Spiritual Intimidation, Part 1

What is he saying? Don't let anybody tell you, you're disqualified from attaining the prize of spirituality because you haven't reached the level of self-abasement, you haven't understood the worship of angels, you haven't had the right visions. All they are is inflated by their own fleshly minds. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Have you ever been at a party or eating lunch with co-workers and mentioned that you're a Christian? Now, sometimes that goes great, but sometimes there are people who immediately bring up why they could never be a Christian. Perhaps they're ready to argue that every religion has at least a kernel of truth, and there are many paths to God.

Conversations like that can be intimidating, and so in those situations, how should you respond? How can you make sure you're honoring the Lord? Consider that today as John continues his study called Complete in Christ.

And now here's John. Now as we come to Colossians chapter 2 verses 8 to 23, that little section in the middle of the book is the heart of the letter, for it is a frontal attack against the heretics that were beleaguering the church in Colossae. And there were four different aspects to this heresy. We saw already in the past that from verse 8 through 15, Paul dealt with the subject of human philosophy. They were saying you need Christ plus human wisdom. You need Christ plus human philosophy, and Paul says you need Christ plus nothing. The next one is legalism. They not only had said to these Colossian Christians, you're not going to cut it because you don't know human philosophy, there are things that you haven't yet learned, but they said, secondly, you must commit yourself to the religion of human achievement. It is Christ plus works righteousness. Having discussed legalism, he moves to his third point and he discusses mysticism.

And this is so very interesting. These people were also trying to intimidate the Colossians in the area of mysticism. Now you say, well, what is mysticism? Let me give you a simple layman's definition, simple enough for me to understand. Mysticism is a deeper or higher religious experience based on some personal intuition, subjective. It's a deeper or higher subjective spiritual experience. It's like saying, well, I've had an experience that I can't define, but I've touched God.

Mysticism. Now the heretics were claiming this. They were saying we have a higher and a broader and a deeper and a greater and a mystical union with God. We have attained a humility and a piety that is unlike anything you have experienced.

We have connected ourselves with the eons and the demigods and the sub-gods and we've climbed the ladder to the presence of the one true deity. You hear some of that palaver, don't you, now and then from people, even today. And so in verses 18 and 19 he says this, and I'll read it out of the New American because it unscrambles it a little. Let no one...just listen to this...let no one...here he's telling them how to back off from being intimidated...let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind. And then verse 19, and not holding fast to the head. Stop there.

What is he saying? Don't let anybody tell you you're disqualified from attaining the prize of spirituality because you haven't reached the level of self-abasement, you haven't understood the worship of angels, you haven't had the right visions. All they are is inflated by their own fleshly minds and the one thing they're not doing is holding fast to the head. And who's the head? Christ. You see, they've said it's Christ plus my visions, plus my experiences with the angels, plus my deeper experience, my higher experience. Now this is the heart of the heresy that was to plague the church for centuries. This became known as Gnosticism.

We've defined it before and I want to define it just in that way by saying again Gnosticism became a very prevalent heresy in the early church and it was the idea that to become a Christian you had to have a greater knowledge, a higher knowledge, a deeper experience with God that came through a knowledge of various emanations, one of which was Christ, various sub-gods and you sort of ascended the scale to God. And you reached a point of great humility and great piety when you had experienced these mystical things. Now that's very intimidating because you don't even know what the people are talking about. I've had people say to me the other day, Jesus came in my room and put His arm around me and talked with me. And I say, what am I going to say? I don't relate to that. How nice.

Why you? Now notice what He says in verse 18, He says, Don't let anyone deny you the prize. And what is the prize? Of spirituality, of salvation, of completeness. Don't let anybody say, Hey, fella, you can't win the prize, you're disqualified.

And the idea here is like a track meet. Don't let anybody tell you you're disqualified and you don't get the prize because you didn't attain the higher knowledge. Because you didn't have this special kind of self-abased pious humility because you don't have that higher knowledge of the various angels because you've never had super visions. So in verse 16 He said, Don't let the legalists condemn you. And here He says, Don't let the mystic condemn you.

Don't let him intimidate you by what you haven't experienced and make you think that you don't really know God at all because you've never had any of those experiences. There are always those people coming along claiming a higher level of spiritual knowledge, a higher experience. And what it really boiled down to here, Paul says, is they don't believe Jesus is enough. That's what it boils down to. It's Jesus plus some super knowledge and that's a lie right out of hell. It says they delight in humility.

Isn't that interesting? They're so happy to be humble. Their own humility thrills them. I'm so proud to be humble. They're like...I don't know if you've ever read David Copperfield and read Uriah Heep. Ah, he's humble.

