l warns people about getting mesmerized by claims of access to God through some other supernatural agent. Specifically, is talk about the stoikaia, is what I'm zeroing in on here, verses eight through 10. Paul says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition. According to the elemental spirits of the world, the stoikaia, and not according to Christ. Well, why is Christ better? Why should we pay attention to Jesus and be fixated on him and not these other elemental spirits? Well, Paul answers that in verse nine, for in him, in Christ, not in them, the stoikaia, for in Christ, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And your completeness was provided or enabled in Christ, who is the head of every ruler and authority. Again, a reference to Paul's vocabulary of spiritual powers there. So, that's a big theme. Don't get distracted or mesmerized by other supernatural agents and what is claimed about them because Christ is preeminent. Third, your completeness in Christ isn't obtained or supplemented by baptism or anything else. You're either complete, as Paul says in verse 10, or you're not. The statements of verses nine and 10 precede the baptism talk in verses 11 and 12. That matters. Our conversion, again, the circumcision made without hands, Paul talks about in Colossians 2.11, the circumcision of the heart. In other words, our change of heart was accomplished in him, in Christ, when we were buried in him by spirit baptism. Again, that's my take on it. I think that's the most coherent reading of this, that we're not talking about water baptism here. We're talking about spirit baptism. People can go back and listen to the previous episode for that. But the circumcision of the heart was accomplished in him when we were buried in him. We were put into Christ's body by spirit baptism. You can cross reference 1 Corinthians 12.13 for the same language, for the same author. It is because we are in him, we are in Christ, and because we were put into his body, that when he rose from the dead to, quote, Paul in Colossians 2.11 and 12, we were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. Our resurrection is because we are in him. So all of that being the case, now we move on to verse 13, again, which we did mention last time in our discussion of the putting off of the body. Verse 13 is a reference. It's going to use crucifixion language. And again, I think that the putting off of the body is best understood, not as a repentance of ours, but as a reference to Christ surrendering his own body on the cross. I think it's a reference to the cross event. And again, people can listen to the previous episode for why. So verse 13 here, Paul says, and you, again, he's addressing the Colossians at the beginning of the verse, you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. It's an obvious reference to people who are uncircumcised, to Gentiles.  You, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us. It's an interesting change of pronoun there, having forgiven us all our trespasses. So he's talking about non-physical circumcision or uncircumcision. Again, he's talking about their status as Gentiles, which was in part a physical thing, but it's also a spiritual thing because they don't have access to the truth of God. They are enslaved by the gods of the nations, the whole Deuteronomy 32 worldview. If that's an unfamiliar concept, again, I'm sorry, but I can't keep repeating unseen realm content in all these episodes. You have to read the book or at least maybe read the shorter version in supernatural or something. And we'll get into Deuteronomy 32 a little bit later in this episode so you can pick up some thoughts there.  Click here. There's videos that explain this as well. But he's speaking to Gentiles. Again, they were outsiders. They had been put under lesser sons of God by God at the Tower of Babel event as a punishment. That's a spiritual status. It's not just a physical thing. And it's not even primarily a physical thing because circumcision wasn't an issue when God did that act at Babel. It's only going to come later when we get into Abraham and his descendants. It becomes the sign of God's covenant with them. But that all post-dates the punishment at Babel, probably not by a great deal of time, but it still post-dates it. So since Paul is talking about really a spiritual condition, it's consistent to view verses 11 and 12. Again, in my head, the same way that what he's talking about there is a circumcision made without hands. He's talking about a spiritual baptism. And he's not talking about literal rituals there. But again, for that, you can listen to the previous episode. Paul says they were made alive. Again, it's an heiress together with him. It's a reference to the death, burial, and resurrection. We were made to participate in that when we were put into the body of Christ. Again, spirit baptism is a key thought here. I want to focus a little bit on Paul's change of pronouns here because it is kind of interesting in commentators. Of course, serious commentators have taken note of this. And I think I have some good thoughts on it. But Paul says, you Colossians, this was your condition. And he says that he talks about that God made you alive together with him. And then he switches and says, well, having forgiven us all our trespasses. So he includes himself and he's a Jew in this. So what's going on here? Well, Marcus Bart in his anchor Yale commentary writes this. He says, the change of personal pronoun from you to us is noteworthy. And again, he had begun his comments about Gentiles now he switches. So back to Bart. Paul the Jew seems to include himself expressly in the proclamation concerning the forgiveness of sins. He thus says expressly that there is no forgiveness of sins for Gentiles without forgiveness for Jews. The former is a shareholder with the latter. The share which non Jews have in the inheritance of Jews finds expression in the change of the personal pronoun. Done, I think, I'll just read you. Done says in his commentary, his NIGTC commentary. He writes the significance of this, this pronoun change should not be lost sight of, especially in view of the indications, some of them already noted back in verse 11, that the most likely threat from an alternative philosophy in Colossae was perceived to be basically Jewish character. The significance is that Paul does not attempt to avoid such a Jewish characterization and perspective. He makes no attempt, as it were, to outflank the alternative philosophy by ignoring or striking clear of the Jewish character of Christianity's message. On the contrary, he reaffirms the Christian Jewish starting point that Israel was in an advantaged position over the nations by virtue of God's choice of Israel to be his special people. The difference is that the disadvantaged state of uncircumcision has been remedied by a circumcision not performed by human hands rather than by a circumcision in the flesh. Now that's the end of the done quote. That I like actually better than Bart's because Paul includes the Jew in this, and in so doing, he has already reminded or told his opponents, who are, again, basically, there's some sort of Jewish mysticism going on here. Well, the cure for this and the cure for both Gentile and Jew was a circumcision made without hands. That's the segue into the talk about the cross. Again, I think it's just noteworthy. We don't want to miss the fact that Paul doesn't have two paths of salvation. He has one path of salvation. He has one salvation trajectory. He includes Jews in what he says about the salvation of those enslaved under the gods of the nations. Okay, let me be more blunt here. The faith, Christianity, that the New Testament writers are communicating, their aim is not to make it as Jewish as possible as though to suggest or imply that there's some sort of Jewish path and Gentile path. What Paul says right here just by this simple switch and pronouns is that no, no, the way of salvation is exactly the same for Jew and Gentile. Any notion that we have to do Jewish things to either assist in our own salvation or achieve our salvation or that salvation just broadly, generally, is connected to Jewishness is false. It's specifically denied here by Paul. Again, just in that little switch of pronouns, you can see that Paul is not allowing for this two-path kind of situation, two-path talk. Now, Paul expands on what he's talking about here as far as the cross. As we keep going in verse 14, he says, all this in verse 13 happened to you. We were made alive together with him, having God has forgiven us all our trespasses. Verse 14, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. A done in his commentary, I liked what he said here. He says, the metaphor, this metaphor, is drawn from the legal world. The record of debt, which is the Greek term, kereographon, occurs only here in the New Testament. It meant literally a document written by the person responsible, a holograph or a receipt, as in its only occurrence in the Septuagint suggests. That's Tobit 5.3 and also in Tobit 9.5. This term is used. That's some sort of receipt. But here, it has the further sense of a certificate of indebtedness or bond. It's essentially a bill. There's a bill to be paid here. He cites the Testament of Job 11.11, which is a Second Temple pseudopigraphical text. The metaphor done continues, is probably adapted to the earlier Jewish idea of a heavenly book of the living. He cites Exodus 32, 32 and 33, Psalm 69, 28, Daniel 12, 1, Revelation 3, 5, as developed in apocalyptic circles into that of books where, indeed, of good and evil were recorded with a view to final judgment. That's the end of the done quote. We did a whole episode on this way, way back about the book of life. If you've just Googled drmsh.com or nakedbiblepodcast.com, book of life, you're going to find that episode. Done saying that that idea of God's recordkeeping, which was both good and bad, you have to listen to the episode. I can't rehearse the whole thing here, but it's not about storing up brownie points. It's just the idea that God notices everything. Nothing goes forgotten here. God has a record of everything, and that becomes the basis for condemnation. Have that record of debt to borrow Paul's language here canceled out by the cross, then you will be saved. The only people who are judged by God's records are those who are not in Christ. You can listen to that earlier episode. I like the way done tied this statement in here with the whole record books, heavenly record books idea. I think he has a good point there. It's essentially a bill. God has canceled this bill that stood against us with its legal demands. Then the rest of verse 14, this he set aside, this bill he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Again, just a side note here. I don't want to interrupt the flow of thought too much, but I'm going to throw this out because this has been the news in the last year or two. Just a side note, there's been a lot of talk recently about how the crucifixion of Jesus didn't include nails. Nails aren't specifically mentioned in the crucifixion scenes, but holes in the hands from nails are mentioned in the Gospels, John 20-25. I'm not sure why this is a big deal. It's probably clickbait, what I call archaeoporn on the media, the mass media, doing biblical archaeological stuff to get you to click on something so they can show you something else. We're trying to say, oh, you didn't realize that this idea isn't in the Bible or just to get people again to question what they've been taught. Again, I have a very low view of the archaeology, the pop archaeological media, as anyone who's read my blog knows. So I'm not sure why this is a big deal just generally, but if nails weren't used, here's the point. This wording in Colossians 2-14 wouldn't make any sense. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. I'm sorry, folks, but even though nails aren't listed in the description of the crucifixion scenes, there were nails. Paul surely would have been pardoned the pun, nailed for saying something that everyone hearing it would have thought, well, that never happened. Again, it's just a sidebar. The wording here would make no sense. And of course, you do have the reference in John 20-25 about the holes in the hands and so on and so forth. They don't get there by accident. So on to verse 15, he disarmed, again, continuing the thought. When God did this, this whole cross event, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Now, this is where I want to focus today. So I'm going to skip it for now and come back to it onto the rest of the chapter, but we're going to park on verse 15 in a moment. In verses 16-23, there are just some thoughts I want to highlight here. He writes, therefore, again, in light of all of this, all this stuff in Colossians 2, up to the first 15 verses here. And we did our little summary review to begin the episode. Now, these new thoughts about canceling the bill and whatnot. Paul says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. That's verse 16. Now, the context is clearly Jewish here. Sabbath can't be anything but Jewish. The other items could have a Gentile orientation and a little bit later in this section, Paul's wording. And again, commentators have pointed out that food questions and festivals, Gentiles did that kind of stuff too. But the reference here to the new moon and the Sabbath, again, it's clearly Jewish flavoring, at least at this point in this verse. Now, Mu, in his commentary, has some good thoughts on this section. I want to share them with you. This is Doug Mu, his Colossians commentary in the Pillar series. He writes, Paul enumerates two sets of issues on the basis of which the false teachers are passing judgment, food and drink, and the observance of special religious days. These are also just the matters dividing the strong and the weak in the Roman community in Romans 14. And in both passages, there is considerable debate about the source of such regulations. While Paul does not directly say so here, his reference to rules such as do not handle, do not taste versus 20 and 21, make it clear that the false teachers were advocating abstinence from some kinds of food and drink. Similarly, it is virtually certain that the teachers were advocating, advocating rather than criticizing observance of special days. In other words, they were insisting on these things. Back to Mu. Our text gives no information about just what foods or drink or kinds of drink were being prohibited. In Romans 14 and 15, the weak were avoiding meat, perhaps also the wine. The Old Testament law, of course, prohibits the eating of certain foods deemed unclean, but it does not generally prohibit any kind of drinking. Now he has a footnote here I want to read to you. He says, the law prohibits drinking only on certain specific occasions. The people are not to drink