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. [17] These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. [18] Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, [19] and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. | Colossians 2:16–19
In the sermon Sunday, I ended with the above challenge from the Apostle Paul. In this, he calls us not to hold too tightly to the earthly things that we place trust in for salvation. Food and drink, festivals, and Sabbath, these are all means of grounding hope in ourselves. In each one of these, salvation is controlled and managed by the individual. Belonging to God becomes a matter of what you do, what you know, or how far from sin you can keep yourself. It isn’t that none of these are important, but none of them are the MEANS of salvation; these is the outworking of a life that has seen grace. These are all the shadow, but the substance is Christ.
Or another way to say it: these are all parts of the body, but He is the head. This metaphor: of the life of the church as a body, is a common one in Scripture. Sometimes we focus so much on the body that we forget the head, which is silly. The head is the source of everything that happens in the body. While the body is important, it needs the head to make sense of all of the functioning parts.
In a sense, what we see in the Fall is a decapitation. The people of God, who function as the body, choose to cut themselves from the head in order to have freedom. The freedom of the body from the head is not a good freedom. In real life this would cause instant death, but spiritually it caused a death as well. It prevented human beings from being able to construct an accurate picture of who they are or what they exist for. In this, it isn’t just about obtaining salvation, but about making sense of life. Since the Fall, human beings have been a body without a head, flailing around without purpose.
In Jesus, the Head came to us. God came to earth; the Word was made flesh. He offered Himself to rescue us from the meaningless existence that sin had created. He gives us, not only a means to be reunited with God, but a way to make sense of the life we live.
In a way, the life of the Christian and the church is the act of recapitation: putting the head back on the body. The head has been given to us, but all of reconnecting of spinal cord and senses is a process (don’t overly imagine this process). Paul tells us that this is done by holding fast to the head, which requires:
1. RECOGNIZING THE HEAD
The first step is acknowledging that without Christ, we are a headless body. The whole world is created from Him, to Him, and through Him, which means that He is at the center of its purpose. If this entire world is about Him, then there is no purpose that does not flow from the Head.
2. TRUSTING THE HEAD
The second step is trusting that Jesus actually wants what is best for the body. The original decapitation came because Adam and Eve could not trust that God had their best in mind. In order for the Head to be able to lead the body, we must trust that Jesus knows what is best for us.
3. OBEYING THE HEAD
The third step is putting this trust into practice. In His Word, we have God’s description of the world and how we are to live within it. God has described the problem of sin, the hope of salvation, and the life of grace. Much of it differs from the headless descriptions of life that we have been given and are inclined to believe. The process of recapitation requires moment after moment of submission to the Head, trusting and acting by His leadership.
The promise that we get in this verse (as well as the parallel text in Ephesians 4:15-16) is that this work of trust and obedience, holding fast to the Head, will grow the whole body with a growth that is from God. In the same way that recovery from any significant injury requires physical therapy and exercise, the work of recapitation requires us to practice the way of Jesus over and over again, so that all of the joints and ligaments can be knit together and we can be restored to what we were created for: worship.
This is not an individual endeavor, but a corporate one. Each part must be doing this work, but we must also be participating in the corporate act of recapitation. This means that we gather together to recognize, trust, and obey the head, as a family. Let’s continue to do the work of holding fast to the head, that we may reap the benefits: when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Eph. 4:16b).