terminology for the powers of darkness. Christ is superior to them, their authority that they had over the Gentile nations has now been nullified and delegitimized. They have every right and God has every expectation that they should be brought back into the fold. 1 Peter 3 18 through 22, again the same, you know, we're looking for the same phrase, right hand. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh and but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to all this, now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for good conscience, through what? Through getting what? No, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here's verse 22, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him. Again, just think of the Great Commission, go you there for and teach all. Okay, that's not where the Great Commission starts. That's usually how it's quoted. That's actually not how the Great Commission starts, starts in verse 18. It's not just Matthew 28 19 and 20, it's Matthew 28 18 through 20, verse 18 all power, all authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Okay, Christ is ruling something and the fact that he is seated at the right hand of God, both tells us that the kingdom has begun, the kingdom rule has begun, the power, the, you know, the, I should say the authority is a better way to put it, but the authority of the gods and the nations from the Old Testament who are enslaving the Gentile, their authority has been nullified, delegitimized. And what the disciples are supposed to do is make disciples from those nations, you know, make them members of the family of God because as the kingdom of God increases, the kingdom of darkness diminishes. That in a nutshell is spiritual warfare. It's not praying some incantation or yelling at a demon. This is how spiritual warfare is usually taught. Like I'm going to assume the authority to pray something really loud and the demons are going to get scared and go away. Okay, what spiritual warfare actually is, is the great commission. That's what it is. Growing one kingdom and diminishing another. Maybe because you have the authority because you're in Christ on earth to go into hostile territory and say it is time to come home. The authority, the spiritual authority that has been over you, that has enslaved you, yes, it's an outgrowth of a punishment. You know, that happened a long time ago and Israel failed in doing their job to be a kingdom of priests and to bring you back into the fold through them, through the single people of God in the Old Testament context. They failed miserably, but at least, you know, God produced the Messiah through the seat of Abraham who has now delegitimized their authority. And they're going to fight. They're going to fight because it's their turf. And so what we do is we remember that all power is given to Jesus in heaven and on earth, go therefore and make disciples from every nation because as that kingdom increases, the other one diminishes. And this is a war of attrition. The gates of hell will not be able to withstand it. Again, the gates of hell is the one taking the beating, not the church. This is all content again from unseen realm. So let's look at another passage, Romans 8, 31 through 34. What shall we say to these things? Paul asks, if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is it to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us. And this harkens back to language and Colossians and Hebrews that the connection of the resurrection and the ascension with the completion and therefore the completed status of the believers' salvation, the believers' inclusion in the family of God, that that is all linked to the program of Christ, the work on the event of the cross, the resurrection and the ascension. Because of those three things, that's why we have the forgiveness of sins. That's why we have eternal life. Our works do not contribute to this. They don't supplement it. It's not based on anything we do. It's based on something that was done for us. Again, we sort of beat this horse a lot in the book of Hebrews. We've been beating it in Colossians there. We have it in Romans again. It's the one who's at the right hand of God saying, yep, they're mine, interceding for us. He's not sitting there saying, oh, man, I just wish they'd spend a few more minutes in church or something. No, it has nothing to do with performance. It has everything to do with believing in the performance of someone else, i.e., Jesus. Acts chapter 2. Again, this is part of Peter's sermon. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried in his tombs with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus, God raised up and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. What Peter is saying is you realize that since the Spirit has come, and there they are at Pentecost and Acts 2, and everybody has seen this happen, that's proof of the resurrection and the ascension. It's proof of that because Jesus taught that only after I do these things, only after I return to the Father will the Spirit come. Again, these things are just tied together. Hebrews 1, again we hit this a lot in our previous series, long ago at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. He can't sit there until he's made purification for sins, and if he's sitting down and the Spirit comes and you can be guaranteed, you can be sure that you have been forgiven, that purification has been made for your sins. And by the way, he became much superior to angels. As superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Again, it seems clear that the ascension that Christ took or he returned to the place of rulership over God's celestial family, the spiritual kingdom as it were, and the earthly counterpart of that is yet to come. So we have this already but not yet rulership going on. Another indication of how the supernatural world of the heavenly host is analogous to or a template for the world of humanity. Again, the heavenly host, it's an analogy to the way God looks at us as his earthly family. And again, if you've read Supernatural, if you've read Unseen Realm, if you've heard interviews of me about any of those books, that's the constant reference point. Why is angelology, if I can use that term important, because the way God looks at his heavenly family and his relationship to his heavenly family is analogous. It's a template for the way God looks at us. Again, these points of correlation are drawn intentionally and they have significant theological ramifications. Acts 233. Yeah, I'll just read it again. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. So the Spirit, again think back, this is again Unseen Realm content. You're not familiar with Unseen Realm, you've got to go to the podcast website, watch the videos again for the basic worldview, Divine Council worldview, Deuteronomy 32 worldview. That's why they're there. But the Spirit, who is but isn't Jesus, just as Jesus is but isn't God the Father. I mean, he is God but he's not the Father. Well, the Spirit is the Spirit but he's also equated with Jesus in certain passages. Paul says twice, the Lord who is the Spirit. Spirit of Christ and Spirit of God, Spirit of Jesus and Spirit of God are interchanged in the New Testament. So the Spirit, who is but isn't Jesus, is sent because Jesus conquered death. That's the Genesis 3 solution. He is everywhere present in believers, which means he is there to combat the dominion of sin. That's the Genesis 6 solution. Remember, there are three reasons why the world is a mess. Not just one, it's not just the fall, it's three. Genesis 3 rebellion, Genesis 6 1 through 4 rebellion, and then what happens at Babel? And so the third of these is the Spirit is the agent who launched the reclamation of the nations. That's the solution for Babel. That happens in Acts 2. So again, Acts 2 is the validation because the Spirit obviously showed up. That's the validation of the resurrection and the ascension because, again, Jesus said, this isn't going to happen until these other things happen. So when you see this happen, you know that you can be sure that I am at the right hand of God. I have been raised from the dead. Your sins are forgiven. You're going to have eternal life. You're in my family now, all this stuff. And again, the Spirit is the trigger to all of this. The Spirit comes and shows that, okay, Jesus did conquer death. Spirit comes as proof that he rose again and ascended to the Father. I mean, even though lots of people have seen him after post resurrection, appearances and all that, but this is another way to look at it. And when the Spirit comes, he indwells believers. And that's the retardation, the inhibition of depravity. We now have something inside of us that works against depravity, which was the big point of fallout for the Genesis 6 episode. And the Spirit is also here to, you know, indwell and empower people at Pentecost who go back to the nations and become these little cell groups to plant churches and to tell people about the Messiah. Because there's this guy Paul that's going to come down the road and a lot of other believers too that are going to go out from here and Jerusalem into those nations and reclaim them. Again, all of these things work together. And they contribute again to the whole question of the importance of the incarnation, you know, to the whole plan of salvation. It wasn't for the angels that Jesus did this. It was for humans. It was for humanity. And Hebrews 1.13, to which of the angels did God ever say, hey, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? Again, it's this right hand language. It's only to the Son that he says that because when he seated at the right hand of God, he is superior to everything else in heaven, except the Father. Okay. So again, all of these ideas, these disparate threads, they all come together. Again, you just have to sort of see the lay of the land for that. So to wrap up this episode, there are two already but not yet things going on in these 17 verses. One is the status of the believer. And the other is the idea of rulership with Christ. Now, those two things are connected. I think you can already tell that. But I wanted to present them as sort of two separate already but not yet themes that are going on in this chapter. Already but not yet isn't just about eschatology. I mean, it is about eschatology, but it's about other things too. This is sort of a paradigm in Scripture, a mode of thinking that you're going to see theologically in a number of places attached to a number of ideas, a number of aspects of theology. And if I can sort of give a little shameless plug here at the end of this, a lot of this stuff that we went through today, I've talked about in the Angels book and have talked about in the forthcoming, whatever that is, a demon's book. But this is important stuff. It's a good drill down. Again, if you're listening to the podcast and you haven't read Supernatural, you haven't read Unseen Realm, you're a bit handicapped here. And you can get caught up and listen to it again. Again, these are important places to drill down within a worldview. Again, if you have ever suspected that, boy, I have lots of Bible stuff floating around in my head, but I don't know how to connect these things. They must be connected in some way. Well, your intuition is correct. Your intuition is correct. And so that's one of the things we try to do here on the podcast. It's one of the things I try to do in what I write. Lots of places, well, I shouldn't say lots, but the places that do teach people, the churches that do spend time teaching to people do a good job of giving them data. But it's an altogether different thing to connect the points of data, to connect the dots. And so hopefully, again, you get a little sense of that here in this episode. But again, the takeaway is already but not yet operating on two different levels in Colossians 3, 1 through 17. All right, Mike. Well, when can we get more Unseen Realm material? When is the second one? I'm two coming out. Yeah, I gotta do. That's not even a twinkle in my eye. Oh my gosh. What do we have to do? But you can get all that content on what is it? More Unseen Realm dot com? Yeah. I mean, that that takes you a little bit, you know, beyond Unseen Realm. But but there's a tab in more Unseen Realm dot com that says what's next and it has a long gross realize. We need to start chipping away. There's a lot, there's a lot more to be added. But again, everything I produce in some way, you know, is going to drill down into the first one. You got to get the first one. Got to get Unseen Realm, get the lay of the land. And again, if you have this sneaking suspicion that the stuff in the Bible must, there must be something that connects all of it. Your suspicion is correct. And again, that's what I try to do in the book. You know, give you the lay of the land and connect the dots so that you have the you have the framework in your head. All right, there you go. We'll go get his new angels book to while you're at it. And leave a review to please. We appreciate that. All right, Michael, we wrap up chapter three next week and looking forward to that. And with that, Mike, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.ermsh.com. You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 236 Colossians chapter three versus 18 through 25. I'm the layman, Tray Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how you doing this week? Pretty good. Pretty good. Can't complain. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mike, I wanted to briefly call for questions specifically about the book of Colossians here as we normally do when we finish up a book. We're getting close. Only one chapter left, so if you have any questions about the book of Colossians, please email me at traystrickland at gmail.com. You can get that at nakedbiblepodcast.com website for the correct spelling. But send me your questions, and then we'll do a Q&A specifically about Colossians here in a few weeks. Yeah, it's getting to be that time. Like you said, after today we'll only have one more chapter. Yeah, and we'll do a regular Q&A after that, and then that'll give us enough time to collect those questions. Sure, sounds good. All right. Well, I guess in the chapter three this week? Yeah, it's verses 18 through 25, Colossians three, and that does finish up the chapter. Now, I'm just going to read the section, and you can probably guess we're going to be spending most of our time on this one, but let's just jump right into, I'm going to include verse 17 here, because it sort of sets the context for 18 through 25. Paul finished the last section this way. He says, whatever you do in word or deed, in or do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him, and then he goes into his section. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bond servants, obey in everything in those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward, you are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. That's the end of Colossians chapter three. Now, we're probably, it's probably fair to say we're going to be spending the lion's share of our time on the wives and husbands section, but I do have things to say about each of these sections that I think are fairly important. What we want to do is we want to focus on the commands in this section noting their ancient and their Christological context. What I mean by that is there are some cultural considerations, that's the ancient part, and then regardless of what the cultural considerations are, what is said in here needs to be framed again in light of verse 17. Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. So it has a Jesus orientation that, again, works within the culture, but is going to transcend the culture as well. So a few general observations as we jump in about this whole section, a theologically and in terms of discipleship. Again, as we just said, the context is pretty obvious. It's set by the prior verse, verse 17, about doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. So the idea of honoring Jesus frames what follows, or at least ought to. And second, scholars typically refer to this section's command with a German term, the Hausstaffel. Household rules is the translation of that. Their command's about household management. Again, it's just sort of a convenient category term that has woven its way into academia. And it's useful because in the culture, of course, he's writing to the Colossians here in Greco-Roman culture, there are such codes. There are such lists of rules. These are known, the kind of thing Paul does in verses 18 through 25, is known in literature elsewhere of the same period and earlier. Dunn has, I think, a useful summary of this whole issue of genre, the household rules idea. And I want to selectively read some portions from his commentary. So he says, there are similar household codes in other early Christian writings, and he mentions a few New Testament references with less close parallels in some of the past early epistles, and early Christian texts like the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas and Clement and Ignatius, Polycarp, so on and so forth. This suggests, Dunn says, that the Colossian code may have been derived from earlier traditional material, whether in form or content or both, and raises afresh the question whether this was simply a dollop, my scholarly term there, dollop of standard teaching inserted here, like an old sermon being rerun, or whether it had any particular relation to the situation in Colossian how grant his quotation there kind of assumes the lateness of Colossians, which I don't think is warranted. But the idea, again, is that there's a, this isn't new, this isn't sort of unique to Colossians. Dunn continues, the model insofar as there is one was that of Oconomia, household management. In the classic definition of Aristotle, the household was the basic unit of the state. As part of good ordering, therefore it was necessary to deal with its basic relationships, master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. That these became common concerns in thoughtful society is sufficiently clear from such examples as Dio Chrysostom's fragmentary oration on theme, covering the same three relationships. Seneca's description of one department of philosophy as concerned with how to advise a husband should conduct himself toward his wife, or how a father should bring up his children, or how a master should rule his slaves. So you have these ancient examples and Dunn continues, he has a few others. Dionasius of Halachronassus praises Roman household relationships using the same three pairs in the same order as Colossians and deals with duties of wives before those of husbands and those of children before those of fathers as here. That similar concerns were active in Diaspora Judaism is evident, for example, from pseudo facilities, from Philo, he mentions a few other texts, Josephus, you know, contra appion, a few references there. Again, you can find this material both in Greco-Romanian and Jewish texts is his point. Now back to Dunn, he says, why should a code, such a code be introduced here? At all events, we can well understand that socially responsible Christian leaders like their Hellenistic Jewish and Stoic counterparts would wish to consider not merely how individuals should conduct themselves, but how Christian commitment to the Lord should affect the primary unit of community, the household, to become a member of the new family, cross reference there to Romans 8, 16, 17, and verse 29, did not involve displacement or justifying neglect of household responsibilities. Whether the believer belonged to a Christian or non-Christian household, Christian discipleship was not disruptive of society's basic structure. Relationships within the family and household were themselves part of Christian vocation and the first place where responsibility to the Lord should come to expression and be put to the test. This would be important, not least since the earliest churches were all house churches, and he references here Colossians 4 or 15, we'll hit that next time, so that the model of the well run household provided precedent for the well run church. With such motivation, it would be natural to draw on rules of proven worth from the best contemporary social models. We should not ignore the fact that use of the model of household management betokens a similar concern for society and its good order, but it also had the bonus of demonstrating the good citizenship of the young churches, facilitating communication with the rest of society, and making possible an apologetic and evangelistic impact which should not be discounted. That's the end of Dunn's selection there. Again, I think that's a good contextual setting. It was important for Christians to conduct themselves and their families in such a way that they wouldn't be aberrations to, again, the wider culture. There's going to be some aspects of family life and interpersonal relationships that are going to, there's going to be differences there, and we can imagine what some of those, some of the more obvious ones would be, maybe in terms of sexual morality or worship of ancestors or something like that, but what Dunn is talking about here, the basic unit of family and the basic relationships. Paul is going to tell his church of Colossae and other audiences that your household needs to be orderly. Your relationships, again, need to be really above reproach in terms of what you can do that won't dishonor God, but that people outside the Christian community will be able to look at and admire and appreciate. We'll start in Colossians 318 with some of the particulars here. It opens, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. The last part of that's going to be, of course, important, but a lot of the discussion here is oriented around the submission idea. Dunn writes this, it is important to note that it is wives and not women generally who are in view. Women who were single, widowed or divorced and of independent means could evidently function as heads of their own households, as in the case of Lydia, Acts 16, 14, 15, Phoebe, the first name Deacon in Christian history and patron of the church at San Crea, Romans 16, 1 and 2, Chloe, 1 Corinthians 111, and presumably Nympha in Colossae itself. Again, that's a reference to Colossians 4 or 15. The concern here is primarily for the household unit with the implication that for Christians, too, its good ordering was fundamental to well-ordered human and social relationships. That wives are addressed first is presumably also a recognition that their relationship to their husbands was the linchpin of a stable and effective household, and that's from Dunn's commentary on Colossians and Philomen. Now, let's take a look at the terminology here. On the verb translated, submit in Colossians 318. It's Houpotaso in Greek. Now, Mu observes this. Again, I'm just pulling out some things I think are interesting in the way commentators have looked at this. And Mu writes, the verb is not common in pre-New Testament Greek, but does occur 30 times in the Septuagint, where it occasionally refers to humans submitting to God. Second Maccabees 912 he cites here. But more often refers to submission in the secular sphere, particularly to the military and the state. The verb occurs 38 times in the New Testament, 23 of them in Paul. It can denote a forcible subjecting as when evil spiritual beings are subjected to the authority of God or Christ, Luke 10-17, Luke 10-20, 1 Peter 3-22, or when God subjects all things to Christ, 1 Corinthians 15-27, for example, Ephesians 1-22, Philippians 3-21, or it can be used when God, because of humanity's fall into sin, puts creation into subjection, Romans 8-20. But Mu continues, but particularly characteristic of New Testament usage are exhortations, and here's a key, exhortations to voluntary service, to voluntarily putting oneself under the authority or direction of someone or something else. And Mu lists examples. You get this idea of this voluntary submission in passages like Hebrews 12-9, James 4-7, or all believers are to put themselves under the authority of God. Romans 8-7, to be under the authority of his law, or to be under the church. The church is to be under Christ, Ephesians 5-24. Jews are to be under submission to God's righteousness, Romans 10-3. Humans are to be in submission to governing authorities, Romans 13-1, 13-5, Titus 3-1, so on and so forth. Christians are to be in submission to their leaders, 1 Corinthians 16-16, slaves to their masters, Titus 2-9, young men to older men, 1 Peter 5-5, children to their parents, Luke 2-51, wives to their husbands, Ephesians 5-22, and of course, here in Colossians 3-18. You get a number of instances, this is Mu's point, where you have a term that is used in a lot of forcible contexts, both in terms of the state and even theologically, where God, again, like the spirits being subjected to the authority of Christ and what not, which obviously wouldn't be voluntary. But what Mu is saying is a lot of these references in the New Testament are exhortations to voluntarily putting yourself under authority. And of course, the last part of Colossians 3-18 says that this is fitting in the Lord. So this is sort of the way this needs to be framed and what we need to be keeping in mind. Again, back in the previous episode of the podcast, this whole thing about thinking of yourself in a new way. And part of being who you are in Christ is the way that you relate to each other in a variety of relationships. And in this case, in this section, again, as Dunn pointed out, and as is pretty obvious, what Paul is zeroing in here, zeroing in on here is the primary social unit, the concern for household order. Again, it's wider than husbands and wives and parents and children. It includes the household servants as well, because this is the basic unit of society. And it's the idea of having an orderly household, not like showing the guys at work that you're the boss and everybody cowers in your presence. That isn't the idea. The idea is orderliness. And in the Christian context, again, the context of Christ's Lordship, it's voluntary. It's not something that is to be forced upon others without regard to their personal welfare or something like that. It's a voluntary thing, and it's done for the purpose of honoring the Lord. Again, not in terms of showing off or harming someone else or something like that. Again, some self-serving motive is not in view. Now, back to Dunn here for another comment. He says, the call for wives to be subject, hupotaso, to subject oneself to be subordinate to is unequivocal, not even lightened by the prefixed call, be subject to one another, or the addition of words like, as the Church is subject to Christ that you get an Ephesians, you get that commentary in Ephesians 5, 21, and 24. The exhortations should not be weakened in translation, in deference to modern sensibilities. This is, again, done. But neither should its significance be exaggerated. Again, we're quick to worry about the one weakening the language, but we ought to be just as worried about exaggerating it as well, amping it up. Neither should its significance be exaggerated. Subjection means subordination, not subjugation. Now, let me repeat that line because I think Dunn says that well. Its significance should not be exaggerated. Subjection means subordination, not subjugation. And those are different but related terms, but they are different terms, and they're the difference to recognize that, you know, the nuance is there is important. Marcus Bart comments on the passage this way. Again, he has some useful things to say. Houpotosso in the Greek means to order accordingly, to join below, to subordinate, to subjugate. Again, he uses the term subjugate and Dunn, you know, I would agree with Dunn that's not the best vocab choice. In the middle voice, and let me just jump in here, that's what we have in Colossians 318. We have a grammatical middle voice. I don't really need to, I don't want to go into a grammar spasm here, but the middle voice is basically an action that's done or committed with respect to the one doing the action. It's an action done with benefit for, or if it's a bad verb, with deleterious effect to the one doing it, like the action sort of springs back on the subject, the one doing the action. In the middle voice, Bart says, the term means to subject oneself, there's your middle aspect, to subjugate oneself, as well as to be subservient to another, an outside external actor being in view there. In the letter to Aristaeus, which is a Second Temple Jewish text from about the second century, first century BC, the word is used in a positive sense for a humble, humanly accommodating, and therefore God-pleasing demeanor. Again, if you're thinking that this term must mean, or I would be even more blunt if you're thinking that it does mean necessarily, like it inherently means something violent, something aggressive, something overlordly, something heavy-handed, you would be incorrect. That is not an inherent semantic in this verb. It can certainly be used that way, but the point being made here by Bart is that it's also used of something that's, again, just orderly and respectful and accommodating, again, is the way he puts it. There are contexts for that as well. So again, context is everything, and what's the context here? This is Colossians. Colossians 3.18, the prior verse says, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Again, it's not, hey, now you got an opportunity to be abusive. You got an opportunity to belittle someone that's not in view. It's not in view. Back to Bart. In the New Testament, the verb occurs 38 times, 23 of those are in the Pauline corpus. Marcus Bart, again, Bart referencing another one of his pieces, his essays, differentiates two varying usages in the Pauline letters. When Hupatasa, this is number one, when Hupatasa was used in the active or in the sense of something grammatically called the divine passive, which I'm not going to unpack here, when it's used either of those situations, therefore as a description of the name of God, the act of subjugation and the fate of submission reveal the existence of a hierarchy or establish the proper order of right and might. What he means by that is when you have Hupatasa in a sentence, and it's an active verb, then the subject, the one who's doing the action, really describes, again, subjugating something. Again, and again, a number of contexts, you're going to, again, have the exertion of state authority or spiritual authority, like in God with these powers of darkness and whatnot. There are times Bart is saying, look, when it's active or when God is the actor, that's with divine passings. God is the external force. It often has this sort of rougher or more heavy-handed kind of feel because of God's own authority in a particular situation. But secondly, number two, he writes through the use of the middle or passive where God isn't the actor. When you get that situation, Paul is describing, and other New Testament writers would be describing, a voluntary attitude of giving in, of cooperating, of assuming responsibility or carrying a burden. This kind of subjection is demanded only of Christ or of persons who are in Christ. That's just some of his observations on how the New Testament uses this. In Colossians 318, this is what we have. We have a middle, a grammatical middle. Paul is telling the believers a classy, you voluntarily do this. Why do you voluntarily do this? Because it's easy, because you like it. No, this is a way to honor the Lord. At the end of the section, in particular, it's the references to what he's talking to slaves or servants. He says, just know that you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. When it comes to God who is observing all this, if you're being abused in an abusive situation, and in the case of the slaves, it's like, unless they escape, they can't get out of this. They have no legal standing. God sees that and he will repay. In the end, you will receive your inheritance as a reward, as a believer. Again, it's really the best that Paul can offer. When we get into the slavery section, I want to say a little bit more about that. You get the question, well, why doesn't Paul just demand that Christians rise up and revolt and declare slavery just the awful thing that it is? Well, because the Romans would probably just kill everyone. You have to think of the context. The person who is vulnerable, the most vulnerable, in some cases, really the only person that's vulnerable is the slave in that situation. But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. We'll stick to the wives here in verse 18. Again, Bart's point, Dunn's point, Moose point, as what we're going to see here, is about, there's a voluntary aspect here. It's about order and accommodation. It's about humility. It's not about belittling someone, demeaning someone, this aggressive, heavy-handed feel. One last comment from Bart, he says, outside of Pauline writings, these observations aren't really applicable. I think that's important because we are in Paul's writings. What Paul has in view, again, is this kind of flavor to the term. Yes, well, that's all well and good. But how should we take this? What does it mean? How should we think about this? I think Moose has a handy section here. I've picked out a few things that he says. Then I'm going to offer something that, if you're really interested in this topic, you'll be able to get something on the episode site, episode page for this particular section and Colossians, if you really want to drill down into something particular, but we'll get to that in a moment. Moose writes here that the message, the translation of the message, translates Colossians 318 as understand and support your husbands. But as the data reveal, this illegitimately weakens the meaning of the verb. To be sure, as the husband loves his wife, he will often, in effect, put himself under her, deferring to her interests and needs. He cites Philippians 2, 3, and 4 there about the mind of Christ. But this submission of the husband to the wife is of a different character than the submission required of the wife to the husband. In this latter sense, the wife puts herself under her husband in recognizing and living out an order established by God himself within the marriage relationship and within the marriage relationship and by extension in the family of God. Again, because you're going to have some of these principles that are going to apply elsewhere. But I think we're wise with Dunn's earlier comments and a few of the others. Now, what's in view here is husbands and wives, Christ and the church. Yes, we have an analogy going on there, but on the human level, we've got Paul talking to wives, not just women everywhere. Again, because you have women who can function quite well independently. They don't have husbands. They're independent households, and that's just fine. And that becomes really important not only in the early church, like with house churches, but even in the New Testament. You have women who are conducting these house churches in their own homes. They have the means to do it. When you come into their home, it's their home. They're the ones in charge. So there's overlap between the individual home and the church. That's inevitable because you're meeting in somebody's home. Just like it would be today, you're meeting somebody's home. It's their home. We're not carrying over a husband-wife relationship as though it means that all the men in the church get to treat all the women in the church, get to demand submission or