Lesson 11 – Struggling for the Right Goal, part 3 (2:8)
Read Colossians 2 - www.bible.com/bible/59/col.2
Verse 8 is our lesson focus today with a warning for us not to be taken captive by certain things around us that can deceive us and hold us captive to non-truth if we allow it.
The first thing mentioned is philosophy. Mankind can be very good at making things sound so right and so very easy to follow. One of the greatest examples in the Bible of human philosophy trying to explain God’s actions is found in the book of Job. Job’s four friends tried their best to explain why Job had suffered the terrible calamities we find listed in Job 1:13-19 – he lost everything he had.
But Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, wrote in Ecclesiastes that all man’s philosophies are nothing but vanity – empty air.
The second thing mentioned here that can hold us captive is empty deceit. These are the empty words of promise someone makes we know sound too good to be true, but we want so much to believe they could be true – and so we begin to fantasize about something we can only wish for. These are words of empty deceit we must guard against.
The third danger is human tradition. I grew up in a culture that had formed many traditions based on what was considered to be good Christian living when those things were made. But in a culture where many things were no longer the same as then, the traditions had become something entirely different than what the Bible says about the action involved. We enslave ourselves to empty rituals while finding a way to do the very thing the tradition was originally set to keep us from doing. Instead of tradition, we should be following principles God has set for us.
The final thing listed in this verse that can enslave us is the elemental spirits, or principles, of the world. This might include such things as supposed scientific facts, for example, theories of man for how this world came into being. There was no human being present at that time, only God was there so only God can tell us what happened – Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Jesus alone is Truth – as we read in John 14:6. Rely on Him to keep you from being held in captivity to these empty words and practices of mankind.