contaminated water, Leviticus 11, 34 and 36. The priests are not to drink wine when entering the tent of meeting, Leviticus 10, 9. And those who take a Nazarite vow are to drink no wine for the period of their vow, Numbers 6, 1 through 3. The Rehobites, Jeremiah 35, 1 and 19, also abstain from wine. So Mu quotes this again just to say, well, we don't have real specifics here and the Jewish law doesn't really forbid drinking wine except on some really narrow instances. But he still believes that this is, again pardon the pun, has Jewish flavoring here. And he continues with this thought. He says, however, both the Old Testament and Judaism reveal that many Jews living in Gentile environments chose to abstain from all meat and wine in order to avoid possible ritual contamination. This is probably the rationale for the prohibitions in Romans 14 and 15 and with explicit allusion to Jewish festivals later in this verse. It's natural to think this is the same here. Now I'll just stop with Mu at this point. I mean this is a legitimate observation because if you were a Jew living in a Gentile world, you couldn't necessarily know what you were eating and how it was prepared and all that sort of stuff. And so many of them would just not do it, even though they could, just to be safe on the safe side. And again, that makes some sense here in terms of what Paul might be picking up on and what the Jewish leadership again might be insisting upon back to Mu. He says, nevertheless, what is missing in Colossians in comparison with Romans is any direct reference to the Mosaic law or to divisions between Jews and Gentiles. So this context about being Jewish and living in a Gentile world, you'd think if that was specifically the point Paul would have quoted something here. So Mu's like, well, maybe not. I mean, we don't have any specific reference to the Mosaic law here. These omissions are especially significant. This is back to Mu in light of the fact that Paul explicitly mentions just these matters and some passages in Ephesians that are closely parallel to ones in Colossians. Remember, Ephesians and Colossians are these twin epistles. Mu continues, we should therefore at least keep open the possibility that the Colossian false teachers abstinence from food and drink had its origins elsewhere. He's saying that that's a possibility. Since many ancient Greco-Roman philosophical and religious traditions also featured prohibitions of meat and wine, although there is then universal agreement that the false teachers insistence on observance of days was influenced by Judaism, dispute remains over the degree and nature of that influence. Some interpreters think that the false teachers were representing what we might call a mainstream Jewish viewpoint, noting the importance of the observance of special days in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Others have thought that a sectarian Jewish viewpoint, such as found at Qumran, might be the background to all that Paul's saying here. Most interpreters, however, persist in thinking that the false teachers had integrated the observance of Jewish special days into a larger syncretistic system. On the whole, Mu concludes in this section, it seems best to view the practices in verse 16 as basically Jewish in origin and perhaps even orientation, while still recognizing they may have been taken up into a larger mix of religious ideas and practices. So that's the end of Mu's section that I wanted to read to you. Now, the Qumran reference there draws interest because of the other elements of Jewish mysticism that we've talked about that had some connection to these sorts of ideas found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically with astral spirits and the Stoikea. We talked a little bit before about how there was a certain asceticism at Qumran and there was obviously Jewish mystical teaching at Qumran. So this idea that maybe a Qumran sect or something like it is in view here, or something that borrowed from non-Jewish ideas and sort of mashed them with Jewish ones that kind of look like what's going on at Qumran, that's again worth having on the table as far as what might Paul specifically be shooting at. The larger point, of course, is going back to our very first episode on Colossians is that you don't need the book to be written after Paul and hence be non-Pauline to have all this stuff in view. It's already in the context of Paul's own lifetime and his own environment. Now, Paul will add to what he just said there about, don't want to disqualify you insisting on asceticism, worship of angels and all that. He's going to add a little bit of that in a moment in verse 18, but he says something that's, again, kind of interesting when you get to my spot here. He says, these things in verse 17 are a shadow. Again, this is the insistence about the food and drink laws or rules and then the new moons and festivals and sabbases. These things are a shadow, verse 17, of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Now, we've talked about this language before. It should also sound familiar if you listen to this series on Hebrews because the writer of Hebrews uses the same shadow language there. These things, food laws, feast days, Sabbath are a shadow, again, of heavenly things, things to come, the things that we're going to experience in glory when we are exalted with Christ. That's when we're going to experience the real, the realia, the full reality of what these earthly, temporary things were pointing us to. Now, Hebrews 8.5 refers to this kind of thing this way. It says, they serve a copy, again, the Jewish system there, the priesthood and whatnot. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was showing you on the mount. Again, this whole idea of this stuff is a shadow. Maybe I could use the phrase, a dim reflection, a good but incomplete or insufficient copy. The book of Hebrews actually uses that word too, the copy of the ultimate reality. Now, but here's the kicker. In verse 17, let me read it to you again. All this stuff that people might pass judgment on you about, the food and drink, the festival, new moon, Sabbath, these are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. The substance belongs to Christ. In other words, the things that these shadow items represent, the fullness of that is Jesus. So Jesus is by definition superior to these things. Again, there are not two paths of salvation. There is one, okay, for Paul, and it's Christ. Christ is superior to the stoikaia. He's superior to this law stuff. Again, let no man deceive you. Again, it's his message. This is also why, in the book of Hebrews, for instance, the writer equates belief in Jesus with the Sabbath rest of God. You can go back and listen to episode 182 for that portion of Hebrews. It's Hebrews 4. Christ is our Sabbath. He is the ultimate rest of God. This is what you get. Observing the Sabbath, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it unless you make it superior to Christ, unless you use, well, Jesus needs some help here, or I need some help completing my salvation. If you make it a salvation issue, if you somehow suggest that the cross event was inadequate in some way and now we need the Sabbath to be right with God, then you're wrong. You're just wrong. If you want to observe it, fine, if it draws you close to God, good. But as soon as you start doing the bait and switch, you're wrong. And Paul was pretty blunt about it. He's as blunt as the writer of Hebrews was. In verse 18, let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism, the worship of angels, going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind. Again, here we go with the mystical visions, the asceticism, the worship of angels. You want to go back and listen to the specifics of that in this series in Colossians go to episode 229. Verse 19, not holding fast to the head. I mean, this is the problem. You're not holding fast to the head, to Jesus, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows up with a growth that is from God. You know, to summarize it, your faith can't grow unless it's fixated on Christ, unless it holds fast to Christ. Don't get sidetracked with the shadow, with the temporary, with the copy, with the dim reflection of the ultimate reality. Get fixed on the ultimate reality. Get fixed on the ultimate point of reference, which is Jesus. Again, I don't think he could really be much clearer on this. Now, let's go to verse 20. If with Christ you died the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you not submit to regulations? Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. It's verse 21, verse 22 now. Again, these are referring to things that all perish as they are used. They're temporary, continuing in verse 22. According to human precepts and teachings, these have, indeed, an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. That's the end of the chapter, end of verse 23. Here, again, as noted above, in our little food laws and feast days comments, Gentile thinking could be included in this here. Above, you get a specific reference to the Sabbath. Paul's language here, and I think one of the indicators that he might be including looping in Gentiles into this is in verse 20, where he references the elemental spirits of the world. Now, you could say, well, Jewish mystics, they would have assigned spirits to the elements of the world. We already covered that again, episode 229, but it's kind of interesting because earlier, and this is where we're going to camp in verse 15, when he referenced the rulers and the authorities, putting them to an open shame. He is referring there to the gods of the Old Testament, the Deuteronomy 32 worldview that are in control of the nations of the world. Maybe we can take this world language and include Gentile things, Gentile ideas in it. That has to be on the table. There's no way to conclusively exclude it, despite the Jewish flavoring here. This is why I like and read to you Moos comments about, we probably have some kind of syncretistic thing going on here. A Jewish sect mixed in with maybe some Hellenistic ideas, Gentile teachings, that sort of thing. Some group in Judaism at some point either took something like from Qumran, the Jewish mystical stuff, and then married it to Hellenistic or Greco-Roman ideas. This is what Paul is fighting against. Or they made up their own view of some sort of mystical encounter, mystical beings, whatever. Really, the point of origin of all this and where all the strands come from isn't really important. We have both a Jewish and a Gentile flavoring here. Those items are both on the table, which again, it makes it even more significant that for Paul, there is only one path of salvation that loops in both Gentile and Jew. He doesn't talk about two tracks. He talks about one. You who were dead in your trespasses and sins, you're on circumcision, all that kind of stuff. You Gentiles and he includes himself in the switch of the pronouns that we noticed earlier in verse 13. Everybody's included. Everybody's included. Jew and Gentile here. The solution is the same. I want to use this as a jumping off point into this whole subject matter that's brought up in verse 15. Let's go back to the victory statement in verse 15, the victory over the rulers and authorities. This is a good place, I think, to summarize the passages where Paul connects the resurrection and ascension, the cross event, let's just be as broad as we can here, to the defeat of the powers of darkness. Now, I've commented on this before in Q&A. I've commented on it before in a couple of other episodes, but I'm hoping, again, this will be sort of the episode that I can reference in the future as far as this subject matter. I have a whole chapter on this, this idea of the demise of the gods, the nullification of the gods in my forthcoming book on demons, what the Bible really says about the powers of darkness. Now, that's not the angel's book. The angel's book is its own thing. The demon's book is a separate book. It's a companion to the angel's book. I have no idea when the demon's book is going to be out, but I'm going to read you an extended portion of it because of this topic. Again, I'm not going to give you all of it. You're going to have to get the book whenever it becomes available. Again, who knows when that's going to be, but at some point in 2019, and you can get the whole treatment. The major passages on this are covered or touched on in that book. The major passages for this idea in Paul are 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 24, Colossians 2 through 15, which is where we are. Ephesians 1, 15 to 22. Ephesians 3, 7 to 10. Ephesians 4, 4 through 8. I actually have an extended discussion of that in the unseen realm, so you could just go as well and read that. 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22. That's also unseen realm turf. Romans 15, 8 to 12. There are a number of passages that I don't discuss specifically in the unseen realm that are relevant to this topic, and so I'm going to read you a lengthy excerpt here from the demon's book. I'm going to skip the Ephesians 4 stuff for sure, since that's an unseen realm, so let's just jump in. This comes right after I talk about Ephesians 4 in that book. So in Ephesians 4, 4 through 8, the New Testament draws on cosmic geographical thinking, draws on Psalm 68 specifically, to portray Christ's victory over the powers of darkness. Mount Hermon, which is the Mount of God in Psalm 68, that it was being reclaimed as Yahweh's possession, is an important focus point. So back to the paragraph. Jesus provoked darkness in Bashan and at Mount Hermon to set the circumstances of his death in motion.  