What is it that threatens to disconnect people from "the head"?
Colossians 2:19 VOICE "They are detached from the very head that nourishes and connects the whole body with all of its nerves and ligaments, a body that grows by the kind of growth that can only come from God."
Anonymous
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Mark Vestal
Supporter
In Colossians 2:19, “the Head” is Christ. Paul says plainly that Christ “is the head of the body, the church” (Col 1:18). The church, which is His body, receives its life, growth, unity, and nourishment from Him. The thing that threatens to disconnect people from the Head is a false religious system that turns the believer’s attention away from Christ and toward man-made spirituality. In the verses just before Colossians 2:19, Paul warns against people judging others in “meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday,” and against those who delight in “voluntary humility and worshipping of angels,” intruding into things they have not seen, being “vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” (Col 2:16-18). That is the danger: religious pride, self-righteousness, and human ordinances that appear spiritual but do not truly honor Christ as the Head. These things can puff up the fleshly mind while failing to edify the body of Christ. Christ is not merely part of the Christian life; He is both the foundation and the Head. “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:11). The body does not grow by man’s religious systems, but by holding fast to Christ, from whom “all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God” (Col 2:19). So, what threatens to disconnect people from the Head is a Christ-displacing religion: one that looks humble or spiritual outwardly, but actually feeds pride and draws believers away from resting in Christ. The body of Christ must keep its focus on Christ Himself, and specifically on what God has revealed through Christ crucified for us. At the cross, God’s righteousness was displayed, sin was judged, and the believer’s standing before God was secured by Christ’s work, not by our own religious performance. Therefore, true edification comes as the church holds fast to Christ, trusting in God’s righteousness through Him, rather than being puffed up by self-righteous works or man-made worship.
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