RBV: Colossians 1:4

. . . since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints; . . .

--Colossians 1:4

This verse appears in the middle of a longish introductory sentence by which the apostle Paul lays the groundwork for his appeal to the members of the church at Colossae, an appeal that he does not voice until chapter 2. The problem facing this young church in Phrygia was that they were in danger of being "cheat[ed] . . . through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ" (Colossians 2:8). In other words, conditions were such that they were showing signs of believing ungodly ideas promoted by outsiders. As a careful study of the phrase "the basic principles of the world" reveals, these ideas or philosophies had their origins in demons.

As he begins his letter, the apostle wishes to assure the Colossians that word had reached his ears that, despite their vulnerabilities to deception, they were faithful to their calling in Christ and that it was demonstrated in acts of love that they performed to benefit their fellow church members. Thus he lets them know in verse 3 that he always prays for them and thanks God for them. This should have the effect of building their confidence that their election by God was genuine and that they could rely on divine help and strength to face the spiritual battles that they would soon have to wage against these counterfeit doctrines.

Paul had heard of their situation from a reliable source. Verse 7 informs us that one of his proteges, Epaphras, who originally hailed from Colossae (Colossians 4:12), had been working with them and had given him a report of their progress. Evidently, he told the apostle that elements of the local religious milieu were beginning to become apparent in the ideas he was hearing among members of the congregation.

It is not easy to pin down what the exact problem was. Both Jewish and Greek philosophies can be seen in the language Paul uses to describe the problem. There may be some kind of Jewish mysticism, perhaps even radical apocalypticism, present (Colossians 2:18), and certainly, a form of asceticism is mentioned in Colossians 2:21-23. In areas far from the Temple, Jewish philosphers (like Philo in Alexandria) were mixing Judaism with Greek philosophy, creating a strange hybrid of revealed truth and humanistic "wisdom," syncretism of the worst kind since it contains enough truth to attract a believer and enough error to turn his feet off the path to God's Kingdom. These quasi-spiritual ideas later coalesced into formal Gnosticism in the next century, but at this time, the rudiments of such thought were just beginning to take root in various places--one of which was Colossae.

In any case, Paul opens his letter with positivity and encouragement, letting its recipients know that they already have what it takes to stand firm in the faith. If they keep their eyes on the hope set before them, they will endure even this severe trial.

What Is Real Conversion? (Part Three)

The first two parts of this series considered the questions of who is truly converted and whether conversion is an event or a process. Perhaps an even more basic question on this subject is "What role does sin play in conversion?" There would be no need for conversion without the existence of sin and its destructive effects on humanity. Sin and the anti-God world it has spawned are what Christians must turn from so that they can truly follow God's way of life.

God gives a concise description of conversion in Ezekiel 18:30-31: "Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit." However, if a person is converted, and he subsequently sins, does he automatically become unconverted? Certainly not. Since conversion is a process in which one turns to righteousness and holiness over time, it also takes time and a great deal of habitual sin for one to revert completely to an unconverted state.

The apostle John helps us to understand the Christian's battle against sin in I John 1:5–2:2:

This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you, that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

In this passage, John is responding specifically to certain claims, voiced by Gnostics who had already begun to infiltrate the church, regarding sin and a Christian's ability to sin. They claimed three false beliefs:

1. In verse 6, that their conduct had no bearing on their relationship with God. As John repeats their statement, they believed that they could sin—"walk in darkness"—and continue fellowshipping with God with no adverse effects. John calls this a lie.
2. In verse 8, that they had no sin—in effect, that they were perfectly pure already. John calls this self-deception.
3. In verse 10, that they were beyond sin—in other words, that they could not sin. The apostle says this belief calls God a liar.

This passage reveals how little the Gnostics understood, though they claimed to know it all, which is what the Greek word gnosis means, "to know." A Gnostic is "one who knows," or pejoratively, a "know-it-all." Gnostics were proud of their knowledge, believing that they knew more than others did. Worse, they felt that their knowledge gave them superiority over others who had not studied the "mysteries" of spirituality as deeply as they had. However, John exposes that they actually knew nothing. As he writes, the truth was not in them; they did not understand even the most basic elements of Christianity.

He answers their false claims quite simply. First, he argues that, by definition, a Christian is one who follows the example of Christ, so it is sheer nonsense to say that our manner of life has nothing to do with our relationship with God. Only if we do as Jesus did will we stay in fellowship with God and please Him (John 8:29). If we are constantly trying to follow the example of Christ, His blood will be available to cleanse us of our sins, and He will gladly do so along the way.

Second, he counters that we only show our hypocrisy and self-deception if we claim not to sin, because we are obviously full of sin. Paul instructs us that God's law defines what sin is (Romans 7:7), and even a cursory comparison between God's righteous standards and our imperfect lives reveals that a great deal of sin remains in us after baptism—sinful ways that we must turn from. If we fail to see any sin in ourselves, we are clearly deceiving ourselves.