The provocation was essential because his sacrificial death was essential. One cannot have a resurrection and an ascension without a death, and the resurrection and ascension are central to the re-enthronement of Jesus above all powers. In Ephesians 4, 8, Paul read Psalm 68, 18 as describing the conquest of supernatural evil, Bashan, which in turn led to the coming of the Spirit and the subsequent gifts to the body of Christ. The coming of the Spirit was, of course, contingent on the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ to the position of rule, the right hand of the Father. Paul more explicitly connects the finished work of Christ and the defeat of evil spirits, in this case the hostile gods enslaving the nation as the rulers and authorities, in passages like Colossians 2, 8 through 15. In verse 15, the cosmic forces, the rulers, R.K., and authorities, exusea, are disarmed and put to shame. The lemma R.K. is used to divine beings in the New Testament. I'm not going to read you all the verse references in this section. So the lemma R.K. is used to divine beings in the New Testament, including earlier in the same letter, Colossians 1, 16. The same is true of the lemma exusea, Colossians 1, 13, and you can compare that to Ephesians 2, 2. Paul is writing to a Gentile church and clearly has Gentiles in view, when he describes his audience as, quote, dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, verse 13. Jews, of course, share the problem of being estranged from God because of sin. Paul makes this clear with language like our transgressions and against us. He includes himself as a Jew in both the problem and the wonder of forgiveness. But Israel had no supernatural rulers and authorities to be disarmed. The nations did, per the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Two climactic accomplishments are noted here in Colossians by Paul. First, the record of debt that stood against us, Jew and Gentile, was canceled or set aside. Second, the rulers and authorities were disarmed and put to shame. The resurrection, verse 12, was the causative agent to both. For if there was no resurrection, the debt against us would still stand and we would not be made alive together with him. Scholars have been puzzled by the word choice in verse 15, disarmed. The lemma is Apec duomai. It is found only here and in Colossians 3.9 where it's translated typically put off, remove, strip off, the old self. It is obvious that the term would not point to the destruction of the rulers and authorities as Paul elsewhere has the powers of darkness actively engaged against believers in Ephesians 6.12. Now, the key word there is destruction. I'm going to argue that they have been nullified, delegitimized. They're not destroyed yet because that comes at the end. There are still principalities and powers that Paul has to fight and that we are in conflict with. Back to my paragraph here. Scholars find the idea of removal or stripping of something awkward here and it is if one lacks the Deuteronomy 32 framework as a reference point. Paul uses the same verb in Ephesians 4.22 when he reminds the Ephesians that they have put off the old self with its practices and I put on the new self. The putting off and putting on speaks of turning from the old way of life to something new. The cognate noun Apec dusis occurs only once in the New Testament in this very passage, Colossians 2.11. Now, what are we to make of this metaphorical term that essentially talks about removal? Applied to the rulers and authorities in Colossians 2.15. The idea of removal captures the nuance. While not destroyed, the supernatural rulers and authorities have been displaced or removed from the authority they held over the Gentiles. Who was it that removed this authority? The most high himself? On the basis of the death and resurrection of Christ. Loes, who is a commentator in the Hermioneus series, comes close to this idea when he writes that the rare verb means to take off to put aside. The middle voice, however, can also be used in an active sense. Then it means to strip. God through Christ put aside the old order of the rulers and authorities. He stripped them of their authority. So I'll just stop here for a moment. I like that grammatical observation from Loes there. I think it's useful and helps again frame the meaning of the term in relation to what actually happened to the powers of darkness. So back to the book, back to the demons book section. The point of Paul's declaration is that the ruling authority of the gods allotted to the nations, Deuteronomy 32.8 and again Deuteronomy 4, 19, 20, 17, 3, 29, 23, 26, that that ruling authority was declared illegitimate and null by the work of Christ. In the past, prior to Christ, the most high had a lot of the nations to the sons of God. Their authority was legitimate because they had been appointed by the true God. They were supposed to be in their positions. Psalm 82 tells us that these gods, sons of the most high, Psalm 82, 6, rebelled and became corrupt. Instead of ruling their people according to the sort of justice God desired, they enslaved them, ultimately becoming the objects of their worship and seducing Yahweh's own people into idolatry. Now because of the cross, their rule has no legitimacy. Gentiles would have understood the implications of this. As early writers like Plato understood the gods had been allotted to the nations. I'm going to read a little selection from Plato here. In the days of old, the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. Let me just read that sentence again. This is Plato. Again, this is in Deuteronomy 32. This is Plato. In the days of old, the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. There was no quarreling, for you cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper for each of them to have. We're knowing this that they would seek to procure for themselves by contention, that which more properly belonged to others. They, all of them, by just apportionment, obtained what they wanted, and peopled their own districts. And when they had peopled them, they tended us, their nurslings and possessions as shepherds tend their flocks, accepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of a vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure. Thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now, different gods had their allotments in different places, which they set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister and sprang from the same father, having a common nature and being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land, which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue, speaking of Greece. And there they implanted brave children of the soil and put into their minds the order of government. Their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of the destruction of those who receive the tradition and the lapse of age. I'll end it there. That's from the Dialogues of Plato. It's the Jewett or the Jowett translation in 1892, Oxford. Again, the Gentiles know this stuff. It's amazing that about the only people who don't get this worldview are people who are Christians today in the modern world. But again, this is important for understanding the supernatural framework of Scripture. Again, that's why I wrote Unseen Realm. If you haven't read the book, you need to read the book. But they get this, and Paul's declaration in Colossians 2.15 about the rulers and authorities being stripped of their authority, they're stripped of their power is important. And Gentiles would have picked up on what Paul was laying down. They understood the context. So back to my book here. I write, consequently, part of the good news of the gospel to those under the God's dominion was that they were free to turn from those gods and embrace Jesus. In fact, God was demanding their return to his family. The breach caused by the Babel Rebellion had been closed. The gap between them and the true God had been bridged. That the authority of the rulers and authorities was nullified by the most high does not mean that the supernatural forces of darkness allotted to the nations surrender their charges. Paul knew his Old Testament specifically that the final judgment of the gods was eschatologically connected to the day of the Lord. Nevertheless, their demise is in process. Paul's language about the cosmic rulers runs in parallel to what we saw in the Gospels with respect to the demons. Jesus' announcement that the kingdom of God had come was accompanied by exorcisms. The point wasn't that there were no more demons. Exorcism accounts and forms us quite clearly that both the demons and Jesus knew the fate of the powers of darkness was yet future. For example, in Matthew 8, 29, the demons cry out to Jesus, what have you to do with us, O Son of God?  The phrase Before the Time points to a definite future destiny. Hagner, another commentator, captures the idea succinctly. I'm going to quote him. The demons' subsequent question, have you come here to torment us before the time, is interesting from at least two aspects. First, in it the demons recognize that at the eschatological judgment they will experience God's judgment and the end of their power. And second, they recognize that Kairos, that that time has not yet come. Jesus has in effect come too early and threatens their realm too soon for the eschatological judgment of demons, in any quotes a few other passages. This of course fits in with Matthew's perspective of realized eschatology. The kingdom has come but in advance of its fullest and final coming. That's the end of Hagner. Back to my section. In like manner, in declaring to Gentiles that the most high had invalidated the jurisdiction and dominion of their gods, Paul did not intend to claim their eschatological hour had come. Paul linked his mission of evangelism of the Gentiles to the restored spiritual fortunes of Israel. The final mystery of God's salvation plan would be known when, quote, the fullness of the Gentiles, unquote, had become part of the kingdom of God, leading to the salvation of Israel, Romans 11-25-26. Only when the full number of Gentiles were saved with the nations and their gods be finally judged. Again, but this is just a rabbit, this is me breaking in here to myself. But it's in process. Their authority has been nullified and as the kingdom of God grows, their sphere of dominion diminishes and shrinks. The issue with triumphing over the rulers and authorities in Paul's thought, in Paul's day, is that they have no more legitimate authority over the nations. The Gentiles have every right and God earnestly wants them to switch sides. There's no argument and it's important because if you could say, well, they're supposed to worship those other gods, don't you remember Deuteronomy 32, Paul? Again, this two-track salvation or the Gentiles can never be saved because they're under these other gods. All that kind of stuff Paul says, no, no. There's one path and because of the resurrection, their authority has been stripped by the same most high who gave it to them. We're done with that. By delegitimizing their authority, Paul legitimizes the authority of Christ, his own ministry. Now, I have a footnote at this and I want to read this specifically because again, I like, if you've read Unseen Realm, you know it isn't just Mike. There are just hundreds, maybe we're in the thousands of footnotes there. I don't know. But again, I'm not making stuff up. It's not just me. This isn't just my idiosyncratic reading of the Bible.  There are no original thoughts in the book. It's all under peer review. Go check the footnotes and the sources. But I have a footnote here that reinforces that. I wrote, the full task of reclaiming the nations in Paul's mind meant the gospel had to reach all the nations listed in Genesis 10 that had been divorced by God at Babel. This was what lay behind his urgency to reach Spain, Tarshish, the most remote of those nations. Jewett and Kotansky take note of this point and I'm going to quote them. At the end of time, all Israel will be saved, Romans 11, 26. But this cannot occur until the fullness of the Gentiles has been achieved, Romans 11, 25. Reckoning backwards from this apocalyptic climax, Paul infers that current Jewish resistance against the gospel provides time for the Gentile mission. This is the reasoning behind the Spanish mission project that this letter seeks to advance. He's talking about the Romans there. For if the gospel can be brought to the end of the known world, the climactic conversion of Israel can occur and the Parusia can come as promised. That's Jewett and Kotansky. That's the Hermania-Romans commentary, which is a significant scholarly commentary. Again, this is biblical theology. It's just that we have such gaps in the way we think about Scripture that to some listeners, this might sound really new and even kind of odd. It's not. It's your Bible. Back to, again, my demon's book. Other sections in Paul's letters and other New Testament books connect the de-legitimization of the authority of the allotted supernatural powers of the nations to Christ's resurrection and ascension. Note the juxtaposition of the two themes in the following instances. 1 Corinthians 15, 20 through 24. I'm just going to read the passages. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. There's the resurrection, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as an atom all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ, the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ, then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying, at the end destroying every rule, every RK, every ruler, and every authority, exusea, and every power, dunamis. Ephesians 1, 15 through 22. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ Jesus when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Verse 21, far above all rulers, all RK, and all authority, exusea, and powers, dunamis, and dominion, you know, thrones, coreates, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. 1 Peter 3, 18 through 22. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive. There's your resurrection in the spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waged in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water. That baptism, which corresponds to all that, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God. Again, if you've read Unseen Realm, this idea of a loyalty pledge to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven, there's the ascension, and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers, having been subjected to him. Now, not surprisingly, Paul's theology linking a rising Messiah to the release of the Gentiles from their false worship from the gods that enslaved them is anticipated in the Old Testament. Romans 15, 8 through 12, is suggestive in that regard. Here I'm going to read Romans 15, 8 through 12. