Colossians 2:18
Colossians 2:1818Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you with speculation about what he has seen. Such a person is puffed up without basis by his unspiritual mind.
Read as a warning against false humility and against giving to angels the worship that belongs to Jehovah alone. Because the Watchtower identifies Jesus with Michael the archangel, the verse is not connected to the letter's Christology — the angel-worship being condemned is understood as a separate pagan or mystical error.
This verse tells you what Colossians was written against, which is what makes chapter 1 land. The Colossian problem involved a form of worship of angels and a taking of stands on visions — a system in which Christ was one mediator among ranked spiritual powers rather than the Creator. That is the setting for Paul's answer in 1:15-20, and it explains why he writes at such length that in Christ all things were created, that he is before all things, and that in him all things hold together. Then note what the letter puts at its centre. : in him all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily. Paul's response to a Christ-among-the-powers theology is to say the whole of what God is dwells in him. Raise it as a historical observation rather than an accusation, because it is one: Paul wrote an entire letter against a Christology in which Christ is the highest of the created spiritual powers. That is worth reading Colossians for, straight through, in one sitting. Compare , .