A WARNING AGAINST DECEPTION
Col. 2:8
Morning Meditation 6/16/2013
Verse 8-9 says, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."
The word "beware" translates "blepo" and means, "to see, to discern, it is used of the bodily eye." It can also mean "to perceive by the senses, to feel." It is a present active imperative verb. The present tense means that what Paul is warning them about is a present threat. The imperative mood is a command expressing urgency. The active voice means they must decide. So "beware" is a caution light or an alarm of impending danger.
The words "any man" translate "tis" and "it is an enclitic indefinite pronoun, i.e., a certain one." Paul calls no names here. He just applies this warning to anyone who is teaching things that will pervert the true teachings of Christ. The word "spoil" is used to cover several words in the Textus Receptus from which our KJV is translated. The word "esomai" is "the future first person singular of the 'to be verb.'" It could be translated, "there shall be." The word "spoil" translates "sulagogeo" and means, "to carry one off as a captive (and slave); to lead away from the truth and to subject one to one's false doctrine."
The word "philosophy" translates "philosophia" and means, "love of wisdom; used either of zeal for or skill in any art or science, any branch of knowledge. Used once in the NT of the theology, or rather theosophy, of certain Jewish Christian ascetics, which busied itself with refined and speculative enquiries into the nature and classes of angels, into the ritual of the Mosaic law and the regulations of Jewish tradition respecting practical life." (Quote from Strong's in Online Bible). A. T. Robertson says that Paul used this word "because the Gnostics were fond of it." Paul does not use a name but he does use the same vocabulary that the Gnostic used so that no one would misunderstand which false teaching and teachers he was dealing with.
The word "vain" means, "that which is devoid of the truth." The word "deceit" comes from a word that means "to cheat, to beguile, to deceive." Paul is saying that the ideas being presented by these teachers are completely devoid of the truth and cheat and deceive the followers.
The word "tradition" translates "paradosis" and means "what is transmitted." It is used, "of the body of precepts, esp. ritual, which in the opinion of the later Jews were orally delivered by Moses and orally transmitted in unbroken succession to subsequent generations, which precepts, both illustrating and expanding the written law, as they did were to be obeyed with equal reverence." Jesus rejected the validity of additions to the divine law. One of the things Paul followed when he was an unsaved Jewish scholar was "the tradition of the fathers" (Gal. 1:14).
The traditions were the interpretation of the law by the scholars. Jesus exposed those who nullified the teaching of the Scripture by tradition. Matthew 15:2-3 says, "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?"
Jesus said again in Mark 7:8, 13, "For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. . . Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye."
The word "rudiments" translates "stoicheion" and means, "any first thing, from which the others belonging to some series or composite whole take their rise, an element, first principal; the elements from which all things have come, the material causes of the universe." The Pulpit Commentary says of the rudiments of the world that they "are the crude beginnings of truth, the childishly faulty and imperfect religious conceptions and usages to which the world had attained apart from the revelation of Christ."
The early church Fathers believed, from Origen onward, that "rudiments" was speaking of the powers of nature or the heavenly bodies which were worshiped by the Gentiles as gods and which the Jews identified with the angels as God's agents in the direction of the world. This subject creates an interest today as is seen in the reading of horoscopes and astrology. All of this is of the world, has Satan as the one behind it, and is not of Christ.
The words, "And not after Christ" mean that there is no way to associate this false teaching with Christ. It is forbidden in Scripture for a Christian to participate in anything like this. The heavenly bodies were put there to glorify God, not to be worshipped (Psa. 19).
May the Lord bless these words to our hearts.
In Christ,
Bro. Earl White
