2022_12_07 Insight Post- David Schleyer

I have loved reading through Paul’s writings all year. I find that he often writes in a way that points out both the potential positive and negative ways of responding to his messages about Jesus. He has a wonderful way of writing.

For example, in Colossians chapter 2, Paul writes that as believers saved by grace through faith, we must walk daily by grace through faith.

First, Paul puts it in positive terms:

My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well-constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7 (Message)

Paul is telling us to keep going the way we started, basing our worldview on grace and faith. We need to allow this reality to inform how we live.

Paul then gives the negative, the alternative he’s urging us not to follow:

Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him. When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything. Colossians 2:8-10 (Message)

Even though it’s tough, we can’t let alternative worldviews and their lifestyles lead us astray because those worldviews come from human beings, not God.

Alternative worldviews can’t augment our Christian faith or, worse, be thought of as a way to live the life God wants us to live.

So why should we reject the alternatives? Because we already have something far better in Christ: the fullness of “God-ness” in Jesus. Jesus revealed the fullness of God to us and brought us into that fullness, uniting us in God’s love.

If I am not careful, it is easy for me to be influenced or even adopt the ways and traditions of the world and try to adapt my faith to those things. That is a danger we must avoid at all costs. But I think Paul’s point is: so why would we even want to play around with alternatives when we’ve already got the best? We owe everything to Jesus and only to Him.

David Schleyer
Executive Director of Operations