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, as it is written, therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. And again, it is said, rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people. And again, praise the Lord all you Gentiles and let all the peoples extol him. And again, Isaiah says, and here's the one I want you to focus on. The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles. In him will the Gentiles hope. The key item in the passage is found in verse 12, which has the Messiah, the root of Jesse, arising. The lemma is anesthimi, to rule the Gentiles. Paul's source is Isaiah 11-10 from the Septuagint. In the context of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, assuming the rulership described by Isaiah requires withdrawing the authority of the sons of God allotted to the nations of Babel. Of the two Greek verbs, agero and anesthimi, used to describe the resurrection in the New Testament, anesthimi, and especially its cognate noun, anastasis, has received concentrated attention for its use in describing the resurrection of Jesus. Now I'm going to quote the New International Dictionary of New Testament theology and exegesis here. That entry in part says, the verb anesthimi occurs in the New Testament over 100 times, but almost all was in the Gospels and Acts. The only exceptions are Romans 15-12, 1 Corinthians 10-7, Ephesians 5-14, 1 Thessalonians 4, 14 and 16 in Hebrews 7, 11 and 15. Luke acts accounts for more than 70 instances. In approximately three-fourths of the occurrences, the meaning is general, not connected with the concept of resurrection. All occurrences in John but one, John 11-31, have to do with resurrection. Whereas Matthew never uses it this way, he prefers agero. Such a meaning occurs a handful of times in Luke and it is a bit more frequent in Acts, but in the epistles, it is found only three times. Ephesians 5-14, 1 Thessalonians 4, 14 and 16. In contrast, the noun anesthasis, which occurs 40 times, means resurrection in virtually every case. The only exception is Luke 234. Some have thought that agero, especially in the passage, is used predominantly for what happened at Easter, the awakening of the crucified one to life. While anesthamy and anesthasis refer more especially to the recall to life of people during the earthly ministry of Jesus and the eschatological and universal resurrection. There are, however, too many exceptions to that. Agero is applied to John the Baptist and to the dead generally and Paul applies it to both Christ's resurrection and the future resurrection of the dead in the same context. It would be more accurate to say simply that agero occurs more frequently than anesthamy in the sense of resurrection. That's the end of the quote. In other words, both of these verbs can and do refer to the resurrection and the noun form anesthasis is almost always one exception of 70 referring to the resurrection. So the anesthamy, anesthasis, this language is important. In the Septuagint of Zephaniah 3-8, we also see the combination of resurrection language, this kind of verbiage, these lemmas, with the reclaiming of the nations. It says this, Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, for the day of my rising up, anesthasis, the day of my rising up for a testimony, because my judgment is for the gathering of nations. In order to gather the kings, in order to pour upon them all my fierce anger, because in the fire of my zeal all the earth will be consumed. Zephaniah actually combines both the resurrection for applying this to the Messiah. Specifically, that's going to be the catalyst to gather the nations and then that gets combined with the final resurrection, the final judgment of the nations and their gods. Lastly, again, back to the book, Psalm 82 itself is part of the matrix of ideas that contribute to Paul's theology of the abrogation of the authority of the allotted powers. Recall that after castigating the gods, verses one through five, and sentencing them to die like humans, verses six and seven. The psalmist closed the divine council scene with a plea, quote, Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit the nations. Scholars have drawn attention to the fact that the Septuagint translator used, anesthami, rise up for this plea. It takes little imagination to see how these passages could be read in hindsight by Paul. After his dramatic encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus and his call to be the apostle to the Gentiles, the resurrection of the Messiah would be forever intertwined with the reclaiming of the once rejected nations. That's the end of the section in my demons, but I know that was long. But again, I wanted a place, and this seems like a good one, for the podcast's sake, to get that theme addressed because it just pops up in Paul's letters in a number of cases, and who knows when we're going to get to those other instances. As we wrap up this episode, Colossians 2, 13 through 23, again, our focus has been this theme. A lot of the other stuff we've hit before, Paul's reiterating the supremacy of Christ, the preeminence of Christ, to the shadow, the temporary, the copy, things of food laws and new moons and Sabbath, feast days, whether he's hitting at Jew or Gentile or both. Again, I think it would be certainly both, especially again when you factor in the Sabbath reference there. There are not two ways of salvation. There is one, and the one way is Christ, who is the substance. He's the ultimate reality of these shadow things, and he is superior to every other exalted power in the supernatural realm. And in fact, again, both Jew and Gentile will understand this when Paul says it. The cross event stripped away the authority of the rulers and the authorities over the nations. Now, the Jew should have heard that and thought, okay, Deuteronomy 32. I guess we're wrong. I guess they're not locked in. The same most high has just nullified their authority. The authority he gave them as a punishment to punish them, to estrange them. He has just nullified that authority. And so, yeah, Paul can take the message of our Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth to the Gentile. The path of salvation is exactly the same for them as it is for us. Of course, this is part of the matrix of ideas that Paul's opposition just didn't want to hear. They're trying to deflect attention away. They're trying to rebut it. They're trying to substitute something for it. And Paul's just having none of it. He's having none of it. And he takes them right back, again, to their own scriptures, to deal with the idea, again, that there's one path, Jew and Gentile, one means, one salvation. And everything that holds the Gentiles, either in their own mind or the mind of a Jew, everything that holds them at a distance has been stripped away. Okay, Mike. Well, we're going to take a break from Colossians next week. We've got an interview with David De Silva, and then another interview after that. But then after that, we'll jump back into chapter three with Colossians. And yeah, it's a good breaking point. Sounds good. All right, Michael, with that, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com. We're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 235, Colossians chapter three, verses one through 17. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you? Pretty good. Pretty good. Do you want to tell people about the fantasy football league, Trey? No, I'm not doing pretty good, Mike. It's been a rough year. I'm an offer. I haven't won a game yet. What is it, 0 and 3 today? Pretty rough. Pretty rough, Mike. It's only the beginning of the long season, so I'm not worried because my team's competitive. I've just been playing teams that seem to want to score the most points. That seemed to be better, right? Just playing teams that seem to be better. Unfortunately, that's true. I have an unfair advantage. I have Maury's leadership. Can I borrow him for next year? No, he is an exclusive property. Well, I'm not worried. It's like I said, we're just getting started this year, so plenty of time for me to make some moves and to come back. All I got to do is make the playoffs. Mike, get that six seed, and I'm in, and then anything can happen. Let the chips fall really may. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I've been in the same situation before, so I know that that is possible. But you've got a long road. It's a long road, so what can we say? Let's talk about something a little bit happier, and that's your angels book, Mike. How's that been going? It's out, and the reviews are starting to come in. Yeah, it's like upward to 50 reviews already, like in a week, a little over a week, which is pretty good. I don't know if that compares to unseen realm. I don't have that much of a memory, but a lot of good feedback. I've gotten some an email just from colleagues and whatnot that doesn't appear on Amazon. So far, a pretty enthusiastic response. It's actually helpful, even though I'm not, in the words of one person on Facebook, I'm not telling people how to make angels do stuff for them. If you haven't seen Lexham's commercial for your book and it's fantastic. I love it. Yeah, Mori is multi-talented. Not only is he a fantasy football wizard, but he's also quite good on screen. Yeah, that suit looks good for you. I think you need to wear that suit at the next conference. No, that suit is happily back where it came from, whatever place they rented that thing from. Well, we also can mention, speaking of conferences, Mike, the annual ETS and SPL conferences at the end of November or middle of November are coming up and we plan on doing a live Q&A in Denver, tentatively planned for that Friday, November 16th, but we haven't confirmed it, but that's what we're trying to target. So if you're in the Denver area, start to mentally plan to come out and see us in Denver in November. Yeah, once we lock that down too, I'm sure we'll have other details emerged too. Absolutely. All right, Mike, well, we're back into Colossians. Yes, we are. Colossians 3, 1 through 17. We're basically having a little more than half of the chapter today and we'll finish it up on the next following episode as well. So in this one, first 17 verses, there are really two trajectories that I want to sort of follow for this episode. And I'll just give them to you ahead of time, you know, sort of a preview here, but the two trajectories are the already, but not yet aspect of the Christian status and how discipleship is rooted in that status. And then secondly, the already but not yet status of Christ's kingdom rule. So based upon what Paul has said in the first two chapters, he's laid the foundation for sort of drawing out some implications. He's going to talk about, you know, Christian conduct in light of this. And so these are the two things that sort of pop out in Colossians 3, these two already, but not yet things, these things that are in process, but that are still moving toward an ultimate conclusion. So the Christian status and how discipleship is rooted in that status, and then the whole idea of Christ's kingdom rule presently, and then again, moving toward sort of an ultimate climax. So let's just jump into chapter three. I'll read the first four verses, and then we will get into some thoughts about it. Paul writes, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. So we'll stop there at verse four, and you can already get this flavor of stuff that's already, but then stuff that's not yet. Again, it jumps out in this passage. And that's really the first thing, you know, to really observe. This sort of paradigm, already but not yet, is in Paul's mind in a number of places, and in the mind of other biblical writers too. But it's kind of obvious here. You have died, your life is hidden. These are like present realities.  So the already stuff, again, gets expressed even grammatically. There are certain heiress tenses. And again, for those who need to review, the heiress tense in Greek is sort of a snapshot. It views an action as an event, an action as a completed whole. So it's not an action continuing. It's not an action that needs something to be supplemented. It's not an action in process. Process isn't even in view. It just views the action as a whole, completed sort of thing. And there are perfect tenses. Perfect is sort of building upon the heiress idea anyway, where you have an event that has occurred in the past and it has ongoing ramifications. It's not that the event is in process, it's that there are certain things that extend from it, ramifications that extend from it, that move into the future, move beyond, I should say, that's probably a better way to say it, that sort of have implications beyond this completed event. So the phrase you have been raised with Christ, it's an heiress passive. And it's a completed event, completed action. And passive, that that happened because of an external force. You have died. Okay, there's an heiress. Again, your life has been hidden with Christ. That's a perfect and also, again, a passive. You have died as active. So you have two passes, one active, and you have two heiress and one perfect. So you have this already kind of thing going on. And then there are some already in the perfect tense that that phrasing your life has been hidden with Christ. You have ongoing ramifications, then when we hit verse four, then Paul's going to be looking to the future, the not yet stuff. And again, the not yet aspect is when Christ is manifested. This is talking about a future sort of thing. If you are looking in a reverse inner linear or some other kind of inner linear, that's an heiress passive subjunctive. You say, well, why wait a minute, it's an heiress. Well, it's an heiress because it's Paul's viewing an event again, that it's going to happen when it happens. That's a whole completed event. But the subjunctive mood in Greek is something we really haven't talked about on the podcast before. The subjunctive is the mood of unreality.  Things that have already taken place are already in process. We've either watched them happen or are watching them happen. Subjunctive, is there some kind of contingency? It hasn't happened yet. There's something, some aspect that's either delaying it or it's out there. And that's what we have here. So yeah, when Christ comes back, it's a reference to the full orb of the event. And by the way, since it is a reference to the sort of completeness, you can't really parse this up into stages like a rapture to second coming, it's just a generic reference to the appearance of Jesus just generally broadly. So that's why we have that tense there. But it's subjective that there's a contingency. Other stuff has to happen before this happens. That kind of idea. So, you know, we get this out there in the future kind of thinking. And when that happens, you will also appear with him. There's our future tense, future passive. You will also be manifested. It would be the way to translate that in passive language. You will be manifested. You will be revealed or something like that when he comes back. So we've got already elements. We've got not yet elements in the first four verses. Now to unpack this a little bit more, just in terms of, you know, and try to keep it in simple terms and again, terms that, you know, relate to what he's going to get into as far as how this should affect your behavior. I mean, ultimately, that's where Paul's going. In other words, you have been given new life. Okay, your new life in Christ has already started.  If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. So this language of Paul, you have been raised. You have died. Your life has been hidden.   And this life, this new life means that the old life is over. Okay, you have died. So you've been given new life.  