THE MYSTERY
[p. 85] THE MYSTERY
In verse 11 you have reached a point where there is neither the religious man - that is, the Jew - nor the learned man - that is, the Greek - “Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all”. Well, the only question is, Did you ever get there? He is the Head, you have to get to Him. People think it a very easy thing to say Christ is your Head, but you have to travel a bit before you find it. If Christ is my Head, I could not have a head of my own. You could not think differently. You might have difference in service, but we could not think differently if we had but the one Head. That is one of His dignities, “head of the body, the church”. The question is whether you know it. The Colossians were very nice christians. You see it in chapter 1: 4; very nearly the same words are used there as to the Ephesians; but then Paul says in verse 5, I cease not to pray for you, according to “the hope ... laid up for you in heaven”. If I do not keep you on heavenly ground, I can make no hand of you.
A man thinks he can contribute to Christ. It is a very different snare from the Corinthian. The Corinthian thinks, I am a christian, I can do just as I like - a sort of antinomianism. The Galatians, on the contrary, were legal; they thought they would correct flesh by law. The Colossian error is the most subtle error. People say, Would not the Lord like a little help? That is a Colossian. It is to contribute to Christ, it is that I could help Christ by my religion or by my learning, that is the way. They will not accept any less than a pious man. In the Church of England he must say the Holy Spirit has called him; it is a very subtle thing; that ended in Romanism. You were [p. 86] not to eat meat, and you were not to marry. It was only to produce something pleasing to God. The flesh is gone altogether. God can use my body; He is not going to use my will, and no dictation of mine will He accept. Man thinks to be eloquent, he will thunder away; he gives out a hymn; in a hundred and fifty ways it comes in, genuflection, religious attitudes, and the like. It is not that I do not like to see a man devoted to God, but the moment you think you are adding to God by your religiousness you are in the Colossian snare. The apostle finds that that is the great thing, that nothing but the truth of the mystery will preserve them from this religiousness. The full knowledge of what Christ is will cure the Colossian; the cross will cure the Galatian. The Corinthian and the Galatian failed in understanding the gospel, but the Colossian does not understand the mystery in power. Therefore the apostle begins in chapter 2 and tells them what great conflict he has for them, that they should understand the mystery. Nothing could preserve them from this snare but the mystery. I have often felt I would like to be eloquent that I might assist the word, but a contributor is not a servant. A servant is one who does what his master tells him; not like Martha, officious. You may say, Well, I saw it was there, ready to my hand. If you were a servant you would wait for direction. I might see a man in a train and think it was a good opportunity to speak to him. I do not think I could until I looked to the Lord for direction. I do not think opportunity is the ground for action, but God’s will; you ought to be always ready.
The mystery is that all the saints in the whole world have but the one Head. It is not like man and wife with two heads; there is but one Head for all saints. Recognition is one thing, reality is another. If you and I had but one head we could not think differently. Every christian has not reached the Head.
[p. 87] You must get Him first, and then you hold the Head. ‘Holding‘ is by power. “Vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head”. I think almost every one of us understands the unity of the body; we are all united by one Spirit in one body, but who understands that we have only one Head? They may assent to it as a truth. If I hold the Head, and you hold the Head, there is only one Head between us. That is what the apostle is instructing them in here.
In chapter 2 he states what is the danger, and what Christ is as the Head. The point is that you are to keep Christ only. If you have Christ only you would not want the flesh. Your body is a servant. The snare is that I suggest something; but I must not suggest anything. Of course there must be communion with the Head. You cannot understand Ephesians thoroughly without Colossians; still I think it came in to correct. Just as Corinthians and Galatians correct as to the gospel, so I think Colossians is a corrective for the church. If a man had the gospel correctly he would be neither Corinthian nor Galatian. If a man had the church properly he would not fall into the snare the Colossians are warned against. The point is, the apostle wants them to understand what the mystery is. “In which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge”.
It is a wonderful thing to get the mystery. He begins, “lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.... As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power”. There you arrive at this fact, that you do not want anything outside of Him! Suppose a man said he could help the gospel by science. I do not want it, I do not want to go outside of Christ. All christendom has gone outside. Everything they do is outside Christ. The danger is, we try and get outside. If you use sentimental music you have gone outside the Head. Take verse 11: “In whom also ye are circumcised”. Now you get two things; one is circumcision - the cross, the other is baptism. You first get, “Ye are complete in him”. Well, I do not want any addition to Christ. If I am complete in Him that will do. Then you get rid of the other. The whole thing is swept away. The old man is swept away. And you can see how the word ‘sins’ is brought in; very likely a monk, copying by hand, put in ‘sins’ in the margin, because he would say, If I am swept away altogether, what is the use of my monkery?
