What Does Colossians 2:20 Mean?
If you have died with the Anointed One from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, are you subject to decrees?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,THE KEY
Your death with the Anointed One makes submission to the world’s elemental order a return to a life the verse says you have already left.
THE MEANING
Your life is joined to the Anointed One in a death that releases you from the world’s basic ordering system. The verse asks why you submit to its decrees as though you still belonged to that order. The tension is between a life already released from one authority and a posture that still submits to it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that submitting to the world’s decrees is still necessary to belong to a life joined to the Anointed One.
THE ROOT
στοιχείων
stoicheiōn
GROWS FROM
στοιχ-
stoich-
An element or unit in an ordered series; by extension, a first principle.
“Rudiments” carries the sense of the world’s elements or first principles. This word family also evokes things arranged in a row and walking in line, so the verse asks why someone released from the world’s order would let that order set the line again.
ALSO GROWS
stoicheō: Walk in line; keep step.
στοιχέω
This branch makes the image of following an order visible alongside the world’s “elements.”
stoicheion: An element or first principle.
στοιχεῖον
The plural form in this verse points to the basic constituents or principles of the world’s order.
ἀπεθάνετε
apethanete
GROWS FROM
θνῄσκω
thnēskō
To die.
“have died” in this verse is apethanete. The verb says that death has already happened; “with Christ” joins that death to the Anointed One. This completed break makes “living in the world” an identity the verse puts under pressure.
ALSO GROWS
apothnēskō: To die.
ἀποθνῄσκω
This is the verb’s dictionary form, carrying the completed death named in the verse.
thanatos: Death.
θάνατος
The related noun keeps the focus on death as the break from the former order, rather than a new rule to perform.
δογματίζεσθε
dogmatizesthe
GROWS FROM
δογματ-
dogmat-
A decree or formally stated rule.
“subject to decrees” in this verse is dogmatizesthe. The verb pictures being regulated by decrees. Its word family sharpens the contrast: the verse speaks of death from the world’s elements, yet submission to rules that still claim authority over the living.
ALSO GROWS
dogma: A decree or formal ordinance.
δόγμα
This noun names the kind of ruling that the verb describes someone submitting to.
dogmatizō: Subject to decrees; regulate by rules.
δογματίζω
This is the verb’s dictionary form and brings the force of “are ye subject” into view.
THE PATTERN
Death with the Anointed One releases a life from the former order’s claim to govern it.
Now if we died with the Anointed One, we trust that we shall also live with him.But now, after you have known God, or rather have been known by God, how do you turn back again to the weak and emptied elements, to which you desire to serve again?Since then the children share in common flesh and blood, he likewise shared in those same things with them, so that through death he might make idle the one who held the strength of death, the Slanderer. And loosen those who through fear of death were held in slavery throughout all their living.THE THREAD
Watch lest anyone lead you off as spoil through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the handing down of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to the Anointed One.The same Greek word rendered “rudiments” in 2:20 appears here, where the world’s elements stand against life shaped after the Anointed One. Read together, the verses reveal why submission is startling: it returns to the very order this passage says you have left.
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