V. A false philosophy is known by its destructive influence.—“Lest any man spoil you.” The meaning of the word “spoil” is very full and significant: it is not simply to despoil—to strip off—but to carry away as spoil, just as the four kings, after the battle in the vale of Siddim, plundered the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and bore away as spoil the people and all their property and victuals (Gen. xiv. 12–16). The Colossians had been rescued from the bondage of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of light; they were settled there as free and happy citizens; and now there was danger lest they should be tampered with by some crafty marauder, seized and carried away as booty, and fall into a worse state than their former slavery. There are worse losses than loss of property, or even of children: man is never so grievously spoiled as when his soul is debased and robbed by the errors of wicked seducers. Men who have contemptuously given up the Bible as a book of fables, lost their peace of mind, wrecked their moral character, and blasted their prospects for ever, began their downward career by embracing the apparently harmless ideas of a false philosophy. “The thief cometh not,” saith Jesus, “but to steal, to kill, and to destroy; I”—the infallible Teacher, the incorruptible Guardian, the inexhaustible Life-giver—“am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John x. 10).
VI. Against a false philosophy the Church must be faithfully warned.—“Beware.”
1. Because it is seductive in its pretensions.—It seeks to refine and elevate the plain Gospel by a show of lofty intellectualism; it dignifies some particular religious rite into an unjustifiable importance; it elaborates a ritual marvellous for spectacular display and musical effect; it flatters the pride and ministers to the corruption of the human heart; and, stealing through the avenue of the charmed senses, gains an imperious mastery over the whole man.
2. Because it is baneful in its effect.—It not only misrepresents and distorts the truth, but injures the faculties of the soul by which truth is obtained and kept. It darkens the understanding, pollutes the conscience, and weakens the will. It robs man of his dearest treasure, and offers in exchange a beggarly system of crude, unsatisfying speculations. The soul is goaded into a restless search after rest and cursed with its non-attainment.
Lessons.—1. Human philosophy is essentially defective. 2. The true philosophy is the highest knowledge of Christ. 3. All philosophy that weans the soul from Christ is false and should be shunned.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Verses 9, 10.
The Divine Fulness of Christ a Pledge of the Believer’s Perfection.
Christianity is the true philosophy. Here are its profoundest depths, its loftiest themes, its most substantial discoveries. The philosophy that is not after Christ is vain and misleading. It was a false conception of the Colossian heresy that the Divine energy was dispersed among several spiritual agencies. The apostle boldly declares that in Christ dwells the whole πλήρωμα, the entire fulness of the Deity, and that it is in vain to seek for spiritual life in communion with inferior creatures.
I. The Divine fulness of Christ.—1. In Christ is the fulness of the Deity. “For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead” (ver. 9). A small text, but a great subject. These words contain the sublimest truth in the narrowest compass. Fulness is a term used to signify all that anything contains. Hence, we read of the fulness of the earth, the fulness of the sea, and that the Church is Christ’s body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. In Christ inhere all the perfections, attributes, and qualities that essentially constitute the Divine nature—power, wisdom, eternity, self-existence, omnipresence, truth, love, holiness. The deities of the heathen never pretended to possess more than a few Divine attributes, some portion of Divinity. But Christ contains in Himself the totality of Divine powers and excellencies.
2. The fulness of the Deity in Christ is present and permanent.—“Dwelleth.” The present tense is used. It is not as a transient gleam or as a brilliant display to serve a temporary purpose, but as an ever-present and unchanging reality. Mystery of mysteries! the body that hungered and thirsted, that bled and died, that rose and ascended on high, is still the temple of illimitable Deity! The manifestations of God through angels and prophets were brief and partial. The Shekinah, or visible glory, that hovered over the ark of the covenant was a symbol only of a present deity and disappeared as mysteriously as it came. But in Christ, the transcendent fulness of the Godhead finds its permanent home, never to depart, never to vanish.