Colossians 2:20: Living Dead to the World

"If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?" Colossians 2:20

When's the last time you tried to live as if you were dead? It's an odd concept, is it not? Yet, we find in scripture that it is the exact way we ought to live. In Christ, we have died with him and have been raised with him, and therefore just as he has died to the world, we have died to the world as well. But the key is living as if this were true.

In the second chapter of Colossians, we see Paul teaching us this very concept. The Colossian church was being pressed by the culture around them to conform to some legalistic (that is, a type of thinking that says that you can be saved by works) ways of living, but Paul did not want them to do so. He encouraged them to not follow these practices for many reasons, one of them being that they have died to the "spirits of the world" (see verse quoted above), and therefore they ought not to live as if they were still alive to these spirits. These "spirits" are not mystical "spirits," but are the teachings and philosophies of evil men in that day who tried to currupt their religion. Paul wrote the Colossian church to warn them against these evil men, and to encourage his audience not to follow their teachings because they were dead to the world.

But how can this be applied to us? Last time I checked, we didn't have any cultural pressures pushing us towards circumcision, new moon festivals, or Saturday Sabbaths. Although we may have different cultural pressures, the principle stays the same: we are dead to the world. What do I mean by this? That we are dead to the cultural pressures that this world often presses upon us. What are those pressures? How about things like excessive drinking, pornography, idolization of money, idolization of relationships, and things alike? How about things like abortion and homosexuality? These are all cultural pressures that the world says are okay, but we must not conform to them. For we have died to those things, and we ought to live as if we were dead to them, that we might not embrace them, but rather fight against them.

So, how have you caved to cultural pressure rather than living as if you were dead to the world? How have you listened to the world instead of listened to the Word? Christian, let me encourage you: live as if you were dead to these things, and run to the substance of Christ.