You sure is. Humility, somebody said, the sweetest loveliest flower that blossomed in Eden and the first to die has rarely bloomed since on mortal soil. It is so frail, so delicate a thing, tis gone if it but look upon itself and he who ventures to esteem it his proves by that single thought he has it not.

Their supposed humility was nothing but ugly pride. And they had...they worshiped angels, verse 18 says. What does that do? There is one what? Mediator between God and man and who is it? The man Christ Jesus. They were worshiping angels, denying the one mediator. William Hendrickson tells us that there is evidence at this particular time in Colossae that angel worship was rather prevalent. And we know that the Essene community leaned toward angel worship. One of their writings tells them to carefully regard and guard the names of the angels. But angel worship is forbidden. In Revelation when John tried to worship an angel twice, the angel said, get up, do not worship me, I'm a creature, worship God.

Remember that? Even the angels forbid it. And notice what else it says in verse 18.

And this is hard to understand because it gets shifted around in the translations. Taking his stand on visions he has seen. Your Bible may say has not seen, but the true rendering, taking his stand on visions he has seen.

Saying, well, I'm sorry about you. I've seen things beyond what you've seen. I've comprehended things.

I know the secrets not known to ordinary man. I take my stand there. That's very intimidating, folks. That is very intimidating. You feel like sort of a second class Christian. I never had any of that.

I never saw anything. Very intimidating, super pious, hypocritical, self humiliating, having deeper experiences with angels, seeing visions, getting special revelations. And we're sitting around at the Bible study just trying to understand what it says on the page. And Paul says to the Colossians, don't be intimidated. Don't let those people take your prize away and say you're disqualified from...you're disqualified from spirituality because you haven't had that greater experience. The truth is they are puffed up in their fleshly unspiritual minds. That's pretty straight stuff, isn't it? They are guilty of the worst hypocrisy there is, spiritual pride, and they are devoid of the true spirit.

They're not holding fast to the head. I love that. As a Christian, you know who you need? Jesus Christ. You know what else you need? Nothing.

He is all in all, isn't He? Christ plus nothing. You don't need special visions. You don't need conversations with angels. You don't need some kind of self-imposed piosity.

You don't need to keep a bunch of rules. You just hold fast to the head from whom all the body by its joints and ligaments is nourished and knit together and increases with the increase of God. You just hold to the one who holds the whole church together.

Don't you be intimidated. Don't you let these people tell you that works and self-righteousness and false humility and angel worship and special visions and special revelations have to be added to the sufficiency of Christ to bring you to spirituality. That's a lie that wants to dishonor Christ. That's right out of hell.

Believe me, people, I think one of the most satanic lies going on today is the fact that when you're a Christian, you still haven't got it all. That's a lie. That's a lie. You don't need anything else.

It's all yours. And you are complete in Him. People come along and say, Well, if you haven't had the baptism or if you haven't had this, you haven't gone to the next level. That's a lie. That isn't true. You have received, says Peter, all things that pertain to life and godliness, doesn't he? This is insidious and it's intimidating to people.

Where are they getting cheated? The Lord Jesus is the head and He holds it all together and He is the one who brings about the growth. He is the pituitary gland, if you will.

As the head contributes to the growth of the body by the pituitary gland, so the head, the Lord Jesus, causes the growth of the body and He's all you need to grow to maturity, to grow to spirituality. Legalism is out and mysticism is out. Third thing, the third thing that they tried to use to intimidate these dear Colossian Christians was asceticism.

You say, Well, what is that? A-S-C-E-T-I-C, ascetic. The dictionary defines an ascetic as somebody who lives a life of rigorous self-denial. An ascetic is somebody who sells everything and goes and lives in a monastery. And these religious phonies in Colossae, man, they really had it all. I'm telling you, they had every heresy there was. And they were saying that the only true spirituality comes in self-denial. You know, I think the church has been intimidated by that for centuries. The only truly spiritual people are the people who have nothing, sell everything and live in absolute abject poverty.

This is extreme rigid abstinence. Look at verse 20. Wherefore if you already are dead with Christ from the ABCs of the world or from the basics of human religion, why as though you were still living in the world are you subjecting yourself to ordinances like touch not, taste not, handle not?

Stop there. He says, Your union with Christ in His death has caused you to die to the rudiments of the world. Your union with Christ in His death has caused you to be separated from human religion. And human religion is based on legalism and mysticism and self-denial and all those works kinds of things. But he says, The redeemed are set free from self-styled man-made rules designed to make you holy. And the world comes along and says, If you want to be really holy, give up everything.

