Colossians 2

What if Paul wrote Colossians 2 to me? In Colossians, he is arguing against false teachers--he is confronting a worldview contrary to the gospel. So, too, do we often fall prey to various worldviews presented by the devil, the flesh, and the world. We are tempted to put our dependence in something else. Below is Paul's encouragement to me to trust Christ for acceptance and protection. However, the different colored font could be substituted for your struggles... The gospel confronts the darkness with light, the lies with truth. We need to bring that light into our own life. 

I want you to know how much I am struggling for you in Waco. My purpose is that you may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that you may have the full riches of complete approval and protection by God, in order that you may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of unconditional love and care. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by find-sounding arguments of false ways to gain acceptance by proving yourself; attempts to be good enough to gain love; lies of shame; and painful attempts to gain protection through control. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how earnestly you are seeking Christ and how you are beginning to open yourself up to deeper levels of dependence and repentance.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive lies of fear and shame; images of what it means to be accepted or successful; or methods to maintain control of your life. For these depend on human traditions, values, and measures of what is good and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness, acceptance, and Fatherly protection through adoption in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority, whose opinion is the eternal and final in love and grace, and sovereign over every moment. In him you were redeemed from your sins; imputed justification and thus given complete, loving acceptance; and adopted into the family of God and covered by his wings and love, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

When you were dead in your sins, in your idolatrous ways to gain approval and protection, God made you alive in Christ. He forgave us all our sins……He forgave you your attempts to find righteousness and salvation and acceptance by your own efforts. He forgave you for how you made idols out of good works, trying to earn approval of parents and teachers and the various ways you exchanged God and his glory for your own glory. He has forgiven you how you have failed to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind and have fallen short of his glory in thought, emotions, conduct, and love. He took all this away, nailing to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, the ruling images of this world, the value judgments, the accepted ways to gain approval and find success, the promises of protection that the powers of money and success provide, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. He showed how the one way to gain approval with the One whose opinion is the only true one is not through success or earning it, but through the death of Christ. He showed that protection is not the most important thing in this life but there is an eternal security in his death that brings us to the Father’s arms for his Father’s glory and has brought us to an eternal hope.

Therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you do, how “successful” you are, what credentials you have, what possessions you have. Do not let anyone be the judge of if you are accepted or not. Do not let money or your attempts at control or the things of this world trick you into feeling protected. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who lifts up “being good enough” in education, good works, in your various roles; who offers assurance of protection in money, control, keeping a tight discipline on yourself or your schedule disqualify you for the prize. Such a person may boast in his accomplishments, his power, his sense of being in, his secure arrangements, his success, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost his connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules and values: “Find approval by being smart enough! Successful enough! Important enough!” “Find protection by ensuring a good nest egg, self-discipline, a well-arranged life, a tight schedule, control!” These are all destined to perish, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom and seem to work, with their visible outcomes, euphoric (yet momentary) successes, emotional gains, but they lack any value to gain the true approval and acceptance and protection.