something like that. That is not in view. Unfortunately, we get that in some of our own some things that I'm sure all of us have heard about culturally either that we've experienced that we've just heard in the broader culture, but that is not in view in what's being discussed here. Now, back to Mu. He adds here, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11-3, the head of a wife is her husband. The husband as the prominent and directing member of the relationship is to take the lead in the marriage relationship. The submission of the wife can, of course, take the form of quote-unquote obedience, but three caveats at this point must be introduced in order to strike the right balance in Paul's teaching. First, it is probably significant that the household code here in Colossians urges wives to submit to their husbands, but children and slaves to obey their fathers and masters respectively. Let me stop there. Did you catch that? Paul does not use the word obey for the wife in relationship to the husband. He uses that vocabulary for the children and for the servants. He does not use it of the wife. Instead, the wife is to voluntarily put herself under the authority of her husband again in the orderly household relationship that Paul is zeroing in on here in the culture. Mu says it's probably significant. I would think it is because you can very easily have the same verb for all three things, all three groups, but he doesn't. Back to Mu, he says this pattern is typical, though not universal in the New Testament. It suggests that the New Testament writers put the relationship of wife to husband in a different and less authoritarian category than these others. Obedience naturally fits a situation in which orders are being issued and in which the party obeying has little choice in the matter. Submission, on the other hand, suggests a voluntary willingness to recognize and put oneself under the leadership of someone else. To submit is to recognize a relationship of order established by God. But submission to any human is always conditioned by the ultimate submission that each believer owes to God. Let me just stop there. Again, we have an ultimate authority. This statement in Colossians 318 isn't all Christian men do all Christian women. It's not that. It's also not about heavy handed authority. Paul doesn't even use the word obey here. He uses instead the word submit. Ultimately, the one voluntarily putting himself under the authority of someone else, ultimately, the person that they're submitting to isn't the final authority. The final authority is God. This is not a legitimization of an unbelieving husband telling a wife to do a certain thing that is contrary to the faith. It's not a legitimization of that at all because her ultimate authority is not her husband. At that point, it's God. There is an order and we can't just sort of pluck one part of the order out and harp on it and forget about the rest, the rest of what's going on theologically and back to move. He says, in any hierarchy we can imagine, God stands at the top of the chart. This means that a wife will sometimes have to disobey a husband, even a Christian one. If that husband commands her to do something contrary to God's will, even as she disobeys, however, she can continue to submit in a sense by recognizing that her husband remains her head, just not her ultimate head. Second caveat now that Mu has, that was all under the first one. The second caveat is that the submission of the wife to the husband is inevitably and necessarily conditioned significantly by the demand that husbands love their wives. And in so loving them, will often do the reverse. They will submit to their needs and their desires and wishes. He references Ephesians 5.21 there. The mutuality implied by the one flesh union of husband and wife and the husband's love of the wife must be given full weight, even as the need for wives to recognize the headship of their husbands is upheld. Third caveat, we might cautiously suggest that without eviscerating the word of its meaning, submission may take different forms in different cultures. I think that's certainly true again just to jump in here. Paul's is back to Mu. Paul's was a patriarchal culture in which a man, husband of a wife, father of children, master of slaves, the man ruled the household. The New Testament certainly does not abolish a certain kind of patriarchy in that sense, although it must be said that the etymological sense of rule in the word is not the best way to express the New Testament concept of the headship of the husband. Nevertheless, we may tentatively suggest that the New Testament teaching about the oneness of all in Christ, coupled with the demand that husbands love their wives, as Christ did the Church, no less, sets a trajectory that leads to a more equal sharing of all dimensions of the marriage relationship. I think that's well said. That's well put. If you have a situation where the guy is just proof texting this verse and other verses as a means to get what he wants, or as a means again to show off as a means to prop himself up in the eyes of other men, he's just operating with a completely wrong motivation. How is that loving your wife? I mean, honestly, how is insisting on of your wife, you proof text this verse to her, if it makes her feel demeaned and belittled, how in the world? I mean, prove it. Let me hear it. How is that loving your wife? At best, you're really ignorant of your wife at that point. If you don't have a clue that this is demeaning her or belittling her in some way, okay, now you've got the added problem of cluelessness, okay, and you're still, you're actually violating the command. You're taking the command and severing it from what follows. Husbands love your wives. Again, both of these things are in the same passage, and both of them are framed by do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. Sometimes, speaking as a man here, a lot of times, the way to love your wife is to not get your way. You may not like that, but that's the reality of it. If you do that, you can actually honor both of these because your wife is going to, again, if she has a clue, your wife is going to see that, and that's going to encourage her to voluntarily accommodate and work with you. You can't just take one side of the coin and pretend the other doesn't exist. They both have to work in tandem, and that's what makes the whole passage interesting, that they're both there, and there has to be this symbiotic relationship. This is another observation from Bart. He's quoting a scholar named Kehler, a German. Kehler also emphasizes that in the New Testament, the element of voluntariness is associated with huppataso. She differentiates this verb sharply from to obey, and again, we've already seen that Paul doesn't use the word obey here. The Greek word for that, he uses huppataso. She differentiates this verb sharply from to obey because where the concern is obedience, it is already decided for the subordinate ones why their obedience is necessary. This is not a concern with huppataso. Wherever it occurs, any kind of compulsion is excluded. The key word there is compulsion, okay? Because you've got voluntary, to quote Bart, voluntariness, if that's a word, in the context. So, voluntariness and compulsion don't really work together, which is why, as he quotes Kehler, and Kehler's work, Kehler's work again suggested, if you actually look this up, wherever huppataso occurs, any kind of compulsion is excluded. Again, when you have a middle voice going on, middle or passive that doesn't involve God. When concern is with the order of God, back to Bart, who desires observance and response, and when this answer is expressed by huppataso, it is an entirely voluntary decision. She, Kehler, observes for this passage, quote, their subjection that of the wives is valid for the order of God, not really that of the husband as the final goal. Thus their subjection can never be blind obedience, which she would have to render to her husband or which he can even demand. In other words, the wife has to keep God in mind as well. That's the motivation. It's not just blind obedience. Whatever the husband says, I have to do because of this verse. No, there's an ultimate, there's a higher authority here. Bart adds, these observations of Kehler can be verified basically in Colossians. The ethical admonitions proceed from the glorious abundance of the now revealed secret, so that the action to which they are summoned can be understood as the joyful affirmation of that which is given, and the idea of compulsion and involuntariness is misplaced here. In addition, especially for Colossians, we are ultimately dealing with subjection to the Messiah, to Jesus. Additionally, verse 18 does not contextually deal with blind obedience since it is preconditioned that women, insofar as they are married to non-Christian husbands, can refuse this obedience. That's an essential point, he says, namely in that they do not venerate the gods or their husbands. That's his example. His example is, you're a Christian wife. You're married to a non-Christian husband. This doesn't force you to venerate the gods, pagan gods that your husband worships. Again, that's an immediate, pretty obvious example of how this command is ultimately about obeying Jesus, being conformed, putting yourself under submission to him. Again, I think that's just helpful, again, to frame things that are going on. Done adds, with the last phrase, as is fitting to the Lord, he adds this. The one distinctively Christian feature is the additional words as is fitting to the Lord. The Greek word, aneko, translated as is fitting, reflects the typical stoic idea that one's best policy, indeed one's duty, was to live in harmony with the natural order of things, a sentiment shared by Hellenistic Judaism and the early Gentile mission. In this case, once again, reflecting a patriarchal view of human society, but in the Lord, again, fitting to the Lord, fitting in the Lord, implies a different perspective. It reflects both the claim that Christ is the fullest expression of the creative wisdom within the cosmos and the thematic statement that life should be lived in accordance with the traditions received regarding Jesus as Christ and as Lord. Now, what do we do with that? I think just to summarize what's going on for 318. The submission command is not about obedience being owed or required to the husband in all cases. And it's not about blind obedience. Again, Paul uses the obedience terminology for other relationships in the same context. He does not use it of the wives. And secondly, rather, the idea is voluntary subordination to a divine order, an order which has God as the highest authority, not the husband. Now, when Mu, in the passage I read with Mu, he references First Corinthians 11.3 here, which says the head of a wife is her husband. That's the way the ESV puts it, anyway. If you're interested in the meaning of the word head in that passage and just more broadly, and this whole idea of order, I've plucked out from Thistleton's commentary, a commentary that I've not referenced yet, has a long sort of, not an appendix, but a subsection of his commentary on the meaning of the Greek term for head, kephale. This has been a decades long, I mean, lots of centuries, I guess, but it's really in this country, in the West, the debate over the meaning of kephale has been raging for a couple of decades now. And Thistleton has a really nice summary of the back and forth, the scholarship about what headship actually means. And so I've plucked that out of the commentary, made a PDF of it, and we're going to put that on this episode's webpage. So if you want to read that, I don't know, I think it's like 18 pages or something like that. It's a really nice summary, again, for those of you who really want to drill down on the point, but I'm going to move beyond it now, that the basic debate is, does this head mean source or does it mean authority? Okay, that sort of thing. So you can drill down on that and get some more information there. But I want to move on to verse 19, you know, husbands love your wives, do not be harsh with them. Done, again, notes that we have the verb agapao here, which again, if you have an inner linear, you're going to detect that. And he, and I would agree, thinks that there's some significance to that. He writes a distinctive Christian note comes through in the use of the verb agapao, which as elsewhere in the Paul lines, he gives a few references from Paul's letters, gains its characteristic emphasis from Christ's self-giving on the cross. And he references Colossians 1, 4, and 3, 14. Thus agapao plays the role in Colossians 3, 19 of the in the Lord, or as is fitting to the Lord in the previous verse. Okay, and again, later on in verse 20, to do something because it's fitting to the Lord is the same thing as sacrificially loving them. So in verse 18, wives are to submit themselves to their husbands, because that's what the Lord wants. And really, he actually did that by example, putting himself under not only God's authority, but becoming a man, the whole mind of Christ thing, doing that voluntarily. And so the flip side of that, husbands love your wives, using agapao is again, what they do there, that verb choice takes us back to the love that Jesus exercised in a number of contexts. Again, it's the mind of Christ thing. So back to done, he says, this is one of the points in the parallel treatment of Ephesians, at which the author takes off into a lyrical account of the love of Christ for his church. The allusion to Christ as the model of love and action is true, did not alter the subordinate role attributed to the wife in Colossians 3, 18. So it doesn't alter the role. However, he says, you know, again, that's true. But again, we have to let agapao conditioned how we, again, see this whole thing working, again, this symbiotic relationship between submission and love. And Bart says, you know, it needs to condition the role and prevent the abuse of power in the culture. Now, he uses a term in his commentary here that I don't know if I'm going to cite something that uses it later or not. But if you're studying this passage and you're into, again, serious commentaries, you're going to find out that in the Greco-Roman culture, part of the Roman culture, something called the paterfamilius, the man of the house had absolute life and death authority in the home, literally life and death authority. And what, you know, done, and Bart and again, some of these other writers, you know, when they comment on how we need to view these commands, not only in the context of household rules and household order, but in the wider context, you have to realize how much power that the man of a Roman household, the husband had over the wife, over his children, over his servants, it was literally life and death authority. And so what the commentators are saying here is that Paul doesn't go there. I mean, Paul's all in favor of order, but he blunts that kind of thing by telling husbands, you need to love your wives and don't be harsh with them. And that's the flip side of the whole submission thing. And again, Hupataso being voluntary and it's not, he doesn't use the word for obedience, then you get to verse 19, and he flips around and says, look, you know, we're not repeating the paterfamilius style here, where whatever the husband says is law and he has absolute life and death authority. No, husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Why? Because that honors the Lord. How do we know that he cares about honoring the Lord? He uses Agapato as the verb. And Agapato is going to take their minds back to the context where that verb is used, especially in the Gospels, especially of Jesus. Again, why? Because verse 17 says that you're supposed to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. We talked last time about letting the word of Christ, what Christ's teachings dwell in you richly. You're supposed to be imitating him in your social and family relationships. And the paterfamilius model just doesn't do that. It's far too harsh, far too sweeping and all-encompassing. A person's literal life and death fate in the hands of the man of the house. Again, that's not what Paul is endorsing here. Paul is endorsing order within the household as Jesus would do it on all sides, as Jesus would do it. And again, that's just the guiding principle. So in other words, humility, kindness, not the lust to be obeyed and served should dictate how a husband treats his wife. This is not a proof text endorsement for getting what you want. And that is not the mind of Christ. That is not the framework in which what Paul is writing works. It just doesn't work that way. Now, Mu also comments on Agapao. He says this, as is fitting for such a list of rules for the household, Paul turns quickly and somewhat abruptly from wives to husbands. Requiring wives to submit to husbands, as we've noted, matches widespread Greek and Jewish teachings about marriage. Again, it's a very secure cultural perspective there. Requiring husbands to love their wives, however, does not. In other words, that's something the culture wouldn't have expected. So yeah, the submission verse in verse 18, you got plenty of Greco-Roman and Jewish teachings about that. But when Paul throws in, oh, husbands love your wives and don't treat them harshly, that would have turned heads. That wasn't common. Mu says the concern in the secular codes was usually effective household management, especially since the household was typically viewed as a key building block of society and of the state. Accordingly, the focus of the codes was on the paterfamilius, the head of the household and what he should do to maintain order and decorum in his household. Referring to a husband's love for his wife would not fit this purpose. And indeed, no other code we have discovered from the ancient world requires husbands to love their wives. But that's kind of startling. I'll read it to you again. No other code. And there are a lot of these household codes from the Greco-Roman world. No other code that has been discovered from the ancient world requires husbands to love their wives. This is an altogether different ethic. Mu adds, moreover, the word for love here is distinctly, though certainly not uniquely, Christian word for the kind of sacrificial, self-giving love whose model is Christ himself. Perhaps significantly, the only other occurrence of the verbal love in Colossians refers to God's love for us, his people. These are really good nuggets from the text, again, that really help us frame what is being discussed here and what isn't in view. Now, again, I would say as a final point of advice for verse 19, an application, I think you can summarize this well in a statement like this. If you want your marriage to fail, micromanage and nitpick your spouse in a heavy-handed way. That's a good recipe for failure. If you want it to succeed, examine yourself and love your wives. Think about what do I need to do as a husband to love my wife so that she won't be sitting there thinking about accommodating me with fear and trembling, because that isn't the point. You want your marriage to fail, micromanage, nitpick, be heavy-handed with your spouse. You want it to succeed. Do that to yourself. Examine yourself and it's probably just going to work and help you, again, honor both sides of the relationship, both sides of the coin. Let's move to verses 20 and 21. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. The problem for us here, again, is the cultural disconnect with the Greco-Roman world. We not only have that with the Potter-Familius, but we have it in other ways. Bart, for instance, says the Greek word of her technon, which is translated offspring or child, technon doesn't really have any specific age in mind. The word alone doesn't give us sufficient reason to think of a minor child, and only that. It is possible, he says, and probable, that grown children are addressed who live in one household with their parents, as was customary in the extended family in antiquity, where the father remained head of the household until his death. Again, there's a cultural disconnect there. We don't really have that kind of situation now. Even if you have older kids still living at home, we don't have a culture that says the father remains the head of the household until his death. Basically, it's this Potter-Familius life or death kind of power, and that sort of thing. We don't really have that, but there's a reason why, Bart, what he's essentially saying is there's a reason why technon is used, and technon doesn't really have a specific age in mind. It's because culturally, you'd have older children, even adult children living under the same roof. That was just sort of normal. It also doesn't really reflect the Jewish understanding of patriarchal, nomadic life. When you had the patriarchal age, this is before you have cities and urbanization, before they're in the land. To sort of proof text these sorts of things from Genesis ignores the fact that the family life changed when Israelites got into the land. They built houses and cities and so on and so forth. It wasn't that you all lived under the same tent. When you got married, you just sewed on another section. Everybody's in the father's tent, and he's the patriarch. He's the head of the household until he dies. It doesn't stay that way. That's not a static sort of thing, because you also have verses like Genesis 2.24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. There is a sense that you have your own unit. We don't want to be ignorant culturally. We don't want to press one culture into a passage to justify again the way we want to interpret a passage. Muad's Paul emphasizes the absolute and sweeping character of this relationship, parents to the children, by adding that children must obey their parents and everything. Again, he's going to unpack why that wording. This universal and apparently unqualified requirement of obedience naturally raises questions about its implementation in our culture. We do not, especially in the West, have households of the sort that Paul had reviewed in this passage. This does not mean, of course, that his exhortation can simply be dismissed, but it does mean that wisdom rooted in broad biblical principles will be required to apply the requirement of, quote, obedience in all things, unquote, to children in our culture. As long as children are living under the protection of their parents, we would suggest they are expected to obey their parents. Although even here, of course, exceptions in the case, for instance, of abusive parents have to be recognized, but when children are no longer under the protection and care of their parents, we would suggest that while deference and honor are still appropriate, obedience is no longer necessarily to be expected. In the Ephesians parallel, Paul requires children to obey their parents because it is right, and then quotes the fifth commandment of the decalogue as justification. As he does, throughout the admonitions to husbands and wives, children and parents, here in Colossians, Paul abbreviates the idea, claiming simply that children should obey their parents for this pleases the Lord. The Lord again is Jesus in the context. Done adds, the legal status of children under Roman law was still more disadvantaged, comparing it to women. Technically speaking, they were the property of the father. The children were the property of the father. For example, the formalities for adoption were essentially the same as for the conveyance of property. He cites an ancient text for that. It's called the Patria protestus law. The child under age, in fact, was no better off than a slave. A point Paul had been able to put to good use in Galatians 4, 1 through 7. Note how closely parallel are the instructions of Colossians 3, 20 and 22. 20 says, children, obey your parents and everything for this pleases the Lord. 22 says, bond-servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters. You have the everything language in both. This situation, back to done, is presumably reflected in 321 sandwiched in between. Fathers do not provoke your children, unless they become discouraged, where the responsibility for the child is thought of as exclusively the fathers. And that's a cultural thing. For although the mother was the main influence over the children until they were seven, and he cites, again, an ancient text there, the father was primarily responsible thereafter for the boys, at least. Again, this is Greco-Roman culture. Bard adds this, for a comprehension of the Declaration in Colossians 3, 20, the situation in the society of the time needs to be considered as well by the fact that children in a household became Christians in opposition to their parents. They put the Roman patria potestas, again, this idea of children as property. The position of the father in the household and antiquity, they put that whole situation in a questionable position from a non-Christian viewpoint, which could leave them subject to their approach that they were undermining the Roman societal order. Let me stop there. Again, what Bard is saying is that in a Christian context, the relationship of fathers as children isn't, again, going to be as categorical and as clear cut and as overlordish when we have Christians involved. Even if it's a Christian child to a non-Christian father and vice versa, it's going to change the dynamic a little bit. And Bard says, that could put this part of household order. That could create problems. People on the outside could look at something going on in a home where you have a mix, Christian and non-Christian, and think that the Christians are undermining the Roman social order. Now back to Bard, he says on this basis, we can understand the emphasis of Paul when Paul says, obey in all things. It is expressed because just this decision of children against the religion of their parents and in the Jewish Messiah is accepted from obedience. In other words, accepted as an, not accepted ACC, but accepted EXCEPTED. That's an exception. Obedience to parents is emphasized as a characteristic concern of the faith of the Messiah against all accumulated accusations, as these are formulated not only by Tacitus and other secular authorities, but as they are also transmitted in the New Testament. Again, let me translate that a little bit. What Bard is saying is, you're going to have these situations where, because the children might be Christians, and again, you have adult children here, they're going to view Jesus as the higher authority, higher than the father, the potter familias. And so the advice is, because you might run into this exception, you really, really need to obey your fathers in everything else. You need to have a good track record here, because that, again, maybe, maybe not, but it might help in the situation where when you have to obey to honor the Lord, it's not just going to be one of many instances where, well, he's doing that because he's a Christian. He just disobeys his father all the time. They're just social disruptors. They're just trouble. They're against the social order of thing. No, you have a pristine record is what Bard's saying that is in Paul's mind. Paul's concern, you need to have a pristine record, because when push comes to shove, if you're ever in this situation and you have to disobey, Lord willing, maybe that'll be taken into consideration, and it won't have a terrible ending or something like that. So, again, this is Bard's point saying, this is probably why Paul does use this kind of terminology. Again, you need to have a really, really, really good track record of obedience to your parents because of this context, you know, the eventuality here. It really could happen. And of course it did. Colossians 3, 22 through 25, let's just finish up the passage. You bond servants, Paul says. He addresses the slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service, as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ for the wrong doer will be paid back for the wrong he has done. And there is no partiality. Again, as the commentators are very quick to point out, slaves are just part of the household order. They're members of the household, very common. The household slaves, Bart says, are the ones addressed here and not slaves on large estates in mines or on galleys, the whole Ben Hur thing. He's saying, look, these are rules for household order. So there's a subset of what we might call the whole issue of slavery and antiquity here. There's a subset in view here. For the author of Colossians, Bart says, this kind of slavery was not a major problem. He proceeds naturally from the point that in the relationship of slave master, master slave, what it means to have put on the new self can be made manifest. The fact that there where this new self is put on is neither slave nor free person does not mean for Paul the abolition of slavery, but it is a summons for him to shape the contact with each other in such a way that it will be revealed that the Messiah takes slaves as well as masters into his service in order to proclaim that he the Messiah is master over all things. So when you have a proper orderly relationship and not just again a heavy-handed orderly relationship, but when you have in a household, you have masters who are believers and slaves who are believers, they need to let their status as equal in the sight of God, equal members of the family of Jesus. That needs to frame how they relate to one another. And for a believing master, that needs to frame and influence how he treats his slave or his servant and vice versa as well. And of course, the wording here in verses 24 and 25, Paul knows that you're going to have a situation where you have believing slaves and unbelieving masters and the unbelieving master could be abusive. That's why he reminds the slave, look, you're going to receive the inheritance as your order. You're actually serving the Lord Christ and the wrongdoer will be paid back. And he's trying to encourage people in that situation, slaves in that situation. Dunn says the slaves are clearly members of the Christian congregation and treated as responsible individuals. It was evidently another characteristic feature of the early Christian churches that they contain as members of one body, both masters and slaves, presumably in some instances, in a powder-familias context. You could have a powder-familias come to the Lord and some of his slaves would be in the same household. Dunn cites Philemon as an example. This too was not entirely distinctive in the ancient world, but the no slave or freedman of Colossians 311 made the equal membership of master and slave a principle of far-reaching significance. Again, people are watching in the wider culture, what Christians are doing within their homes, within their households. Dunn adds, the instructions which follow are directed primarily to slaves and their responsibility toward their masters. Four verses, in fact, with only one verse directed to the masters. And that's going to follow really in chapter 4 verse 1, which says, masters treat your bond-servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. This is quite a good turn of a phrase on Paul's part. And there's only one verse to that effect, and then you get all these other verses at the end of chapter 3, directed toward the slave. This probably indicates that there were more slaves than masters in the typical Pauline church, strengthened in the impression that Christianity initially drew its greatest numerical strength from the less advantaged groups in society. He cites a few, you know, church historical texts for that. It's also a reminder that the rules of the game were, as always, dictated by the powerful. Christians who wanted as much freedom as possible within these structures to pursue a Christian calling as members of the church were wise to carry out their responsibilities as slaves with all diligence because of the rules of the game. Done continues, this should not be criticized today as merely social conformism. Those who live in modern social democracies in which interest groups can hope to exert political pressure by intensive lobbying should remember that in the city of Paul's day, the great bulk of Christians would have no possibility whatsoever of exerting any political pressure for any particular policy or reform. In such circumstances, a pragmatic quietism was the most effective means of gaining room enough to develop the quality of personal relationships, which would establish and build up microcosms, that is, churches, of transformed communities. That's the end of the done quote. Again, you know, why doesn't Paul advocate slave rebellion in any of his epistles? Didn't he know it was wrong? Well, yeah, he knows about the image of God. He knows about the fact of, in Christ, there's neither bond nor free. Paul knows this, he wrote the stuff except for the image of God, but Paul talks about imaging a lot using the Old Testament language to talk about being conformed to the image of Christ. Again, Colossians 3.17, this is why he's given the commands because you're supposed to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. You're supposed to let the word of Christ, the teaching, the example of Christ dwell on you richly, and that's going to frame your conduct. Paul knows all this. So why doesn't he advocate rebellion or protesting and mass? Going down to the Roman Senate, a bunch of Christians there with posters, you know, why doesn't he advocate stuff like this? Rebellion or protesting level of advocacy. Well, the short answer is he didn't want the slaves to be killed or taken away from their masters and sent to worse masters. Again, they are the most vulnerable in the entire situation. They don't have rights. This is not a democracy. I mean, a lot of people living under Roman authority don't even have Roman citizenship. You know, you can't make the assumptions. You can't transfer the assumptions we would make about our own culture back into the New Testament. If you have a bunch of Christians rising up against this institution, acting like Peter would, you know, going into places and freeing the slaves, you know, stuff like that, you're going to have a whole lot of people dead or moved to worse situations, or you're going to have people who weren't slaves, becoming slaves because the Romans are just not going to tolerate it. They have no incentive or reason to tolerate it. This is a tyranny. It doesn't work this way. You know, maybe think of North Korea or something like that, where you just can't handle the situation in the way that we in the West would love to see it handle the possibility literally does not exist. And so when Paul writes about slavery, he can suggest to Philemon that, you know, he's a brother in the Lord now, and he can suggest, you know, to let him go. Now, let's say Philemon does that. That, yes, it sets onesimus free, but it also puts onesimus in a position of vulnerability. You say, how am I, how does that work? I would recommend to you, I mean, again, this is fresh in my mind because I just got done reading the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, which is a great book. But Douglass actually talks about even the status of people, you know, blacks who had their freedom in the pre-Civil War and during the Civil War, even the post-Civil War context, not so much post-Civil War, then the issue was Jim Crow. But before and during, even in northern states, places where he escaped, he was still vulnerable because if someone knew, he wasn't owned by someone else. He was like fresh meat. No one is, you know, they