Colossians 2:8-15
8-10 Watch out for people
who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to
drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything.
They spread
their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions
of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ.
Everything of God gets
expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a
telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and
the emptiness of the universe without him.
When you come to him, that fullness
comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything.
11-15 Entering into this
fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of
observing an initiation rite or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in—insiders—not through some
secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone
through for you, destroying the power of sin.
If it’s an initiation ritual
you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going
under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a
resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ.
When you were
stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God
brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the
slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s
cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham
authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets.
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