Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 2:04:09 PM
‘As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power’ [Colossians 2:6-10].
The warning against the vain philosophies of men is predicated on being established in the faith. Apostasy statistics are full of young folks that profess faith and have their names on the church roll, but they are not grounded in the faith.
From the Parable of the Sower they are like the stony ground hearer with no depth of soil or the thorny ground hearer which chokes out the word. In each of these cases the word produces no fruit. [Matthew 13]
Baptismal regeneration nor decisional regeneration nor church membership will do. The apostles teach the same doctrine of Christ that we must be born of the Spirit in order to see and enter into the Kingdom of God…
‘In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new…Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever [Galatians 6:15; 2 Corinthians 5:17; I Peter 1:22-23].
Christ is the ‘head of all principality and power. In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’. Recognition of Christ’s authority and wisdom is the first things of faith. We are complete in Him so that the wisdom of men is dismissed as the fruit of a deceitful heart.
How does the unbelieving man know truth since he has rejected the eternal wisdom revealed in Christ? He has no basis for what he calls truth. Being finite he cannot know why or how he exists. He denies the only one who does know and that can tell him. He thinks that autonomous reason and autonomous science will discover these things. This is why Darwinism is more of a false religion than science.