06 When Religious Rules Replace Christ (Colossians 2:16-23)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. What the Bible means and how we know. I'm Krisan Marotta. My passage today is Colossians chapter two, verses 16 through 23. And this is the sixth talk in our series on the book of Colossians. If you'd like to follow along in the lecture notes, you can find them at wednesdayintheword.com slash Colossians 6. That's wednesdayintheword.com slash Colossians 6. Thank you for being with us, and I hope you'll join us again. I want to start today by look actually going to the Gospel of Luke, because there's a story in Luke that illustrates what I think is the essential main point of our passage in Colossians. So turn to Luke 7. This is probably a familiar story for you. We're going to start in verse 36. One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him. So one of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner. And Jesus answered, answering, said to him, Simon, I have something to say to you. This is not Simon Peter, this is a Pharisees, different, same name, different man. And he answered, Say it, teacher, a certain money lender had two debtors, one owed five hundred denary and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more? Simon answered, The one I suppose for whom he cancelled the larger debt. I love that answer. The one I suppose. Like you know, like really Okay, anyway. In answering, he said, You have judged rightly. Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, Do you see this woman? I entered your house. You gave me no water from my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much, but he who has forgiven little loves little. So contrast the woman and the Pharisee. She was most likely a prostitute. That's probably what they mean by a woman of the city. He was one of the scholarly community leaders. She had no social standing. He had very high social standing. He was an educated Jewish man steeped in the knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures. She was probably Jewish, but she may have been a Gentile. But it's most likely she was Jewish, she was probably illiterate, and she could potentially have had no knowledge of the scripture. So the Pharisee kept the law with this exacting precision, and she was a public lawbreaker. And he was most likely clean according to all the Old Testament rituals and dietary rules and prescriptions, and she was definitely unclean. Yet she understood the gospel. She knew who Jesus was and that he was her only source for mercy and forgiveness, and she count was counting on his grace for her salvation. So she's weeping at his feet, aware of her unworthiness, while the Pharisee sits at the other end of the table, counting on his ability to keep the rules. So he's, you know, impressing Jesus with his disciplinary practices. And yet she left forgiven and he did not. Well, we're going to look at Colossians 2, 16 through 23 today, and Paul is making that exact same contrast between law-keeping and faith. And he's going to set faith in Christ in opposition to law-keeping or a set of religious disciplines or practices. And he's going to argue that faith in Christ is fundamentally incompatible with those rituals. And if I understand him properly, I think he would see the woman in Luke 7 as an example of a person of faith, and the Pharisee as an example of the direction the Colossians are in danger of heading. So let's, as always, start by remembering where we are in the book. So in chapter 1, which is Paul's introduction to the letter, he expressed his gratitude for the evidence of faith he sees in the Colossian church, and he prays that they would grow in spiritual wisdom, that that evidence of faith he sees would blossom into full maturity, specifically that they would fully understand that the way to know God is through Jesus Christ and only through Jesus Christ. And then in 2.4 he began his main point. 2.4 says, I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. And then in 2.6, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him. So that's his main point. Continue believing the gospel that saved you. And he urges them. Remember, you came to faith by grace through the blood of Christ, and you continue your sanctification that way. And we're continuing his exhortation section today. So I want to structure our time a little bit differently. Usually we just dive in and go verse by verse through the passage, but today I want to give you the overview first. I want to give you the here's the big picture and the conclusion. And then we're going to go back and look at how we reached that conclusion. Because particularly in this section, I think it's easy to get lost in the details and you kind of lose track of what the main point is. So I want to make sure we get that, and then we'll go back and look at how we got there. So just remember the Colossian Church is being infected by a heresy that is luring them away from the true gospel. They've started listening to what Paul has called the teaching and commandments of men or these plausible arguments, as he mentioned. And we don't know exactly what the issues were that the false teachers were teaching, but we get our first real clues in this section. So notice 2.16, he 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. And 218, 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. And then 221, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. So whatever they were teaching, it involves some kind of set of practices that they were to do and not do. So the false teachers are saying, okay, if you really want to be obedient to God and be a real really be a Christian, here's what you need to do. You need to restrict your dietary practices in some way, your eating and drinking. You need to engage in some kind of self-abasement. You need to keep these festivals and keep these rituals. And we know this to be true because we've had visions and been told them by angels. So that's kind of the what we can gather