"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect
of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are
a shadow of things to come ..." wrote the apostle Paul in Colossians 2:16-17 (KJV). This passage is often misinterpreted. What does it really
say?
Paul was combating a local heresy. False teachers had introduced their
own religious philosophy, which was a blend of Jewish and gentile concepts.
Their distorted ideas were founded on human "tradition" and "principles
of the world," not on the Word of God. Paul warned the Colossians
to "beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit,
according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles
of the world, and not according to Christ" (verse 8).
These false teachers introduced their own rules and regulations for
their idea of proper conduct (verses 20-22). The content of Paul's warning
to the Colossian church strongly indicates that these heretics were
the forerunners of a major heresy that developed into gnosticism, which
is a belief system that holds that secret knowledge (gnosis is
Greek for "knowledge," hence the term gnosticism) can enhance
one's religion. Gnostics claimed to be so spiritual that they disdained
virtually everything physical, regarding it as beneath them.
