Fortified and Not Taken Captive
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.
Colossians 2:8–10 ESV Read More
The first rule of holes is that if you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. The best part about that is that there is no second rule of holes. It really is that simple. I had a friend once that said he was sick of guys complaining about struggling with sin. “It’s easy,” he said, “Just stop it!” He was pretty good at self-control and willpower.
This verse comes up a lot in the context of philosophical beliefs and apologetics, but that’s not really the context of this verse. This verse is about slowly being led astray from faith and into reactions and common sense based on the world. For example, the world would say that you shouldn’t do anything that would increase your risk of harm, so you would say “I’m not going on that mission trip to Whateverstan because that’s dangerous.” Instead, we go buy a sweet bike and ride it around without a helmet ignoring that statistically, the bike is much more dangerous than terrorists.
We seldom avoid Christ out of deliberate rebellion. We don’t have that moment where we can say “Stop disobeying. Just stop it!” More often we disobey out of our love for ‘common sense.’ We are slowly taken captive, not ransacked. If we read those two verses backward, though, our lives might radically change.
In Christ the whole fullness of God resides in bodily form, and Christ has filled you up completely with His own self.
If you are filled to the fullest with Christ, who is filled fully to the fullest with God, what elemental old wive’s tale can stop us? What fear of man can hold us back from telling the lost and dying souls out there about the love of Jesus? Would we dare shy away from sharing Jesus with people far from God out of fear of having diarrhea for a week?
That is how we get taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit. We turn our eyes away from Him to fills everything and we worry about our tiny selves and the tiny world of discomfort. Christ, who is our life, has purchased us by His ridiculous grace and will help us through every single thing. He will help us wake up when we volunteer in the kids’ ministry on Sunday morning. He will help us care for our neighbors who are hurting. He will help us talk to our kids about Jesus’ love and He’ll help us talk to our parents when they are drowning in dementia. He will give us language when we don’t know what to say.
We have nothing to fear. Christ is the head and the authority. As we walk in Him, He will care for us. If we get off track, even then He is with us to help us through our failures too. We can’t lose. Let us allow no chance to be taken captive by false teaching because we are so deeply embedded in Christ.
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