How does Jesus' death emphasize the importance of keeping the Law contrary to what Col. 2:2:14-17 says?

This has to do with What happens when a person is born again.

And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

a. And you, being dead: This is the place of every person before they are raised with Him through faith in the working of God as Paul described in Colossians 2:12. Before we have new life, we are dead. Before a person comes to new life in Jesus, they are not a sick man who needs a doctor; they are dead people who need a Savior.

b. Being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh: Before we have new life in Jesus, we are dead in our trespasses. A trespass is a specific kind of sin: overstepping a boundary. We are dead because we overstep God’s boundaries in our sin and rebellion.

c. He has made alive together with Him: We can’t make ourselves alive, but God can make us alive together with Jesus. We can never be made alive apart from Jesus.

i. The new birth (made alive) and cleansing (forgiven you all) go together as features of the New Covenant, as prophesied by the Old Testament (Ezekiel 36:25-27) and the New Testament (John 3:5).

ii. Having forgiven us is the ancient Greek word charizomai - a verb form of the ancient Greek word charis (grace). We are forgiven by grace.

d. Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us: The handwriting of requirements has in mind a list of our crimes or moral debt before God, a debt no imperfect person can completely pay. But it can be taken out of the way, by payment from a perfect man, Jesus Christ.

i. What a glorious picture! My “rap sheet” or “debit ledger” is settled forever, because Jesus nailed it to the cross.

ii. Martin Luther told once how Satan laid heavy condemnation on him because of his sins. Luther told Satan to list them all, and even reminded him of some he had forgotten. Then he told Satan to write across the whole list “paid in full by the blood of Jesus Christ,” and Luther rejoiced in the payment Jesus made.

iii. Having nailed it to the cross: We must keep that list up on the cross. We get into trouble when we take that list down from the cross and carry it around. We forget that it was all settled at the cross.

e. Having disarmed principalities and powers: Another aspect of Jesus’ work on the cross is that He disarmed principalities and powers. These ranks of hostile angelic beings (Romans 8:38, Ephesians 1:21, Ephesians 3:10, Ephesians 6:12) don’t have the same weapons to use against Christians that they have against those who are not in Jesus.

i. Against the believer, what weapons do demonic spirits have? They are disarmed, except for their ability to deceive and to create fear. These are effective “weapons” that aren’t tangible weapons at all.

ii. Demonic spirits only have power towards us that we grant them by believing their lies. The weapons are in our hands, not theirs. We will one-day see how afraid they were of us.

iii. Perhaps Satan, for a moment, thought that he had won at the cross. But Hell’s greatest “victory” was turned into a defeat that disarmed every spiritual enemy who fights against those living under the light and power of the cross. The public spectacle of defeated demonic spirits makes their defeat all the more humiliating.

5. (16-17) Applying the truth of Jesus’ victory in light of the Colossian heresy.

So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.

a. So let no one judge you: The opening “so” is important. It connects this thought with the previous thought. Because Jesus won such a glorious victory on the cross, we are to let no one judge you in food or in drink or in other matters related to legalism. A life that is centered on Jesus and what He did on the cross has no place for legalism.

b. Food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come: The Old Testament law had certain provisions that are done away with in Jesus, regarding such things as food and sabbaths. It isn’t that those laws were bad, simply that they were a shadow of things to come. Once the substance - Jesus Christ - has come, we don’t need to shadow any more.

i. The point is clear: days and foods, as observed under the Mosaic Law, are not binding upon New Covenant people. The shadow has passed, the reality has come. So for the Christian, all foods are pure (1 Timothy 4:4-5) and all days belong to God.

ii. Christians are therefore free to keep a kosher diet or to observe the sabbath if they please. There is nothing wrong

Since you claim to be an SDA, please define what you mean by "Law".

If you really look closely at Col 2:16, you should be keeping the Festivals as well as the weekly Sabbath.

Edit: By limiting the Law to just the "10 Commandments" you make the Messiah's word in Matthew 5:17-19 of no effect. Think for a minute about this section of scripture:

Matthew 22:34-40 ESV But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. (35) And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. (36) "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" (37) And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (38) This is the great and first commandment. (39) And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (40) On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

The Christ calls these the two greatest commandments, where are they listed in the 10?

Not here:

Leviticus 19:18 ESV You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Nor here:

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 KJV Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: (5) And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

Not part of the decalogue at all.

The traditional SDA understanding of Colossians 2:16 is incorrect, please re-read the verse more carefully and in more than one version of the Bible. If you reject the Festivals using this verse, then you must also reject the Sabbath. And we both know the Sabbath is still required.

