Jesus-Centered Religion (Centered #8)

About ten years ago, shortly after my wife and I moved to Waverly, I got invited to a gathering of pastors from around the state of Iowa.

We were doing the usual thing in meetings like that — going around the room introducing ourselves. And because I didn’t have a church yet (Riverwood hadn’t been planted), I couldn’t say the things everyone else was saying. So when my turn came, I decided to throw in some humor.

I said something like this:

Hi, my name is Erin. My family and I recently moved to Waverly, Iowa, where we’re seeking to plant a yet-to-be-named church. But I realize as you hear me say that, you’re probably wondering how in the world I’m a church planter — because I don’t look like one. I’m not wearing a flannel shirt. I don’t have any tattoos. I don’t smoke cigars. I don’t drink beer. In fact, I don’t even drink coffee. So you’re probably wondering what qualifies me to plant a church. I’m still trying to figure that out myself.

Thankfully a few of them chuckled. I’m not that funny, so I knew I wasn’t going to bring down the house.

But what made the joke land at all was that there was truth in it.

The Unwritten Rules

When I read the books about church planting and listened to the podcasts, what I heard was: you need a passionate love for Jesus and a genuine calling.

But when I went to the church planting conferences, when I sat in meetings like that one, when I was in conversation with other church planters — I heard a very different story.

What they seemed to indicate was that you need a cool shirt, hundred-dollar jeans, a couple of tattoos, and a love for beer and Jesus.

Well, I had Jesus. And that was about it.

And in those conversations you could hear the unwritten rules. The assumptions. Then you’re not a good church planter, are you? Are you sure you’re actually called to this?

You Know This Feeling

Have you ever had someone make assumptions about you based on knowing just a sliver?

Maybe they found out what town you grew up in. Or what college you attended. And they assumed certain things.

Maybe the assumptions were positive. Maybe they were negative. Maybe you have coworkers or family members who assumed things about you when they learned who you planned to vote for in the last election. Maybe you have classmates who found out you’re passionate about a certain genre of music or film and drew conclusions. Or maybe the assumptions came from appearance — comments about your height, your hairstyle, your skin color.

And here’s what happens when people make those assumptions: we start sensing they have expectations of us. And those expectations turn into pressure.

Suddenly we feel pressure to do certain things, or believe certain things, or say certain things — because if you’re this way, then surely you’re also that way.

It’s what we Americans do. We learn this much about someone and think we know this much. And so we apply pressure to others, or feel pressure to adopt things ourselves.

“You’re Going to Be Drinking Beer”

When my wife and I felt called into church planting, I was the young adult pastor on staff at a church in Cedar Rapids. When it became clear they didn’t share the same call to plant, we knew we needed to go learn. So we went to Kansas City for a leadership residency.

About three or four weeks in, one of the leaders at that church said to me: “Before your year here is done, you’re going to be drinking beer and you’re going to have a couple of tattoos.”

She ended up being wrong on both counts.

But that stuck in my head. And part of me started thinking, am I doing this wrong? I don’t like the taste of beer — but maybe I need to force myself to like it, because that’s what a good church planter would do.

I’m not opposed to getting a tattoo. In fact I’ve had the same tattoo idea in my head for about fifteen years and probably should just go do it. But I started wondering: do I need to get that tattoo so I look cooler, so more people might want to be part of our church?

I felt the pressure. She assumed this is what would happen — and I started thinking maybe I needed to behave that way.

Paul Addresses the Same Thing

Today the Apostle Paul is going to address some religious assumptions in the church at Colossae. And he addresses them because he knows those assumptions turn into pressure.

These brand new believers in a small town are feeling pressure — that maybe they need to adopt certain behaviors, or think certain things, or do certain things in order to make God happy.

And Paul writes not only to protect them from that assumption and pressure, but to free them.

That’s my hope for you today. If you came in with a sense that you need to do certain things or believe certain things in order to be accepted by God, what I hope you hear is that you are free in Christ. If you’ve put your identity and your faith in Jesus, you’re free. There’s no pressure to force yourself to adopt things just to make other people happy — not when your heart is centered on Jesus.

Open your Bible to Colossians 2. We’re finishing the chapter today, verses 16 through 23.