The whole thing is gone in the cross. Then baptism is, you are a buried man. You have no status. Some of the earlier christians would not baptise a healthy child - they thought they would give him a chance in the world. They understood he was cut off from position here if he was baptised. Do you understand it? Is not a buried man cut off? God has no claim on a buried man. God has disposed of the flesh. It is completely swept away. Then in baptism you have lost your status in the flesh. You do not believe everything is swept away in the cross. It is most absolute, the severing of the thing, never to be revived. It is cut off; the body of the flesh is swept away in the cross. But not only so, you are buried with Him in baptism. You did not put yourself there - no man could bury himself. I suppose someone buried you in the death of Christ.
First, you are complete in Him; that is verse 10. It reminds me of the man who emigrated with some [p. 89] friends. Well now, he says, we have got to the right place, and lest any of you should wish to go back we will burn the ships. Therefore it says in verse 20, “If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world”. There is nothing people know so imperfectly as the death of Christ. The cords that bound our hearts to earth are loosened by His death. If you accept His death, you find there is not a single thing between you and heaven, no more than there is sin between you and heaven. We are dead with him from the rudiments of the world. What are the rudiments? The very smallest thing you could get up, the ABC, as it were. As to baptism, someone put you there, dipped you in the water. You are cut off, you have put on Christ. Even your child you either connect with Adam or with Christ. “Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead”. God will raise you from the dead. Therefore in chapter 3, “If ye then be risen with Christ”. The point is to show you are completely cut off from the world. There is the vital thing. In baptism your status is God’s. God does not address a man that is buried. A monk copying this scripture would say, What is the good of my religion if that is true? There is nothing so seductive as religiousness. I do not object to a man weeping at a gospel preaching himself, but I do object to his weeping in order to make me weep; he might as well have a harmonium. There are three intrusions of the flesh. You would use your mind, your body in some way, to subserve the interests of Christ. The gospel got you out of the Corinthian snare and the Galatian snare, but it is the mystery will get you out of the Colossian error. Where is the man that would be made a minister of the gospel if he had not two things, learning and religion? He thinks by these things to contribute to Christ. Why should I not give my position and everything? How [p. 90] should a man that is baptised give his position? He has not got any!
In chapter 3 there is no single thing between you and heaven. I do not think it is practice; it is practical. I will rise out of all these things, where there is no man but JESUS, neither the religious man, nor the learned man, neither Greek nor Jew, “neither Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all”. Now you have got hold of the Head. You get there by Christ’s life if you only answer to what belongs to you. You are not there in Romans, but you are looking up to get there. In Gilgal they had to be circumcised. The fact is, everything is gone from us in the cross. I accept it. I leave it all behind. Like a man going up in a balloon, he loses sight of everything. Then he loses sight of himself, for in the long run he is unconscious - he is a gone man. The illustration fails me, for I cannot give him another life. In Colossians 3 I am entering now on a wonderful life; I have dropped all that is of the world. I am entering now where Christ is everything, and in all.
He never was baptised as you are. He was baptised to take His place with the godly remnant. Baptism in its simple meaning is, I am done with the old order, I am entering on a new one. He was baptised with John’s baptism; you do not call that your baptism.
You only get one word that alludes to the Head in 1 Corinthians 12. Many rejoice to think we are all one body, and some go so far as to say we are one body in heaven, but that is not correct, we are one body on earth. We cannot have difference of judgment if we have one Head. Difference of knowledge we may have and of occupation. The same judgment you have in Peterborough about a case you would have in Australia. So if you arrive at a judgment here it is binding on the whole church of God. You will find if you study things that people have very little idea of [p. 91] one Head. The Holy Spirit always acts for Christ. He forms the body, He dwells in the house. In Gilgal the whole order of Egypt is rolled off. I drop it all off as it occurs. Marah is, I drop the thing as it arises. If I see an apple on the table that is not my own and I would like to take it, and I do not take it, I have drunk death, the sin is stopped anyway. Is it right for you to wish for an apple that is not your own? No, it is sin. But then you do not take it, you suffer in the flesh, you have ceased from sin, you would like to take it. Gilgal is, you have rolled off the whole thing, body and bone. Someone said to me, Why do you not bring in Paul? People would think they could not get it unless they were like Paul. It is too great an illustration. The thing is, I have left every single thing behind me, both lust and habits. I am on new ground, where none of these things enter. No one is to be found here but that one Man. That is my home. I have reached heaven.
I doubt if you get in Colossians the corn of the land at all. The first-fruits are very simple, but people do not know it. I see a great many texts about, but not often, “Seek the things which are above”. There is a time in the history of every devoted soul when he raises the question, Where is the Lord? I walk about the world, I hear what is going on, but where is He?