from this section. So essentially they're claiming keeping a certain set of practices or disciplines is essential to your relationship with God. And they know that to be true because they've had visions. Now, today we'd be way too sophisticated to listen to someone who said they had an angelic vision. We would just dismiss them right out of hand as crazy. But if someone came along with a PhD and an MDiv and they just wrote a book that's on the bestseller list, we would listen. If, you know, if they sound scientific or um intellectual or eloquent, we would listen to that person if they had the right credentials and they wrote a you know an articulate, engaging book. Well, I think visions of angels had the same appeal for the Colossian Church. That was the authority structure. And Paul, remember back in chapter one, argued Jesus, what Jesus says trumps everything else. So even angels on a heaven and earth, everything, remember that section at the end of chapter one, he's argued what Jesus says is more weight, carries more authority than any other kind of vision. So Paul's gonna set faith in Christ in opposition to these religious disciplines and argue that they're it's fundamentally incompatible with faith, and he's gonna give two reasons why. So the first is that religious rituals hold out the promise of being the way to please God, but they are in fact a lie. So the idea that we observe rituals, uh, dietary rules, festivals, etc., because that behavior marks me as one of the good guys, that's a lie. That's a false promise. So the idea that those kinds of practices make me pleasing to God is a false promise. I didn't become acceptable to God by keeping practices, and that's not how I maintain his favor. And I think they hold the promise of being the solution to my problem because they curb my outside beh outward behavior. So if I used to be wild and profligate and sluggardly, but now I'm keeping the rules, I look different. I used to be selfish and say any thought that crossed my mind, but now I can count to ten and bite my tongue, or I used to scoff and mock and laugh at others, but now I keep those thoughts to myself and I do what's required. I pray, I attend worship, I sing, I serve, I do mission, and it gives me this illusion, see, I'm doing well. Those rituals make me think I've got it all together because my life is regulated, it's orderly, so I must be pleasing to God, I'm doing it right, I've solved my pesky problem with sin, because look at all the stuff I'm doing. And Paul's gonna argue that's a false promise. That has the appearance of wisdom, but it is not, in fact, solving anything, because my problem of sin is not solved by discipline. So remember the prostitute and the Pharisee. The prostitute didn't keep any of the rules, the Pharisee kept them all, and if rituals could solve that problem of sin, Jesus would have praised the Pharisee and condemned the woman weeping at his feet. And he's gonna say, I can take on all the rules and regulations ever thought of and assume I'm really super organized and disciplined and I can maintain them perfectly, it's not gonna solve the problem of my sinful heart because it won't change who I am on the inside. It will change how I act on the outside, which could make me more pleasing to others and people might like me better, but it absolutely will not solve the problem of my guilt or my sinful heart. Now, there's a place for rituals and festivals and regulations. I mean, God himself gave them to Israel for a purpose. He restricted what they could eat in certain ways, he set up festivals for them to observe, but he gave them the rules and the regulations, not because that was the essence of spirituality, but because they were, as he says, shadows. They were to teach us something. They were intended to reflect something about the way the world works, what God is interested in, and make me stop and think. So they were educational. They were to make me to realize something about God. Unfortunately, for many, they became the be-all and end-all. He's going to call them the elementary principles, the kindergarten stuff. So they're not at the heart of what a relationship with God is all about. What's at the heart of that is the cross. But these were just shadows. They were the beginning things, the like the early steps of kindergarten that were the building blocks to start teaching me about who God is and what he values. And remember, the Colossians are in danger of abandoning the cross for the shadows, though they're in danger of abandoning the real thing for the shadow or the elementary things. So, do I find favor with God through practicing religious practices? No. The only way to find favor with God is through trusting in Jesus and his death on the cross. So I have been reconciled to God because Jesus died for me. And if I put my faith in Jesus, my sins, which are just as real and many as the woman in Luke 7, are no longer held against me. The rules and rituals are not going to solve that problem. So I'm guilty, I'm condemned before God, and if nothing happens to change that, I'm lost. There's not one single thing I can do. No rituals, no rules, no disciplines that will ever change my guilt. That's why the gospel, of course, is such incredibly good news, because God took the initiative to reach across that barrier that separated us, to solve the problem of my sin, to reconcile us to him, and then to begin changing us from the inside out. So his first point is the rituals are a false promise. They look like they're wise, but they're not wise. They give the impression that they will make you righteous, but they will not make you righteous. His second point in the passage is that the only real solution is Christ, that Christ is the real solution to my real problem of sin and guilt. So I could set up thousands of rules and regulations and it won't solve the problem of my evil heart. But what Christ did on the cross is the beginning of that solution because now I'm forgiven and reconciled to God, and God is pleased