Third, regarding a Christian being incapable of sin, John contends that such a statement calls God a liar. Since the whole plan of God is based on redemption from sin, if we are already so spiritual that we cannot sin, why is God putting us through this farce of conversion? The truth is that all men are sinful (Romans 3:23). Jesus teaches that, just as God is perfect, we are to become perfect (Matthew 5:48), and Paul echoes that our job is to "go on to perfection" (Hebrews 6:1).

In his answer, John admits that, even though the whole thrust of Christianity is to turn from sin and live sinlessly, we still have sinful human nature in us—or as Jeremiah 17:9 says, a heart that is "deceitful" and "desperately wicked"—and we do sin. Yet if we sin, admit it, repent of it, and seek forgiveness for it, Christ's blood covers the sin, and we go on striving not to sin. The desired result is that we have overcome the sin, learned a lesson, and grown in character. This is how conversion works: step by step, one transformation to the image of Christ at a time.

This should tell us a few things about conversion. For starters, it is not something we can do alone. It is God who works to convert us by His Spirit, as we work in cooperation with Him (Philippians 2:12-13). Conversion is His spiritual, creative process at work, transforming us into what He has purposed and designed us to become. As Paul says, the process of conversion is God's workmanship in us (Ephesians 2:10). He conducts us through the entire process.

In addition, we realize that, no matter how long we live, the process of conversion will never be complete. We can never achieve perfection in this life, for we will always fall short of the righteousness of Christ. With its inherent self-centeredness, human flesh can never be entirely converted to God's way of outgoing love. The apostle Paul, certainly a righteous man, lamented many years after his initial conversion, "I am carnal, sold under sin" (Romans 7:14) and "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells" (verse 18). Only by the resurrection of the dead at Christ's second coming will we be truly "incorruptible" (I Corinthians 15:52).

Yes, sin is involved in the conversion process, but we are endeavoring to overcome it. Even with the indwelling of God's Spirit, from time to time we will sin. Thus, a converted person is not perfect, but he is constantly working in that direction under God's guiding hand.

Next time, in Part Four, we will consider more deeply the goal of the conversion process.

False Christs and the True

One of the fiercer debates among early adherents of Christianity centered on the person of Jesus Christ Himself. Various groups held widely divergent views on just who He was. In ignorance or in stubborn refusal to accept the testimony of the apostles, first-century groups from Alexandria to Antioch began to teach a slew of different Christs. In Galatians 1:6-7, only two decades removed from Jesus' death on Golgotha, Paul warns the church against false gospels, perversions of the message preached by Jesus and His apostles. Many of these false Christianities became apostate in large part because they changed the teaching about Jesus Christ Himself.

These different Jesuses came in various forms. Some denied His pre-existence, teaching that He was simply a righteous man whom God accepted and glorified as the Messiah. Others advocated a Jesus who was the first creation of God. Early Gnostics of the Docetist persuasion conceived of Jesus as a normal man whom a spirit, Christ, inhabited upon His baptism—and who left Him to return to a pure spirit form before His suffering on the cross. Similarly, others thought of Him as only coming in the appearance of a man of flesh and blood, while in actuality He was of pure spirit essence, not even making footprints when He walked! An element among the Jews, eager to dissociate themselves from Him, even spread the rumor that they had it on good authority that He was really the bastard son of a Roman soldier, so how could He be the Messiah, much less divine?

This proliferation of false Christs became so widespread that by the end of the first century, the aged John son of Zebedee was forced to lay down an unambiguous rule to help the church recognize true from false: "By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God" (I John 4:2-3). He then proceeds to say that this perversion of Jesus' true nature "is the spirit of the Antichrist." In other words, changing the revealed truth about Christ changes Christianity, turning it against (anti-) Christ. By teaching falsehood about the Savior, no matter how sincerely, a group becomes His enemy.

Over the centuries since, Christian theologians and scholars have tried to figure out—even in some cases, to quantify—Jesus and His nature, and it has led to little more than continuing confusion about Him. The real cause of the confusion is that these very intelligent and devoted people have not truly accepted the revelation of Jesus in Scripture. Instead, they have trusted more in scholarship and their own abilities to reason out an answer.

During one of His encounters with the Pharisees, Jesus tells them, "Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word" (John 8:43, emphasis ours). These Jews could not understand or believe the truth Jesus taught because they were not spiritually equipped to handle it. Even Jesus' own disciples could not really understand Him until "He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures" (Luke 24:45). As Paul explains in I Corinthians 2:10-11, 14:

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. . . . Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. . . . But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Human conceptions of Christ are not enough; the real Jesus Christ of Nazareth must be revealed by God's Spirit through the Scriptures.

The New Testament, of course, presents Jesus Christ primarily in the four gospels, giving us four slightly different perspectives—eyewitness accounts—of Him and His ministry. Each author presents Him in a different manner, with a different intention, and to a different audience. In aggregate, they display a complete, rounded portrait of His personality, message, and purpose.

Matthew writes to a predominantly Jewish audience with the aim of persuading them that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, the true heir of David and King of Israel. He tends to emphasize Jesus' authority and fulfillment of prophecy.

Mark, a protégé of Peter, produces perhaps the simplest gospel, a fairly straightforward account of Christ's ministry. He highlights Jesus as the Servant of God, working steadily and diligently on behalf of mankind—all the way to His suffering and death and beyond.

