{"id":473,"date":"2010-06-07T06:57:52","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T10:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=473"},"modified":"2013-06-26T11:26:51","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T15:26:51","slug":"all-boundaries-obliterated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"All Boundaries Obliterated!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong><\/p>\n

“\u2026 a renewal <\/em>in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman \u2026\u201d<\/strong><\/span> (Colossians 3:11a)<\/p>\n

We have been exhorted, as those graced by God through Christ, to put on \u201cthe new self\u201d (v.10).\u00a0 This \u201cnew self\u201d is at various turns pictures the state of each one of us individually and at other times all of us collectively \u201cin Christ.\u201d\u00a0 In what follows it is clear that Paul now has the corporate nature of \u201cthe new self\u201d in view more than that individual.<\/p>\n

Paul now designates different racial, religious, cultural and social distinctions that, while found on earth among the unredeemed, are obliterated and cease to exist in \u201cthe new self\u201d re-created by Christ.\u00a0 He first gives two contrasting pairs, then names two groups individually, and then closes with another contrasting pair.\u00a0 First is the pair \u201cGreek and Jew.\u201d<\/span> Eleven of the thirteen times Paul uses the noun \u201cGreek\u201d he combines it, as he does here, with the word \u201cJew.\u201d\u00a0 It refers not simply to people of Greek culture or language, but more broadly to pagan or heathen peoples.[1]<\/a> This is in distinction from the \u201cJew\u201d as determined by birth, race or religion.[2]<\/a> The next pair is \u201ccircumcised and uncircumcised,\u201d<\/span> which is the same distinction simply considered now by that characteristic mark (or its absence) which set the Jew apart from the Gentile.\u00a0 Paul may have repeated himself in this way for sake of emphasis simply because false teachers in Colossae seemed to have had a significant Jewish vein to their teaching and may have been pushing physical circumcision as a necessity for saving faith.\u00a0 Then there is \u201cbarbarian.\u201d<\/span> The word referred to those who spoke in \u201cstammering, stuttering, uttering unintelligible sounds<\/em>\u201d and were thus considered of \u201cstrange speech or foreign language (i.e. non-Greek in language and culture in the NT).\u201d[3]<\/a> The word itself had an \u201conomatopoetic repetition\u201d to its intonation\u2014with the sound bar-bar<\/em>.[4]<\/a> Then comes \u201cScythian.\u201d<\/span> The Scythians were inhabitants of what is today southern Russia.\u00a0 \u201cBy the more civilized nations of antiquity the Scythians were regarded as the wildest of all barbarians.\u201d[5]<\/a> They were \u201cthe barbarian or savage \u2018par excellence\u2019.\u201d[6]<\/a> Finally there is the pair \u201cslave\u201d<\/span> and \u201cfreeman,\u201d<\/span> which mark out both sides of the social scale of bondage to servitude on the one hand and self-directed autonomy on the other.<\/p>\n

The false teachers in Colossae were preaching a \u201cgospel\u201d that divides \u2013 some are \u201cin\u201d and others are \u201cout.\u201d\u00a0 Some are \u201cin the know\u201d and others are not.\u00a0 The Gospel of Jesus Christ unites and binds.\u00a0 It overcomes social, racial, religious and cultural distinctions to make all believers stand on the level ground of grace before God \u201cin Christ.\u201d\u00a0 The vertical grace of God to man is given without regard to such distinctions.\u00a0 That grace then goes horizontal between the recipients of such grace and those same distinctions fade away in the fellowship of those who make up the \u201cnew self.\u201d<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> BAGD, 252.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 379.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Friberg, 87.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Robertson, 4:503.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Thayer, 580.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> BAGD, 758.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“\u2026 a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman \u2026\u201d (Colossians 3:11a) We have been exhorted, as those graced by God through Christ, to put on \u201cthe new self\u201d (v.10).\u00a0 This \u201cnew self\u201d is at various turns pictures the state of each one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colossians","post-preview"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgYGxX-7D","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1603,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/1603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}