Listen to this post NOW on Beyond Everything Radio!

Today we explore the core of Paul’s message to Colossae. The first chapter was a multi-layered, theological framework through which Paul prayerfully struggles to help this community hold fast to their faith. From Paul’s prison cell in Rome, we discovered that this letter summarizes his most vital components of his Gospel. Colossians contains direct overlap of words, phrases and themes between his previous letters to churches and by application, we would do well to compare Paul’s incarnated ecclesiology to our modern understanding.

In the first chapter, Paul wrote in the indicative, but now he switches to the present active imperative. He’s no longer describing, he’s directing. If Christianity upholds Paul’s letter as the trustworthy, living word of God, and believes it to be authoritative for living, then people of faith should respond accordingly, and challenge any church that doesn’t. Personally, I have never experienced a community that truly modeled their ministry after Paul’s.

“(blepo) See to it/surveil closely/watch carefully that no (person or thing) (sulagogéo) takes you captive/gains control over you by philosophy and (kenēs àpátes) empty deceit/foolish misleading, according to (parádosis ánthrópon) human tradition, according to the (stoixeĩa) elemental spirits/foundational aspects of the (kosmos)world/world system, and not according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

From whom or what is Paul warning the Colossian Church to avoid a cognitive/spiritual capture? Who or what has the ability and potential to carry people off as spoil, or to spiritually plunder them? Colossae was in the heart of the Roman Empire, and as such, existed under the shadow of Greek mythology and the polytheism and syncretism of Rome. Just as it is today, the religio-political power structures would be impossible to avoid. The historical context helps us contextualize Paul’s message to modern churches.

Paul WAS NOT commissioned to launch an upstart new religion. Only 5-10% of citizens in the Roman Empire were Jews, so there was no concept of a Bible and anything close to sacred text could only be read by less than 15% of the population, thus Paul’s teaching doesn’t direct them to study a book. What they did have was a cosmology shaped by Greek philosophy, and the influence of the Roman State and its melting pot of syncretistic pagan religions. Cities had many temples to deities, idol worship, and paganism all jumbled up with those educated by Greek philosophy and the Stoicism of Roman leadership. What didn’t exist was Atheism. Literally every institutional power, imposed upon its citizens a spiritual or cognitive framework for belief in their cosmology.

Paul was warning them not to be “carried off or looted” by the socio-politico-religio worldviews. This is exactly what dominates the modern church’s pulpit and its feed.

Think about it… the Christ following ecclesia (community) were the only “unaffiliated” citizens. They didn’t have temple, nor attend any, because this community understood itself to be the “agios” People of God who are theTemple of God (1 Corinthians 6:19). They didn’t adopt the cosmology of Greek mythology’s mount Olympus, for they worshiped the “unknown God” (Acts 17:23). Their faith in the embodied Christ meant they had no impulse to compete with idols for personal power. These were the first people to be spiritual but not religious and were marginalized in society…something they treasured as the suffering of Christ in and as their own life.

It’s worth mentioning that the philosophy of Platonic dualism, which divided reality into two competing components (spiritual and physical), permeated everything. We just read how Paul warns against this “philosophy” and “empty deceit.” Plato remains a dominant philosophy in Evangelicalism, which enlarges the separation between Spirit and flesh as its moral performance metric. How many churches prohibit alcohol, smoking, dancing, secular music, or certain movies all because they deem it sinful, worldly or fleshly? Many believers seek to evacuate their “sinful humanity” because they cannot reconcile Christ’s humanity? For Colossae, their practice was not moral performance in the hope of abandoning their bodies at death, but rather to extend the embodiment of Christ Himself into every scenario of human life in perpetuity.

A spirituality that embraced “incarnation” was and remains a scandal.

Why does the modern Church, which proudly embraces the institutionalization of its worldwide religious power structure, seem to have so little in common with those to whom Paul is writing? Yes they are different times and cultures, but fundamentally something has been lost. We’re off track. It’s my conclusion that the church has lost the embodiment of the cosmic Christ. Moderns pay a cerebral attestation to embodiment, perhaps in the Eucharist, but fall very short of the incarnation of the first Century Church.

Christians today DON’T believe Jesus Christ has come back in the flesh, but instead keep pointing to a rapture the bible authors knew nothing about. The early Church, who received Paul’s gospel, believed they were the living body of Christ. Modern Christianity manipulates the Bible in order to interpret it according to the evening news as proof that Jesus is coming. This essentially invalidates not only what Jesus told his disciples, (“this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”..Matthew 24:34), but invalidates the purpose, mission, and existence of the ecclesia in the world, by reducing it to an earth evacuation business.

Compare Paul’s words to what is actually believed today.

“For in him the (pléroma) whole fullness/totality/end of deity dwells (somatikos) bodily/in reality, and you (plerów) have been filled/ given real significance/made complete in him, who is the head/superior to of all (àrxé) rule and (èxousia) authority.” (Colossians 2:9-10)

Paul’s letters (our New Testament) has a resounding message that Christ exists in totality, completely bodily in reality, in and as each person who places their faith in Him. Christ in and as us is the sole (inner) authority and rule of literally everything. WE ARE THE SECOND COMING… but few modern churches believe that. Paul is not promising a rapture in two-thousand years. He promising Christ has already come in and as each of us. What value would Jesus returning centuries later have for 1st Century churches? Clearly none.

The modern pre-tribulation, pre-millennial eschatology, which is only about 150 years old, combined with the wide scale adoption of Neo-platonic dualism, has not only given rise to an over identification with political ideology (heresy on both sides of the isle), but has completely neutered the Gospel of it’s power. We live in a spiritual desert of competing tribal religions, institutional control and overreach, and an unbiblical version of Christ which is cut off or carried away from every corner of life. Paul’s warning to the church in Colossae is precisely what the Church has become today. If Paul were alive, we’d get a letter.

The only path back to the embodied pleroma (totality) and freedom from all institutional power (exousias) will be to once again uphold the gospel of subversion (axe laid to the root). We cannot overpower the powers, we must subvert them by repatriating power to the Gospel. We must personally and corporately deconstruct, unhitch, cease to be taken captive, and emancipate from religion and human tradition, and regain the cosmic Christology where we believe once again that we (as the universal church) are the second coming of Christ into the world, in the flesh…our flesh…our lives.

The experience of Christ is to once again be the unaffiliated, the uncultivated, to be free from all institutional power, because we have our identity and power in Christ who IS our life.