could capture him and he can't protest. No one is going to protest on his behalf. But no, you can't have this guy because he's my property. Here's the proof. If there is no legal relationship binding, in this case, Frederick Douglass to a master that, okay, he's a good master, but I'm still a slave and I don't like it. You know, Douglass had those situations, he had bad situations, he had good situations in terms of, you know, the violence and the subjugation. But if he wasn't attached to someone and somebody else just wanted to literally pick him off the street, they could do it. And in a Roman context, if there was no legal attachment between Philemon and Onesimus, and somebody picked Onesimus off the street, Philemon is going to lose that case in court if it ever gets there. And Onesimus is in big trouble. You know, so, I mean, we can't know if Philemon ever released him or not. We don't know that. All I'm saying is that these situations are not as simple as you might think. And I think, you know, ultimately, this is why Paul doesn't demand his release. I think he leaves it to the wisdom of Philemon as to what to do, what would be the best, what's the best thing to do for this person in his situation and in your context. I'm going to leave that to you, but I want you to know that this is a good guy. He's a believer. I love him. He's very, very useful to me. I wish I could keep him here, but I'm going to send him back. You know, all that stuff. There are other things going on. And maybe this is the best way for Paul to say, do the wisest thing here. What is the way to make him least vulnerable in the context of the culture and in the context immediately of where you're living? What is the thing that makes him the least vulnerable or that gives him the most legal protection? Or, you know, it's just literally the best situation. Again, we don't know all of the ins and outs of this. On a wider scale, you know, on a cultural scale, Paul is not going to advocate for overturning, you know, slavery. And he's not going to run in there and set people because again, you're going to have a lot of people. Yes, they might have it bad, but they're going to die. They're going to be tortured. They're going to lose limbs. They're going to die. You know, they can have their children, you know, family separated and sold into other slavers. I mean, the Romans did all of this stuff. And the people who are the most vulnerable again, have no legal recourse. They just don't. And so we have to realize that Paul understands his own context better than we do. And so we shouldn't be going around judging Paul. He doesn't endorse slavery by not saying, hey, they, you know, we need to go out there and free everybody or they should all be let go. He doesn't endorse it. There are other considerations going on that, you know, we can guess at with reasonable, you know, accuracy, like, like, this is a very realistic possibility. And so maybe the best thing is just to sort of leave things as they are and treat each other like brothers and sisters. Maybe that's the best thing to do here because I don't want to make you more vulnerable. You know, I could fight for you if I had to, you know, given this context. Again, all of these things are realistic possibilities. We don't know them because they're not spelled out in the New Testament in all these cases, but they are, they are nevertheless real concerns. So let's not be blaming Paul or anybody else in the New Testament context for endorsing something like slavery. That isn't what they're doing. They're being cautious. They're taking the culture into consideration and they're reminding both sides, both servants and masters that, look, ultimately, ultimately, you have a higher master, okay? Colossians 4-1, masters treat your bonds, servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. You know, God is watching. Okay, God, the Lord is watching. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father through him, Colossians 3-17. That is what's supposed to frame all this and not just the master-servant relationships, but all these relationships, again, as we've talked about. So again, scripture doesn't, there is no such thing as a sanctified culture. A lot of scripture is given to us presuming the culture of the writer and, of course, the original readers. It is what it is and we need to let, again, the Bible be what it is without, again, accusing the authors of endorsements and approval and whatnot. They're not laying out a case. Paul is not laying out a case for the goodness of slavery as an institution. It's just part of his world and he's trying to give the best advice he can give and advice that honors the Lord and that also creates a good name for the believing community, because he knows that there are going to be occasions when Christians are going to disobey their masters. They're going to disobey the paterfamilias. There's going to be friction, so as much as is possible, obey your masters, obey your fathers in everything. Build up the goodwill, if that's at all possible, because, again, he knows what all of the possibilities are, both within the unit and externally, again, with the power of the state. So let's not treat the passage simplistically. Let's not filter it through our own system of government, our own culture. It is what it is and, again, let's try to look and think a little bit more carefully about what Paul is really concerned with. He's concerned about people. He's concerned about the believers in all these situations, no matter what side of the situation they're on, and he's giving the best advice he can possibly give, again, in the context of their status as equal believers in the family of God. Mike, in college, I got a job as a dishwasher. You know what I was the best dishwasher there is, and I worked my way up, you know? And look today, look, I'm on the Naked Bible Podcast from Washington. So maybe just whatever situation you're in, you do it to the best of your ability. And some of the people try to relate it to the employer-employee analogy, but I don't know if that really fits. That slightly issues you such a hard. It is. There'll be some overlap, but some obvious disconnect, too. And even employment in another country is going to be different than employment here, just because of laws and whatnot. But I hear you. And I'm not making up this number. I actually counted. I kept count. I had 35 jobs from the time I left high school to the one I have now. Yeah, I mean, retail is a long haul. Briefly, I mean, during your school work, I mean, you had night jobs and going to school. I mean, I don't even know how you slept. Well, I achieved your PhD and whatnot. There were a few, the last year of my doctoral, this was partly my fault, but we needed the money. But there were two days of the week that I didn't sleep at all. And that was poor planning, I guess you could say. For a few months anyway, I was in that situation. But you do what you have to do. But I always had two or three or in some cases four little part-time jobs. I'd cobble them together. My wife occasionally worked. Sometimes I couldn't provide everything. We didn't have this sanctified rule about the wife can't work or anything silly like that. But we tried to keep her at home. Most of the time it worked. Some of the time it didn't. But you do what you have to do. And I was just in a situation where I, if I was going to get through school and if I was going to be married and have kids, it's on me. It is on me. And I have to put up or shut up. And you just do what you have to do. And you can do anything. My motto is you can do anything for a short time. It's not going to be forever. But that's just what you do. And I was security. Did a lot of security work, which was great because you get to do your homework. Problem, of course, is sleeping. Because you miss that. And a lot of custodial work. Once I was done with what I needed to do, the rest of the time was mine. I mean, you try to be strategic when you're in situations like that. But yeah, there were some pretty low-level jobs there. And I don't want to minimize them. Because actually, they're important. They were important. There were a couple of times that I'm the lowly security guard that saved the company a few million dollars. That happens. They're important jobs, but they don't have status in our culture, is really what it amounts to. It's all about status. You do what you have to do. And we need all of that. Absolutely. We all have to start somewhere. That's why young people, you got to pay your dues and stay with it and take pride in your work. And if you do that, if you do that, your boss will notice. Just trust me. Absolutely. Because there aren't a whole lot of people who just approach whatever the job is with that kind of attitude. It will get noticed. Someone will notice it. Absolutely. They just will. Because it's not the norm. Absolutely. Well, at least God will notice everything. So we're in good hands. So we won't. Yeah. But all right, Mike. Well, I want to remind everybody to send me your Colossians questions at Traystrickler.gmail.com. If you have any, I will be collecting those. Next week we'll be getting into Chapter 4. And with that, Mike, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. The upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 237 Colossians Chapter 4. I am the layman, Traystrickler, and he's the scholar, Dr. Mike Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you? Pretty good. Pretty good. I hear your family has increased by one. That's correct. So we had a good week. You know, it's a good couple weeks, actually. We have a new black pug, which we've been looking for for a year. So we finally got one, and he is a two-and-a-half-pound terror. And Maury, how's Maury taking it? Maury has been a little clingy, a little dejected, but he's coming around. Yeah, he's pouting. He has competition for attention now. So what's the new pug's name? Norman. I did not. I wanted Loki, you know, because we have this like super villain, crazy villain kind of thing. That's how we view our pugs. You know, they're just like these wild-eyed super villains. So Maury is Maury already from Sherlock Holmes. And I wanted Loki, you know, from the Avengers. But they wanted Norman for Psycho. They like the Psycho. So that's crazy. I don't know. That's a good Norman. The Norman I'm used to right now is that me and my wife are going back and watching Cheers on Netflix. So when I hear Norman, I hear Norman, you know, when he comes in to the bar. So it's funny how watching Cheers back there. There's quite a difference between that Norman and this Norman. Yes. Yes. So that's the Norman that springs to mind right now for me. But nonetheless, I bet he's, are the pugs, do they sleep in the bed with you? We let Maury do that. And then I'll get up and I'll take him out in the morning. But now Norman, we have in the room in his little crate because we got to take him out at three in the morning. You know, we'll have a couple weeks of that before he, you know, doesn't need that anymore. But he's, he just goes on command. It's great. So whoever had him, you know, the owners, initial owners must have worked with him a little bit because he is no, no trouble at all. And like Norman Bates, he is attached to mommy. He has a mommy thing going on. Oh, yeah. Well, there you go. Well, that's fun. Dreen is liking that. So, you know, yeah. So as you get the kids out, you just basically bringing more kids in to the home. It sounds like what y'all are doing. Yeah. And I see there's a comment in there about how much more obedient these are than the other ones. Yeah. All right, Mike. Well, hey, this is the last week of Colossians. So I wanted to remind everybody that we're going to be doing a Colossians Q&A. In probably two or three weeks, we've got to do a couple of regular Q&As before that to give us time to collect the questions. But if you have a question specifically about the book of Colossians, send me an email at TrayStrictline.com. We'll collect those. We obviously can't answer everybody's email questions. But send me your questions anyway. I'll collect them. We'll go through them and we'll put together an episode of specific questions about Colossians. So, you know, with that, I'm excited that this has been a good series. I'm glad that people voted on this. I was wanting to go back to the New Testament and maybe we'll go to the Old Testament next, but I've enjoyed the book of Colossians very much and we appreciate you taking the time to do it. Yeah. Like you just mentioned, we're almost at the point now where we've got to vote again. So that's coming around the corner. But Colossians, I think, was worth the time that we spent on it. I mean, today it's Colossians 4 and, you know, you read through the last chapter of Colossians and it seems like there's really not much there beyond, you know, Paul saying, hey, so-and-so is still with me. They haven't left and boy, they're a good worker and I appreciate them and say hi to other people in Colossia. But there's actually a few things in the last chapter that are kind of interesting that we're going to spend most of our time parking on. They're actually toward all of them, toward the end of the chapter. So there are a few things I want to hit on as we work our way there. But we'll just read through, you know, the fourth chapter here. And when we hit something, again, as is our typical pattern, you know, I'll say something, but we're really angling for most of this episode on some of the things at the end. There's a little more to think about in some of these than you might suspect. So last time when we were talking about the relationships, you know, that the pairings, you know, husband, wife, father's, children, master's, servants, we included the first verse of Colossians 4 in that because it should be included in the first verse that masters treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. And it echoes a thought that preceded it in chapter 3. So we're not going to backtrack and do any more with that. So we'll begin this episode in verse 2. And again, continue all the way through the end of the chapter. So first few verses in Colossians 4, read as follows. And again, I'm reading in the ESV. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Now we run into right here, again, the concept of the mystery. And we had touched on this earlier in the book of Colossians. But I want to, again, just draw attention back to it, because here we have Paul in jail for declaring the mystery of Christ. So for anyone who either doesn't remember the earlier reference to Wisdom in the book of Colossians, because it was pretty early, I want to hit a few things. Again, we're not going to backtrack through all that information. You can go back and the episode where we covered Colossians 1, 26, and 27 is going to have a few more things that I'll allude to here. Why don't I just read that, the earlier reference in Colossians, again, this same letter to the concept of the mystery. In Colossians 1, I'll go back to verse 24 and start reading there. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh. I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the Word of God fully known. The mystery, hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. To them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Earlier, I had quoted a little segment from DPL, the dictionary of Paul and his letters that noted musterion, the Greek term there, appears 21 times in Paul's letters out of a total of 27 New Testament occurrences. Overwhelmingly, this is a Pauline phrase. DPL added, usually it points not to some future event hidden in God's plan, but to his decisive action in Christ here and now. Even more specifically, Christ's role in the salvation of humanity and reconciling or resetting all things to the original creation order. The Gentiles, here's the key core element of the mystery, that the Gentiles are a specific element of this for a couple of reasons. One, their disinheritance as part of the family of God by God himself at Babel. And two, all of this, again, this whole plan, not only broadly of the salvation of humanity, but even more oddly or pointedly, again, this is why Paul refers to it as the mystery, but even more pointedly, it all depended on a Jewish Messiah who was the child of Abraham and David through whom all of the disinherited nations would once again be brought back into the family of God. Again, the Deuteronomy 32 worldview again in play, that God had disinherited the nations, Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, again, for those who are familiar with my content. This is a very familiar theme in the content. It's a very familiar, very important point of biblical theology, this whole idea of disinheriting the nations as a punishment at Babel. It was the third sort of rebellion, stanza of the Old Testament that essentially frames the entirety of the rest of the Bible. The first one being the Fall, the second one being Genesis 6, 1 through 4, the third one being what happens at Babel. And of course Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, a big player there, Psalm 82, again, gives us information on how to parse what happens at Babel. So that's a big deal. And Paul is looking back at all that and of course knows his Old Testament really well and says, you know, this is what I was called to do. And this is a mystery. This is the musterion, Christ in you Gentiles, not just Christ for the Jews. That would just be sort of obvious. But Christ in you, the work of Christ being the catalyst, the linchpin for the Gentile nations being brought back into the family of God or at least people who live among those nations who are Gentiles. Paul lives to this in other places. 