A warbling against speculative deceivers.
"Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Mark—
I. THE NATURE OF THE PHILOSOPHY HERE CONDEMNED. It is philosophy inseparably connected with "vain deceit." There is a philosophy which is highly serviceable to religion, as it is the noblest exercise of our rational faculties; but there is a philosophy prejudicial to religion, because it sets up the wisdom of man in opposition to the wisdom of God.
1. The apostle refers to the Judaeo. Gnostics who regarded Christianity mainly as a philosophy—that is, as a search after speculative truth, and not as a revelation of Christ and a life of faith and love in him. The apostle claims for the gospel that it is thus "the wisdom of God."
2. He refers to the speculative result of such a philosophy. It tends to "vain deceit;" it is hollow, sophistical, disappointing, misleading. It is the "science falsely so called" which "puffs up" and cannot edify. It always tends to undermine man's faith in the Word of God.
II. THE ORIGIN OF THIS PHILOSOPHY. "After the tradition of men." It had its source in mere human speculation, and could not appeal to inspired books. Our Lord condemned the Pharisaic attachment to traditions. This later mystical tendency was strong in its traditions, which it reserved for the exclusive use of the initiated.
III. THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THIS PHILOSOPHY. "After the rudiments of the world." This seems to point to ritualistic observances worthy only of children, but not adapted to grown men. They belonged "to the world"—to the sphere of external and visible things. These rudiments were "beggarly elements," done away in Christ.
IV. ITS NEGATIVE WORTHLESSNESS. "And not after Christ."
1. It had not Christ for its Author; for it followed "the tradition of men."
2. It had not Christ for its Subject; for it displaced him to make way for ritualistic ordinances and angelic mediators. No philosophy is worthy of the name that cannot find a place for him who is the highest Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30).
V. THE DANGERS OF THIS PHILOSOPHY. "Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you." It would have an enslaving effect, tartly by its ritualistic drudgeries and partly by its false teaching. There are worse losses than the loss of property or even children. This false philosophy would involve:
1. The loss of Christian liberty. (Galatians 5:1.)
2. The loss of much of the good seed sown in Christian hearts. (Matthew 13:19.)
3. The loss of what Christians had wrought. (2 John 1:10.)
4. The loss of first love. (Revelation 2:1.)
5. The loss of the joys of salvation. (Psalms 51:12.)—T.C.
Christ the Fulness of the Godhead, and our relationship to him.
"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and in him ye are made full, who is the Head of all principality and power." The apostle is here condemning one of the false principles that underlay the teaching of the Gnostics—the substitution of angelic mediators for Christ.
I. CHRIST'S TRUE DEITY AND TRUE HUMANITY.
1. He is no mere emanation from the supreme God, but "all the fulness of the Godhead." All the infinite perfections of the essential being of God are in him. The Gnostics taught that the fulness of the Godhead was distributed among many spiritual agencies. The apostle teaches that it is in Christ as the eternal Word. "The Word was with God, and was God."
2. This fulness "dwells" in him now and forver. It is a blessedly abiding fact. It is a permanent indwelling.
3. It dwells "bodily;" that is, with a bodily manifestation. The false teachers, imagining that matter was essentially evil, could not brook the thought of the Divine Redeemer linking himself forver with a human body, and they, after Docetic theory, either denied the reality of his body or its inseparable connection with him forver. But "the Word was made flesh" (John 1:14), and "The spirit which confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh,.., is the spirit of antichrist" (1 John 4:3).
II. OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE FULNESS OF CHRIST. "And in him ye are made full, who is the Head of all principality and power."
1. Christian life is union with Christ.
2. Christian life is the enjoyment of his fulness.
III. THE EXPLANATION OF THIS RELATIONSHIP OF CHRIST'S FULNESS TO OUR FULNESS. "Who is the Head of all principality and power." He is more than Sovereign over the powers. He is the Source of their life and activity. This headship over angels is asserted elsewhere (Hebrews 1:1-14). Angels are not, therefore, mediators for man, displacing "the one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). They are but fellow servants under the same Head (Revelation 22:8, Revelation 22:9). Therefore we do not seek our fulness in them, but in our Head.—T.C.