Colossians 2:8

Paul clearly separates Christ from how humans explain the world, what is important and valuable, and how to think and get things done.

He warns against people who are captivating in their speech. Those people have a method of message delivery that gives their thoughts traction among people. And we are tempted to equate delivery with truth.

But Paul has some choice adjectives to describe their message:

Empty: Basically, it is high-sounding nonsense. This means it promises knowledge, but whatever you had before would be removed from you rather than have something good added to you.

By the time they are through with you, whatever semblance of truth you had before would have diminished, and rather than becoming wise as they promise, you become ignorant, which is not even the worst of it. Because you think that you now know more when you actually know less, you become dangerous because what gets added to you, at the very least, is arrogance. Your latter state is worse than it was before.

Deceitful: what it purports to be is not what it is; rather, it is the exact opposite of what it purports to be.

For example, when the devil told Eve that eating the fruit would make her be like God (Genesis 3), that was not something innocent; taking that step was not an act that Eve could do, and then shrug off and move on. Taking to that word led to the very opposite happening. They were not going to be like God; rather, they were going to experience darkness and death, not light and life.

With the benefit of hindsight, there was nothing innocent about the serpent in the garden conversing with Eve. If you could turn back the hand of time and you can go back to the garden of Eden, you would tell Eve that she may need to throw away being nice for a moment and not even give the serpent a hearing.

After Paul identified those teachings as empty and deceitful, he tells us their origin.

Traditions of this world: what has been said before, probably repackaged, with the only claim to authority being that it has been from antiquity.

Elemental spirits of this world. In another place, he said we should beware of deceiving spirits and demonic teachings (1 Timothy 4:1).

False teachings are not innocent. One thing they have in common is that they are not Christ-centered. They elevate human wisdom, reasoning, tradition, and practices as the way to go.

If the teaching is human tradition, we can trace it to something already on earth. If it is elemental spirits, we cannot trace it to something already on the earth. It comes across as something new.

Jesus said that the religious leaders of Israel, over centuries, have elevated their tradition above the word of God (Mark 7:13).

“That it is how it has been done” means longevity is an authority or some past figure rather than the word of God.

People want to control others and demand that they conform not to the word of God but to a handed-down tradition.

And truth, like tradition, can be historic. The challenge is to remove the falsehood from the truth, but because tradition has total control, those who seek reform, purification, and the upholding of just the truth may be doing so at the risk of their lives in the hands of the holders of tradition. That is why Jesus died in the hands of the tradition holders: He was making truth claims that threatened them.

So watch out for human traditions and elemental spirits, where everything else is elevated, not Christ. And it does not matter the result, watch out!

You are not dealing with something innocent; we are battling with spirits and tradition, trying to take control of your life.

Note that the warning in the focus verse are given to Christians, who are being urged to stand from the faith, rooted and built up into Christ, and overflowing with thankfulness (Colossians 2:7), and not think there is some other spirit somewhere that they need to connect with, or some tradition that the need to go back to to be complete.

The only thing you need is to be rooted in the true knowledge of God and continue along that path and, from the previous verse, overflowing with thankfulness. That's all.

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