Colossians 2:18

b. Caution against angel-worship, Colossians 2:18-19 .

18. Beguile The marginal judge against you, is more accurate. The allusion is to the judge who, presiding at the games, fraudulently deprives him of the prize to whom it should be awarded. The false teacher would deprive them of their rightful reward of the incorruptible crown by misleading them in the way of attaining it. His character is described in four particulars. 1. He wills, or delights in, a pretended humility which held God to be so unapproachable and incomprehensible that the mediation of inferior spiritual beings was necessary. Worshipping of angels would readily fall in with this theory. Notwithstanding the apostle’s labour and caution, this evil took so deep root in Phrygia and Pisidia, that three centuries later the Council of Laodicea forbade the practice by a special decree, condemning it as idolatry and an abandonment of Christ. 2. He stands upon what he has seen, and pretends to a profound knowledge of the heavenly world by wonderful visions. Most recent critics omit the word not. 3. Believing that he has fathomed the mysteries of the spiritual world, he is, though pretending to humility, really but without reason inflated by his own spiritualized sensualism.