1 Corinthians 2, of course, he talks about the hidden wisdom of God. We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. And again, had the rulers of this world understood this, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Why is that an important thought? Because the rulers of this world in Pauline theology and in his terminology are these geographical rulers. And this is why Paul uses the vocabulary of geographical dominion, principalities, powers, rulers, authorities, thrones, dominions and all this kind of terminology. And what Paul is saying is had those rebels, had those fallen powers of darkness known, what all of this meant, what the arrival of the Jewish Messiah really meant, that it was going to be the key to nullifying their authority and bringing the Gentiles back into the family of God, they never would have crucified Jesus. I talk again at length about this in unseen realms, so I'm just going to leave that point for there. Again, dictionary of Paul in his letters adds this thought, the mystery which focuses on salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ is not new for God had decreed it quote before the ages, and it references 1 Corinthians 2.7, which we just read. It has been kept hidden from the rulers of this world, 1 Corinthians 2.8, only ignorance of the mystery can explain their crucifixion of the Lord of glory, but now the mystery of God's salvific plan, which includes the divine inheritance. Again, the full divine inheritance I would add, which means Gentile inclusion, all of the nations, not just one. All of this is being revealed through God's spirit post-Pentecost. I mean, this is why as we've talked before, a couple episodes ago, I believe it was, we sort of took the time to talk about when Paul talks about resurrection, somehow in his head, the other light that goes on is the defeat, the nullification, the de-legitimization of the rulers and the authorities, the powers of darkness. Why? Because those are the ones over the nations and Paul's saying, this is my mission to go, tell them that they don't have to worship the gods that they worship. Yes, the Most High created a certain situation that went haywire because of the rebellion of those beings. Again, God didn't choose them when they were evil and wicked, but they became corrupt. So there's this tendency among the Gentiles. We've talked about this before as well. Plato writes about this, lots of pagan classical Greco-Roman texts allude to this idea of the parceling out of the nations and their locales to distinct gods. This is the same worldview in the pagan world as we see in the Bible. Of course, in the Bible, the one who sets this up is the Most High, Yahweh of Israel, and it's a judgment. It's a thing to alienate the nations, but then God, right after that, goes to Abraham, creates a covenant with him that includes the nations, includes a pathway back. The mystery is how the pathway back would work. What would finally achieve this? And that's the mission of Christ. It's the cross event. And so we've spent a lot of time in Colossians talking about that and linking it again to these thoughts. And here again, Paul refers to the mystery, the mystery of Christ. Ephesians 3, for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons and men in other generations, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. You know, they get to see it play out in real time. This mystery, verse 6, Ephesians 3, 6, this mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. So I just wanted to again reiterate those thoughts. You can get more detail in the earlier episodes of Colossians, really earlier episodes, because we've hit this a couple times. Again, a few episodes ago, specifically the link between the resurrection and the ascension, of course, that triggers the sending of the Spirit, which at Pentecost goes out, penetrates all the nations through the Jews initially who are at Pentecost, hear the message of Jesus, believe, and then they go back home and they start to plant the seed that will produce a remnant among the Gentiles to be brought back into the family of God and our series on the Book of Acts. You can go back and listen to that in Acts chapter 2. At least begin there and it's going to pick up really all the way toward Acts chapter 10. You get glimpses of how this works to the Jew first and then transitioning to the Gentiles, how this whole plan is coherent in light of what happens, what's described historically in the Book of Acts. Now, if we go to verse 5 here in Colossians 4, Paul says he tells his readers, walk in wisdom toward outsiders. Again, he's just talked about, hey, this is the mystery and they know by now what he means by that that the Gentiles are being brought in. Of course, this is part of what is being opposed by the mystic Jewish element that Paul has been opposed by. He's alluded to throughout this letter for what they teach and how they want to tear him down and teach contrary to what Paul was saying. Right after again commenting on reiterating his mission, the mystery, he says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Now, this comment concerns a lot more than good principles of time management. Unfortunately, that's typically how you're going to hear it preached. You make the best use of the time then somebody will go off and talk about how to make schedules and how to not waste time, don't spend too much time watching TV. Again, that's really not the point. There might be some application in there to what I'm going to say, but that's really not the point. He links this thought to the two outsiders. Again, those who would be both outside the community in terms of people who need to be redeemed, need the message that Paul has, and also those who would be out there opposing it. You link those two thoughts and what Paul's really getting at here is a sense of urgency for the mission, for completing the fullness of the Gentiles, which is a phrase he uses elsewhere in other letters about this notion that we've seen the gospel now go to all the places, and again, read the Book of Acts or listen to the series. We've seen the gospel go to all the places that are connected in some way with Jewish inheritance, covenant inheritance. Now, I was on the Damascus road. The Lord picked me out who I'm the worst of all men, the worst of sinners. He chose me to go to the Gentiles to complete the plan, to make sure that the gospel penetrates all of the places, at least that they were aware of in terms of their Old Testament history and their knowledge of the world, all those places the gospel has to go to so that the fullness of the Gentiles can be brought in. Why is that important? Because then those who are now hardened against the Messiah, which would be a lot of the Jewish community, then that's going to soften them up. That's part of God's plan to include the Gentiles. Then the hearts of his fellow Israelites, his fellow countrymen, again, will be opened to transition, come back to the Lord. Romans 11, I don't want you to be unaware of this mystery. Brothers of partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. When we get that point, Israel, all Israel will be saved. We've talked about that, what that might mean, that phrase. But at the very least, Paul linked this idea with the return of the Lord and the ushering in of the final age, the reconsumption of the kingdom. This was a big deal. When Paul talks about walking wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time, it's both be on guard for an alternative gospel, but also be on the lookout for opportunity to minister to Gentiles. This is where you're the Colossians. This is where you live. I want to quote a little bit from Mu's letter, his commentary to the Colossians on the Colossian letter. He writes this, the word for time here, kairos, can sometimes have the sense of a particular time or an opportune moment, as opposed to kronos, which usually refers to time in a general way. It is not clear whether the word has that particular nuance here or not, but it does not make much difference to the meaning. More significant is the wider salvation historical significance of the concept time here. Paul views the time in which believers find themselves as caught in the tension of the already, but not yet. We talked about that earlier in the podcast, especially as it relates to the kingdom and the mission. Believers becoming what they are ultimately going to be. Back to Mu, he says, believers live after the initial coming of Messiah and the inauguration of the redemptive kingdom, but they also live an expectation of a second coming of Messiah to complete the work of redemption. Paul has alluded to this tension in Colossians 3, 1-4, and his call for believers to watch in verse 2, as we have seen, may also allude to this eschatological sense of time. Therefore, the need to buy time, so to speak, is especially imperative because of Paul's sense of the shortness of the time. Mu references 1 Corinthians 7-29, again where Paul uses that language. He does not mean by this that the Lord will return within a specified short period of time, but that the return of the Lord is always impending, rendering it entirely uncertain how much time we will yet be given again to complete this mission. An important aspect of wise living is to use the short time God has given us to the best effect. In Colossians, because of the focus on outsiders, this will refer specifically to making the most of the open doors that God gives us to evangelize. He connects the reference to make the best use of time specifically to the mission, to the whole fullness of the Gentiles idea. I thought that was important because, again, you hear this preach that it becomes something about keeping a schedule, keeping a day planner or something like that. That's really not what's in view here. It's a much bigger concept. Verse 6, we read, Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Now, this is an odd phrase, seasoned with salt, because in our day, when we talk about someone who is a salty mouth or salty speech, we're actually talking about somebody who swears a lot or is really crude or something like that. That's actually not what Paul is shooting for here. Salt had a different meaning in the biblical world. It actually had a number of meanings, but, again, what he's angling for here is something positive so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. I want to read a little bit from LBD, the Lexham Bible Dictionary, on salt. It has a really nice entry on salt. If you don't have LBD, you should. You can get it for free online. This is one of the free resources that Faithlife, my employer, gives out. You just have to give them your email account, and you get the Faithlife Study Bible and Lexham Bible Dictionary. This has a really good entry on salt, so I'll read a few parts of it. Salt as a symbol of life. That's a header, and the writer says, in the biblical world, salt was associated with life due to its uses as a preservative, a purifying agent and a seasoning. Many of the symbols attached to salt reflect its practical uses. For example, because salt can delay the rotting or decaying process when rubbed into meat, it is a symbol of incorruptibility. Salt was also a symbol of provision, and eating someone's, quote, bread and salt, unquote, left the eater obligated to the giver. Put that person in debt in a practical sense. Other practical uses of salt attested in the ancient world include a purifying agent that is ancient people's rubbed babies with salt at birth, and that's actually alluded to in Ezekiel 16.4, and the prophet Elisha used salt to purify a polluted spring. That's alluded to in 2 Kings 2, 19 through 22. It was also a seasoning for food. Job 6, 6 and 7 references this, and tasteless salt, therefore, was worthless and thrown out. Matthew 5.13 alludes to that. You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? Answer, it ain't going to happen. It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Salt was also, on the other hand, a symbol for death. I mean, there was a flip side to this coin, and LBD writes, despite salt's practical uses, too much salt, if you think about it, too much salt can lead to death. For example, land that has too high of a salt content, such as salt flats, marshes, or pits, is typically incapable of producing good crops and thus unproductive and uninhabitable. Victorious armies in ancient times would sometimes use salt to render land infertile. Again, you actually get a reference to that in the Bible. Judges 9.45, Zephaniah 2.9, I refer to this practice. Scripture refers to God's covenant as a covenant of salt, and here's another aspect of salt. Reflecting salt's unique place in the covenant, the phrase, quote, covenant of salt, unquote, is usually understood to refer to the perpetual obligation of the covenant, perhaps due to the concept of loyalty owed to the provider of salt. Let me just stop there. You get the picture, salt was viewed as so valuable that when someone gave it to you in a meal or just gave it to you for your use, there was an implied debt, an implied obligation owed to that person because they were good to you. There was this implied loyalty obligation, something that bound you to reciprocate in some way. The LBD writer is saying, that's probably what's behind this phrase covenant of salt that's used occasionally in the Bible in reference to the covenants that are made. The salt of the covenant, therefore, is necessary for life, again, in the endurance of the covenant. One more category of meaning salt and discipleship. Several New Testament passages connect salt with discipleship, including Jesus calls his disciples to be the salt of the earth, perhaps referring to salts preserving or flavoring properties. We read Matthew 5.13, it's in other synoptic passages. Second Jesus calls his disciples to have salt within themselves and to live at peace, perhaps referring to God's Word and the effect it was to have on their lives. Mark 9.50 is one such reference. Paul admonishes the Colossians, that's where we're at here in Colossians 4.6, to season their speech with salt. Again, in light of those other contexts about discipleship and loyalty and enduring quality and whatnot, this isn't a negative thing. Paul's not telling the Colossians to behave negatively toward other people. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. This, again, has to be interpreted in line with, again, being like Jesus, in line with discipleship, in line with being wise in the way that you answer people, the way you treat people. So it's, again, part of discipleship there. Paul moves from there into verse 7. Here's when we get the whole section on Paul mentioning traveling companions and greeting other people in Colossians and so on and so forth. I'm going to read through a good part of the passage here, beginning in verse 7. Paul writes, Dickicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you. And Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions if he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is called justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God and they have been a comfort to me. A few comments here, again, drawn from Mu, Dickicus, we've run into this name before in passing. But Dickicus, Mu writes, was apparently the person chiefly responsible for delivering the letter since he plays the same role in Ephesians, there at the end of that letter, Ephesians 621, and is accompanied by Onesimus. And we mentioned Onesimus last time, or an episode or two ago. Yeah, I guess it would have been the previous episode about the servant-master relationships. So Onesimus, again, that particular slave, is accompanying Dickicus. So he plays the same role Dickicus does in Ephesians and he's accompanied by Onesimus. And since Ephesus and Colossae are no more than 120 miles apart, we can reasonably surmise that he, Dickicus, is carrying the letters to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, and to Philemon at the same time. Again, that makes sense if Onesimus is with him, because he's obviously going to be the subject of the letter to Philemon. Back to Mu. Dickicus makes his first appearance in the New Testament as a Christian from the province of Asia, who accompanied Paul on his trip to Jerusalem to deliver the collection. Again, the money Paul's been collecting for the poor community back in Jerusalem, that's referenced in Acts 20 verse 4. So Dickicus is kind of an important figure, very trusted figure in Paul's life. Mu writes, accompanying Dickicus on his mission to Colossae is, of course, Onesimus. He is the slave about whom the letter to Philemon is written. From that letter we can conclude that Onesimus encountered Paul in his place of imprisonment, that he was converted through Paul's ministry, and there's an illusion there in verse 10 of the letter to Philemon, and that Paul had become deeply attached to it. Again, I think that's fair. Aristarchus, Mark and Justice again are referenced here. Aristarchus, like Dickicus, figures in the later stages of Paul's ministry being mentioned first as a traveling companion of Paul's from Macedonia. During the Apostles of Ephesians ministry, there's another connection to Ephesus. According to Acts 24, he hails from Thessalonica though. He accompanied Paul on at least the early stage of his voyage to Rome. He's mentioned there in Acts 27 too, and may have gone all the way to Rome with Paul. Just don't know. This might be particularly likely if, as we think, Paul is writing this letter, Colossians, from Rome shortly after his arrival there. Mark, of course, is more familiar. He is the cousin of Barnabas. One note about the term anepseos means cousin and not nephew. King James has sister's son. It's not nephew. It's cousin. You could look up the word in a good lexicon for that. Mu writes, Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, is the same Mark who had a checkered career in Paul's early missionary labor. That's