to begin that process of changing me from the inside out. And that produces real lasting change that rituals can't accomplish. Think again to the woman and the Pharisee. The rituals and the disciplines may keep my outward behavior in check for a time with a great deal of effort, but they are not going to solve the problem of my sinful heart. The only real lasting solution to that is Christ. Okay, so the gospel proclamation then is how to find that reconciliation, how to solve that problem of our slavery to sin. And it all comes through faith in Christ. And the Colossians are in danger of turning away from that belief to a system of festivals, regulations, disciplines, and asceticism. And he's going to argue those things cannot bring you into favor with God, and they won't remove the sin from your heart. They're a false promise. Alright, so that's kind of the overview. That's where we're going. Let's look then at the details. Look at Colossians 2.16 and 17. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. So remember back in 2.4 through 15, he urged them to hold fast to the gospel. He said, if you want to be right with God, don't listen to the stuff you're hearing from these false teachers because it's a lie. And then in 2.16, he essentially says, Therefore, let no one tell you otherwise. Let no one set up a system of rules and regulations and festivals and tell you you don't measure up because you're not keeping them. These are shadowy pointers to the reality of what Jesus did. So he has this phrase, these are shadows of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. That's literally the body is Christ. So the metaphor he's cat he's counting on is you remember when you were a little kid and you'd be like out playing in the sun in the late afternoon, and you have these big long shadows that you can make funny, funny um dancing figures with. That's kind of the idea. He's saying there's a shadow on the ground, and then there's a body that is making that shadow. And the real thing, the real object is the body, not the shadow. The shadow is just a reflection, just an image of the real person, but it's not the real person. The real person is the body. So the shadows are the things to come, but the real substance, the body that is casting that shadow, the body that that shadow is supposed to show me a picture of is Christ. That's the metaphor he's bringing up. And the question on the table is are my doing these things, whatever they are, whatever things I'm considering doing, whether they're rituals, meditation, prayer, fasting, singing, whatever, are they intrinsically value in and of themselves, or are they just a shadow? So are they the shadow or the body? Okay, let me give you an example of what I mean. Look at Leviticus 19. We're gonna look at 19, verse 18 and verse 19. So Leviticus 19, 18 says, You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19, 19, you shall keep my statutes, you shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind, you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material. Okay, so both of these are commands. They both have a you shall or you shall not in them. They're both in the law, they're side by side, and yet Jesus says of 1918, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, that that's one of the great commandments. He doesn't say that about 1919. So why? Why would he single one out and not the other? Well, most of you are like, that's fairly obvious. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's a fundamental principle about the way things are and ought to be that is germane to every situation. I am always called upon to love my neighbor as myself, and I can apply that in hundreds of situations and hundreds of different ways. Now it may l look different in different situations, but it's this foundational principle. It's it's not a discipline. 1919, the very next verse, is what I would call a ritual or a religious practice. So it's not that interbreeding cattle or sowing two kinds of seed in your field is intrinsically wrong in the nature of things, nor is it wrong for God to command them, but that was intended to teach us something. There was something about mixing fabric that was a shadow of a future reality. It was intended to educate me about the necess the necessity of making distinctions and the dangers of mixing two different things. So mixing two different religions, for example, is a lesson to be learned. When I obey that kind of practice, it teaches me some distinctions need to be kept. So the distinction that this is good and that is evil, this is light and that is dark, this is selfish and that is generous, this is the one true God and that's an idol. This is wise, that's foolishness. There are distinctions I ought to make and I ought to know the difference, and that kind of ritual can make me reflect on what kind of distinctions are worth keeping. So I think we would say Leviticus 19, 19 is to teach me something about holiness and purity and a single-minded focus on God. But it is not an abiding principle the way love your neighbor as yourself is. And that's the kind of distinction Paul's making. One's a shadow, one's the reality. So one is the real deal, and one is just a reflection of that real deal, and it's designed to teach me about it. So if the Colossian teachers were advocating their practices in that context, using the language of keep these rituals, they're just educational. They'll just help you understand God, they'll just help you see what he's like and what he's about, and you are free to partake or free not to partake as you find them useful, then I think Paul would say, Great, we have that freedom in Christ. And I don't think he'd reprimand them for that. But the minute they start saying, these are a means of grace, and by means of grace I mean these are something I must do to be pleasing to God, or I must do them, or I'm missing out of God's best and I'm now settled for his second best, or I have to do them or I won't grow in faith, or I have to do them, or God is not pleased with me. Anytime I start crossing that line to make them universally required, then I crossed a line I dare not cross. And that's the line Paul is recommend reprimanding them for, because we've shifted the cross out of the center and we put something else in. So instead of faith in the cross, I now have these rules and regulations that I have to keep, and that's idolatry. So see the difference, the shadow in the reality? So I wanted to give you the big picture before we got into details, because it gets kind of um it's easy to get lost in the details. Okay, let's go on to 18 and 19. