Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Colossians 2:23 (NIV)
The Appearance of Wisdom
The woman working the back rows of the nursery in April knows what every crate on that cart needs and gives it exactly that. Bare root roses go in before the buds break. The hydrangeas get the morning side of the building. She sets a shrub with the crown at the depth it wants and not a half inch under, and the ones she plants live.
Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. Paul is writing about rules that were being pressed on believers in Colossae. Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch! He says those rules are based on merely human commands and teachings, and that the things they fence off are all destined to perish with use.
The regulations really do look like wisdom. Self-imposed worship shows, and so does a body treated hard. A system like that turns out something visible every week, and a person watching it from across the room is right about what he sees.
They lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. A man’s appetite never comes out where anyone can grade it, and the rules don’t get that far in. He can keep a list perfectly for a year and want on the last day of it everything he wanted on the first, and the list will have nothing to say about that.
The whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow, and the ones pressing these rules have lost connection with the head. You died with Christ, Paul tells them, and the ligaments and sinews are at their work whether anyone can feel it happening or not.
Out in the back rows the roses go into the ground at the right depth in the right week, and they take, the way they do every April.
A Prayer to Remember
Right now I’ve got a rule for this and a rule for that, God, and I’m keeping most of them, and what I want hasn’t moved an inch since January. You know where growing comes from. Do it in me. I’ll keep the rules that help and stop asking them to do your work.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
