Connection with the Head

Colossians
 We can see in the second half of chapter 2 of Colossians that the people to whom Paul was writing had a somewhat Gnostic and very heretical view of Jesus.  They thought that they could commune with God through spiritual beings who came from Christ, and that they had to follow a very ascetic and rule-bound lifestyle.  Thankfully, Paul set them straight.  We can find our reality in Christ himself.  We'll see in the coming days in reading Colossians just how much we can rely on Christ, rather than some cheap man-made imitations.

Against the gnostics

As we make our way through Job, I thought it would be interesting to insert a map of the land of Uz, which is where Job lived.

This map is from bible.cc

1 John
Some brief comments on 1 John - it was written partially to combat against early gnostic teachings, such as that Jesus didn't have a mortal, fleshly body, which meant that anything his followers did in the flesh didn't really matter.  As we will see in 4:2, John doesn't agree with these ideas (This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God...)