Heavenly Father, we come to Your holy Scriptures, and we come from very different places. Some of us have had a really good week. Some of us have had a hard one. Some of us have been so busy we’ve barely given You a thought. Some of us walked in excited and eager to learn. Some are hampered by our past. Some are worried about our future. Some are walking in grieved by sin — our own or the sin of those around us.

Father, it’s absolutely ridiculous to think that I as one person could speak in a way that says what each of these people needs. That’s why we come to You. Through Your Holy Spirit, be our teacher. Let me simply be the instrument You use, but let them ultimately hear from You. And when we leave this place, let it not be about whether that was a good sermon or whether I did a good job — let us walk out in awe of who You are and what You’ve done through a cross and an empty tomb.

Help us not to merely set aside the things from our past week or the things ahead. Instead let us bring them to You, lay them before You, and ask You to speak through them directly to our hearts and minds — so we hear what You have for us and become the people You call us to be. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen.

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations — “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used) — according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:16–23)

“Let No One Pass Judgment”

Paul starts by essentially saying: don’t let people judge you.

But if you stop and think about it — how do you get someone to stop judging you? I can’t make you not think certain things about me.

So does that mean Paul is wrong, and therefore the Bible is wrong? No.

What Paul is saying is: don’t let their judgment affect you. Don’t let their assumptions turn into pressure.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but when I was a kid there were times I’d have a shirt I really liked, or get new shoes — and then get teased for them. The assumption was that I wasn’t cool enough for them. So I’d stop wearing them.

I had perfectly good shoes in my closet I never wore. Perfectly good shirts that stayed at the bottom of the drawer, because pulling them out meant getting teased.

I let them judge me.

Paul doesn’t want you to be like thirteen-year-old me. He doesn’t want you worried about what other people will think — because if they assume certain things, they’ll expect certain things, and then comes the pressure.

Two Kinds of Pressure

These brand new believers were under two very different kinds of pressure: pressure from Judaism, and pressure from paganism and mysticism.

1. The Pressure of Judaism

We see this in verse 16. After saying don’t let anyone pass judgment on you, Paul lists five things: food, drink, a festival, a new moon, a Sabbath.

All five come either from the Mosaic law — the law established with the Jewish people — or from traditions some Jewish leaders had added over the centuries.

With food and drink, there were things they were not supposed to eat or drink as part of their faith and worship. There were festivals God had instituted, like the Feast of Tabernacles and the Passover. The new moon simply marked the start of each month and an opportunity to worship and remember God. And the Sabbath was one of the biggest — from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, no work was to take place. A complete day of rest.

Now notice the rhythm of it.

You eat and drink every single day — so there was daily pressure. The Sabbath came every week — weekly pressure. The new moon started every month — monthly pressure. And the feasts came annually — annual pressure.

In other words, there was constant religious pressure to do all these things in order to keep God happy. It was constant work.

And What If You Slipped?

What happened if you didn’t quite honor the Sabbath — you went out and did a bit of work? What if you got sick during Passover and couldn’t participate? What if you slipped and ate something you weren’t supposed to?

Paul doesn’t spell it out, so we’re inferring from the rest of Colossians and the rest of Scripture. But there was an underlying sense that you had to do all of these things continually and constantly to keep God happy — and if God didn’t approve, if you stayed on His bad side, He wouldn’t let you into the afterlife.

At that time, especially around the time of Jesus, there were genuine questions about whether there was an afterlife at all. Some Jews believed there was; some did not. It was a relatively newer concept gaining popularity. And Jesus talked about the afterlife, so He landed firmly in the camp that says yes, there is a heaven.

And so the teaching emerged: if you don’t observe the food laws, the feasts, the Sabbath, the new moon celebrations properly and correctly — you don’t get heaven.

Can you imagine the spiritual and emotional pressure that puts on someone?

I think some of these brand new Jesus followers in Colossae started wondering, maybe we’re not doing this right. We started with Jesus — He died on the cross for our sin and we put our faith in Him — but now maybe we’ve got to move on to the food and the feasts and everything else. Maybe we should do these things too. What’s it going to hurt?

It’s essentially risk management. We’ll just do these things to keep God off our back, in case we’re wrong.

2. The Pressure of Paganism and Mysticism

But that wasn’t the only pressure. They also faced pressure from the culture and the cultural religions of their day.

Verse 18: “Let no one disqualify you” — in our terms, don’t let anyone cancel you — “insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind.”

