| From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase |
Part 5 of a 20-part series. Read part 4.
|
|
The heart of the heresy of counterfeit worship is the false teaching that man in his pride, not God in Scripture, determines whom to worship and how.
18 Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
20 Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations - 21 "Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle," 22 which all concern things which perish with the using - according to the commandments and doctrines of men?
23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
In this passage, the Apostle Paul under divine inspiration warns the church against man-made doctrines, counterfeit doctrines. He warns us against the evil tyranny of four specific categories of counterfeits. First of all, he warns against submission to counterfeit authority. Secondly, he warns against engaging in counterfeit worship, which is our present focal point. Thirdly, he warns against the use of counterfeit intercessors. And fourthly, he warns against the deception of counterfeit revelation.
Satan, the enemy of Christ, the enemy of the true Church, stands ready at all times to bring these evil tyrannies into the visible church, often in very subtle ways. Satan seeks, at all times, to undermine the spiritual life and testimony of the individual believer and the church as a body.
In First Timothy 3:15 Paul tells us that the true church of Jesus Christ, the church of the living God, is "the pillar and ground of the truth." The true church, in the Greek the ekklesia, means the called-out ones, the ones who are called of God by His Spirit and cleansed from their sins by the blood of Christ. The body of believers - the local assembly of believers in particular - is designed by God to be "the pillar and ground of the truth."
The force of the original language is that the true church of Jesus Christ is to be the stronghold of the truth. The words that are used in that verse carry the idea of stability - stability in the truth as it is found in the Word of God alone, and in the person of Jesus Christ alone. In John chapter 17, Jesus prayed to the Father, "sanctify them" - sanctify Your church, set them apart from the world and the world's thinking - "by Your truth. Your Word is truth."
That is God's plan and purpose. And so Satan is constantly at work to attempt to frustrate that plan and purpose of God. Satan is at war against the church. One of the main ways in which Satan wages his warfare is by introducing counterfeit worship into the church - things that are not true worship according to the Word of God, things that God opposes and condemns.
The Heart of the Heresy
Let me remind you that as we approach the problem of counterfeit worship we are following a pattern that involves asking and answering a series of vital questions.
The first question, which we have now answered, was this: How did the warning that Paul has set forth in this passage in Colossians chapter two apply to the people to whom it was written - the Colossian believers in the middle of the first century? The answer is that Colossian church was witnessing the beginning of a heresy that would plague the church from their day all the way through the centuries until our day. It is the heresy of counterfeit worship.
In their day, this evil counterfeit took the form of the worship of angels. People who were influenced by pagan Greek philosophy and pagan Greek religion brought this into some parts of the early church. These people were influenced by polytheism - the worship of many so-called deities or alleged components of deity. But the heart of the heresy was Satan's lie that man, not God in Scripture, determines whom to worship and how.
Let me repeat that, because it is a vital point to have in our minds as we move on: The heart of the heresy that first appeared in this part of the early church, and has continued to trouble the church through the centuries, is the false teaching that man in his pride, not God in Scripture, determines whom to worship and how.
With this in mind, we now turn our attention to our second question: How has this same evil manifested itself in subsequent church history? What do we find, in the nearly two thousand years since the time of the Colossians, that has posed a similar danger to the church? What kinds of counterfeit worship do we find in church history, and how does Colossians chapter two apply to those things? How has Satan waged this critical aspect of his war against the church? That will be the subject of our next article.
bw0005
Copyright 1998-2024
TeachingtheWord Ministriesmmmmmwww.teachingtheword.org
All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced in its entirety only,
for non-commercial purposes, provided that this copyright notice is included.
We also suggest that you include a direct hyperlink to this article
for the convenience of your readers.