Many believers are chasing things that bring bondage, not freedom. Those activities can sound good, but if they are included in our salvation, we become enslaved to their demands. 

After Paul told the Colossians that living by the rules of the law cannot save a person, he issued a warning, “I am telling you this so no one will deceive you with well-crafted arguments” (Colossians 2:4). Many live today as if adherence to a personal law can save them. They follow well-crafted religious arguments motivated by deception, not truth.

 Paul issued another warning in the same chapter, “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ” (vs. 8). Anything we add to our salvation apart from Christ is, as Paul said, religious nonsense. It is a nonsense that resembles idol worship where we create something in the image of our spiritual dysfunction and worship its imagined power. Nothing we do, even the most strident forms of obedience, can save us.

“For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ himself is that reality” (vs. 17). In all of Paul’s writing, Jesus was everything. Nothing could be added to Him. Only the sacrifice of Jesus could satisfy the demands of God. Our efforts to live righteously are only the evidence of our salvation, not its source.

Whenever we worship the false god of human effort, we will become legalists of our delusion and require others to live within those limitations, “These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline. But they provide no help in conquering a person’s evil desires” (vs. 23).

If we rely on anything, like strict religious devotion, piety, self-denial, or bodily discipline, to save us, we are the most deceived of all people. What Christ did is the only source for a life of faith. When the Lord is everything to us, we won’t chase the shadows of man-made religion. We will live as free people in His provision able to step out of the shadows of delusion into the light of His presence. That is our only place of true freedom.