¹⁸ Take care that no one keeps defrauding you of your prize by delighting in humility and a religious worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, ¹⁹ and not holding firmly to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. (Col2:18-19)

Progressing through Col2, Paul appears to be dealing with something that must have been a pastoral issue of his day but his hardly prevalent today – the religious worship of angels. Nevertheless, there are a couple of points to make from this passage in the context of what I have been setting out in these posts and more comprehensively in my book. Firstly, he refers to believers being defrauded of their prize. The apostle alludes to that idea more substantively in Phil3:14: “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the highest calling of God in Christ Jesus”. Also,where he wrote:   ^“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one wins the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. So they do it to obtain a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable” (1Cor9:24-25). “Race”, “competes”, “wins”, “prize”  – it’s hardly the language of “all of grace”, is it? For, as I have been showing, attaining gospel salvation is not all of grace, rather it is dependant upon it – there is a big difference.

Chief of sinners?

Such a misunderstanding is made by those (like myself in the past) who understood Paul to regard himself as “the chief of sinners”. He did make such a statement, but what was the context? (1Tim1:15). It was stated two verses earlier – because he had been a blasphemer of Christ and chief persecutor of His infant Church. It was in the past. In terms of his life as a Christian, he wrote:  “Our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you (believers)” (2Cor1:12NASB).

“Chief of sinners” pertained to Paul’s calling and election – for that is all of grace, but that’s where such a paradigm ends. Thereafter it’s a case of working out one’s own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil2:12). It’s a case of striving, racing and competing for the prize of the high calling of God. As I have also been explaining, this is not directly related to who does or doesn’t “go to heaven when you die”. That pertains to the sheep and goats teaching of Matthew 25, where neither religion nor a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is an issue (v40) – merely  the exercise of  compassionate love towards one neighbour (indicated also in Rom13:8-10; 1Jn4:7 inter alia). The prize Paul refers to does require religious practice and a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. It is not for the proverbial “world and his wife”, but for the Lord and His (Rev21:90) – destined to share His very throne (Rev3:21).

A theology of glory

Truly, Paul’s is a theology of glory, albeit predicated on a theology of the Cross. For Christ’s suffering for the pardon of many and the sanctification of those who worthily partake of His body and blood – together with humanity’s experience with sin and the suffering that resulted from it are essential ingredients by which the sons of earth might be raised to divinity. That starts with God’s elect who already partake of the divine nature. “For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from One; for this reason (Christ) is not ashamed to call them brothers (Heb2:11).

Lower than the angels?

This in turn pertains to Paul’s reference to false humility; to the angels and why they should NOT be worshipped by man. Referring back to Hebrews:

For (God) has not put the world to come of which we speak in subjection to angels, but one testified in a certain place saying: “What is man that You are mindful of him or the son of man that You take care of him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honour and set (man) over the works of your hands; You have put all things in subjection under (man’s) feet. For in that He put all in subjection under man, He left nothing that is not to be put under (man). But currently we do not see all things put under him. But we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels and because He suffered death has been crowned with glory and honour, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone (Heb2:5-9) 

The mystery of God

The author of Hebrews indicates that whilst we currently do not see all things subjected to human beings, that is the eventual plan. What Christians can see by faith is the Man Christ Jesus already crowned with glory because of His suffering, so as to bring many human sons to glory (Heb2:10). This is something the angels themselves desire to look into (1Pet1:12). The seeming irony is, that as a direct consequence of human sin, initiated by a fallen angel, the Word of God became incarnate AS A MAN, not an angel. The Head of all principalities and powers existentially relates with and is ultimately betrothed to men and women, not angels. This surely pertains to the mystery of God (Rev10:7 ) – the rationale for the Fall (cf. Rom8:20), Christ’s suffering to remedy it, and humanity’s arduous path to theosis.

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