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by a sensuous mind and not holding fast to the head from which the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. So let no one disqualify you. Let no one tell you you're not really a Christian, you haven't got this faith thing right, you haven't figured it out, insisting that the way you're pleasing to God is all this other stuff. And he's describing this foolish person who's trying to defraud him as someone who's willful, headstrong, conceited without cause, puffed up by his own ideas, set himself up as a religious leader, claiming he has the inside scoop, the true knowledge, but in fact he's self-deceived. And I think the key charge against him is 219, the 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. So this person is convinced that he has actually got everything right, but in fact he is not holding fast to the head. Okay, so what metaphor? Let's unpack this metaphor a little bit. Paul uses the metaphor of the church as a body, and Christ is a head a lot. He uses it in several of his letters, and he almost always means the same thing. So he pictures us as every all the b individual believers are like parts of the body. Feet, hands, eyes, whatever, and we are all held together and guided and taught and uh by the head, which is Christ. And he's saying they're claiming to be part of the body, but they've actually left the body. They are not part of the body. So it's like a hand has gone off and gone his own way. And they've metaphorically abandoned the body, abandoned the head to go their own way. So they've cut themselves off from the oxygen, the blood supply, whatever, and have left. Now, what have they done in reality? Their doctrines they embrace have diverged from the message of Christ. So their ideas do not fit with the apostolic gospel. They're not holding fast to apostolic teaching about Christ or from Christ. So they've not stayed grounded in truth. In contrast, say to Paul, who is suffering and imprisoned for the message of Christ. And he adds to this phrase, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments. And that one was curious to me because it's like, well, why add that? Is he just like carried away with his own metaphor? And I, you know. Why add that to the picture? And I think he's making, I think he is kind of drawing out the analogy. If you fix picture a body, what holds the body together? Well the joints hold the bones together and the ligaments hold the joints in place and the muscles to the bones and so on. And they represent the way the body is held together. So joints and ligaments are the things that keep the body a body. So what would that reflect in reality? What makes us a body of Christ? And it is we believe the same gospel. We have fellowship in Christ. That is, we share a stake in the gospel with everybody else who's who believes in the gospel. So there's this specific set of beliefs that make up the actual real message that was taught by Jesus, and we embrace it. And that truth, that gospel message is what holds us together and makes us a body because we all believe the same gospel. In contrast to the teachers who are teaching a different message. So those holding fast to the truth and the head are growing in truth and wisdom, and you know the growth, notice he even adds that growth is from God, it's not from my rituals, it's not from me trying harder, it's because God in his grace has given me his spirit to change me. Okay. If Christ died with verse 20, if Christ died, if with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why as if you are still alive in the world do you submit to regulations, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used according to human precepts and teachings. These indeed these have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the problem, to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. That's his, I think, his strongest statement. They are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. They will not change your sinful heart. So the contrast here is between being focused on the things of this world and the things of the next. And the problem with the false teachers is they're worldly, not in the sense that they're materialistic, in that their teachings are focused on the here and now. The things I do, like eat, drink, touch, taste, asceticism, those are things of today. They have the appearance of wisdom because they order my day-to-day and they all um kind of put rules and patterns in place. They make sense, that is the as he says in 23, they have the appearance of wisdom, but in reality they're focused in this world, as if I'm living in this world. But what did we learn from chapter one and from 1 Peter last fall? This world is not our home. This is not where real life is to be found. It's to be found in the next world. So it's not found in keeping the rules and organizing my days today. Real life is found in the kingdom of God. So what's the essence of my salvation? If you take everything from me, think again of the woman and the Pharisee. You strip all the trappings of religion away, you take everything away, and you look at who are they and their barest essential. What is the thing they must have? And they must have faith, just like the woman in Luke 7. And faith is not found in the practices of this world. It's the one thing I must have to gain life in the next world, knowing