For many of the mystics of that era it was all about angels, or the visions you’d have. Some of it dipped into paganism as well.

But the word I want to focus on is what my translation renders “asceticism.”

What I learned this week is that in the Greek, the word isn’t asceticism. The word is humility.

That initially bugged me, because part of why I use this particular translation is that the translators aim for word-for-word rendering. That makes it slightly more stilted, which is why I don’t always recommend it for daily reading — but for preaching, studying, and leading Bible studies during the week, it’s genuinely helpful. So it bothered me that they didn’t translate the word as “humility.”

But as I dug in, I understood why they went with the thought instead of the word.

Because This Isn’t Real Humility

The kind of humility Paul is describing here is not true humility.

We learn what true humility is in Philippians 2 — considering the needs of others before your own, with Jesus as the ultimate example. Jesus had no sin, and yet Jesus put our needs before His own. He did not need to go to the cross to pay for His own sin; He was sinless. But He knew we needed it.

That’s humility.

The “humility” in verse 18 is a self-centered humility. They thought it was humility because they denied themselves. But it wasn’t humility, because it was entirely about themselves.

The way they did it was by denying themselves any luxury or excess. They’d go to extreme forms of fasting. They’d eliminate comfort — no mat for a bed, sleeping directly on the ground. They might own only one or two outfits.

The idea was that the more you suffered in this life, the more holy you became — and the more likely you were to earn the afterlife and keep your god happy.

These Things Aren’t Bad

Don’t mistake me: none of this means these practices are inherently bad.

Fasting can be a genuinely good spiritual discipline. Fighting materialism might be really good for you and your soul. Go back to the Jewish practices — the Sabbath, taking a rest and a break, can be deeply restorative. Enjoying a feast can be a time filled with joy and worship.

These are good things.

What was happening was pressure to take a good thing and make it the primary thing.

You replace Jesus and insert your fasting. You take out the gospel and insert the Sabbath. You take all of that out and insert these practices — and now the practice is what’s needed to keep God happy.

In other words, it becomes about what you do rather than what Christ has done.

Shadow and Substance

Which is why verse 17 says: “These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”

Notice — some of these are genuinely good. They’re a shadow of things to come. Think about it: the whole idea of Sabbath was rest. What do you think heaven is going to be? Rest. It’s a shadow of what’s coming.

But it’s still a shadow. The substance — the center, the core — is Jesus.

Then down in verse 23, Paul acknowledges that some of these things sound good. They have an appearance of wisdom. It might be impressive that you fast every Friday. You might feel really holy listening exclusively to Christian music. You might feel better about your faith using a particular Bible translation.

And let me clarify — sometimes these things genuinely are wise. Sometimes it’s wise to fast, whether from food or social media or Netflix, for a time and with a purpose.

But what happens is that it sounds wise while we’re quietly replacing who Christ is and what He’s done. Which is why Paul says these things fade and are empty. Look at the very end of verse 23: “they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”

The Pastor Who Wouldn’t Own a Bed

Years ago I heard about a pastor who was absolutely determined to practice asceticism. So he refused to let himself and his new bride own a bed. They were going to sleep on the floor.

She decided not to complain. She made up a sheet and blanket on the floor, put down some pillows, and they slept there. And she quietly prayed that God would give them a bed.

Sure enough, his lower back started hurting. He ended up in conversation with a friend, and it came out that he didn’t own a bed.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, it just seems materialistic to have a mattress. I want to really give my whole life to God.”

“Dude, this is bad for your body. You need a bed. I happen to own a mattress factory. Come down to the warehouse, pick any mattress you want, and I’ll buy it.”

And suddenly this pastor went from “we can’t have any mattress” to “what is the most expensive, best mattress in this entire place?”

He thought the deprivation would purify him. It didn’t. It did not remove the indulgence of his flesh. It was still right there.

Paul is asking: why are you doing this? Why chase after these things trying to eliminate desire, when it isn’t accomplishing what you think it will?

So How Do We Keep the Substance?

How do we keep ourselves from slipping into this kind of thinking? How do we keep the substance of the gospel as the substance of our lives?

I think it comes from the very first word of today’s passage: therefore.