Deprive yourself and go live in total abstinence. And he says, If you do that, you're simply modeling yourself after the system of religion in the world. Now, just to give you a little background, the ascetics were really weird, many of them. They believed that the body was evil. Some regarded it a sin to take a bath because they would see their body. That's right.

Very serious with them. There are writings about that. They felt marriage was an experiment of the serpent which separates from the Lord.

Why? Because you would see somebody else's body. Athanasius boasted of the devotion of Anthony who never changed his vest or washed his feet. And that was praiseworthy. Fortunately, he lived in a society of other people who didn't do it either. Antonius proudly related that such was the holy asceticism of Simeon Stylitus that when he walked, vermin dropped off his body. That's how holy he was. And some early church fathers in a fit of asceticism castrated themselves as an act of self-denial, seeking by such rights to attain holiness.

Stupid. Now I'm not saying that there should never be any self-denial. If God so desires that you and I live like Hudson Taylor to accomplish what He did and to be God's man in the place that He was, then that's glorious. But He never did it to attain spirituality.

He did it because that was God's call to Him. That's the difference. Now I want you to notice verse 21. Touch not, taste not, handle not. You almost get a...like they would touch not, taste not, handle not.

See? That's not spiritual. No more oil, no more wine, no more meat, no contact with a stranger, no touching a religious inferior. You know, these ascetic...that's right. Did you know that the ascetics were not allowed to touch a religious inferior? Simple diet, simple clothing necessary for spirituality.

It's the only way to be spiritual. Verse 22, He says, all that stuff will perish with the using. It's all a matter of the commandments and doctrines of man. It's all human stuff.

Why are you attributing inherent value to what is passing? God doesn't expect all of us to live in poverty. If that's where God calls you and that's what God has for you, glorious, that's His plan. If God chooses to give you things like He gave Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Job and bless you, keep that in mind. If God chooses to allow you to be rich, He doesn't say it's sinful to be rich. He says make sure in 1 Timothy 6 that if you're rich, you do good and share your riches.

See? It isn't whether you have it or not, it's how you hold it. But spirituality isn't determined by that. It isn't Christ plus poverty that makes it. It isn't Christ plus never taking a bath. It isn't Christ plus going to live in a monastery. It isn't Christ plus anything. They're all going to perish, all that stuff. They're just the commandments and teachings of man. It's just human religion again.

Verse 23, now this is really difficult to translate, so I'm just going to give you my translation, no version, but just the Greek with a little broadening so you'll understand it. All the regulations of this kind have a reputation for wisdom. They intimidate. They appear to be really the divine wisdom.

Look at this. He keeps all the rules. He has the higher visions. He communes with the angels. He receives revelations. He's in abject self-abasement and poverty and it looks to be so good because of self-made humility and unsparing treatment of the body, but it is no value whatever, it serves only to satisfy...what?...the flesh.

You know what it is? It's simply and only carnality. You're trying to glorify yourself as the one who can either save or make himself spiritual. Self-styled ritual, self-styled mysticism, self-styled poverty for the sake of apparent piety and holiness just panders the flesh. These people, listen to them, their religion is godless for they worship themselves. Their humility is fake because it's nothing but masking of spiritual pride. And their self-denial is a false standard because it's an effort to make themselves more holy than other people.

In all of those exercises, they serve only to indulge their carnal flesh. And the Colossians were being intimidated by them and so have you and I been. You say, you mean we have them in our world today? Yeah.

That's right. These ascetics may be not quite so common in our society, but it's interesting to think about it. Now listen, I want to close by drawing it up to today and what I say now, I want you to think about, be prayer about, try to evaluate along with me. In our modern day, when someone comes along and says to you, spirituality is Christ plus external behavior, Christ plus what you eat, what you drink, ritualistic, narrow-minded, legalistic, super hyper fundamentalist kind of thing, that's very intimidating often. I can remember in my own background being in a situation where I was greatly intimidated, where I became actually paranoid almost about the things I did because I felt that those were the only things that were validating my spirituality.

A guy came to me one time and I told you this, but it fits here and I'll tell it to you again. And he said to me, you're not spiritual. And I said, how do you know I'm not spiritual? He said, because you don't go to prayer meeting.

I'll never forget that. I said, well, what does that have to do with me being spiritual? How do you know I don't spend all day every day and all night praying? He says, spiritual people go to prayer meeting. But I went through that kind of legalism and I know what it's like. And you don't need to be intimidated by that. Now there are some things that are real moral issues, but you don't need to have some narrow person come and intimidate you and force your spirituality outside.

