PRAYING FOR WISDOM
It’s time once again to practice our prayer exercise from our first week; especially since it will require spiritual wisdom and understanding to both process and live out what we are ingesting this week. Pray this prayer 3xs. 1x for you and your GC, 1x for our faith family, and 1x for another faith family you know of whether here in Dallas or around the globe…
Father, will you fill ________ with the knowledge of your will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that women and men of ________ might walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Jesus, bearing fruit in every one of their good works and increasing in the knowledge of you, Father. May _______ be strengthened with all power, according to your glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, always giving thanks to your Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Thank your Father for delivering the men and women of ________ from the domain of darkness and transferring us into the kingdom of your beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. Amen.
GETTING INTO COLOSSIANS
Watch The Bible Project’s video overview of Paul’s letter to the Colossians which you can find here.
Then read Colossians 3:1-17.
REFLECTING ON TRUTH
Idolatry is a word used often throughout our scriptures. I am sure you have run across this word in one form or another. So prevalent is the word and the issue among our ancient ancestors that perhaps we often pass over it with little thought. While idolatry might be an old term, it plays an important role both in the lives of the Colossae saints as well as yours. So, let’s stop for a moment and think about the word idolatry. Ponder this: When you think about the worship of idols, what images does your mind conjure up?
Do you see half-clothed primitives lying prostrate in the dirt around a wooden figure? Or perhaps servants in white tunics dancing around a marble statue? Maybe pictures of animal sacrifices surface or incense engulfed incantations echo in your ears, or ornate temples and elaborately dressed priests flash across your concentration?
One more question to consider: Who or what is being submitted to, worshiped in your images of idolatry? Do you see Greek statues of Zeus or other human-like figures? Or how about pictures of the Hindu Kali and her green face and dozens of arms and eyes? Perhaps the visualization is simple, carved figurines. Regardless, what do these images represent or what inhabits them?
Now with the ancient picture of idol worship squarely in your mind, doesn’t Paul’s description in chapter two of new moon festivals, and angelic worship in relation to the elemental spirits and human traditions of this world seem to reinforce it? After all, is not idol worship the devotion in practice and adoration in the acknowledgment of “gods,” these spiritual beings we discussed a few weeks back? But, if that is the case, then none of us are actually in danger of even accidentally falling into this false worship we have been pondering, or are we?
While praying to handcrafted effigies or offering sacrifices via a cultic priestess to appease a particular deity would indeed classify as idol worship, would it surprise you to learn that there are more “normal” expressions of submission to the ideas and images of the spiritual beings (and human traditions) behind our concepts of idolatry?
In fact, Paul simplifies and expands our understanding of idolatry in chapter three, particularly in verse 5,
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
Read that verse again. What is idolatry, according to Paul? He seems to have left out the typical forms of worship that we imagine. So what is Paul trying to get at? Let’s think about this list for just a second and see if we can discover a common theme in these modes of worship.
Paul starts with sexual immorality. I am sure illicit behaviors come to mind at this phrase, but let’s consider what sex is to get to what Paul is saying here. Is sex not the most intimate, vulnerable, and adjoining means of relating between two humans? In its God-ordained manifestation, sex is meant as the most fully encompassing (physically and emotionally), fully satisfying way to know and be known. Sex allows us to be exposed (authentic) and connect without shame. Sex is such a powerful means of relating that it can spark new life, and thus it is to be savored within and saved for only the most special relationship. So, if we reduce sex to anything less than its uniquely spectacular means of relating and take it out of the boundaries of its potential goodness, then what we are doing is tearing at the core of how we relate to one another as humans.
For this reason, sex is such a big deal in our scriptures, not because of prudishness, but because of its relational power. The fundamental relational nature of sex is also why it is listed first, and many commentators read the other examples of idolatry within a sexual framework. Which makes sense, for if our most intimate relationship is twisted, then every other way of relating will be twisted as well.
Now to impurity. While this word can carry sexual connotations, the word also takes on the idea of “uncleanliness” or “unholiness” in the Hebrew mind, which denotes how one relates to God. A righteous person is one who relates to God in the way that God has designed her to connect to him. She recognizes God for who he is as creator and sustainer of all things good, and herself for who she is in his image and free under his good ordination. Thus an impure person is one who lives in a way that rejects God’s way of relating to themselves, and themselves to the world God has given them. Perhaps they attempt to worship God on their terms or fail to recognize God as something wholly other. Either way, they are separated from God and thus their view of themselves is off as well.
Now the word translated “passion” in the ESV can also be rendered as “lust.” Again, lust has a sexual connotation but is not limited to such. Lust is the disproportionate longing for gratification from something or someone. Disproportionate in its intensity, expectation, and reciprocation. The person, feeling, or object so intensely desired loses its created essence. No longer is it an image bearer of the Creator that you want to connect to, or the proper context of a feeling or use of an object in its natural limitations that you desire; each lost to longing for selfish gratification. Those things and people I lust after are defined by what I see them as, what I want from them. I am the center by which things relate. And thus people and the planet are mine to use.