And since you're a new creation, the old life is over with. Your destiny in this new life is not yet completely manifest. You're going to be experiencing the ramifications of that as time goes on. But ultimately, someday out there when Christ appears, then you will be manifest really for who you are in an ultimate sense. What's going on now is real. If you're a new creation, your life should be changing because of your new status. But your experience, again, is still in this world. You still struggle. You still have sin. Again, these things can't be avoided because you're still in this present reality.  Again, some of these other passages we've talked about in Colossians and then in prior in Hebrews, the previous two series, or the previous series in Hebrews and then this one. Another way of looking at it still is, as certain as Jesus' life and impending appearances, so your new life and appearance with him will be, and it is. Again, we have this already idea and not yet. When he is manifest, when the validity of his resurrection is manifest to everyone by virtue of his return, then your faith in him will be vindicated.  He's hinting at glorification here, obviously, in the return of the Lord. Believers returning with him, all this kind of stuff that is familiar to us eschatologically in the not yet part. But it's rooted in something that's already taken hold, a new status. Now, Mu, in his commentary, I kind of like some of the things he says here, I think are worth observing. He writes, this identification reflects the relentless Christological focus of Colossians. Again, Colossians is all about the preeminence of Jesus. The Mu continues, and it reminds us of Paul's autobiographical remark in Galatians 220, I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live. There's your status change, but Christ lives in me. There's your ongoing. The life I now live in the body, ongoing. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. These verses, Mu says, reflect Paul's conviction that the life and destiny of the believer are inextricably bound up with Christ. He continues, our identification with Christ now real, but hidden. Again, because we have this futuristic idea, the not yet idea is still in the passage. Will one day be manifest? As John puts it, quote, dear friends, now we are, now we are children of God. And what we will be has not yet been made known. Let me just break in here. It's interesting that the same lemma that's used in Colossians 3-4. The Colossians 3-4 reference about appearing occurs in that passage. We are now children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known, not yet been manifest. That Greek lemma is the same as the lemma in Colossians 3-4 about being manifest, back to Mu. But we know that when Christ appears, the same verb again, same Greek lemma appearing when Christ is manifest, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. That's 1 John 3-2. Let me just break in again. There you have the already not yet, very plainly. We are children of God, but what we will be has not yet been manifest. It's exactly what Paul's saying here in Colossians 3. Back to Mu for a little bit, because Christ is now in us, we have the hope of glory, Colossians 1-27, and it is that same union expressed in the other direction that we are in Christ that will bring hope to its certain accomplishment. As the text in 1 John suggests, the believer's appearance in glory or in a state of glory will mean a final transformation into the image of Christ, and he references Romans 8-29. By means of resurrection, and he references 1 Corinthians 15-43 there. In Christ, God has restored the definitive and perfect image of God that was marred in the fall, and believers who are joined with Him will share that image. Again, this is about transformation, being conformed to the image of His Son. The whole concept of imaging is familiar to this audience by virtue of our discussion in Unseen Realm and in podcast episodes, being God's representatives. Again, Paul is getting the same set of thoughts just in a different verbiage. What Paul is talking about here is, first of all, the believer's destiny, glorification and everlasting life with Christ, because we are united to Him, we are in Him, we are in the body of Christ, all these phrases Paul uses. Secondly, he's talking about this new life, a thing true of us because of union with Christ means that our old life is over. We're dead. Our old life is over. Paul is going to proceed then to tell the Colossian believers that following Jesus, living in conformity to His will, means thinking that way. It means thinking that way about your old life. I mean, look at what Paul says elsewhere, just a few other passages. 2 Corinthians 5-17 have already alluded to this one. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. Again, your old life is dead. You have to think this way, moment by moment, day by day. This is actually what Scripture means by the renewing of your mind. My old life is over. I'm a new creation. Colossians 2-20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. And then Romans 6-5-6, for if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. Again, this is why Paul will attach. He proceeds to attach a series of commands to what he's just said in Colossians 3-1-4. Now, if you actually look at what follows, and we'll include Colossians the first four verses in this, but here are the imperatives. Again, if you have Bible software, you can run a real quick search for the imperatives. The imperative is the boot of command in Colossians 3. And this is what you get. Here are the imperatives in these first 17 verses. Verse 1, seek the things that are above. Verse 2, set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Verse 5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you.  Verse 8, but now you must put them all away. So put away another command. Put away these old things, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Verse 9, do not lie to one another. Again, that he picks that one out as an old behavior. Verse 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility. In other words, do the opposite.  And set that in your mind. My old life is over. I'm a new creation. Verse 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your heart. So let rule as the command. And here's another command in the same verse. Be thankful. And then verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, so let dwell. So we have seek, set your minds, put to death, what's earthly in you. Put away, again, all these old behavior patterns. Don't lie to one another. Put on the new behavior patterns. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts and let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Those are the commands. And be thankful. Those are the commands in the first 17 verses. And they extend from this status change. And if we can just boil it down, Paul's talking about a status change. Your old life is gone.  And again, that conclusion is based upon the first two chapters of who Jesus is and his exclusive ability to cancel your debt of sin. Nail it to the cross. We've talked about all this. The fact that he is exalted above all other powers, both good guys and the dark powers, again, that would seek to enslave you and what he did on the cross, the cross event. Because of all that stuff that we've covered in the first two chapters, Paul transitions in chapter three to what a lot of people would call practical stuff. Personally, I think the first two chapters are practical. There's nothing more practical in biblical theology. If you're actually thinking theologically, that shouldn't be a conundrum. Again, it tends to be an excuse to not think about that stuff and then just get to the preachy stuff. Again, that's not where Paul's head is. Paul draws his conclusions about conduct on the basis of theology and the basis of what he's just talked about doctrally. And some of that stuff is pretty heady stuff. We've spent a number of weeks in those two chapters. So these commands really, again, extend from your status change. The commands describe decisions that you have to make now, states of mind that believers need to cultivate. And if that's done, states of mind, again, behaviors that will be manifest in our lives and our conduct, these decisions or states of mind reinforce or demonstrate the idea or reality that our old life, the life we live that led to everlasting death and that would cut us off from everlasting life. That's what the old life could produce, temporary gratification, everlasting death. And so we have a new status and our state of mind needs to involve all that. My old life is over. I'm a new creation. So the commands are actually ways to remind ourselves of the real life that awaits us, what our destiny now is and how our old life hastened self-destruction and anger and misery to everyone around us in some way. In the reverse, again, the idea of putting on our decisions that we have to make to cultivate positively. So, I mean, all of this is about, again, like I said a few minutes ago, what Paul's saying here is kind of unpacking the idea of being renewed in your mind, again, decisions to make both negatively. Don't go back to the old life and positively. Put on these new things and states of mind. Again, you're doing this not to earn brownie points with God. You're doing this because you're thankful. There's verse 15, the command to be thankful. You're doing this because you're thankful for what has been done for you. Again, we're not earning brownie points with God. We're not working our way to heaven. We're not hoping our perfection or near perfection does the job. It's not in view at all. Again, first two chapters, it's about the preeminence of Christ in the cross event. That's what does it. That's what changes your status. And as we've said many times, God loves you when you had the awful, terrible status. While we were get sinners, Christ died for us. But what changes our status is what Jesus has done on our behalf and Paul is saying, look, because of all that stuff, verse one, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Again, just set your mind on things that are above. Verse two, so he's talking about decisions and a state of mind. And this is ongoing. It's not a once and done deal. There's an already status that you have. And there's a not yet point of manifestation, point of ultimate reality, point of ultimate transformation that's still out there. But let's talk about his list a little bit, the things to avoid. This is how Paul does this in the chapter. When he gets to verse four, where we just ended, then he starts going into put to death there for what's earthly and use sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is adultery. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these two, you once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander. I'm seeing talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. Then he transitions again to some more positive things. So let's talk about the negative things that he lists there. Now Mu points out this. Again, I like the way he puts this. He says, the list of sins that we find in verses five and eight have parallels in a number of other New Testament texts and are sometimes matched by comparable lists of virtues on the other side, like in verse 12. Scholars have dubbed these respectively vice lists and virtue lists, again, for lack of a better category. And they have argued that they represent a literary form that the New Testament writers have borrowed from their environment. Whether this is the case or not, Mu says, what's more important for the interpretation of Colossians three is the degree to which the vices listed here reflect actual problems in the Colossian community. The list of sins in verse five focus on sexual sins, while the one in verse eight singles out sins relating to interpersonal relationships. The virtue list of verse 12, along with many of the positive exhortations of verses 13 through 17, also focus on community relations. That's the end of the Mu quote. Regarding the sexual sins that are listed in this section, O'Brien in his commentary, his word biblical commentary has a little thought here. He says, five sins are identified with the earthly members, fornication, impurity, lust, evil desire, and covetousness in general. And it's interesting that he says about that list, those five things, there is a movement from the outward manifestations of sin to the inward cravings of the heart, the acts of immorality, overtly and uncleanness due to the inner springs from which they come. Now again, that's O'Brien. Again, that's a good observation. And he's right. The list here moves from the stuff that people see to the stuff they don't see and stuff that's lurking inside. And Paul's saying, you've got to deal with all of it.  It's gone. So you need to be thinking in this mode, thinking in these terms. The reality of your status change needs to run through your head every day and even throughout each day because that, again, is going to lead you to be sort of on the page you need to be on, thinking about what it is that pleases God and what doesn't please God, what it is that destroys you and other people around you and what doesn't. Again, this is a mental and a spiritual and ultimately a behavioral transformation based upon, again, the content of the theology Paul's been getting into. Now I want to take a little bit of a rabbit trail here. Again, just I'm going to track through these terms, the terms for sexual sins here. There's a few things that are worth observing here. The first one in verse five, sexual immorality is how ESV translates. It's the Greek term porneia. Note that porneia is different than adultery. Adultery is a different Greek word altogether. This porneia, just generally speaking, is a term that should not be exclusively restricted to ritualized sex like in pagan religious practices, like engaging with temple prostitutes. That certainly is included in it. Again, if you're married, then it transitions to adultery, but if you're not married, it's still a sin. But it's wider than this ritualistic idea, even though that's a big part of it. In John 8.41, for instance, we see evidence of this where the Pharisees accused Jesus this way. They say, you are doing the works of your father. You're doing the works your father did. Jesus says, this is what you guys are doing. You're the father, the devil, and a lot of stuff. They said to him, well, we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God. They accuse him of being born out of wedlock. It goes back to the Joseph Mary situation, which has nothing to do with temple prostitution. Porneia again extends beyond that. I actually blogged this at one point on my website because this seems to be a kind of trendy thing, even in evangelicalism now, to restrict porneia, to temple prostitution. I guess it seems like, I hope not, but it seems like to legitimize fornication. It's completely wrongheaded. I wrote this on my website. If you read the context of the passage, John 8.41, verse 41 is an accusation levated Jesus by the Pharisees. What do they mean by tarnishing Jesus this way? They are charging. He was born out of wedlock. He's the out of wedlock child of Mary and Joseph, and it isn't hard to see why they'd do that. Matthew 1.18-25 clearly tells us Jesus was not Joseph's child and that Joseph found Mary pregnant before he and Mary had been married. They were only betrothed or engaged. Joseph stayed with Mary for the duration of her pregnancy, even though people knew they were only betrothed. No doubt they were ridiculed and held in contempt. Matthew 1.25 also clearly tells us that Joseph had no sexual relations with Mary until after the birth of Jesus. Again, it says that explicitly, again, which would also be a time, which would also be time enough for the traditional betrothal period to have elapsed. It runs its course and everybody can see she's pregnant.  