“Grab your coat and get your hat. Leave your worries on the doorstep. Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.” That’s a line from an old, old song, “The Sunny Side of the Street” by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. It’s a song I love to sing, one line in particular: “I used to walk in the shade, with those blues on parade. But I’m not afraid, this rover crossed over!”
Colossians 2:16-23 is Paul’s version of “The Sunny Side of the Street.” “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality [SONshine], however, is found in Christ.”
At the time Paul wrote this, there was a group of false teachers constantly dogging his footsteps and trying to undermine the freedom he preached in Christ. They wanted to draw Christians back into the shadows (they still do).
Paul reminds his readers that to have a shadow, (altars, offerings, festivals, priesthood, etc.), you must have something of substance, and that substance [SONshine] is Christ. Why return to the shadows when you can have the true substance.
In this passage Paul describes Christ Jesus (the true substance) as the “Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.”
We are the body. Christ is the head. We can live without various parts of our body. I’ve had a few surgeries in my lifetime and I’m living proof you can live with some pieces gone. But get detached from the Head, and you’re dead. Paul just called these false teachers with their “appearance of wisdom” dead, and warned his readers if they got caught up in these “human commands and teachings” they’d be dead also.
There’s one other line in that old song. “Can you hear that pitter-pat? And that happy tune is your step. Life can be complete, on the sunny side of the street!”
SONshine (Jesus) or shadows, that’s the choice.
