Vers. 21-23. Asceticism—
- Multiplies unnecessary restriction.
- Is a species of self-worship.
- Is unjust to the body.
CHAPTER III.
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
Ver. 1. Seek those things that are above.—Our Lord says that as He was “from above,” so His disbelieving hearers were “from beneath,” which He interprets as “of this world” (John viii. 23, 24). The apostle in like manner in the next verse opposes the “things above” to “things on earth.”
Ver. 3. Your life is hid with Christ in God.—You are much more likely to have it kept pure by having it in Christ than by setting round it a hedge of “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not.”
Ver. 5. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.—“Quite so!” the heretic teacher might say; “this is just what we ourselves advise.” “Yes,” rejoins the apostle; “but let us know what it is we are to slaughter.” It is no hewing and hacking of the body, but what is as much more difficult as it is noble—the excision or eradication of evil thoughts (Matt. xv. 19, 20). Inordinate affection, evil concupiscence.—R.V. “passion, evil desire.” The former of these seems to indicate the corrupt conditions from which the latter springs. Covetousness, which is idolatry.—“Covetousness,” or “having more.” There is many a man, beside the clown in Twelfth Night, who says, “I would not have you to think my desire of having is the sin of covetousness.” The full drag can afford to sacrifice (Hab. i. 16).
Ver. 8. Anger, wrath.—The former is the smouldering fire, the latter the fierce out-leaping flame. Malice, blasphemy.—The former is the vicious disposition, the latter the manifestation of it in speech that is meant to inflict injury. Filthy communication—One word in the original; R.V. gives it as “shameful speaking.” The word does not occur again in the New Testament. It means scurrilous or obscene speech. A glimpse of Eastern life helps us to understand the frequent injunctions as to restraint of the tongue in the New Testament. Dr. Norman Macleod says: “In vehemence of gesticulation, in genuine power of lip and lung to fill the air with a roar of incomprehensible exclamations, nothing on earth, so long as the body retains its present arrangement of muscles and nervous vitality, can surpass the Egyptians and their language.” But the same thing is witnessed of other Eastern tongues.
Ver. 9. Lie not one to another.—“Very elementary teaching,” we should be inclined to say. Whether there was any special tendency to this vice in the Colossian converts we cannot know.