Evil desire, like impurity, takes us back in the Hebrew stories to the garden. The same urge that allowed the serpent to seduce Adam and Eve continues to haunt us today. We desire to determine what is good and evil, to create and sustain and control the world that we inhabit; all while at the tearing at our relation to our Father, to one another, and the earth which we use for our visions of the world.
Covetousness is the next word in the ESV. Like passions, it too has a more common word to describe its intent: “greed.” Greed is the craving for more, and how do we get more? In the pre-globalized economy, there was an understanding of limited goods. If someone possessed a great deal of land, for example, they did so at the cost of others having less land (either opportunity for it or having it taken from them) for there was limited land to possess. In or Amazon and Apple world, we do not think of things in limited availability, but the fact is that in order for you and I to have inexpensive goods, and ever more of them, someone, somewhere has to have less; less of a wage, less of a quality of life, less of a natural resource, etc. How do we get more? We get more at the expense of others, taking what they have one way or the other; and thus people are reduced to obstacles to our having or means of getting more.
In summation, idolatry to Paul it seems has little to do with temples or totems, figurines or festivals; but everything to do with how we relate—the ideas and images that give shape to how we perceive others and what expectations we have for them in our daily interactions.
How do we associate ourselves to the world around us and the God who created us? Are we entitled rulers exercising our dominion by using others and the earth for our pleasure or enslaved animals instinctively satisfying our desires, eating or being eaten? Do relationships revolve around me and what I want? If so, it is no wonder that such ideas and images of relating manifest in “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk [degrading what we speak about, thus demonstrating a belief that it as less than its God-created vaule]” (3:8).
It seems then that idolatry then takes place in the most ordinary context, our bodies. Dallas Willard (161-162) describes our tendency towards practicing everyday idolatry this way:
“My body is the original and primary place of my dominion and my responsibility. It is only through it that I have a world in which to live…and…begin to extend my kingdom…I generate a realm in which I am driven by desire and channeled by ideas, sensations, and emotions that play over my body…In developing my dominion…but I soon run into realities that do not yield to my will. Often these are the kingdoms of other individuals, organized around their desires and contrary to my own. So I begin to experience destructive emotions, especially fear, anger, envy, jealousy, and resentment…These may, in time, develop into settled attitudes of hostility, contempt, or indifference.”
We find ourselves continuing to submit to the domains of darkness, to elemental spirits and human traditions not by going to a temple but by the twisted and destructive ways in which we interact with one another, know one another, view ourselves and our relation to God. This is why Paul says to “put off the old self with its practices,” (3:9). Like Jesus in his famous Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Paul argues that how we relate to ourselves and others is indicative of how we relate to God, and thus those “other gods” from chapter two.
Though many may read Colossians 3:1-17 as a list of moral imperatives, some to avoid, others to pursue; Paul is not outlining dos and don’ts, instead, he is continuing to step down the big idea that we have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the beloved Son (1:13). Having taken us from the heights of creation (1:15-20) through the rebellion which we inhabit (2:6-23), Paul now sets us firmly on the ground with those we share life among—wives, husbands, children, parents, siblings, employees, employers, authority figures, those under authority, and of course, the Lord Jesus and ourselves (3:18-4:1). It is here, in the way we relate to ourselves, others and God that idolatry takes on its most “earthly” form.
The good news is that it is this same bodily context in which we “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (3:10). In these same relational contexts where we once submitted to the domains of darkness, we can now see the “things that are above” make their way into every word and deed. For, we have “died to the elemental spirits of this world” (2:20) and have our life “hidden in Christ” (3:3); which means we no longer have to practice everyday idolatry. The “peace of Christ” can “rule in your hearts” (3:15), if we will take responsibility to participate in the grace that saves us.
USE THESE QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU PRAYERFULLY REFLECT INDIVIDUALLY AND DISCUSS AS A DNA GROUP.
That stood out you as you read through Colossians 3:1-7?
What stood out to you as you read the section above?
In what relationships do you recognize everyday idolatry in your own life? How is it manifesting itself?
What opportunities have you had this week, and perhaps have before you in the coming days, to “put on the new self”?
BE ZEALOUS & REPENT
Repenting is one of the most ordinary and extraordinary practices of our faith heritage. The stories and letters that ground our faith are replete with the exhortation to and examples of repentance. In a nutshell, repentance is the turning away from one thing and grabbing hold of something different. It is not merely the ceasing of an action or attitude, but the replacement of what is let go with something completely other than what is released. Or, as Paul so aptly says, “putting off the old self” and “putting on the new self”.
So, prayerfully ask, answer, and share:
What ways of relating to God and others do you need to let go?
And what ways of relating to others and God through Jesus do you need to grab hold of instead?