Beware!

Colossians 2:8-15
Beware!

The apostle sees Colossian Christians, whom he has commended and encouraged up to this point in the letter, as facing a great danger of being taken captive by false teaching.

They are in danger of being kidnapped by error.

We would say they were in danger of being taken, hostage! That is something we hear much about in our day.

In several parts of the world today, ordinary tourists may suddenly find themselves taken hostage and denied their rightful liberties.

Paul sees a like danger facing Christians who are taken captive by wrong philosophy, wrong teaching, false doctrine.

Such things can deprive believers of their Christian liberty and hold them hostage for years, if not for the rest of their lives.

The philosophy that threatened the Colossian Christians was a strange mix of early Gnosticism, Greek philosophy, local mystery religions, and Jewish mysticism.


Gnosticism taught that God could not come into direct contact with the material world.

Paul took care to point out that Jesus is God, and He came in the body of His flesh.


The other weapon used Philosophy means simply "the love of wisdom. We are all much indebted to philosophers of the past, to Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and others, for their keen insights into the nature of reality and life.

The love of wisdom is a good thing in many cases.

What the apostle has in mind here, of course, is the danger the Colossians are facing becasue of bad philosophy.

The Colossian heresy promoted itself as traditional. It could trace some or many of its ideas back to traditions among the Jews or the Greek philosophers or both.

Paul here warned that the tradition of men has no equal authority to the word of God.

The Colossian Christians had to deal with a whole variety of false teaching.

Not only did they have wrong ideas about Jesus, but they also had wrong ideas about things like circumcision.

They were being taught that they had to be circumcised to be right with God. Paul makes it clear that they were circumcised, by putting off the sins of the flesh.

Paul says Gentile Christians find their true circumcision in their baptism.

Christians don’t need to be circumcised, they need to be baptized.

baptism does illustrate our identification with the death and resurrection life of Jesus.

We were buried with Jesus, and buried under the water. We are also raised with Him, and raised up out of the water.

We are not only made alive, but made alive together with Him.

Jesus not only paid for the writing that was against us. He also took it out of the way, and then nailed it to the cross.

He did everything possible to make certain that the handwriting of requirements that was against us could no longer accuse us.

Another aspect of Jesus’ work on the cross is that He disarmed principalities and powers.

These ranks of hostile angelic beings (Romans 8:38, Ephesians 1:21, Ephesians 3:10, Ephesians 6:12) don’t have the same weapons to use against Christians that they have against those who are not in Jesus.

Paul writes this so that we have clarity of mind and thought and we follow what the bible says it is.

Let us pray:
Dear Heavenly father, We commit ourselves to what we have understood about you, your life, and the finished work on the cross. Let not the other elements drive any thoughts in to us. neither tradtions nor philosophies.

In Jesus Name. Amen.

Blessings & Prayers 

Pastor. Bobby Leonard