Shadow and Substance

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you (Colossians 2:16). I had just reminded you that in Christ you were made alive, that the record of debt against you was nailed to his cross. Now I press the freedom of it home. There were those at Colossae who would drag you back into a court of scruples — what you eat, what you drink, which days you keep. So I tell you plainly: these things "are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ" (Colossians 2:17). A shadow is not nothing; it was cast by a real body coming. But when the body has come, who runs back to embrace the shadow on the wall? You have the substance. His name is Jesus.

There is a subtler danger than judgment, and it is the danger of enchantment. "Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind" (Colossians 2:18). Notice what such a teacher does not do: he is "not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body… grows with a growth that is from God" (Colossians 2:19). This is the whole of it. A man may speak of angels and visions and secret things and yet have let go of the one thing needful — the Head himself, Christ, from whom every true growth comes. Whatever loosens your grip on him, however spiritual it sounds, is loss.

Then I ask the question that undoes the whole system: "If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations — Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch?" (Colossians 2:20-21). You died with him. Why live as though you never had? These rules have "an appearance of wisdom" (Colossians 2:23) — and I grant they look severe and holy and disciplined. But hear my verdict, which is the heart of it: they "are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh" (Colossians 2:23). The flesh is not starved by rules; it is fed by them, for a man grows proud of his own severity while his heart stays untouched.

So do not measure your standing before God by your diet or your calendar or the harshness you inflict on your body. That is shadow-work, and you have the substance. Hold fast to the Head. Draw your life from Christ as a limb draws life from the body, and the true dying to sin — the kind no rule can manufacture — will follow, because it is "a growth that is from God" (Colossians 2:19). Grace and peace to you.