Luke, the longtime companion of Paul, addresses a mostly Gentile audience. Downplaying Jesus' Jewish origins, he presents Jesus as the model Man, the greatest Son of Adam—in fact, the Second Adam—who came to save the whole world from its sins and to found a new, better world, the Kingdom of God.

Finally, John, writing last of all during a time of increasing apostasy, pens his gospel directly to the mature Christian, remembering scenes from Jesus' ministry that the other gospel writers left out. His shows Jesus Christ as God in the flesh, a Teacher of deep spiritual truth and the Way to eternal life.

These thumbnail sketches are hardly sufficient to explain God's revelation of His Son in Scripture, but they provide a starting point for understanding the approaches of the four gospels. Only in them, and in the rest of the Bible, with the help of God's Spirit, do we see the true Jesus Christ: Savior-King, Suffering Servant, Ideal Man, and Almighty God.

No Good News Here

A recent sensation in the world of New Testament studies is the "presentation to the world" of the supposed "Gospel of Judas." National Geographic, an organization renowned for its progressive views on social, environmental, historical, and even religious subjects, gave the 1,700-year-old papyrus document a lavish premier with an hour-long and heavily advertised special and its own interactive mini-website. Considering all the hoopla, one would have to be forgiven if he thought an original autograph had been found, written in the disciple's own blood. However, this "Gospel" is nothing of the sort.

The docudrama special, shown in prime time on the National Geographic Channel, unfolded the mystery of the ancient codex's journey from Egypt through a maze of antiquities dealers to its modern discovery in the New York bank vault. In poor condition due to neglect, the document was rigorously tested to determine its authenticity as a second- or third-century manuscript. Carbon dating placed it well within those parameters, proving it was not a forgery. Then, of course, a team of top Greek scholars painstakingly translated it, although, because the papyrus is in such bad shape in places, only a partial translation is possible. (If interested, one can read it here.)

Several of the scholars National Geographic chose to comment on the "discovery" of this document are well known within theological circles to be religiously open-minded. Perhaps foremost among them is Elaine H. Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She has written numerous books, most of which focus on Gnosticism in relation to early Christianity. This quotation provides the flavor of her views on the "Gospel of Judas":

Whether or not one agrees with it, it's an enormously interesting perspective. Like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and other ancient texts that remained virtually unknown for nearly 2,000 years, the gospel of Judas offers startling new perspectives on familiar gospel stories: These discoveries are changing the way we understand the beginnings of Christianity.

Another major contributor to the special's academic lineup is Bart D. Ehrman, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His specialty is ancient Christian history, emphasizing the clash between orthodoxy and heresy. Here is a long quotation from him on this new manuscript.

The reappearance of the Gospel of Judas will rank among the greatest finds from Christian antiquity and is without doubt the most important archaeological discovery of the past 60 years. What will make this gospel famous—or infamous, perhaps—is that it portrays Judas quite differently from anything we previously knew. Here he is not the evil, corrupt, devil-inspired follower of Jesus who betrayed his master; he is instead Jesus' closest intimate and friend, the one who understood Jesus better than anyone else, who turned Jesus over to the authorities because Jesus wanted him to do so. This gospel has a completely different understanding of God, the world, Christ, salvation, human existence—not to mention of Judas himself—than came to be embodied in the Christian creeds and canon. It will open up new vistas for understanding Jesus and the religious movement he founded.

Note that he calls this a "reappearance of the Gospel of Judas," which is exactly right. As the television special itself mentioned:

Around A.D. 180, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in what was then Roman Gaul, wrote a massive treatise called Against Heresies. The book was a fierce denunciation of all those whose views about Jesus and his message differed from those of the mainstream church. Among those he attacked was a group who revered Judas, "the traitor," and had produced a "fictitious history," which "they style the Gospel of Judas."

Irenaeus is thought to have been a student of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of the apostle John in Ephesus. Among the more conservative of those considered to be "Church Fathers," Irenaeus argued that only the Four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were authoritative, and the so-called Gospel of Judas, which he had evidently read, was not only clearly heresy but also absolutely apocryphal. Judas had killed himself before committing anything about himself to papyrus.

A skim through the translated text makes it plain that the teaching of this purported Gospel is far from Christian. It contains elements from Christianity—Christ, the disciples, the Last Supper, the betrayal—but its main themes are entirely Gnostic and pagan. It includes references to a number of Gnosticism's pantheon of emanations, gods, and demiurges, as well as allusions to the "god" within. In fact, the bulk of the text teaches the "mysteries" of gnosis.

The "Gospel of Judas" is no Gospel; it is not even Christian. As for being "good news," it fails on that score too. It turns the revelation of God in Christ through His disciples' writings on its head, making good evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20). It entirely ignores the true message of the gospel of the Kingdom of God, touting instead the corrupt mystery religion of spiritual self-actualization through mystic knowledge. It is frankly profane.

The early church soundly rejected it as heresy in the late second century, and the true church today heartily concurs. It should have been left to disintegrate completely to dust in that New York bank vault.