Joshua and Judges: Circumcision of the heart, part 2. Jos 5:2-3; Col 2:8-11; Php 2:6-7.

Title: Joshua and Judges: Circumcision of the heart, part 2. JOS 5:2-3; COL 2:8-11; Php 2:6-7.

 

Announcements/opening prayer:

 

The circumcision of the heart is reiterated in the NT.

 

COL 2:8 See to it [be constantly on your guard] that no one takes you captive through philosophy and [even] empty deception [description of philosophy], according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

 

"See to it" which means to be constantly on your guard is similar to the use of the word "beware," to be constantly looking, used in Php 3:2.

 

Philosophy was of the highest systems of thought to the Greeks and through it virtue was attained, or so they believed. There is nothing evil in it unless one makes it to be the rule of life or the actual method of attaining divine virtue. The gospel and the scripture has superseded the philosophy of the Greeks or anyone else as the highest and only standard for thinking and living. The false teachers of the time, as they are today, loved to use different philosophies to justify their ascetic or licentious practices and their mysticism. When the writings of the Greeks were revived in the Roman Empire they were hailed by some as superior thinking to all else, and yet they were vague and numerous enough to use as an authority to any false religion you could imagine. When they were revived after the dark ages in the early reformation, the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, etc. were again heralded as superior and now added to that was their antiquity. They were really old so they had to be right. False traditions become very useful shields to falsehoods of God and life.

 

Paul describes the philosophy as empty or vain deceit.

 

This doesn't mean that it's evil to study philosophy, in fact it can be quite enlightening and foster good thought, but if it is adopted as a rule of life, above revelation through God's scripture, then it does become evil as the life of the creature by the creature. The creature cannot lead himself.  

 

I doubt the average person today spends much time reflecting on Plato's philosophy, but in our day, there is a greater and more insidious beast and that is the twenty four hour news cycle and the relentless and constant stream of social media.

 

In writing about the changes done to society by the mechanization of all things through large corporations and trusts and mass production, Winston Churchill wrote in his essay, Mass Effects of Modern Life …

"In part again these changes are unconscious. Public opinion is formed and expressed by machinery. The newspapers do an immense amount of thinking for the average man and woman. In fact they supply them with such a continuous stream of standardized opinion, borne along upon an equally inexhaustible flood of news and sensation, collected from every part of the world every hour of the day, that there is neither the need nor the leisure for personal reflection."

 

And that was written in 1925!

 

The next word is tradition; that which in handed down from generation to generation. Some live by tradition. Like philosophy there is nothing inherently evil with tradition unless it is against God's plan for life. Just because something is old, doesn't make it right.

 

COL 2:8 See to it [be constantly on your guard] that no one takes you captive through philosophy and [even] empty deception [description of philosophy], according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world [kosmos], rather than according to Christ.

 

Falsehood puts all these things in place of Christ.

 

False religions attempt to promise the things that God does but without the true person and work of Christ. A counterfeit is only valuable if it is close to the original and Satan tries to satisfy the heart of man with Christ replacements, and some replacements even bear His name.

 

COL 2:9 For in Him all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form,

 

In Christ dwells the whole fullness [pleroma], the entire fullness of the Godhead, whereas they represent it to you as dispersed among several spiritual agencies.

 

Christ is the fountainhead of all spiritual life, whereas they teach you to seek it in communion with inferior creatures.

 

Dwells means a permanent resident. True deity is wrapped in a human body and is such forever. It's an amazing thing to realize that the Godhead, the Son of God, dwelt in bodily form when He was born in Bethlehem, and that as an infant.

 

"Because in Him there is continuously and permanently at home all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily fashion."

 

It is not a divinity but the divine itself. Divinity can be a manifestation of the divine Godhead and it is not as it Christ was given certain attributes of God, but that He is God. He is portrayed in some circles as close to God and so having some of the blessings of divinity, but to be wrong on this is to be far, far away from what He truly is, the Godhead.

 

The indwelling of the divine fullness in Him is characteristic of Him as Christ, from all ages and to all ages.

 

Hence the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him before His incarnation, when He was 'in the form of God' (Php 2:6).