A couple of weeks ago when we were in verses 6 and 7, we talked about this — so forgive the repetition. Whenever you read “therefore” in the Bible, ask yourself what it’s there for. It’s a connector word. What you just read now ties directly into what’s about to come.

We’ve been on this side of the therefore. We’ve seen that we’re not to let people judge us. So what happened right before?

If you were with us last week, when I presented both the prosecution and the defense in my little court case, the defense showed us that when a person puts their faith in Jesus, everything fundamentally changes on the spiritual level.

We saw that you are spiritually circumcised. Just as a Jewish male was circumcised to be accepted by God, when you put your faith in Jesus your heart — your sinful nature — is circumcised, removed. And you are now accepted by God.

We saw that you were spiritually dead in your sins, but you were raised with Christ. Just as Christ was raised physically from the dead, when you put your faith in Him you are raised spiritually. You are made alive in Christ.

And we saw that each of us has a spiritual debt so enormous against God that we could never pay it off. And when Christ died on the cross, that debt was forgiven and canceled. In fact Paul says it was nailed to the cross. Your debt was killed.

So: if you’ve been accepted by God, raised with Christ, and had your debt completely canceled — therefore, don’t let anyone pass judgment on you.

If your attention is on other people and on yourself, their assumptions turn into pressure. But if your attention is on Christ and what He’s done for you, you don’t care what anyone thinks or says — because it’s all about Him and what He’s already accomplished, not about what you need to do to prove yourself.

Why Go Back to Something You Died To?

Paul takes this further in verse 20: “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?”

Twenty-eight years ago I managed to convince my wife to say yes to marriage. So we stood on a stage in front of a pastor and our families and said “I do.”

Now imagine I sadly pass away this week. If in a year or two my wife goes on a date with a man, she isn’t cheating. If that man turns out to be kind and wonderful and will take care of her and be a good presence to my adult children, and she says yes to marrying him — she isn’t cheating on me. It isn’t adultery. She isn’t a polygamist.

Because my death ends the marital covenant we had.

Likewise: God creates humanity, establishes the Jewish people through Abraham, and makes a covenant with them. He furthers that covenant through Moses, with specific things the Israelites were to do and specific things God would do.

But back in Genesis 15, with Abraham, there’s a ritual. Animals are cut in half and laid apart, their blood pooling in a path between them. Typically both parties would walk that path and say, in effect: if I do not uphold my end of this covenant, you may do to me what we have done to these animals. You may cut me. You may kill me.

But God walked through that path twice.

Because He knew the people would not be able to uphold their end. And He was saying: I’ll pay it. I will be cut for you.

So when Christ went to the cross, He was cut — because we did not uphold our end. We sinned against Him.

And the old covenant — the arrangement of doing certain things to keep God happy — was fulfilled. It came to a close. We died to that. And a new covenant was established. A new marriage. And instead of being only between God and the Jews, it became between God and all people.

Anyone can put their faith in Jesus, saying: God, I accept that You walked through that blood path for me. You were cut for me. You took the penalty. And You’ve invited me into this relationship.

So Paul asks: if you’ve died to that old way, why go back to it? Why live under a covenant that’s finished and fulfilled? You now have freedom to live in relationship with God. Why return to what you died to?

Instead, find your freedom and your acceptance in Christ.

Hold Fast to the Head

Which is why in verse 19 Paul urges us to hold fast to the Head.

The Head is Christ — “from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.”

Your joy, your satisfaction, your growth will come through Christ. It’s not going to come through your fasting. It’s not going to come through the Sabbath. It’s not going to come through denying yourself. It comes through Jesus.

Now, to find yourself in Christ you may sometimes need to set other things aside. But that’s meant to drive you to Christ — because it’s through Him that growth is found. He is the head. He is the center.

Normally I’d end with practical ideas for how to keep Jesus at the center. But we’re actually going to see that next week. Very rarely do I get the pleasure of saying “join us next week for the exciting conclusion,” but here we are. Next week Paul begins showing us exactly how to keep Christ as the head. By all means, cheat and read ahead into Colossians 3.

Shadow and Body

Instead of application points, I want to take you back to something we saw earlier and explain it further as we move toward communion.

Verse 17 told us these things are a shadow of what’s to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Again this week I learned that the Greek word behind “substance” is actually body. And again I found myself thinking, the whole point of this translation is word-for-word. But the deeper I dug, the more I think they made the right call.

