Daily Bible Reading 21st May 2025 // Colossians 1:1-2

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

2 To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

Trouble with false teaching is very contemporary and yet as old as the Church herself. Throughout its entire existence the Church of Jesus Christ has been beset by 'hollow and deceptive philosophies'. Paul's letter is a timely reminder that the world is forever insidiously seeking to press the Christian into its own mould. The intellectual and spiritual pressures and fashions of our time seep, subconsciously even, into our minds and hearts and divert us from the truth. This is the very relevance of the Colossian epistle for the Church today. We must be forever alert and on our guard. The 'meditation' and 'healing' of New Age spirituality has already crept into the Church. The big thing for many Church leaders and teachers, these days, is the multifaith philosophy. Flying in the face of Scripture, we are told that 'We are all pilgrims on the same road to God, one way is no better than another'. When it comes to hollow and empty humanistic philosophies, the Teacher of Ecclesiastes is right, 'There is nothing new under the sun.' As today so in Paul's day. It is ever the same with these new spiritualities: they claim to be Christian but, whether they realise it or not, they owe their inspiration to the spirit of this age, to the malevolent evil which is ultimately anti-christ and anti-christian: '...hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ' (2:8).

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