significant because Mark is a nice way of putting it. He wasn't always a shining success and a help to Paul, but here in Colossians, Paul tells them. He even alludes to, well, I've already given you instructions about this guy, and he says, welcome him. So whatever rift there was has been healed. Mu writes, Mark, whose other name was John, John Mark, was the son of a woman whose house the early Jerusalem Christian community met. We know that from Acts 12-12. After Barnabas and Saul had delivered the money collected by the church in Antioch to the Christians in Jerusalem, Acts 11, 27-30, they took, quote, John, called Mark, unquote, with them back to Antioch. He then accompanied Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey only to abandon the trip in Pamphylia in Acts 1538. It was for this reason that Paul refused to take Mark with him on the second missionary journey, creating a rift between himself and Barnabas. That's Acts 1537-39. This split must have taken place around AD 49. And we hear nothing more about Mark until 12 years or so later. Paul's simple conveyance of greetings here and in Philemon 24, along with his commendation of Mark in 2 Timothy 4-11. Let me just read you that. 2 Timothy 4-11, Paul writes, Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you for he is very useful to me for ministry. And back to move. So the greetings here and in Philemon 24 and along with Paul's commendation of Mark in 2 Timothy 4-11 reveals that they must have become reconciled at some point. And again, there's this 12-year gap. Mark apparently had a significant ministry in Rome since Peter, writing from there, also mentions him, 1 Peter 5-13. And it was probably from Rome that Mark wrote the Gospel bearing his name. What's the point here? The point is that failure is not the end of the road. I think in terms of John Mark, this is a good lesson to learn. There are a lot of people out there who think God has put them on the shelf, for some personal failure, in Mark's case, it was just bailing out of ministry. That's not the case. I mean, there are plenty of scriptural examples like this where God doesn't look at a person who fails and say, well, we're done with you. That just isn't the portrayal of not only of the Lord, but also these ministry situations. And Mark is sort of exhibit A for what? You can come to your senses. You can deal with what you did. You own your failure and you get back in the game. You have something to contribute to the Kingdom of God, so get up and do it. Don't live in the past and all that sort of thing. And again, he's just a great example for that. Mu has a couple of comments on Jesus who is called Justice. Jesus was a popular name among first century Jews. This feels like ancient history now. It may actually be almost 10 years, but the whole Jesus tomb thing, I wrote an article on this that you can find on the Internet about the discovery of a tomb and Jesus is on one of the Ashiwaries and what not. Jesus was a common name in the first century. Even in the New Testament, Jesus is a common name. And then you get these second names to clarify what individual we're talking about here. And Mu, again, is pointing this out. Jesus was a popular name among first century Jews, fading in popularity only in the second century because of growing Jewish Christian tensions. Again, that's interesting and kind of obvious too. If you're a Jew, you're not going to name your boy Jesus Yeshua in the second century because, well, that's the guy from Nazareth and we don't like his followers and we don't like this theology. So it falls out of disuse later on. In the multilingual environment of the first century, Jews often took a second Greek or Roman name, often one that sounded like their original Hebrew name. The classic example is Saul and Paul. Justice is a surname that is born by three different men in the New Testament. One of the candidates to take place, take the place of Judas among the twelve has that name, Joseph, called Bar-Sabbas, also known as Justice in Acts 1-23. So that's one. There's a Gentile Godfarer in Corinth, Titius Justice, Acts 18-7, and the Jesus Justice, of course, in this text. We know nothing else about this man, although the name Justice, as Lightfoot notes, was common among Judeans and Gentile proselytes. So we can't really necessarily even get the ethnicity there, but it's just kind of an interesting observation. What Paul says in verse 11, I think, is worth just a passing note when he writes about these four men. These are the only men of the circumcision. He's the only Jewish guys among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God. In other words, everybody else that's helping Paul is a Gentile. These are the only four Jewish guys among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. So of course, the irony is here you have Jews laboring with another Jew to evangelize Gentiles for the sake of the kingdom of God, which is a Jewish, i.e., Old Testament concept. So again, the irony of the situation is pretty transparent there. Paul goes on to mention a few other people in the verses that follow. He mentions Epiphras, Luke, and Deimos. They're all Gentiles, again, as far as we know. I'll just read from verse 12 here. Epiphras, who is one of you, and he's a Colossian, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God, for I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you, and for those in Laodicea, and in Heropolis. Luke, the beloved physician, greets you, as does Deimos. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the Church of the Laodiceans, and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. And say to Archipus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord. I'm going to stop there. There's one more verse in the chapter, but I'm going to stop there. Paul mentions a number of Gentiles here. Epiphras, of course, is one of the Colossians. He's part of the Colossian community. Deimos is referred to elsewhere in Philemon 24. Again, along with Aristarchus there, and Mark, and Luke. Again, same group. In 2 Timothy 4-10, though, it's not a positive reference. Paul writes, again, this is going to be after the Colossian correspondence. For Deimos, in love with this present world, has deserted me, and gone to Thessalonica. Crescent has gone to Galatia, Titius II. I'm going to pick up the last word, Titus to Dalmatia. So Deimos, again, gets mentioned here in 2 Timothy, not in a good light at all. Paul, in 2 Timothy 4, in that chapter, he also adds, only Luke is with me. So some had gone away from Paul to do ministry, Titus, Crescent. We don't know much about Crescent, but of course, Titus we know more about. But Deimos has just bailed. Paul says, only Luke is with me. Get Mark. This is where he mentions Mark. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. And then he adds, I sent Titicus to Ephesus. That's 2 Timothy 4-9 through 12. So this was a, apparently, sort of an entourage, a group, in this case of Gentiles, who had stuck together and helped Paul. I mean, obviously they're mixed in with Jews as well. But for the most part, Paul has success in gaining help from them. They stick with it. They stick with the ministry. But unfortunately, as it turns out, Deimos, who is among the list here, is going to defect. Again, before I hit the last verse, again, we stopped in our reading right at the end of verse 17, and we got one more verse. There are a couple other things before we hit verse 18 that I want to mention that are very, really easy to read over. But again, I think just worth spending a few moments on. Back in verse 15, Paul said, Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And we'll just stop there now. Here we have a character. We alluded to her last time when we were talking about the husband's wives command of Colossians 3 and how it was really directed at wives and not just women and generally, because there are women, both in the New Testament epistles, of course, in the Gospels, Book of Acts that seem to be self-sufficient, self-supporting, head of their own households, and whatnot. And one of these, I think it's fair to say most commentators would lump Nympha in with that group. There is a bit of an ambiguity here, and I'm going to bring this up because it's kind of like, I don't know how many listeners are aware of this, but years ago, I have a friend, John Hobbins, who's a pastor in Wisconsin, and his wife is also a pastor at their church. And I have a number of other friends who, their wives are in some sort of pastoral ministry, and I have still other friends who just don't think that that's right. So years ago, I asked John to sort of blog with me on my site about the women in ministry issue, and his task was simple. I said, John, make me care about this because I can erect beautiful arguments on both sides of this. And ultimately, you really argue this subject to a stalemate, and surprisingly enough, it really comes down to very arcane things about the text, and that's in part what produces the ambiguity in many respects, many aspects of this issue. And this is actually going to be one of them. That's going to be like the issue of Junia in Romans, in the book of Romans toward the end, when she is quote, one of the apostles, or among the apostles. Again, it depends how you translate that. Well, her name in certain manuscripts to do, it's also a male name. So there's this debate, is it a man or is it a woman? And it actually, this is going to sound crazy, but it actually comes down to the accent on the name. And the problem is, is that in original, you know, the oldest Greek New Testament manuscripts, when they used capital letters on seals to write, and that that's always the writing style in the oldest material, they didn't use accents. So there's, there's, it's just completely ambiguous. Nympha, as we're going to find out here, I'm going to read you a little section from a commentary. Nympha's also like that too, it's just really kind of odd. So this is from Moose Commentary. Again, he has a nice little summary of this. He writes, in the second part of verse 15, Paul requests that his greetings be extended to an individual in the church in that person's house. You didn't notice how he words this. Take back to Moose. He says, the gender of this person is not entirely clear. The confusion arising from two sources. Number one, the Greek form, depending on how it is accented, could be the name of either a man, nymphas, or a woman, nympha. Second, the manuscripts differ in the possessive pronoun, modifying church, some having out to his church, others having outase her church, and still others have outone their church. The last option, though it's defended by light foot, can probably be eliminated. It depends on reading brothers and sisters and nympha or nymphas together, which is unlikely. The other two variants undoubtedly arose because of uncertainty, among the scribal copyists here. Uncertainty about the gender of the name nympha or nymphas, which is it? It depends on the accent. Back to Moose. None of the variants commands a very clear preference in terms of external evidence, but the feminine name with corresponding pronouns should probably be preferred. So Moose is going to cautiously land on the female side, since it would be more natural for early scribes to think of a man as the one in whose house of church met rather than a woman. In other words, let me just intrude here. Why else single out this one person? If it was a man, that's just expected, but what Moose's argument is here, or at least how he's trying to articulate this is, since Paul singles out this one individual for having a church that met in the house, he thinks that sort of tilts the scales over to the side of a woman. In other words, she'd be exceptional. So Paul commends her and says hello to her. Back to Moose, he says, the scribes would therefore have been more likely to change an original feminine pronoun into a masculine one because that was the norm. The feminine nympha then is the option preferred by most of the modern translations and commentaries. Nympha then was perhaps a wealthy widow who used her home and resources to support the church. Because of the sequence in this verse, we should probably conclude that she lived in Laodicea and that there was then more than one house church in Laodicea. Why Paul singles out nympha and the church that met in her house for special mention is impossible to know. So I only bring that up again to highlight the fact that you've got this one, you've got Junia in the book of Romans in the last chapter, again, in these sort of meet and greet kind of sections. It's just what it is. You have the same textual ambiguity when it comes to this. So I think no matter what side of this you take, we need to sort of be aware of this. And again, I don't like proof texting. So it's very easy to proof text this in an argument like this. And depending on what translation you want to use to defend what view you have, if you know what I just told you, that's a little dishonest. If you don't know it, well, now you do. You should know that you can get really, really granular when it comes to these kinds of issues. And a lot of these things that Christians tend to really sort of fight about really hinge on stuff like this. Like, how do you really know what kind of accent was on the original text? Especially when they didn't use accents with unsealed script. How are you supposed to know? And my advice is, well, if you're going to discuss this, this is sort of neutral. The Romans 16 thing is neutral. This reference is neutral. So sort of throw them out and try again. Build your case with some other material because neither side really has anything here is the point. Another thing I want to bring up again, we're still, you know, we're stalling a little bit, I guess, well, not really, but till we hit verse 18, the letter from Laodicea. Let me go back and read this. Right after he says, he greets Nympha in verse 16, he says, and when this letter, the letter to the Colossians, has been read among you, you Colossians, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans and see that you read the letter from Laodicea. So Paul wants the Colossians to, when they get his letter, hey, read it among yourselves and then, you know, either copy it or make sure that the church over there in Laodicea, make sure they get a copy or get to read it too. And the assumption is the letter I sent them, you need to read that one too. Now, here's the, you probably already see the issue. We don't have a letter to the Laodiceans in the New Testament. So is this a missing letter of Paul? And how does that work with inspiration? Again, this is really easy to read over, but it actually prompts this question in the commentaries. Again, you might think there's nothing really to think about here. Well, you know, that's not quite true. You know, even arcane, or not arcane, but even sort of mundane things like this, sometimes they generate good questions. Now, Dunn in his commentary sort of gets into the discussion this way. He says, presumably, the cities, you know, the Laodicean Colossi, presumably the cities were so close that any threat to the church and one would certainly be a threat to the other. And so Paul wants to both places to read his letters. But how, what's going on with Laodicea? Okay, you know, what is that, the Laodicean church? Now, the mention of a letter to Laodicea, this is still done in his commentary. He says, the mention of this letter provokes a further round of speculation. Possibly we shouldn't be reading, you know, a letter from, you know, Laodicea, or maybe we should be reading the letter to Laodicea. It's either to or from it. You could actually translate the Greek either way. So the options are on one hand, it was a letter that had been written in Laodicea by someone else, not Paul, and Paul just knows about it, and maybe written to Paul. Okay, maybe that's why, you know, it has importance. We don't know. Again, how else would the present house of Paul know about it? Or maybe it was written by someone else, but was well enough known to be familiar to Paul, to the writer of this epistle. You know, and then therefore it should have already been known to the, to the Colossians, you know, as well. So he's just, he's sort of engaging in open speculation. I'm paraphrasing what Dan is writing here. He says, maybe another view is that it was written by Epiphris. And if that was the case, because some commentators go there to try to explain this, when did it have been logically been referred to as the, you know, Epiphris's letter? Okay. If though, and here's we're done, you know, and a lot of other people want to park, and I've already alluded to the issue. If, however, this is a letter to Laodicea, but viewed from the perspective of the Colossians as seems more probable, then we may assume that it is envisaged as coming likewise from Paul so that he as author could determine to whom it should be read. And that's the issue. You could very well look at the Greek here and conclude that, you know, let me read the way ESV handles it again, you'll see the difference. When this letter has been read among you, you have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea. See that that divorces Paul from it, like Paul just knows about this other letter. You know, I want you to read that one too. It's a good one. I read it. It's good. If you translated though, see that you also read the letter to Laodicea. That suggests that Paul is alluding to something he wrote to that church. So again, we actually can't again, conclusively determine which one it is. But I think it's worth talking a little bit about let's just assume that it's it's Paul line, you know, Paul wrote it. Now, what Dunn says here, I'll just read you what he has and I'm going to throw my own two cents in here. He writes, in that