Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind...which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh. (Col. 2:18,23)
As I was reading this the other day, I couldn't help but notice the modern application. One of the main themes of Colossians, especially in chapter 2, is a warning about false teachers: spiritual leaders who will lead you astray. There are some specific characteristics given. I'll point out a few in v.18-23. First, they deal in voluntary (put-on, false) humility and superficial/arbitrary worship (v.18, 23). They work in rituals, ordinances, and give commands not given by God (v. 20-22). They do not hold forth Christ as the Head of the church, and therefore prevent the body from being knit together with each other and with Christ (v.19). Let's break down these 3 characteristics and give examples that are commonplace in American churches.
Voluntary humility is often displayed in churches by a 'humble' leader who publicly declares that God should get all the glory, but they secretly love the attention they get and cling to over-reaching authority. Here's a few common signs of this false humility: 1) A name is not sufficient. It's socially awkward to address them without a title. 2) They have the authoritative opinion when it comes to doctrine. They may declare that Scripture is the ultimate authority, but in practice, different positions are dismissed without consideration, even if argued from a sound Biblical position. 3) They run the whole show all the time, even teaching on unfamiliar subjects when other members of the body are more qualified and experienced.
Rituals and commandments of men can also be plainly found even in conservative baptist/Bible churches. This is seen most clearly when it comes to church polity. It merely takes a cursory reading of the New Testament to see that church was intended to be very different than it is now. For example, the NT church had multiple elders, met mostly in houses, and meetings were for prayer, fellowship and teaching (not evangelistic preaching). I once asked a friend who is now in full-time church leadership why the church continues to run as it does, in clear contrast to the Biblical example. He acknowledged the difference and only said that the Biblical example was OK for the early church, but we've decided to do things differently now. In other words, “Who cares what the Bible says about how to run church when we can make up our own rules!” It's hard to imagine a more clear example of 'commandments of men'.
Lack of focus on Christ is also a major symptom of the typical church. Imagine that you take someone off the street and show them a few typical meetings at your church. After they carefully watch 10 hours worth of footage, you ask them, “who is the head of this church?” You repeat this experiment 500 times. Invariably, they all point to the guy at the front that did all the talking. This is another situation where doctrinal statements do not match practice, but actions speak louder than words. How about the rest of the body? Is each member being knit together with each other in real and practical ways? In my experience, this certainly can happen in church, but only apart from or in spite of what goes on during the meeting – very rarely does this happen during a church service. The false head takes all the focus, preventing the knitting together of the body.
Isn't it sad? The description of false teachers in Col. 2 is being played out weekly in conservative churches across America. Our churches look more like the false teachers described in Col. 2 than they do the churches described in Acts! Most of this is being done by well-meaning pastors who aren't trying to deceive. Shouldn't this tell us that the system is set up wrong?
“Well,” you say, “can it really be so bad? Sure, most of this is true about my church, but I feel really good when I'm there. I enjoy the preaching. I laugh, cry, and learn something about God. The music speaks to my heart.” In other words, you're satisfied with the superficial religion? You will have “a show of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body”, but what does it satisfy? Is there any tangible fruit, or merely an emotional response?
So what's the remedy? Get away from the shows and rituals and embrace the basics of Christianity – preaching the gospel to the lost and discipling Christians. Dr. Dave recently wrote a good article on this topic which can be found on his blog.
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