Again, at least in that context it does. That was the whole point of the Pharisee's jibe. Jesus was illicit. Again, that's their dig at him. Next term in the list is impurity, akatharsia, which refers to any kind of moral corruption. It's applied to sexual sins. Mu has a footnote to legitimize that, to validate that, that akatharsia is paired with pornea in other passages. 2 Corinthians 12-21, Galatians 5-19, Ephesians 5-3, Revelation 17-4. Again, it's very clear that this is also sexual in its orientation. Passion, the next term, pathos in Greek is lust. Again, it is often in a sexual context, not exclusively, but it does show up. Romans 126 is an example. 1 Thessalonians 4-5. Evil desire generally in James 1, 14, and 15. This is the same term, but again, other passages can very clearly have a sexual flavor to it. Covetiousness, which is idolatry. It's kind of an interesting description. Why would covetousness be described this way? Mu says this, the Greek term, pleonakia, literally, if you want to verbalize that, to want more. Covetiousness or greed. Mu says it's the last item in the list, likewise, usually, that has the general sense of an inappropriate desire for more. But this general sense would, of course, include the uncontrolled desire for more and greater sexual experiences. It's tacked onto the end of these other words that have a sexual orientation. Mu continues, Philo claimed that the first commandment prohibits money lovers, and he cites a reference in Philo. And the New Testament frequently highlights the love of material possessions as offering a particularly enticing and entrapping alternative to the love of God. Now, let me stop there. What Mu's going to do here is he's going to transition into talking about why the association with idolatry. What is it about one thing more? Greed, whatever the object of greed is, whether it's sex or money or something else. What's the connection with idolatry? And he's saying, Philo and other writers make this connection too. So this isn't unusual for the New Testament. Back to Mu, he says, Ephesians, as usual, offers the closest parallel to this verse. For of this, you can be sure, no immoral, impure, or greedy person, such a person is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God, it's Ephesians 5-5. The word used in the Ephesians text for idolatry occurs along with immoral person, pornos, and greedy person play on ectase in I Corinthians 5, 10, and 11, and with an immoral person in I Corinthians 6, 9, and Revelation 21, 8, 22, 15. Clearly then, we are dealing with a customary cluster of terms and ideas. Jewish writers habitually trace the various sins of the Gentiles back to the root problem of idolatry.  Putting some other God in the place of the true God of the Bible leads to the panoply of sexual sins and perversions that characterize the Gentile world. Paul reflects this tradition here, sexual sins arise because people have an uncontrolled desire for more and more experiences and pleasures.  That's the Mu Quote. I think that summarizes the contents pretty well. Again, that's all in verse 5. When you get to verse 8, there's another list of sins. Paul says, you know, but now you must put them all away. Here's another list to put away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Again, as commentators have pointed out, and I referenced a couple. First list is sexual in orientation. The second list is really about interpersonal relationships. To quote Mu again here, I like the way he puts this as well. Determining the exact reference of the five items that follow depends first on deciding, just with the concluding prepositional phrase, from your lips, modifies. Okay, but I'll just read it from the ESV. Again, from your mouth, from your lips. ESV has, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your lips, from your mouth. So Mu says, the T-N-I-V, again, prefers lips to mouth and translations disagree. The word there, of course, obviously is used to connote the speaking function of the mouth. If it modifies the verb, if it modifies the verb to put away, then all the sins listed here will have to be some sense since the speech.  Anger, wrath, malice, so on and so forth. Now, Mu's actually going to sort of object to that. He says, but giving this extended meaning to these words does not have good lexical support. Let me break in here. What he's basically saying is, look, depending on how you take the grammar, if from your mouth modifies all of these terms, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk, obscene talk is kind of obvious. Slander's kind of obvious. What about anger, wrath, and malice? Well, if they all modify from your mouth, then we have to define these in terms of speech to know what specific sins Paul is talking about. But Mu's saying, that's probably not that defensible. And you can see why, because anger, rage, and malice can be expressed in other ways. You could punch somebody in the face. That demonstrates anger. You don't have to say a word. So back to Mu, he says, more likely then, from your lips should be attached to the end of the list only as a way of reinforcing the last two, which are kind of obvious, slander and obscene talk to use the ESV translation. On either reading of the syntax Paul's concern, though, is especially that Christians would avoid unnecessarily critical and abusive speech. It means at least that much. But with the first three, Paul's probably not restricting it to just speech. Anger, wrath, and malice, again, Paul would know that they can be expressed in other ways. None of them should be part of a Christian's life. What about this obscene talk item? Because I know people are going to have questions. And I've actually gotten emails about this too. Like, should Christians swear and all this kind of stuff? Again, I guess it's a reasonable question to ask. I mean, I just grew up in a Christian environment where you just didn't do that. I didn't do it. I don't do it because I grew up with so much of it. It just kind of turned me off. But you know, people have this question. So what about the term? Mu writes this, the Greek word behind filthy language literally means shameful words. And it's rare occurring only here in biblical Greek. It seems to have the general use of obscene language and probably in combination with slander refers to the use of coarse language when defaming another person. And again, you could you could go out to a lexicon like B-Dag for that, Lydell Scott, again, you're gonna, you're gonna see this term used in a defamatory sense. So it doesn't quite, you know, overlap with what we would think of as maybe crude language or scatological language. Scatological is, you know, in reference to body parts and body functions. It doesn't clearly have a one-to-one overlap with that kind of stuff. It actually, again, most likely refers to using language that is defamatory in some way, or maybe pejorative would be another word. Now, you can certainly use those kinds of words in defamatory and pejorative ways, you know, and that would be what Paul is targeting. But it seems that that's actually what's more in view with this vocabulary choice and not just being crude. That's not an endorsement of being crude, obviously. But again, for the sake of, you know, what Paul would have had in his head, this would be language, again, the whole list really, I mean, is going to include this thought or be included in this thought. You know, what Paul's really angling for is tearing somebody down, you know, and there are a variety of ways you can do that. You can do that delicately. You can do it crudely. Paul is opposed to both.   I mean, if it's aimed at someone in a defamatory way, well, then that's really what's, what is in view here in Paul's head. Again, it's not an endorsement of the other, but in terms of vocabulary, you know, what he's targeting is the treatment of other people. Now, on the positive side, Paul gets into this when he hit verse 12. Paul writes, But put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ, okay, which is not technically the Bible, by the way, I'm going to break in here, because Jesus didn't write anything. But it really refers to what Jesus taught, the record of Jesus teaching, I guess we could say to him. Let the word of Christ, let Christ's teachings dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. That's through the section through verse 17 that we're going to cover today. So there's a lot in there. A number of these verses could be commented on, but we're going to be selective here for the sake of the episode. Verse 16, let the word of Christ, again, let Jesus' teachings. And that includes his example as well, not just such as verbal teachings. Let what Jesus taught, either by word or example, dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual psalms with thankfulness in your hearts to God. The imperative there is obvious, let dwell. Again, this should be something that you internalize and that you let influence your thinking. We're talking about renewing of the mind, mental transformation here, because that's going to influence your outward conduct. So being renewed in the mind, so that's what let dwell is getting at. And then he adds these participle. So what you should let dwell, that's the imperative. Inside, in your thoughts is what Jesus taught. Again, either word or deed, just his teaching. And then that you have these three sort of participles that extend from the imperative or that are connected to the imperative teaching, admonishing and singing. And these three participles explain how we let Jesus' teaching and example dwell in us richly. We do that through teaching, we do that through admonishing one another, and we can also do that with music. Again, that just helps us internalize things. And obviously, this is a verse that people are familiar with in all the debates over church music, and should we do this, should we not do that? And both the endorsement and the critique of what happens in worship, church worship. I think you can reduce the passage to a fairly simple question, but it's also kind of a profound question. And that is, does your church worship, in other words, does what you sing, the music performed, does it actually teach and admonish? And there's no particible in here for make you feel good. Or even does it encourage you or uplift you? Now, you know, the point is not that it's wrong to have music that encourages or uplifts, but the point is that it is scripturally misguided to not have music that teaches. I mean, you need music that has some content to teach you. It teaches you the content of Jesus' teachings. It's consistent with the content of Jesus' teachings. And then it also exhorts you to follow his example. You know, I'll be the first one to say I've heard a lot of music in church, and some of it immediately comes to mind that hits those targets really well. And then there's others that doesn't hit them at all. You know, it's really about creating a spiritual buzz. And okay, you know, I understand that that's that can be important. That can play a role, you know, in our motivation and, you know, pick us up and be an encouragement and whatnot. But if that's all you're doing, if that's all you're doing, then you are missing the mark of what Paul describes here, you know, that helps you internalize what needs to be internalized. So again, I think it's a it's a simple point, but it's also a pretty important point. So that in a nutshell is is the first part of our episode, you know, where Paul is talking about the already but not yet in terms of your personal status as a believer. Okay, you're already dead. Your old life is over. You've had a change of status. And, you know, now in the here and now, we need to be transformed in our minds. And he's going through all this, you know, we need to set aside the old life, we need to be transformed in our minds. Here are some ways to do it. Here are some things to avoid. Because we have a destiny at some point, again, who we are is going to be manifest. What we believe the validity of what we believe is going to be displayed is going to be manifest. So we need to keep all these things in mind. The second thing I want to hit on in the episode is the already but not yet status of Christ's rule to his kingdom rule. Now I have flirted with this topic on a couple of other episodes, but I decided I'm going to take this episode as sort of a place where this lives now so that we can easily reference it, you know, to people who ask or people can pass it on and say, here's where Mike talked about XYZ topic in a little more detail. And this whole idea of Christ's kingdom rule, and this is tied to the defeat of the principalities and powers. So again, we flirted with this topic already in a couple episodes and, you know, outside the series and Colossians and other episodes, but this will be a place where we can camp a little bit on the topic. So back to the beginning of our passage, Colossians 3-1, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Okay, he's on a throne, so you've got to be ruling something. You don't sit on the throne and not rule things. Okay, this is imagery that speaks of rulership. And you know, how do we parse this? Well, I want to zero in on just one aspect of Colossians 3-1, this reference to seated at the right hand of God. Okay, just that simple idea, that simple phrase. That phrasing shows up in other places in the New Testament. Some of them are Pauline, some of them are other writers. And it's just kind of interesting when you track on that one phrase, where you wind up. Okay, let's just, I'm just going to read through some of these passages. Ephesians 1, 15 through 22, this is Paul. Paul writes, For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might. Here's verse 20. Okay, all that, the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above every ruler and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, this age, there's your already, but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him his head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So you get an already, but not yet. And along with that, there is the supremacy, the rulership of Christ above every ruler, authority, power and dominion. Again, this is Pauline terminology for the powers of darkness. Christ is superior to them, their authority that they had over the Gentile nations has now been nullified and delegitimized. They have every right and God has every expectation that they should be brought back into the fold. 1 Peter 3 18 through 22, again the same, you know, we're looking for the same phrase, right hand. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh and but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to all this, now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for good conscience, through what? Through getting what? No, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here's verse 22, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him. Again, just think of the Great Commission, go you there for and teach all. Okay, that's not where the Great Commission starts. That's usually how it's quoted. That's actually not how the Great Commission starts, starts in verse 18. It's not just Matthew 28 19 and 20, it's Matthew 28 18 through 20, verse 18 all power, all authority is given to me in heaven and on earth. Okay, Christ is ruling something and the fact that he is seated at the right hand of God, both tells us that the kingdom has begun, the kingdom rule has begun, the power, the, you know, the, I should say the authority is a better way to put it, but the authority of the gods and the nations from the Old Testament who are enslaving the Gentile, their authority has been nullified, delegitimized. And what the disciples are supposed to do is make disciples from those nations, you know, make them members of the family of God because as the kingdom of God increases, the kingdom of darkness diminishes. That in a nutshell is spiritual warfare. It's not praying some incantation or yelling at a demon. This is how spiritual warfare is usually taught. Like I'm going to assume the authority to pray something really loud and the demons are going to get scared and go away. Okay, what spiritual warfare actually is, is the great commission. That's what it is. Growing one kingdom and diminishing another. Maybe because you have the authority because you're in Christ on earth to go into hostile territory and say it is time to come home. The authority, the spiritual authority that has been over you, that has enslaved you, yes, it's an outgrowth of a punishment. You know, that happened a long time ago and Israel failed in doing their job to be a kingdom of priests and to bring you back into the fold through them, through the single people of God in the Old Testament context. They failed miserably, but at least, you know, God produced the Messiah through the seat of Abraham who has now delegitimized their authority. And they're going to fight. They're going to fight because it's their turf. And so what we do is we remember that all power is given to Jesus in heaven and on earth, go therefore and make disciples from every nation because as that kingdom increases, the other one diminishes. And this is a war of attrition. The gates of hell will not be able to withstand it. Again, the gates of hell is the one taking the beating, not the church. This is all content again from unseen realm. So let's look at another passage, Romans 8, 31 through 34. What shall we say to these things? Paul asks, if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is it to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is interceding for us. And this harkens back to language and Colossians and Hebrews that the connection of the resurrection and the ascension with the completion and therefore the completed status of the believers' salvation, the believers' inclusion in the family of God, that that is all linked to the program of Christ, the work on the event of the cross, the resurrection and the ascension. Because of those three things, that's why we have the forgiveness of sins. That's why we have eternal life. Our works do not contribute to this. They don't supplement it. It's not based on anything we do. It's based on something that was done for us. Again, we sort of beat this horse a lot in the book of Hebrews. We've been beating it in Colossians there. We have it in Romans again. It's the one who's at the right hand of God saying, yep, they're mine, interceding for us. He's not sitting there saying, oh, man, I just wish they'd spend a few more minutes in church or something. No, it has nothing to do with performance. It has everything to do with believing in the performance of someone else, i.e., Jesus. Acts chapter 2. Again, this is part of Peter's sermon. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried in his tombs with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus, God raised up and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. What Peter is saying is you realize that since the Spirit has come, and there they are at Pentecost and Acts 2, and everybody has seen this happen, that's proof of the resurrection and the ascension. It's proof of that because Jesus taught that only after I do these things, only after I return to the Father will the Spirit come. Again, these things are just tied together. Hebrews 1, again we hit this a lot in our previous series, long ago at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. He can't sit there until he's made purification for sins, and if he's sitting down and the Spirit comes and you can be guaranteed, you can be sure that you have been forgiven, that purification has been made for your sins. And by the way, he became much superior to angels. As superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Again, it seems clear that the ascension that Christ took or he returned to the place of rulership over God's celestial family, the spiritual kingdom as it were, and the earthly counterpart of that is yet to come. So we have this already but not yet rulership going on. Another indication of how the supernatural world of the heavenly host is analogous to or a template for the world of humanity. Again, the heavenly host, it's an analogy to the way God looks at us as his earthly family. And again, if you've read Supernatural, if you've read Unseen Realm, if you've heard interviews of me about any of those books, that's the constant reference point. Why is angelology, if I can use that term important, because the way God looks at his heavenly family and his relationship to his heavenly family is analogous. It's a template for the way God looks at us. Again, these points of correlation are drawn intentionally and they have significant theological ramifications. Acts 233. Yeah, I'll just read it again. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. So the Spirit, again think back, this is again Unseen Realm content. You're not familiar with Unseen Realm, you've got to go to the podcast website, watch the videos again for the basic worldview, Divine Council worldview, Deuteronomy 32 worldview. That's why they're there. But the Spirit, who is but isn't Jesus, just as Jesus is but isn't God the Father. I mean, he is God but he's not the Father. Well, the Spirit is the Spirit but he's also equated with Jesus in certain passages. Paul says twice, the Lord who is the Spirit. Spirit of Christ and Spirit of God, Spirit of Jesus and Spirit of God are interchanged in the New Testament. So the Spirit, who is but isn't Jesus, is sent because Jesus conquered death. That's the Genesis 3 solution. He is everywhere present in believers, which means he is there to combat the dominion of sin. That's the Genesis 6 solution. Remember, there are three reasons why the world is a mess. Not just one, it's not just the fall, it's three. Genesis 3 rebellion, Genesis 6 1 through 4 rebellion, and then what happens at Babel? And so the third of these is the Spirit is the agent who launched the reclamation of the nations. That's the solution for Babel. That happens in Acts 2. So again, Acts 2 is the validation because the Spirit obviously showed up. That's the validation of the resurrection and the ascension because, again, Jesus said, this isn't going to happen until these other things happen. So when you see this happen, you know that you can be sure that I am at the right hand of God. I have been raised from the dead. Your sins are forgiven.  You're in my family now, all this stuff. And again, the Spirit is the trigger to all of this. The Spirit comes and shows that, okay, Jesus did conquer death. Spirit comes as proof that he rose again and ascended to the Father. I mean, even though lots of people have seen him after post resurrection, appearances and all that, but this is another way to look at it. And when the Spirit comes, he indwells believers. And that's the retardation, the inhibition of depravity. We now have something inside of us that works against depravity, which was the big point of fallout for the Genesis 6 episode. And the Spirit is also here to, you know, indwell and empower people at Pentecost who go back to the nations and become these little cell groups to plant churches and to tell people about the Messiah. Because there's this guy Paul that's going to come down the road and a lot of other believers too that are going to go out from here and Jerusalem into those nations and reclaim them. Again, all of these things work together. And they contribute again to the whole question of the importance of the incarnation, you know, to the whole plan of salvation. It wasn't for the angels that Jesus did this. It was for humans. It was for humanity. And Hebrews 1.13, to which of the angels did God ever say, hey, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet? Again, it's this right hand language. It's only to the Son that he says that because when he seated at the right hand of God, he is superior to everything else in heaven, except the Father. Okay. So again, all of these ideas, these disparate threads, they all come together. Again, you just have to sort of see the lay of the land for that. So to wrap up this episode, there are two already but not yet things going on in these 17 verses. One is the status of the believer. And the other is the idea of rulership with Christ. Now, those two things are connected. I think you can already tell that. But I wanted to present them as sort of two separate already but not yet themes that are going on in this chapter. Already but not yet isn't just about eschatology. I mean, it is about eschatology, but it's about other things too. This is sort of a paradigm in Scripture, a mode of thinking that you're going to see theologically in a number of places attached to a number of ideas, a number of aspects of theology. And if I can sort of give a little shameless plug here at the end of this, a lot of this stuff that we went through today, I've talked about in the Angels book and have talked about in the forthcoming, whatever that is, a demon's book. But this is important stuff. It's a good drill down. Again, if you're listening to the podcast and you haven't read Supernatural, you haven't read Unseen Realm, you're a bit handicapped here. And you can get caught up and listen to it again. Again, these are important places to drill down within a worldview. Again, if you have ever suspected that, boy, I have lots of Bible stuff floating around in my head, but I don't know how to connect these things. They must be connected in some way. Well, your intuition is correct. Your intuition is correct. And so that's one of the things we try to do here on the podcast. It's one of the things I try to do in what I write. Lots of places, well, I shouldn't say lots, but the places that do teach people, the churches that do spend time teaching to people do a good job of giving them data. But it's an altogether different thing to connect the points of data, to connect the dots. And so hopefully, again, you get a little sense of that here in this episode. But again, the takeaway is already but not yet operating on two different levels in Colossians 3, 1 through 17. All right, Mike. Well, when can we get more Unseen Realm material? When is the second one? I'm two coming out. Yeah, I gotta do. That's not even a twinkle in my eye. Oh my gosh. What do we have to do? But you can get all that content on what is it? More Unseen Realm dot com? Yeah.  But but there's a tab in more Unseen Realm dot com that says what's next and it has a long gross realize. We need to start chipping away. There's a lot, there's a lot more to be added. But again, everything I produce in some way, you know, is going to drill down into the first one. You got to get the first one. Got to get Unseen Realm, get the lay of the land. And again, if you have this sneaking suspicion that the stuff in the Bible must, there must be something that connects all of it. Your suspicion is correct. And again, that's what I try to do in the book.  All right, there you go. We'll go get his new angels book to while you're at it. And leave a review to please. We appreciate that. All right, Michael, we wrap up chapter three next week and looking forward to that. And with that, Mike, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.ermsh.com. You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 236 Colossians chapter three versus 18 through 25. I'm the layman, Tray Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how you doing this week? Pretty good. Pretty good. Can't complain. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mike, I wanted to briefly call for questions specifically about the book of Colossians here as we normally do when we finish up a book. We're getting close. Only one chapter left, so if you have any questions about the book of Colossians, please email me at traystrickland at gmail.com. You can get that at nakedbiblepodcast.com website for the correct spelling. But send me your questions, and then we'll do a Q&A specifically about Colossians here in a few weeks. Yeah, it's getting to be that time. Like you said, after today we'll only have one more chapter. Yeah, and we'll do a regular Q&A after that, and then that'll give us enough time to collect those questions. Sure, sounds good. All right. Well, I guess in the chapter three this week? Yeah, it's verses 18 through 25, Colossians three, and that does finish up the chapter. Now, I'm just going to read the section, and you can probably guess we're going to be spending most of our time on this one, but let's just jump right into, I'm going to include verse 17 here, because it sort of sets the context for 18 through 25. Paul finished the last section this way. He says, whatever you do in word or deed, in or do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him, and then he goes into his section. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Bond servants, obey in everything in those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward, you are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. That's the end of Colossians chapter three. Now, we're probably, it's probably fair to say we're going to be spending the lion's share of our time on the wives and husbands section, but I do have things to say about each of these sections that I think are fairly important. What we want to do is we want to focus on the commands in this section noting their ancient and their Christological context. What I mean by that is there are some cultural considerations, that's the ancient part, and then regardless of what the cultural considerations are, what is said in here needs to be framed again in light of verse 17. Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. So it has a Jesus orientation that, again, works within the culture, but is going to transcend the culture as well. So a few general observations as we jump in about this whole section, a theologically and in terms of discipleship. Again, as we just said, the context is pretty obvious. It's set by the prior verse, verse 17, about doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. So the idea of honoring Jesus frames what follows, or at least ought to. And second, scholars typically refer to this section's command with a German term, the Hausstaffel. Household rules is the translation of that. Their command's about household management. Again, it's just sort of a convenient category term that has woven its way into academia. And it's useful because in the culture, of course, he's writing to the Colossians here in Greco-Roman culture, there are such codes. There are such lists of rules. These are known, the kind of thing Paul does in verses 18 through 25, is known in literature elsewhere of the same period and earlier. Dunn has, I think, a useful summary of this whole issue of genre, the household rules idea. And I want to selectively read some portions from his commentary. So he says, there are similar household codes in other early Christian writings, and he mentions a few New Testament references with less close parallels in some of the past early epistles, and early Christian texts like the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas and Clement and Ignatius, Polycarp, so on and so forth. This suggests, Dunn says, that the Colossian code may have been derived from earlier traditional material, whether in form or content or both, and raises afresh the question whether this was simply a dollop, my scholarly term there, dollop of standard teaching inserted here, like an old sermon being rerun, or whether it had any particular relation to the situation in Colossian how grant his quotation there kind of assumes the lateness of Colossians, which I don't think is warranted. But the idea, again, is that there's a, this isn't new, this isn't sort of unique to Colossians. Dunn continues, the model insofar as there is one was that of Oconomia, household management. In the classic definition of Aristotle, the household was the basic unit of the state. As part of good ordering, therefore it was necessary to deal with its basic relationships, master and slave, husband and wife, father and children. That these became common concerns in thoughtful society is sufficiently clear from such examples as Dio Chrysostom's fragmentary oration on theme, covering the same three relationships. Seneca's description of one department of philosophy as concerned with how to advise a husband should conduct himself toward his wife, or how a father should bring up his children, or how a master should rule his slaves. So you have these ancient examples and Dunn continues, he has a few others. Dionasius of Halachronassus praises Roman household relationships using the same three pairs in the same order as Colossians and deals with duties of wives before those of husbands and those of children before those of fathers as here. That similar concerns were active in Diaspora Judaism is evident, for example, from pseudo facilities, from Philo, he mentions a few other texts, Josephus, you know, contra appion, a few references there. Again, you can find this material both in Greco-Romanian and Jewish texts is his point. Now back to Dunn, he says, why should a code, such a code be introduced here? At all events, we can well understand that socially responsible Christian leaders like their Hellenistic Jewish and Stoic counterparts would wish to consider not merely how individuals should conduct themselves, but how Christian commitment to the Lord should affect the primary unit of community, the household, to become a member of the new family, cross reference there to Romans 8, 16, 17, and verse 29, did not involve displacement or justifying neglect of household responsibilities. Whether the believer belonged to a Christian or non-Christian household, Christian discipleship was not disruptive of society's basic structure. Relationships within the family and household were themselves part of Christian vocation and the first place where responsibility to the Lord should come to expression and be put to the test. This would be important, not least since the earliest churches were all house churches, and he references here Colossians 4 or 15, we'll hit that next time, so that the model of the well run household provided precedent for the well run church. With such motivation, it would be natural to draw on rules of proven worth from the best contemporary social models. We should not ignore the fact that use of the model of household management betokens a similar concern for society and its good order, but it also had the bonus of demonstrating the good citizenship of the young churches, facilitating communication with the rest of society, and making possible an apologetic and evangelistic impact which should not be discounted. That's the end of Dunn's selection there. Again, I think that's a good contextual setting. It was important for Christians to conduct themselves and their families in such a way that they wouldn't be aberrations to, again, the wider culture. There's going to be some aspects of family life and interpersonal relationships that are going to, there's going to be differences there, and we can imagine what some of those, some of the more obvious ones would be, maybe in terms of sexual morality or worship of ancestors or something like that, but what Dunn is talking about here, the basic unit of family and the basic relationships. Paul is going to tell his church of Colossae and other audiences that your household needs to be orderly. Your relationships, again, need to be really above reproach in terms of what you can do that won't dishonor God, but that people outside the Christian community will be able to look at and admire and appreciate. We'll start in Colossians 318 with some of the particulars here. It opens, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. The last part of that's going to be, of course, important, but a lot of the discussion here is oriented around the submission idea. Dunn writes this, it is important to note that it is wives and not women generally who are in view. Women who were single, widowed or divorced and of independent means could evidently function as heads of their own households, as in the case of Lydia, Acts 16, 14, 15, Phoebe, the first name Deacon in Christian history and patron of the church at San Crea, Romans 16, 1 and 2, Chloe, 1 Corinthians 111, and presumably Nympha in Colossae itself. Again, that's a reference to Colossians 4 or 15. The concern here is primarily for the household unit with the implication that for Christians, too, its good ordering was fundamental to well-ordered human and social relationships. That wives are addressed first is presumably also a recognition that their relationship to their husbands was the linchpin of a stable and effective household, and that's from Dunn's commentary on Colossians and Philomen. Now, let's take a look at the terminology here. On the verb translated, submit in Colossians 318. It's Houpotaso in Greek. Now, Mu observes this. Again, I'm just pulling out some things I think are interesting in the way commentators have looked at this. And Mu writes, the verb is not common in pre-New Testament Greek, but does occur 30 times in the Septuagint, where it occasionally refers to humans submitting to God. Second Maccabees 912 he cites here. But more often refers to submission in the secular sphere, particularly to the military and the state. The verb occurs 38 times in the New Testament, 23 of them in Paul. It can denote a forcible subjecting as when evil spiritual beings are subjected to the authority of God or Christ, Luke 10-17, Luke 10-20, 1 Peter 3-22, or when God subjects all things to Christ, 1 Corinthians 15-27, for example, Ephesians 1-22, Philippians 3-21, or it can be used when God, because of humanity's fall into sin, puts creation into subjection, Romans 8-20. But Mu continues, but particularly characteristic of New Testament usage are exhortations, and here's a key, exhortations to voluntary service, to voluntarily putting oneself under the authority or direction of someone or something else. And Mu lists examples. You get this idea of this voluntary submission in passages like Hebrews 12-9, James 4-7, or all believers are to put themselves under the authority of God. Romans 8-7, to be under the authority of his law, or to be under the church. The church is to be under Christ, Ephesians 5-24. Jews are to be under submission to God's righteousness, Romans 10-3. Humans are to be in submission to governing authorities, Romans 13-1, 13-5, Titus 3-1, so on and so forth. Christians are to be in submission to their leaders, 1 Corinthians 16-16, slaves to their masters, Titus 2-9, young men to older men, 1 Peter 5-5, children to their parents, Luke 2-51, wives to their husbands, Ephesians 5-22, and of course, here in Colossians 3-18. You get a number of instances, this is Mu's point, where you have a term that is used in a lot of forcible contexts, both in terms of the state and even theologically, where God, again, like the spirits being subjected to the authority of Christ and what not, which obviously wouldn't be voluntary. But what Mu is saying is a lot of these references in the New Testament are exhortations to voluntarily putting yourself under authority. And of course, the last part of Colossians 3-18 says that this is fitting in the Lord. So this is sort of the way this needs to be framed and what we need to be keeping in mind. Again, back in the previous episode of the podcast, this whole thing about thinking of yourself in a new way. And part of being who you are in Christ is the way that you relate to each other in a variety of relationships. And in this case, in this section, again, as Dunn pointed out, and as is pretty obvious, what Paul is zeroing in here, zeroing in on here is the primary social unit, the concern for household order. Again, it's wider than husbands and wives and parents and children. It includes the household servants as well, because this is the basic unit of society. And it's the idea of having an orderly household, not like showing the guys at work that you're the boss and everybody cowers in your presence. That isn't the idea. The idea is orderliness. And in the Christian context, again, the context of Christ's Lordship, it's voluntary. It's not something that is to be forced upon others without regard to their personal welfare or something like that. It's a voluntary thing, and it's done for the purpose of honoring the Lord. Again, not in terms of showing off or harming someone else or something like that. Again, some self-serving motive is not in view. Now, back to Dunn here for another comment. He says, the call for wives to be subject, hupotaso, to subject oneself to be subordinate to is unequivocal, not even lightened by the prefixed call, be subject to one another, or the addition of words like, as the Church is subject to Christ that you get an Ephesians, you get that commentary in Ephesians 5, 21, and 24. The exhortations should not be weakened in translation, in deference to modern sensibilities. This is, again, done. But neither should its significance be exaggerated. Again, we're quick to worry about the one weakening the language, but we ought to be just as worried about exaggerating it as well, amping it up. Neither should its significance be exaggerated. Subjection means subordination, not subjugation. Now, let me repeat that line because I think Dunn says that well. Its significance should not be exaggerated. Subjection means subordination, not subjugation. And those are different but related terms, but they are different terms, and they're the difference to recognize that, you know, the nuance is there is important. Marcus Bart comments on the passage this way. Again, he has some useful things to say. Houpotosso in the Greek means to order accordingly, to join below, to subordinate, to subjugate. Again, he uses the term subjugate and Dunn, you know, I would agree with Dunn that's not the best vocab choice. In the middle voice, and let me just jump in here, that's what we have in Colossians 318. We have a grammatical middle voice. I don't really need to, I don't want to go into a grammar spasm here, but the middle voice is basically an action that's done or committed with respect to the one doing the action. It's an action done with benefit for, or if it's a bad verb, with deleterious effect to the one doing it, like the action sort of springs back on the subject, the one doing the action. In the middle voice, Bart says, the term means to subject oneself, there's your middle aspect, to subjugate oneself, as well as to be subservient to another, an outside external actor being in view there. In the letter to Aristaeus, which is a Second Temple Jewish text from about the second century, first century BC, the word is used in a positive sense for a humble, humanly accommodating, and therefore God-pleasing demeanor. Again, if you're thinking that this term must mean, or I would be even more blunt if you're thinking that it does mean necessarily, like it inherently means something violent, something aggressive, something overlordly, something heavy-handed, you would be incorrect. That is not an inherent semantic in this verb. It can certainly be used that way, but the point being made here by Bart is that it's also used of something that's, again, just orderly and respectful and accommodating, again, is the way he puts it. There are contexts for that as well. So again, context is everything, and what's the context here? This is Colossians. Colossians 3.18, the prior verse says, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Again, it's not, hey, now you got an opportunity to be abusive. You got an opportunity to belittle someone that's not in view. It's not in view. Back to Bart. In the New Testament, the verb occurs 38 times, 23 of those are in the Pauline corpus. Marcus Bart, again, Bart referencing another one of his piec