that this world is not my home, this world is not my focus, this is not where fulfillment is to be found. So there's nothing eternal about eating meat or not eating meat or keeping a festival or not eating a festival or ascetic practices. There's nothing eternal about that, but life with Christ is eternal. A relationship with Christ is eternal. A relationship with Christ built on faith is going to last forever. So I won't find the meaning of existence by shuffling around all the pieces of this world and reorganizing my schedule to fit it all in. That's not going to solve the problem of my guilt before God. And if I focus myself on all the pieces of this life, well, the day is coming when the you know a cosmic hand's gonna sweep all those pieces off the board. And if that's what I'm counting on, I've got nothing. But if I'm counting on faith, I have everything. So again, think of the woman and the Pharisee. And that's what Paul's saying. We've died to Christ with Christ to those elementary principles, the rituals of the kindergarten stuff. They were the shadows that were supposed to teach us something about God and his high standard of holiness, something about what he requires for purity and obedience and what a holy God is all about. So they had a place. They taught us something valuable, but we've moved beyond kindergarten. We're in graduate school now. We've moved beyond the shadow to see the reality, the real thing. And so when I fully comprehend the real thing, which is the cross of Christ, I don't need the shadows anymore. So it's like dying to them because now I know better. Now I know the real deal. Now, there are moral issues to what I do with my body. I don't think Paul would deny that. How I speak, what I say, how I spend my time and energy, what I do with my body, those all have moral consequences. And Paul is not denying that. He's saying, I want you to fully comprehend who you were without Christ and what you can become with him. And it's like the woman and the Pharisee. One will find grace, forgiveness, and real lasting change, and the other's going to be keep the law perfectly and find nothing. One understood where grace and reconciliation was to be found, and the other did not. So I think Paul would say, yes, live your life now in light of eternity. It matters what you do with your body, what you say, how you act, it matters. Your choices depend on what you're counting on. If you're counting on faith, if you want the things of God, then you will start to live in conformity with the things of God. But limiting what you eat or drink to prove yourself spiritual is foolishness. Practicing any set of practices in an attempt to show myself worthy of God is foolish because it misses what Christ came to do for you. So keeping a festival, that's not true piety. Keeping a routine is not true spirituality. As he said in chapter one, true spirituality is that full understanding of the cross, fully understanding what Christ came to do, the inheritance he's bringing me, and then having that living hope change my understanding, how I think, how I act, and how I speak. So there are real moral issues to face, but the key to facing them is understanding who Christ is, what he's done for me, and counting on that in his Holy Spirit changing me, not in keeping rules and regulations. So when he says in 23, there's no value against fleshly indulgences, I think he's saying these practices really aren't accomplishing anything. They have no value in solving the problem of your sinful heart. They don't give you mastery over your sin ultimately. You may have disciplined yourself so that you're keeping it in check, but you haven't actually solved the problem. Your sin is still there, it's just under control. So real change, real lasting change comes through embracing the teaching of Christ, being forgiven by his death on the cross, and then entering into a relationship with God such that his spirit is at work within you, changing you from the inside out. Okay, with the time we have left, I want to. So that's kind of I know that's a fly over the passage, but there's a lot I want to talk about today. In terms of application, because this raises the question, what happens when we disagree with each other? So what if one person says this is a religious discipline and someone else says no it's not, and what do we do? So the let's take for uh just for the to kind of think it through, 216, Paul mentions the Sabbath. So is he saying Sabbath is part of the shadows? It was intended to point to a greater reality, and it is like the you know, mixing two kinds of seed and fabric in Leviticus 19.19, and we're done with it. Or would he say, No, Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments, as such, it's an eternal binding principle. It's more like Leviticus 19.18, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and it is binding on us today. Now, sorry, I'm not gonna answer that question, but I do have a series of four talks on the Sabbath that where I go into great detail trying to answer that question, so you can find those on my website, wednesdayintheword.com, but I'm not gonna answer that. What I want to focus on is say, let's say this half of the room says Sabbath is binding, it's an eternal principle, and we must keep it. And this half of the room says, no, no, Sabbath is a shadow, and we are free to disregard it. And we're in the same Bible study or we're in the same church, how do we get along with each other? That's the question I want to displa explore. Because he's talking about let no one pass judgment on you. So should we judge each other for that? How do we live with each other? What do we do when we are believers in the same body and we've got an issue, and the issue matters, you know, you have to live your life one way or the other, and we disagree with each other. How do we how do we resolve that? How do we get along? Okay, there this is my best attempt. There are two ways to go wrong about religious activity, and I think we ought to