Col 2:16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath:

I find it very strange that you and others use this verse to do away with Yahwehs Holy Day Sabbaths,,, Yet you keep one of His Feast Days,, which plainly by your interpretation of Col 2 , also does away with the seventh day Feast of God.

Lev 23:2 even these are my feasts.

Lev 23:3 Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.

Clearly you have been taught wrong about Col 2 OR it simply doesn't say what you think it says.

# 1, haven't you noticed that the word 'days' at the end of Col 2:16 is an added word by the translators, therefore it is indeed speaking also of the sabbath day 'seventh day'

# 2 haven't you noticed exactly who Paul was speaking directly too, Col 1:2

He was speaking directly too the saints and the faithful brothers and sisters.. Therefore He was telling the faithful not to let the world around them ,, to judge them in the way they kept all of the SabbathS of God,, which clearly they was keeping the seventh day and the other Feast SabbathS of God.

btw. i also keep the sabbath and God other Sabbaths.

No. The ten commandments are the core of the old covenant made between God and Israel. No Christian was a party to that covenant. Also, Jeremiah chapter 31 declares the new was not to be like the old covenant made with Israel. The "law" written on the heart is the Holy Spirit. The heart of flesh that replaces the heart of stone is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit guides the Christian, and not a written code. It is a "law" of faith, expressed through love. .

Well, for starters, the Law was only for Israel and converts to the Jewish religion (Judaism). Nobody could hope to keep the Law, as Paul says in Galatians. Chapter 4 tells us that the Law was a "schoolmaster (King James Version)" to bring us to Christ. In other words, the Law pointed the way to Christ by showing us we could never be perfect, as Jesus was and is perfect.

So Paul says that when the Law was fulfilled, it's done. The verses you've quoted from Colossians 2 make that clear. The Law was "blotted out"! Jesus brought Grace, not Law: He brought salvation and made it possible for us because of His finished work. He kept the Law, and fulfilled it, so that we won't have to.

Grace, grace, wonderful grace!

The writings of Moses precedes Paul and Messiah's words take precedence over Paul's misunderstood letters.

Deu 4:2 "You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of YHVH your God which I command you.

John 5:46 "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me.

John 5:47 "But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?"

Paul's letters will be misunderstood:

2 Pet 3:15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;

2 Pet 3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

Most English translations of the OT and NT are biased against the Hebrew Torah "Law":

Jer 8:8 "How can you say, 'We are wise, And the law (TORAH) of the YHVH is with us'? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie.

BTW - I do not believe the idea of "ceremonial" and "moral" law is Scriptural, there is either the Torah Law of our Creator or the law of this world.

There are atheists that keep the "moral" laws and are even vegetarians that rest on the Sabbath. But do they keep the Feast Days, purity instructions, and wear cords of blue to remember the Torah as instructed by our Creator to be set apart for Him?

> BTW 2- In regard to circumcision of the "flesh", it will be required for both Israel and the "stranger" to enter into the sanctuary of YHVH in the Kingdom to come:

Ezekiel 44:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; No stranger, uncircumcised in heart, nor uncircumcised in flesh, shall enter into my sanctuary, of any stranger that is among the children of Israel.

There is no contrary of what Col 2:14-17, also read Col 2:13.

And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncirumcision of your flesh, he forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross; despoiling the principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them, leading them away in triumph by it.

2:13 Said that even the uncircumcised had been forgiven us all our transgressions. The reason behind this is because under the new covenant of baptism which replaced circumcision. (Rom 6:3)

2:14 The elaborate metaphor here about how God canceled the legal claims against us through Christ's cross depicts not Christ being nailed to the cross by men but the bond with its legal claims being nailed to the cross by God.

2:15 The picture derives from the public spectacle and triumph of a Roman Emperor's victory parade, where captives marched in subjection. The principalities and powers are here conquered, not conciled (Col 1:16-20). An alternated rendering for by it (the cross) is "by him" (Christ).

Your question is a bit confusing. We are to ignore what is written in Colossians?

Jesus' death ended the old covenant, even as a marriage covenant ends upon the death of either party. Paul explains this in Romans 7. Jesus was the God of the old covenant incarnate.

You cannot be held to the conditions of a covenant you were never a party to, and a covenant that ended. Christians are party to the new covenant, and it is not like the old (Heb 8:9).

Well Christ's death doesn't emphasise the keeping of the law it emphasises his fulfilling the law.

Why don't you ask King Constantine he was the one that created that law.