Appearances Only

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 2:23, ESV

Look at nearly any moral challenge and surrounding it you can find a plethora of rules we humans have made up to prevent that moral challenge from defeating us or our culture. While it seems that the Bible does suggest that the role of government has something to do with preventing culture from completely descending into chaotic immorality – I’m yet to find anything in Scripture that would suggest that the government is our solution.

The words at the top of this page are from Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians. After a fairly lengthy warning to them (beginning in 2:8) about not being taken captive by “philosophy and empty deceit,” he finally brings the argument to its intended challenge: your man made approaches to being what God made humans to be won’t work. "Shadow" is not "substance."

He even notes some of their “rules”: “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.” Take those words literally and out of context and no one can follow Jesus. Everyone reading this little devotion has handled, tasted, and touched something today – if you aren’t doing so the very moment. Three strikes and you’re out.

But you may protest and declare, “No one thinks that’s what he meant.” May be not, but the moment I begin to regulate the Christian faith with rules, I’m doing precisely what Paul makes abundantly clear is ludicrous. It’s fine for government to make up the necessary rules. No doubt, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was necessary. But do you really think it stopped racism? The racial tension in our culture is a serious issue right now.

That doesn’t mean the government failed in passing those “rules” about racism. But it does mean that the answer to that problem – or any other moral problem we encounter – is Jesus, not a rule. It means when we let “the rules” do what the gospel is for, we fail. When Paul wrote to Philemon about the problem of the run-away slave Onesimus, who by the way was from Colossae, he says, “I prefer to appeal to you . . . so that your goodness might not be by compulsion but of your own accord.”

The intent of the gospel, you see, is not to regulate human behavior but to transform human hearts. Rule makers can regulate behavior to the extent they can enforce them. The Gospel can transform hearts in ways that change all of life.

Recently I was in a session focused on helping employees provide more Christ-like service to those around us. We were shown a series of pictures of empty spaces – classrooms, dining halls, coffee shop, ball fields, etc. Then we were asked – as the pictures kept rotating on the screen – how could serving with a Christ-like spirit impact or change each of us – since in a few days those empty spaces will be filled with students.

That is such a great question – and one that every follower of Jesus ought to ask on a regular basis. I wrote down two things: [a] "do this out of transformation, not to meet a performance review;" and [b] "being built up flows out of building others us.”

I think that is actually the very question we should ask ourselves about our own lives, our own communities, our own country, and our own church’s engagement with the world as we know it. Electing a candidate who will enact all the right laws is not our greatest need. Our greatest needs is Christ-like behavior on the part of believers who in turn discover ways to transform culture, not seek to regulate it.

Notice what Paul said – these “rules” may “have the appearance” of power to change the world, but ultimately are “of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”

If early Christians, with such limited resources, could “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) in their generation – just think what we could do if we decided to really take the power of the gospel seriously!