carefully consider them before we go out judging people, and consider them in ourselves. So the first way to go wrong is we can just be genuinely mistaken about what God is asking me to do. So I trust his mercy, I realize I can do nothing to earn my salvation, I realize all my religious rituals, they're just like dirty clothes and empty gestures apart from faith. I'm right there with the woman in Luke 7, weeping at his feet, knowing I need the blood of Christ to save me. So let's say we b everybody in the room lands there. So one of us is mistaken. Either the Sabbath is right and binding or it's not. So there is a right answer, but we're we all agree, we're all metaphorically like with the woman at at Jesus' feet, and we have landed on different sides of this issue. I would say if we're both counting on faith to save us, and we're both trying to act out of our best understanding of Scripture what it means to be a believer, then I would say this falls into the category of what Paul calls the weaker brother argument, which if you're familiar with that from Corinthians. So we may disagree about who's the weaker brother. I may think you've got it wrong and you're the weaker brother, and you may think I've got it wrong and I'm the weaker brother, but we ought to humbly recognize one of us is right, one of us is wrong, it could be me, and try not to offend each other. So if we're both counting on the blood of Christ to save us and we differ on what obedience looks like, then we say, yep, we need God to shine some more light of truth here. We need to keep studying, we need to keep figuring it out, and in the meantime, let's try not to offend each other with our practices. So when I'm at your house, I'll keep the Sabbath, and when you're at mine, we won't, or something like that. So you see the difference? We want to be right, we ought to strive for truth and wisdom, but we ought to approach that with a good deal of humility of I could be the one who's wrong. We agree that this is not our salvation is not at stake here, so let's just try to live and let live and try not to offend each other. Okay. So the other way to be wrong is to think that salvation is at stake. So if one half of the room believes, not only do we have to keep the Sabbath, if you don't, you really don't have faith. So your sanctification is at stake, your growth and your maturity, if I don't keep the rules. So I have to do this thing in order to get God's best for my life, or I have to do this thing to make God acceptable, to make me acceptable to God, because I have to handle the Sabbath a certain way, and I think, you know, God's more pleased with me than you because I'm doing it right and you're not. Then we have a serious theological problem. So if that's my attitude, not only must you keep the Sabbath, it is incumbent upon every believer to do it exactly this way at this time in this format, or you're, you know, you may not be in the kingdom of heaven, then I have not embraced the gospel. I am clinging to a legalistic substitute. And you ought to come to me and humbly, gently, and lovingly try to persuade me of how amazing grace is. You're not doing me a favor to let me continue believing a false gospel. So as we pursue truth and unity, I think those are the kind of distinctions we have to make all the time. There's a place for not judging those we disagree with because we agree on the most important thing. And then we can say, well, the rest, that's kind of, you know, we're out in the gray areas and one of us is right, one of us is wrong, we don't know who it is, you know, we're like a kindergarten class arguing about who reads the best. The fact is none of us read very well, you know, so we'll just live and let live and keep hoping that God will make it clear to us in the end. So in that case, I'd say don't judge each other, live and let live. But if we've crossed that line and said you must do this because God will not be pleased with you if you don't, or if you want to grow, this is the only way to do it. In that situation, then I think we have to uh wade right into the conflict. Because you're someone's in danger of losing their soul, and you're not doing them any favor by letting them continue to believe, like the Pharisee, God's pleased with me because I'm keeping the rules, when what they really need to be is the woman in Luke 7 weeping at his feet. So it's painful. I've been in a situation where we had to confront that kind of an issue because after years of conversation, it became clear that line had been crossed, and it was the practices being taught were being taught with the idea that you will not grow if you do not do these and exactly these. Um, but you you gotta risk it. So again, when you start getting confused about, oh, all these things she's brought up, think about the woman and the Pharisee. That's really all Paul's saying. The essential difference between between them is where and how they expected to find grace with God. The Pharisee expected to find grace because he was keeping the law. He was worthy because he was keeping the rules. The woman was counting on the blood of Christ, and that's the essential distinction. Let's pray. Father, we just thank you that you saved us by grace, and that we don't have to try harder and try harder and try harder to earn your favor. And that uh you did for us what we could never do for ourselves. That is, you saved us because of your incredible mercy and graciousness. And we just pray that as we live together as a believer and as a body, that you would give us that dose of humility, give us the right words to say at the right time, help us to not judge when we should not judge, and to be bold and speak the truth in love when it is time to speak the truth in love. And I just pray that all these things would not be head knowledge or just ideas on a page or theology that we learn, but these would be lasting truths that you weave into our soul to change who we are from the inside out. In Jesus' name. I mean, we've got to be a good thing.