Chapter 2                       

Colossians: Chapters -1- -2- -3- -4-
  2:1 I want you to be aware how great is the agony I have for you, for your sake, as well as those in Laodicea, and as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, 2 that your hearts might be encouraged, having been knit together already inside of love, • and into all the wealth of the full carrying of shared understanding into the acknowledgement, the personal and stated knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ, 3 inside of whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

4 I say this so that no one might misguide you with persuasive argument. 5 For if I am absent in the flesh, yet I am together with you in spirit, rejoicing and seeing your good order and the firmness of your faith into Christ Jesus. • 6 Therefore, just as you have aggressively received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk inside of Him, 7 having been rooted and constructed together inside of Him, standing firmly in the faith just as you were taught, abounding inside of it in speaking good grace and giving thanks.

8 Watch carefully, lest anyone of you should be taken captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the fundamentals of the world and not according to Christ. • 9 For inside of Him dwells all the fullness of a Personal God bodily, 10 and inside of Him, you are made full, fulfilled, and complete, who is the head over all influence and authority.

• 11 In whom also you were circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, in the setting aside of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ, 12 having already been fully buried with Him inside of immersion, in which you were raised together with Him through the faith of the energeia of God, the One who raised Him out from the dead. 13 And you, though you were once dead inside of the false steps and the lack of circumcision in your flesh, yet He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all the false steps, • 14 having erased and obliterated the legally written and binding decrees against us, [e] which were set against us as our adversary, and He has removed it out of our midst, having already fully nailed it to the cross. • 15 Having renounced and stripped away the influencers, the sources, and the authorities, He exposed them, having triumphed over them in the speaking of confidence [f].  

16 For this reason, do not allow anyone to judge you in food or in drink or in one’s portion of a feast or the first of the month, or [the keeping of] Sabbaths, 17 which are an outline of the things about to happen; the body or substance, however, is of Christ. 18 Do not allow anyone to call an offense against you, one who desires in [false and outward] humility of mind and the worship of angels, which he has intruded into to spy out, being arrogant without purpose or reason by the mind of his flesh, 19 and does not seize hold of the Head, that is, • the One who connects. Out from that Head, the entire body, through the joints that bind together, being lavishly supplied and knit together, increases with the increase of God.

• 20 Since you have died together with Christ away from the fundamentals of the world, why do you subject yourself to rules as if living in the world? 21 "You shall not handle! You shall not taste! You shall not touch!" 22 These things decay with the use, according to the religious injunctions and teachings of men, 23 which indeed contain a word of wisdom in religious self-desires and [false] humility and harsh treatment of the body. But these things are not of any value towards the filling up or satisfaction of [God's purpose for] the flesh [see 1:24].
 		  
 
Gospel Comments Notes
• Definition: Faith shows itself through acknowledgment first before it can show itself through love. To acknowledge is to accept that God has already accomplished all through Jesus and then to declare it True personally and together.

• Covenant: Christ Jesus sent into us is our Covenant Bond with God our Father, yet as that Covenant, He Himself is filled with infinite Treasures of wisdom and knowledge. This Jesus says, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart” (Matthew 11:29).

• The Form for God through Jesus: It is as we know Jesus together, sharing the understanding of the mystery of Christ, not just in each personally, but also in our togetherness, that our hearts are knit together and Father finds His home.

• Definition: Faith is a living relationship with a Jesus who dwells in Person inside our hearts. We cannot walk inside of Jesus unless we first KNOW that we live only there in all.

• Ruling Verse 7: We received Jesus into ourselves as we believed that He already is, that God speaks the Truth, regardless of any outward objections. We walk as Jesus walked in the same way, convinced that God always leads us by His Spirit, regardless, that we are part of Christ to the measure that we are convinced we are part of Christ.

• Definition: All human folly, the fundamentals of the world, comes from living with one’s back against Jesus sustaining all.

• Ruling Verse 10: We know that Jesus dwells inside of God in all, and that we are inside of Jesus in all. We know that all the fulness of God dwells inside of Jesus and that Jesus dwells inside of us, that we are His body.

• Covenant: As we are inside of Jesus with the Father, we learn that Jesus joined us together with God inside Himself, in the agony of His own Soul. Inside of Jesus, we are already complete, already joined in Life shared with the Father.

• Ruling Verse 1: It was the faith of the Energeia of God Himself, God’s Pro-Determination, that raised Jesus out from death. As we come up from the waters of immersion, we KNOW that same Pro-Determination energeoing us into Life.

• The Covenant: Jesus is the Bond of the Covenant, but the Covenant is God towards us. The fierce Love of Jesus towards us is only an expression of the far fiercer Love of God – God’s Pro-Determination – already causing our union with God, having already caused the removal of all that opposes.

• Definition: The Cross is our protection from all that opposes, NOT our failure to “obey.” The law seeks to kill us, NOT the Cross, which has already “nailed” the death of the law. It is an evil spirit that turns our Protector into our adversary!

• Ruling Verse 5 & 7: In the intimacy of entering into union with us, Jesus gives us His Faith, that all that opposes is gone. The joining of that Faith and the Cross then becomes the Triumphus, the shouting celebration of all Victory, that all lying influencers are stripped and silenced.

• Ruling Verse 4: Demons twist the meaning of “the Cross and the flesh” into the hearing of many, teaching them to “list their sins,” to weep over failure rather than celebrate Victory already complete. With the Faith of Jesus, we cast those accusers down. We leave them no place among our brethren.

• Definition: The world lives by the knowledge of right and wrong, by external rules and by the fear of punishment. In response to this way of thinking, some abuse their bodies in a failed effort to somehow “please God.” Human flesh, our dying bodies, are for God’s purposes, however, as a living offering given to God for the sake of others (see Colossians 1:24-25 & Romans 8:26-27 & 12:2).		 e. The cuse of the the law - the soul that sins shall die. The old covenant can result only in death for all. The fulfilment of the law is execution.

f. This is the word triumphus, the Roman celebration of a victory already won in the display of defeated foes, now in chains.