case, again, if this is a missing Paul line, you know, we have some possibilities, two possibilities, he says, one is that the letter has been lost. Okay, one option is if we think this is a letter Paul wrote, it's gone. It's lost. That would require us to qualify the reflections of the preceding the penultimate paragraph since it would mean that some of Paul's letters were not valued so highly as to be carefully preserved unless that is the loss was wholly accidental and unavoidable. This seems to have been the case with some of Paul's correspondence with the Corinthian church. Let me let me read you first Corinthians five nine. This is a comment made in first Corinthians. Okay, not second Corinthians, but first Corinthians five nine. Here's what we read. Paul says, I wrote to you in my letter, not to associate with sexually immoral people. Now, since that appears in first Corinthians, it very clearly alludes to the fact that Paul had written them earlier. We don't have that. Okay, we don't have that. Dunn mentions that there is an apocryphal letter to the Laodiceans, but that it can only be dated to the fourth century, you know, or later. And he said, he speculates that was evidently written to make good the gap here and was widely regarded as authentic for 1000 years in Western Christianity, unfortunately, again, among some sectors. Dunn says the other possibility possibility one is that this letter is lost. This letter the Laodiceans Paul wrote to the church at Laodicean it's gone. The other possibility is that the letter to or from Laodicea has been preserved under some other name. The most obvious candidate would be Ephesians, which is so geographically close to Colossians and thematically close to Colossians in so many respects. Ephesians was perhaps a circular letter. He later passed from church to church rather than addressed to any one church in particular. It's just that we know it as letter to the Ephesians. So that's how we understand what the letter, what the destination was, and what the context was. Because, you know, the beginning of the letter has that as well. So that's how we read it. But maybe Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians intending that it be passed around in the region of Laodicea. You know, who knows? It's impossible to really know. So back to the question. Okay, what about the earlier letter to the Corinthians? What about this? If this is a Pauline letter, could it be missing just like that original first one to the Corinthians that precedes first Corinthians? That's gone. We don't have that. Is this a problem? I used to, in class, I used to like to address this this way. Let's say you were a traveling companion with Paul and you get up in the morning and you go to make breakfast. Paul opens the fridge and says, oh, man, we're out of eggs. You know what? You need to go down to the market and get some eggs. I could really, I really want an omelet today. So wait a minute, let me make a list. And here's, here's what to get in the market. So he puts eggs there and you know, get us, get a side of beef, get this. You hand somebody hands you the grocery list and you go down to the market and get the stuff on the list. Is the grocery list inspired because Paul wrote it? I mean, just the fact that Paul wrote something, does that mean that we have inspiration happening? You already know my view of inspiration not being an event but a process. And so you can guess at my answer. No. Just because it came from the hand of Paul doesn't mean that it was intended, that God intended it in his providence. Again, I take a very providential view of inspiration. It's a providential process, not a paranormal event. Just because Paul wrote something, maybe he wrote a laundry list. Maybe he wrote a thank you letter to somebody. You know, there's nobody running around collecting these thinking, oh, this came from the hand of Paul. This is the word of God. You know, just because it came from Paul's hand. No. It's quite possible, I think, normal that Paul would have been writing a number of things that God, again in his providence, never intended to be part of the canon, part of the sacred body of literature that we know today as the New Testament. And so it doesn't bother me. I mean, I don't know. I don't know anything about. I don't know which to choose. Is the letter to or from the Laodicea? Is that really Ephesians or not? I don't know. And either it is anybody else. I mean, it's a reasonable guess because of the region Laodicea and Colossae and Ephesians real close together there. And the letters are a lot alike. So that's reasonable. But again, we don't know. And even if we did know, it doesn't solve the earlier letter to the Corinthians, the one that preceded first Corinthians. But in my view, I don't really care. It's just because Paul wrote it doesn't mean that we have to presume that either God couldn't handle the situation all like God really intended that to be in the canon. He couldn't stop the process of it being lost. God failed. That's incoherent. It's as incoherent as the other idea again, that everything that comes from the fingertips of Paul has to be considered part of the sacred text. Neither of these things makes sense, but they extend from again, a spooky view of inspiration. And I'm hoping again, if you're not familiar with how I look at scripture in this regard, go up to the podcast website, NakedBiblePodcast.com at the top. There's Hey, are you new here? Click here. And one of those videos is how I might use scripture. That'll get your feet wet, it gets you a little introduction. You'll also find things on YouTube about again, inspiration is a process, not a paranormal event. There are lots of things you find in the text. And here's one of them that just aren't accounted for by a dictation view or a view that has the spirit of God having to whisper everything in the writer's ear. That doesn't conform to what you actually find in the text. And so that ought to tell you it's a bad view of inspiration. So again, I just thought I'd rabbit trail on that a little bit. And now we'll hit verse 18. Paul finishes his letter this way. He says, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, remember my chains, grace be with you. Now, what's interesting here is Paul's reference to writing this greeting. Now, is the greeting verse 18? Or is the greeting all those greetings that came before, you know, a few lines, a few verses, okay? Is that Paul's, it could be either. But he says, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand, remember my chains, grace be with you. You say, well, what does it matter? What does it matter if Paul just wrote the last verse or a few verses or, you know, there are other references to Paul sort of commenting about, look, look, you know, I'm writing this. There's, again, a very interesting study and you should be able to find this online. Chris Keith is the author's name and the article is entitled In My Own Hand. The subtitle is Grapho Literacy and the Apostle Paul. The journal is Biblica and they put a lot of their stuff again online, 2008, volume 89 verse one, or not verse one, but number one, 2008. So let me read you his first paragraph of this article because it gets into this subject about do we learn anything or can we learn anything about Paul's level of literacy in not only from this verse, but from some of the other verses where he talks about, you know, hey, look, look, I'm doing this with my own hand. Okay, let me just read you the first paragraph and then I'm going to summarize some of the content here. Keith writes that the Apostle Paul was a literate individual as well established and beyond doubt. However, in the ancient world as today, literacy was not a homogeneous entity, but rather existed in shades and gradations. The present essay is thus concerned not with Paul's literacy per se, but rather the degree of literacy Paul held in Greek. And more importantly, how he employed and displayed his literate status in a rhetorical fashion. Recent research in the school papyri of Greco-Roman Egypt. These are like, I'll just intrude here, these are like lessons, school children lessons, you know, and just general reading and writing lessons that have been recovered archaeologically back to the abstract here to the summary. Recent research in the school papyri of Greco-Roman Egypt has yielded new insights into the process by which individuals learned to read and write in the Greco-Roman world. Insights that shed new light on five passages where Paul or someone writing in his name highlights the fact that he has written in the epistle with his own hand. I will suggest that these passages enhance Paul's arguments in the epistles and social position in the congregations by underscoring not only his literacy, but his grapho literacy, his ability to write, not just read, but write, and not only his grapho literacy, but his ability to avoid using it. That's the beginning, you know, section of the article. Now the five passages are 1 Corinthians 16, 21, and I'll read that, I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Okay, 1 Corinthians 16, 21. The next one is Galatians 6, 11. See, with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. Okay, Colossians 4, 18, which we just read. I'll read it again. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains, grace be with you. The next one, 2 Thessalonians 3, 17. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine, every letter of mine. It is the way I write. And then Philemon 19. I, Paul, write this with my own hand. I will repay it to say nothing of your owing me, even of your own self. That's a little aside, of course, to Philemon about the whole unesimist matter. But I, Paul, write this with my own hand. Now, a couple of observations. Again, I'm not going to go through this article. Again, you should be able to get it if you're interested in it. But just a few general observations that he makes in this article. The article highlight, I mean, these six, let me just count them again, these five passages. When Paul alludes to the fact that he's written something in the letter in his own hand, whether it's that verse or a few verses associated with it. When he does that, that highlights the fact that he used an eminences for most of what he wrote. In other words, he dictated his letters. Someone else was the actual writer, and Paul verbally dictated the letters. Now, when he wanted to write something in his own hand, he does, doesn't have to, but he does, and then he points it out. So, again, it's just kind of interesting. Maybe there's some in the audience that have never heard that Paul used an eminences, but he did, and it was actually very common even for literate people in the ancient world to do it this way. Second observation, these passages demonstrate that Paul's Greek education was, at the very least, sufficient enough that he could write formulaic greetings and short phrases in his text. Now, a note here on Philemon XIX. Some scholars believe that Philemon XIX, and also because of the shortness of the letter, when Paul says, I write this with my own hand, it's not at the end, it's not at the end of Philemon. All these other ones are sort of at the very end of the letter, but this one's not. And so, because of that, and because the letter's so short, some scholars see that as a comment by Paul and take it as proof that Paul wrote the entire letter himself. Some people say, oh no, Paul, he just interrupted the eminences here and wrote that verse in and then let his eminences continue as he dictated. I mean, we don't know, but there are a number of people who feel, because, again, this doesn't fall at the exact end that he wrote the whole thing, he say, well, why, who cares? It's because that was unusual. I mean, it was not unusual. And again, you could read the whole article. It was not unusual for people to be able to read in another language. And when I say not unusual, I can't be too generous, because the article actually goes into some studies on this based upon textual evidence that probably about 10% and 10% might be generous of the people in Paul's world at the time could read and write. So that sounds really, really, really low. And it was, and it's not that everybody's a dunderhead. It's just that this is an agrarian culture. There's a lot of servants and slaves in the culture too. This is the Roman Empire. So there are a lot of professions and a lot of cultural situations where reading and writing was not necessary at all. Beyond maybe the ability to write your name or to count a tabulation or something like that for economic purposes. It just wasn't part of life. It's hard for us to imagine, but it wasn't. So again, the studies have put the number at 10%. And again, even the people who are doing the studies say it's probably a little generous, but we're just going to go with 10% that could read and write. So if Paul, if Paul was capable, and it seems like, again, you can build a good argument from Philemon 19. And there are scholars who have, I'm not just going to go, not going to go into all of it. But if Paul could do that, if he could write the whole letter himself, that means he was in the upper echelon in terms of education. He could certainly do it in Hebrew and Aramaic. Those would be his native tongue. And of course, he's going to know Hebrew really well as a Pharisee, Pharisee of the Pharisees. In Greek, he was quite possibly not only trilingual, but he could write in all three languages as well, which would have put him really in a very small percentage of people in the ancient world. It would have really elevated his status of people who could both read and write. Again, apparently he could do all that. Now, he still though uses an Emanuensis, but when he does that, it doesn't mean that he's not capable. And there's an interesting parallel to this of a well-known person, Josephus. Josephus actually tells us in his own writings is this is specifically in against Apion 1.9.51. He specifically tells us that he needed help when composing Greek. Now, again, from what we know about Josephus, he's probably really versed in Aramaic because he's Jewish, but he's also employed by the Romans, so he's probably really good in Latin too. But he confesses he needed a little help. He needs some help to learn Greek well enough to write in it because that's what Josephus has written in Greek. So Josephus actually says, here's a little section. Afterward, I got leisure at Rome. He went to Rome. And when all my materials were prepared for that work, I made use of some persons to assist me in learning the Greek tongue. And by these means, I compose the history of those transactions. So he tells us he had to have an adult as an adult. He had to learn how to write in Greek didn't mean he was illiterate at that point. He wasn't, but he just had to acquire this new skill. And so again, the article, the article by Keith quotes another study by Hetzer, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, it's H-E-Z-S-E-R. And it's from a book called Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. And that author says this, Josephus should probably be seen as an example of those upper class Jews who had achieved a relatively high level of Greek education. Being able to read and discuss Greek literature, although not able to write a faultless and stylistically sophisticated Greek without outside help. And, you know, Heser's quote is used by Keith to say, that's probably Paul. Paul's probably in the same group. Upper class Jew, high level of Greek education, not perfect, but he could do it. He could do it when he had to. He still prefers an Emanuensis. So the fact that he uses an Emanuensis, here's the larger point, is no indication that Paul was some dundering peasant. Okay, he was well versed. Even as you take the writing thing off the table, he quotes, you know, from Greek literature, that the fact that, you know, he does tells you something, but the fact that he could also write tells you something else. Again, he's in the upper elite, you know, for his day educationally, intellectually, which again, I think at some points in what he does write in terms of his content is probably good to know, probably significant. So that's how I wanted to end Colossians. Again, those last few verses have some interesting things in there, places you can drill down if you're really interested. So, you know, it's been a good ride, but this is the end of Colossians for us. And as Trey mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we're waiting for your questions, and I'm happy to get them. And we will, you know, revisit Colossians in that way in the future. All right, Mike. Another one in the books. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, it's an interesting insight. I wish we could get through all 66 books of the Bible, but unfortunately, we just don't live that long. And that's true. I always appreciate it when we've completed a book. And I think our listeners thoroughly enjoy it too. And I want to remind everybody that we will be voting on the next book, probably in a month or two. I think Mike and I discussed that we would hopefully like to kick it off in January. So our next book will probably be in the new year. We've got some Q&As to get to. And maybe a topic or two. Yep. Yep. Again, send me your questions via email to treystrickler.gmail.com for the Colossians Q&A. And with that, Mike, you know, we really appreciate you taking the time and energy to go through the books. I know they're probably not your favorite, but it's not Israelite religion or do I? But you run into it everywhere. So it really doesn't matter. Yeah. And people are interested in your take on these matters. So I know our listeners thoroughly appreciate it as do I. And that Mike, I just want to thank you and thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless.