If ye have died with Christ from the elements of the world, why as [if] alive in [the] world do ye subject yourselves to ordinances?
Paul has just warned the believers at Colossae. Philosophy, religious rules and a false humility were pulling them away from Christ. Now he presses one question: if you have died with Christ, why live as if the rules of the old world still governed you?
The death here is not the ending of a man's natural life. It is Christ's death counted as ours.
This is not at all about being dead to the natural life a man had in the world. That is not the Christian life. The Christian life is really the life of Him who died and rose again. He died — that is the point here — and therefore I am dead too. But if I am dead, what do I have to do with things that only affect men as long as they live?... A man alive in the world is under these regulations, and owns them. That was the position of Israel.
The verse calls them "the elemental spirits of the world"; older translations say "the elements" or "the rudiments." In this letter the phrase points at one particular kind of religion.
These first exhortations rest on the great truth that believers have died with Christ to the elements of the world. The Apostle's own words and the general tone of the letter show plainly what "the elements of the world" are. They are the religious regulations invented by men or borrowed from Judaism.
The wording deserves care. In the older translation Paul does not say we died to the world, but from its elements. One writer draws out why: the believer still stands in real relations to the world around him.
The rudiments or elements of the world are every subtle principle and motive that comes from the world, apart from God. They take in all that makes up the spirit and character of the world, whether religious or irreligious... Note the special term Paul uses in verse 20: "if you have died with Christ [not TO the world, but] from the rudiments of the world." The believer must still stand in many relations towards the world... bodily needs, earthly duties.
Being in the world is not the problem. The phrase describes a whole way of life.
"As if you were still alive in the world." These words do not mean the simple fact of being in the world. They mean having lived in it and of it, outside of Christ. That is the kind of life regulations apply to. It is remarkable that the very things in which Christianity seems to give place to man declare man to be dead — baptism and the breaking of bread, which the flesh would turn into regulations.
The argument settles every such question at once.
Since we have died with Christ, our true interests lie clean outside the world and its rudiments, or elements... The world, and especially the religious world, has many regulations about using or not using perishable material things. They tell us not to handle or taste or touch this or that. But if we really grasp our identification with Christ in His death, we find ourselves outside the world where such regulations hold sway. That settles all such questions for us, and settles them decisively.
These rules look like a way of putting self down. The apostle's verdict is the opposite.
If I am really dead to the flesh, I cannot be looking to ordinances to get the flesh improved. But the tendency of our hearts is always towards this... Here is our danger: religiousness in the flesh is what this special warning is against. And with all its plausible appearance, what does the apostle call it? "Will worship." It may have a great reputation for humility, but before God it is the most positive and terrible pride.
This is not treated as a minor weakness but as something that contradicts what a believer claims to be.
How many poor weak believers are in just this state — not walking as those whose citizenship is in heaven, but living down on earth and in the world, and making their religion consist largely in self-imposed ordinances... Such a state is not merely a loss of comfort to themselves, or a state of Christian weakness; it is a state most inconsistent with the faith they profess.
Death with Christ is only half of it. The verse leads straight on into chapter 3.
Now if Christians had died with Christ from all this, they were also risen with Him. So they were to seek the things where He sits at the right hand of God. They were to set their minds on things above, not on things on earth. For they are dead, their life is hidden with Christ in God, and they look forward to appearing with Him in glory.
- Died — Christ died, and the believer died with Him; this is not a death you work up to, but a fact you start from.
- Died from what — from the elements of the world. These are religious rules made up by men or carried over from Judaism, plus the whole spirit and motive of the world.
- Died to which life — not to being in the world, but to living in it and of it, outside Christ. That old life is the only life rules can govern.
- Dead men keep no rules — rules about handling, tasting and touching deal with things that perish. Behind their show of humility lies pride.
- Dead, therefore risen — the same death that ends the claim of rules joins you to a risen Christ. So seek the things above, where your life is hidden with Him.
Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch,
These three commands are not Paul's rules for the Colossians — they are samples of the religion he argues against, quoted so he can set them aside. Why would anyone who has died with Christ go back under rules about handling, tasting and touching?
The apostle is not laying down rules here. He is quoting the ordinances — the religious rules — the Colossians were submitting to, and the quotation itself is his answer.
Colossians 2:20 asks this: if you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why do you still submit to ordinances, as though you were alive in the world? The apostle gives a sample of these ordinances in the three prohibitions which follow, Handle not, nor taste, nor touch. This was Jewish legalism all over again. It suited a people in the flesh like Israel, people who, as he says here, are "living in the world." But it does not fit the spiritual condition of the Christian at all, for the Christian has died with Christ.
We have done with such language as "touch not, taste not, handle not," which may suit men alive in the world, not those dead in the Christ. This is the manner of human safeguards; this is man's way of preserving flesh in this world.
The answer is not that the rules are too strict. It is that the person they were written for has died.
Since we have died with Christ our true interests lie completely outside the world and its elements. Having died out of the world system we cannot go on as though we are alive in it. That is the argument of verse 20. The world, and particularly the religious world, has its many ordinances about using or not using perishable material things. According to these ordinances we should not handle or taste or touch this or that. But if we really understand our identification with Christ in His death we find ourselves outside the world where ordinances hold sway, and that of course settles all such questions for us in a very decisive way.
Such rules ask for nothing inside. Anyone can keep them, converted or not.
The religion of the world is a religion of "ordinances", or human regulations that the natural man can submit to. Such ordinances call for no work of God in the conscience or heart, and raise no question of new birth or conversion. Such ordinances mean giving up certain material things on certain days that men count holy, such as new moons and sabbath days. One negative formula sums them all up: "Touch not; taste not; handle not".
Because the whole system is negative, it leaves a person with nothing — while making him feel he has a great deal.
The principle, "Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle" describes the whole negative character of legality. If this is the sum of one's religion, he is certainly left empty, though sadly puffed up as though he were full. These things perish with the using. A balloon is only for amusement, quickly deflated and gone. Christianity is not ordinances, but Christ who has in His own blessed Person displaced the whole system of Judaism.
These rules aim at the body. Body and flesh are not the same thing, and confusing the two is where the rules go wrong.
Harsh treatment of the body, as the apostle shows here, does not subdue the flesh and put it to death. It tends to satisfy and exalt it instead. We are taught here a most important truth — the difference between the BODY and the FLESH. Neglecting the body and treating it harshly, giving it no honour or respect, may actually inflate the flesh. The BODY may be set apart to God, may be nourished and used for God, may glorify God; the FLESH never.
God Himself calls His people to keep away from what is unclean, and the words can sound almost identical. The difference lies elsewhere than in the vocabulary.
"Touch not, taste not, handle not," are among the most effective ordinances and commandments of men; while the living God, who calls His children into the gracious liberty of Christ, is here found using very similar language. But between these outward similarities there is an essential and irreconcilable difference, and noticing it is one of the first duties of a true believer… One mark sets every kind of false holiness apart from "true holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). It always aims at presenting the natural man as someone God can accept.
- Died. The argument starts in verse 20. The believer died with Christ out of the world, so rules made for people living in the world have no claim on him.
- Quoted. These three words are a sample of a religion the apostle rejects, not a command he gives.
- Descending. The true order runs handle, then taste, then not even a touch — man's way of fencing in the flesh, tightening as it goes.
- Empty. A wholly negative religion asks for no new birth. It deals only in things that perish, and leaves a person empty while puffed up.
- Backwards. Starving the body does not starve the flesh; it feeds it. The body can be used for God's glory; the flesh never can.
(things which are all for destruction in the using [of them]) according to the injunctions and teachings of men,
Paul has just quoted the slogans of a religion built on rules. Now he gives his verdict: the things those rules guard wear out, and the rules themselves come from people. So can a rule bind a conscience just because religious people impose it?
Verse 21 and the start of verse 22 sit inside a bracket. One writer, using an older translation, shows how Paul's sentence reads once you lift out the bracketed words:
In our Bibles verse 21 and the first part of verse 22 are printed in brackets... The words in the first bracket give us samples of the ordinances the Apostle had in mind... And then the words not in brackets read, "subject to ordinances … after the commandments and doctrines of men … to the satisfying of the flesh."
So Paul is not giving three rules. He is quoting them, then filing them under a heading.
One writer says our English Bible lists those three prohibitions in the wrong order. He also names the method behind them:
the climax is turned upside down in our common English Bible... it is a descending climax: the most familiar thing of all, the handling, comes first; then the tasting, which might be much less; and finally, not even a touch. This is the way of human safeguards. This is man's way of preserving the flesh in this world.
These rules govern things that get consumed. One writer shows what that does to a religion built on them:
such ordinances occupy the soul with material things that perish as they are handled. A religion that consists only of obeying such ordinances must perish when the things it consists of perish. Faith puts the believer in touch with spiritual and unseen things that are eternal in the heavens.
Another writer weighs a religion of pure negatives against the Person who displaced even the system God Himself once gave:
If this is the sum of a person's religion, he is certainly left empty, though sadly puffed up as though he were full... Christianity is not ordinances, but Christ, who in His own blessed Person has set aside the whole system of Judaism — the order God Himself set up by His commandment and teaching. How much more, then, the commandments and teachings of men that have been added to Judaism?
The Greek word Paul uses for these commands is rare. One writer traces where else it turns up, and what it marks:
the New Testament uses a particular and uncommon Greek word for commandments when they come from man. The usual word translated that way is entole, but entalma occurs only three times: in Mark 7:7; in the parallel passage, Matthew 15:9; and in Colossians 2:22... In all these passages the word seems to point to those moral maxims and set rules of conduct which men tried to lay as heavy burdens on the shoulders of their fellow men, but which the Lord showed had no authority behind them.
The same source presses the test onto us rather than leaving it with the Pharisees:
Wherever we impose with absolute authority something that does not come from God Himself, it is a tradition... it matters more than anything that we strengthen each other in this: nothing but the word of God has the right to govern the conscience. When we let go of this principle, and let a rule come in and become binding, so that whatever is not done by that rule counts as a sin, we have moved from the authority of the word of God to the authority of tradition, perhaps without knowing it ourselves.
Paul's answer is not that the rules are silly. It is that the Christian has died out of the world where they apply:
Since we have died with Christ, our true interests lie right outside the world and its basic principles... But if we really understand that we are identified with Christ in His death, we find ourselves outside the world where ordinances hold sway, and that of course settles all such questions for us in a very decisive way.
Removing the rules does not make the body unimportant. It gives the body a dignity that rule-keeping never could:
How strikingly, by contrast, the New Testament brings out the great importance of the body! It declares, for instance, that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is most important. It is itself the effect of redemption, and it is the true ground of Christian morals. "Present your members to God as instruments for righteousness"; "present your bodies as a living sacrifice," and so on.
- Perishable objects. The things these rules guard are used up and gone; that is Paul's whole comment on them in this verse.
- Perishable religion. A religion made of such rules dies with the things it is made of. Faith reaches instead to what is eternal in the heavens.
- Perishable authority. The rare word Paul uses is the word for burdens men lay on others with no authority behind them.
- Imperishable test. Only the word of God may bind a conscience. The moment another rule binds, tradition has taken over.
- Imperishable ground. Having died with Christ, the believer stands outside the world where such rules apply. His body is a temple to present to God, not an enemy to starve.
(which have indeed an appearance of wisdom in voluntary worship, and humility, and harsh treatment of the body, not in a certain honour,) to [the] satisfaction of the flesh.
Paul has just told the Colossians that they died with Christ to the world's rules. Now he weighs up the whole system of rules about what to touch, taste and handle, and finds it worthless. The verse admits that such rules look impressive. Then it gives the verdict: they do nothing against the very thing they claim to fight.
The appeal is real, and the apostle does not deny it. Avoiding what people misuse looks like plain good sense.
These rules made by men do have an appearance of wisdom in the eyes of the world. It seems wise to avoid things that people are likely to misuse — things that harm the body when they are misused.
Some translations render "self-made religion" as "will-worship" — worship a person picks for himself. The problem lies in where it starts.
Worship that springs from the will of man and satisfies the flesh. Rules commanded by man belong here, even though the worshippers may think that keeping them pleases God.
Such worship has no word from God behind it. One writer sets it against the alternative:
It is not the power of the Spirit of God opening up the things of Christ. It is something to do with self, and mostly negative… This is not God's will. It is man inventing ways to please Him out of his own head. The whole thing dresses itself in what looks like great humility, and it prizes harsh treatment of the body.
The verse names humility as part of the appearance, not part of the reality. Commentators name what lies underneath the plain food and the plain clothes.
With all its convincing appearance, what does the apostle call it? "Will-worship." It may have a great reputation for humility, but before God it is the most definite and terrible pride. It does not look like pride. It looks like putting the flesh to death and holding it down.
The self-denial becomes its own reward. It leaves a warm sense of having done something admirable.
You deny the body certain foods on certain days. You treat the body harshly. This feeds the flesh with the feeling that you have done something praiseworthy.
Much of the confusion here comes from treating "body" and "flesh" as the same thing. They are not, and the verse keeps them apart: severity falls on the body while the flesh goes untouched.
Harsh treatment of the body, as the apostle shows here, does not subdue and kill the flesh. It satisfies and lifts up the flesh instead. So we are taught a most important truth — the difference between the BODY and the FLESH. Neglecting the body, hurting it, and giving it no honour or respect may help to swell the flesh. The BODY may be set apart for God, fed and used for God, and may glorify God. The FLESH never can be.
Scripture is precise about what we must put to death, and about how we should treat the body:
We are urged, for example, to "put to death the deeds of the body," but never to put the body itself to death. The body belongs to the Lord, and we are to care for it… harsh self-denial tends to starve the body and feed the flesh.
The last clause is hard to translate, and commentators differ on how to render it. The ESV says these things "are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." One writer paraphrases the older English like this:
Let me paraphrase the last part, since it is quite different from what our translation gives: "These things are not of any value; they are only for the satisfying of the flesh."
Paul's answer is not a better set of rules. It is a new place for the heart. Death with Christ ends the system, and resurrection with Christ gives something in its place.
He applies the principle of death to all the rules, and to the harsh self-denial that treated the body as something evil in itself, which ought to be rejected. Then (Col. 3:1) he uses the resurrection to lift their hearts into a higher place, and to bring them back to Christ by looking up, since they have died as far as the old nature is concerned.
- Appearance. The rules do look wise. That is why Paul exposes them instead of ignoring them.
- Source. Self-made religion is worship that starts in a person's own will. The rules come from men, not from God's word.
- Reversal. What looks like humility turns out to be pride. The feeling of having done something praiseworthy feeds the very flesh it claims to fight.
- Distinction. Body and flesh are not the same. The body can be honoured and used for God; the flesh never can. Scripture says to put to death the deeds of the body, not the body.
- Replacement. Harsh treatment gains nothing. Death with Christ frees us from the world's rules, and resurrection with Him lifts the heart to where He is.