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hosts and, as this is so, how foolish and dangerous it was for the Colossians to seek to
worship angels and subjugate themselves to them! In doing this they were throwing
away the glorious freedom wrought by Christ from abject slavery from which they had
been delivered! It was the great lesson of Galatians all over again:
"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Gal. 5: 1).
While this freedom must not be exercised in a selfish way (Paul was always ready to
limit his freedom to avoid upsetting someone who was weaker in the faith), yet to put the
shackles on again where fundamentals are concerned is to put oneself under the power of
Satan which redemption has cancelled. Therefore, continues the Apostle:
"Let no man therefore judge you in meat (food), or in drink, or in respect of a feast
day or a new moon or a Sabbath day: which are a shadow of the things to come; but the
body is Christ's" (2: 16 R.V.).
Bondage to legalistic requirements was past, whether it related to annual, monthly or
weekly observances. Verse 16 may go wider than Mosaic ceremonial, which did not
touch drink regulations in connection with foods ceremoniously clean or unclean. It
could have included special regulations stressed by the false teachers at Colossae with
their spurious holiness. However, it did include observance of the seventh day, the
sabbath, and we quote from Dean Alford here who certainly had no dispensational bias:
"We may observe, that if the ordinance of the Sabbath had been, in any form, of
lasting obligation on the Christian church, it would have been quite impossible for the
Apostle to have spoken thus. The fact of an obligatory rest of one day, whether the
seventh or the first, would have been directly in the teeth of his assertion here; the
holding of such would have been still to retain the shadow, while we posses the
substance. And no answer can be given to this by the transparent special pleading, that
he is speaking only of that which was Jewish in such observances; the whole argument
being general, and the axiom of verse 17 universally applicable" (Greek Testament
Volume 3, p.225).
The same thing could be said of Paul's argument in Rom. 14: 5, 6. Our Sunday is
not the Sabbath of the O.T.; it is always designated `the first day of the week' in the N.T.
and there is no Divine command in the N.T. to observe it as the O.T. Sabbath. This does
not mean that we do not appreciate having this day as one of rest and the opportunity to
worship together and witness. Nor should we use our freedom to upset weaker brethren;
we seek only to be regulated by what is clearly revealed in God's Word as commands for
the church.
The fact remains that sabbath days are joined by Paul, under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, with `food and drinks' and classed as shadows. But, we are assured, the body (the
substance, the reality) is of Christ. All types were prophetic; they looked forward to
their fulfillment in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. Once He had fulfilled them
they had achieved their purpose. At the best they were only shadows, pointers to Him,
but shadows have no purpose or place when the reality they set forth has come. We
should remember that a shadow has no permanence apart from the body that projects it.
When the body stands directly beneath the light the shadow disappears. And this is