 

Fullness of the Godhead before the incarnation:

 

Php 2:6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped

 

This verse must be broken down if it is to be truly understood. To understand our present topic of circumcision of the heart, we must understand the fullness of the deity of Christ before, during, and after His incarnation.

 

The word for "form" doesn't have an equivalent in English so we have to use many words to describe it. For us the word form refers to a shape, but this is not the use of morphe [Greek]. It is a philosophical term to denote that expression of being which carries in itself the distinctive nature and character of the being to whom it pertains, and is thus permanently identified with that nature and character... As applied to God, the word is intended to describe that mode in which the essential being of God expresses itself. This form can only be apprehended in purely spiritual intelligence and it is not conceivable by human minds. Hence the need of the Spirit of God to convict the world of Him and the sin of unbelief in Him.

 

I quote from Kenneth Wuest's Word Studies:

 

"form" - morfh, [morphe] = Not essence itself, but the perfect expression of perfect divine essence.

 

"This mode of expression, this setting of the divine essence, is not identical with the essence itself, but is identified with it as its natural and appropriate expression, answering to it in every particular. It is the perfect expression of a perfect essence. It is not something imposed from without, but something which proceeds from the very depth of the perfect being, and into which that being unfolds, as light from fire."

 

Thus the Greek word for "form" refers to that outward expression which a person gives of his inmost nature. [Wuest]

 

This expression is not assumed from the outside, but proceeds directly from within. To illustrate: "I went to a tennis match yesterday. The winning player's form was excellent." We mean by that, that the outward expression he gave of his inward ability to play tennis, was excellent. The expression in this case took the form of the rhythmic, graceful, swift, and coordinated movements of his body and its members.

 

Our Lord was in the form of God. The word "God" is without the definite article in the Greek text, and therefore refers to the divine essence. Thus, our Lord's outward expression of His inmost being was as to its nature the expression of the divine essence of Deity. Since that outward expression which this word "form" speaks of, comes from and is truly representative of the inward being, it follows that our Lord as to His nature is the possessor of the divine essence of Deity, and being that, it also necessarily follows that He is absolute Deity Himself, a coparticipant with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit in that divine essence which constitutes God, God.

 

The time at which the apostle says our Lord gave expression to His essential nature, that of Deity, was previous to His coming to earth to become incarnate as the Man Christ Jesus. But Paul, by the use of the Greek word translated "being," informs his Greek readers that our Lord's possession of the divine essence did not cease to be a fact when He came to earth to assume human form.

 

The Greek word huparcho (being) is not the simple verb of being, but a word that speaks of an antecedent condition protracted into the present.

 

Vine's Expository Dictionary puts it this way: Huparcho, primarily, "to make a beginning" (hupo, "under," arche, "a beginning"), denotes "to be, to be in existence," involving an "existence" or condition both previous to the circumstances mentioned and continuing after it. This is important in Php 2:6, concerning the deity of Christ. The phrase "being (existing) in the form (morphe, the essential and specific form and character) of God," carries with it the two facts of the antecedent Godhood of Christ, previous to His incarnation, and the continuance of His Godhood at and after the event of His Birth.

 

That is, our Lord gave expression to the essence of Deity which He possesses, not only before He became Man, but also after becoming Man, for He was doing so at the time this Philippian epistle was being written.

 

To give expression to the essence of Deity implies the possession of Deity, for this expression, according to the definition of our word "form," comes from one's inmost nature. [Wuest]

 

This word alone is enough to refute the claim of Modernism that our Lord emptied Himself of His Deity when He became Man.

 

Now, at this time, in the eternity before the universe was created. Paul says that our Lord "thought it not robbery to be equal with God." [did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped; NASB]

 

The word translated "regard" refers to a judgment based upon facts.

 

The word "God" is used again without the article. Had the article preceded it, the meaning would be "equal with God the Father." The word "God" here refers to Deity, not seen in the three Persons of the Godhead, but to Deity seen in its essence.

 

Equality with God does not refer here to the equality of the Lord Jesus with the other Persons of the Trinity. Nor does it refer to His equality with them in the possession of the divine essence. Possession of the divine essence is not spoken of here, but the expression of the divine essence is referred to, although you can't have the expression of deity without possessing deity.

 

Equality with God here refers to our Lord's coparticipation with the other members of the Trinity in the expression of the divine essence.