Don't let it happen. Secondly, spirituality some people say today is Christ plus a special vision, or Christ plus a special experience. Have you heard that one?

Boy, I get so tired of this. I used to hear that, have you experienced the deeper life? I used to say, what is it? The deeper life. I didn't even ever understand what they were talking about. And boy, you know, I went through some of my college days with real anxiety in my heart because I couldn't experience the deeper life.

What is it? And somebody gets up in a testimony and they say, oh, since I had the second blessing, or since I realized this certain thing, I've experienced the higher walk. I didn't know what they were talking about. And I felt like I'm just doing the same old thing and some people are higher and some people are deeper and I'm just here, you know. I went through that, I really did. I'm trying to tell you something, folks, I don't know if you're getting the message, but I'm trying to tell you what Paul said. Listen, you have Christ, you have everything, is that right? You have His Word, you have all you need.

You have His Spirit, you have all you need. Don't let anybody tell you you need to add to it a system of works righteousness. You need to add to it special visions and revelations. You need to add to it ascetic kind of living, self-denial, throw away everything you own, be absolutely poor.

If you're looking for any of your spirituality in those areas, you just bypassed it. And I would add this, don't you be guilty of intimidating somebody else either. Don't you think that for the most part we tend to intimidate people by what we say, or we tend to encourage them by what we are. Well, let's pray. God, help us to teach the Word so that the body of Christ is protected from those within it who don't know the Word. Help those Christians who can't make the right decision because they just don't know your truth somehow to be taught. Raise up more teachers, more faithful pastors who can teach the truth with love. And help us to keep your church pure the way you want it. We'll give you the praise in Jesus' name.

Amen. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, continuing his study here on Grace to You, titled, Complete in Christ. John, today we saw that legalism teaches that you need works for salvation. But it's possible, even for a believer, to fall into a kind of legalistic thinking like that of the Pharisees, where they thought if they could just do good things, be good on the outside, that would make God like them more.

Do you think there's something in the human heart that tends in that direction? Yeah, and I think where it comes out explicitly is in the book of Galatians, where Paul actually says, having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect in the flesh? In other words, he was saying, you began in the Spirit, you're real Christians, you were regenerated, and now you're behaving legalistically.

This is inconsistent. Legalism is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. So you could say it's right to read my Bible, but I'm reading my Bible because it's my duty to do that, and maybe I want to make somebody think I'm spiritual, or maybe I want to earn favor with God. Rather than saying I'm reading my Bible because I relish the opportunity to commune with God in his Word, you might say I don't do certain behaviors, maybe because I don't want people to see me do them, or I want people to think I'm virtuous. That's very different than saying I don't want to do anything that's going to dishonor Christ. So the difference between legalism and true spirituality is not necessarily in the act itself, it's in the motive behind the act. If you do the right things without the right motive, that's legalism.

And another way to look at it is this. The Apostle Paul says, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. Now, those are all attitudes, right? Love, joy, peace, that's all attitude. So where the Spirit is at work, where the Holy Spirit is really sanctifying a heart, the initial response is those attitudes of love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. Out of that flows obedience.

Where you have the act without the attitude, you have legalism. So that's why Paul says, walk in the Spirit. Cultivate the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. In other words, use the means of grace to access the spiritual truths that are going to motivate you in the heart. And when your heart is filled with joy, obedience is the easiest thing of all. But legalism is simply the external conducting itself in a way that has bypassed the heart. And the heart is what God is after.

Right. And, friend, the truths John is looking at in his current study are truths that will strengthen your heart and show you how to serve the Lord with the power he provides. So I encourage you to pick up the Complete In Christ Study Guide. It can be a great help to you and your family.

Contact us today. Our phone number is 800-55-GRACE or you can shop online at gty.org. This study guide helps you see from Scripture Christ's incomparable glory, showing you why he is sufficient for all your needs. It's excellent for your own study and devotional reading and perhaps even better as a curriculum for your Bible study group. Again, to order the Complete In Christ Study Guide, call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to the website gty.org. And remember, at our website you can download any of John's sermons for free in MP3 and transcript format. You can also purchase the MacArthur New Testament Commentary. There are 34 volumes in all and it covers every New Testament book. And the MacArthur Study Bible is also available in three English editions and several non-English translations. It's hard to find better prices than through Grace To You and we ship for free. So to place your order, go to gty.org or call our toll-free number 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making Grace To You part of your day and be here tomorrow when John examines the dangers of disobeying God's Word as John continues his study titled, Complete In Christ, with another half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.