Because many of you grew up in church, or have been around Riverwood long enough, that if you read “the body belongs to Christ,” you’d immediately think of the church. And that’s not what he means here.

What Paul is doing is contrasting shadow with something else.

A shadow has no substance. You can’t walk over and pick up a shadow. You can’t make a shadow hot or cold. You can’t stick a fork in it and enjoy a bite. It’s just there, and then it fades and it’s gone.

But a shadow indicates that something of substance exists. Something real. Something with a body.

And the body is Christ.

Which means everything in verse 16 — and I’d argue verse 18 as well — are things that point to Jesus.

The Sabbath as Shadow

Take the Sabbath. It was absolutely central to the Jewish people. They upheld it religiously — which is why they were so bothered when Jesus and His disciples were walking one Sabbath and plucking heads of grain. That’s harvesting. That’s work. These are bad, evil people. You therefore are not a good Messiah. You clearly aren’t from God, because if You were, You’d know we don’t work today.

To them it was all about the day.

But as we learn in Hebrews 3 and 4, the purpose of the Sabbath was rest — finding our identity and our rest in God. And Hebrews shows that this rest is ultimately found in Christ.

The Sabbath day was a shadow pointing to the reality of the rest found in Jesus and the gospel.

The Feast as Shadow

Likewise the feasts. One the Jews upheld was Passover, and its purpose was to remind them of what God had done — rescuing them from slavery in Egypt and bringing them into freedom.

For us as Christians, the sacrament of communion comes out of Passover. But instead of reminding us of freedom from slavery in Egypt, it reminds us that Jesus, through His sacrifice on the cross, brought us out of slavery to sin.

The feast is the shadow, pointing to the substance of Christ.

Come to the Table

So as we go to these communion elements today, recognize that these things are a shadow, and that they point to the reality of Jesus.

If you’re a follower of Christ and this is your first time with us, we celebrate an open table here. You are welcome to come.

If you’re a guest and you’re not sure about Christianity, not sure about Jesus, I’d ask you to very respectfully not come to this table. Because this shadow points to the substance and reality of Jesus giving His life for us. When you hold those elements, you’re saying that the bread represents the body of Christ and the cup represents His blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins. And as you take them in, you’re declaring that His act, His story, His work is the very core of who you are.

But if you know that story and it’s yours — even if this is your first time here — come. Let the shadow drive you to the reality and substance of Christ.

A Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank You for what You wrote to us through Paul.

Forgive any of us who have been replacing You with certain behaviors and actions — who have thought our righteousness is found through our own moralism. Forgive us if we’ve taken Christ off the throne and tried to put something else there. Forgive those of us who’ve tried to become holier by forcing ourselves through pain, thinking we have to do some work to make ourselves cleaner or holier — and in doing so have replaced Jesus.

God, help us be people fully centered on You. Centered on the cross. Centered on the resurrection. Centered on the very act and person of Jesus — realizing that what He did is enough. There is nothing we can do to add to it, and nothing we can do to take away from it. The cross truly was enough.

So that’s the heart and mind with which we come to this table. As we take these elements, may we remember what Christ has done, and may this shadow point us to the reality of who You are and what You’ve done. May we have a sense today of that freedom — the freedom of the forgiveness of our sins, and also the freedom to stop worrying about the judgment of others, and the fear that people are trying to tell us how to follow You and what acts we must perform.

Instead we want to center on You. Because I believe Your Holy Spirit is the one who shows us what You’re calling us to do. There may be people here caught up in materialism, and part of their surrender — part of keeping Christ at the center — is saying no to some purchases. There may be people here who are full of the things of this world, and what You’re calling them to is fasting for a time, whether from food or social media or certain entertainment. Some of us have been so busy we haven’t rested, and this is our time to enter Your rest.

But God, help us not get these things mixed up. Help us not take good things and make them ultimate things. During this time of communion, remind us that Jesus is the ultimate. He is primary. He is the head. He is the substance. He is the center.

That’s why we approach Your throne of grace with confidence — because of what Christ has done. And why we approach with humility — because we could not have saved ourselves, and there was nothing we could do to earn Your favor. We come humbly and joyfully because of what You’ve done through Christ.

May we now celebrate the freedom found in Him as we partake. Be glorified in our songs, in our prayers, and in this beautiful sacrament. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen.