The latest tumbleweed blowing across the landscape of the American church is the enneagram. What shocked me is how a church close to my heart and prayers for well over a decade embraced it. This church loves Jesus and stands upon the Bible as God’s word. They’re a great church, full of love and faith in action. The enneagram first self-diagnoses one’s personality strengths and weaknesses, categorized from one to nine, and then provides insight into how those traits mesh or clash with other categories. When a pastor from this church taught the enneagram as a “tool” for spiritual formation last fall, I quickly dismissed it as not offering any true help. Shortly thereafter, an Alisa Childers podcast educated me about the enneagram’s dark origins in the occult a century ago. That’s when casual concern surged to alarm. At first I was tempted to jump ship, but the Lord reminded me that in their time of need I should intercede for them. But a question lingered in my mind. How can a rock solid church fall for something like this?
A vibrant yet discouraged band of Jesus followers in what is today western Turkey answered this conundrum. These believers in Colossae were in extraordinary need of encouragement. Imprisoned in Rome, the aged apostle Paul wrestled in prayer like a gladiator in the Coliseum “that their hearts may be encouraged” (Col 2:1-2). Tychicus, Paul’s hand-picked ministry gift, delivered this letter across the treacherous journey, “for this very purpose… that he may encourage your hearts” (4:8). As one tracks with Paul’s divine train of logic, this discouragement is what opened the door to a variety of false teachers.
The question naturally follows—what were they discouraged about? Paul’s closing argument against these false teachings exposes their misleading appeal: “they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (2:23). These Colossian believers wanted to make their flesh go away. Behavior modification. They so wanted to please their Lord in wholehearted obedience and holy living, but their flesh kept getting in the way! Paul acknowledged their struggle: “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth” (3:8). Their desire for holy living was noble, but their misguided means to that end seized the apostle with alarm. These alternative messages tripped them up in a really bad way. My book Colossal Christ: The Preeminence and All-Sufficiency of Jesus in the Christian Life develops all this in far greater detail (shameless plug!).
It dawned on me gradually that this enneagram-embracing church is a modern day Colossian church. They, too, are a wonderful faith community enamored with Jesus Christ but frustrated about spiritual growth. Paul didn’t use the term “tool for spiritual formation” in his letter, but he could have. These “tools” the false teachers were peddling didn’t replace Jesus. They were just spiritual vitamin supplements to help with behavioral deficiencies.
Now, I’m not knocking every psychological tool that helps us to understand ourselves and people. I’ve personally benefited from the book 5 Voices: How to Communicate Effectively with Everyone You Lead in identifying myself as a “creative” and my wife as a “guardian” and how these strengths can be at odds with each other. But it’s not a tool having power to transform me into the image of Jesus from glory to glory. Only the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ can do that. Trusting in observations about human personality to produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives is a grave error. It’s just another form of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that, like the Law, lacks the power to transform.
The real problem, though, is not the enneagram or the false teachers. Those were just symptoms of a much deeper issue. Paul’s pen penetrated the heart of the problem like an arrow shot into the bull’s-eye. His solution? Present Jesus as He really is in all His awe-inspiring, universe-creating preeminence over everyone and everything. Paul magnifies the preeminence of Jesus to lofty heights, stretching our imaginations into its heavenly realities that the eye of faith alone can see. Chapters 1 and 2 are filled with snapshots of the supremacy of who Jesus is and what He has done. Chapters 3 and 4 show how this preeminence of Jesus works itself out practically in our daily living. The hinge verse that transitions from theology to practical day-to-day living is this:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Colossians 3:1-2 ESV
“Things” is not in the original Greek. It simply reads “seek the above.” Usually translating Greek constructs like this into English as “things” makes sense. Here, however, I believe it does damage Paul’s intent. I’ve heard many quote “seek the things that are above, where Christ is” as a generic appeal to heavenly mindedness. Paul, however, had a more specific focus. All through chapters 1 and 2 two kinds of teaching have been sharply contrasted, both in origin and in results. The gospel, the heavenly message, “the above,” is diametrically opposed to the earthly message, “the below,” of the false teachers. The below is “according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world” (2:8), “a shadow of the things to come” (2:17), “sensuous” (2:18), and “elemental spirits of the world” (2:20). The gospel that originated from above was the source of all their beautiful, spiritual growth: “Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing” (1:5-6). Gospel, or good news, simply means this: “From morning till evening he [Paul] expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets” (Acts 28:23). The gospel is shorthand for the revealing of Jesus as taught from the Scriptures.
So up to this point Paul’s reasoning naturally leads us to understand “above” as the gospel. But as we reach the summit of Paul’s argument to “seek the above,” instead of “above” meaning gospel, “Christ…seated at the right hand of God” assumes the role of chief interpreter to mean heaven. This perception is further affirmed by the translators’ insertion of the word “things” in “the things that are above,” which diverts our thoughts from the gospel because we don’t think about the gospel as “things.” The indefiniteness of “things” shifts the weight of interpretation to the reader rather than from the fine-tuned crafting of the author. Just read three or more different commentators on Colossians 3:1 and you’ll see what I mean.
So catch this. “Seek the above”—instead of being a clear-cut centering in the good news of Jesus revealed from the Law and Prophets—morphs into ambiguous, positive thinking about heavenly things (whatever that is). So instead of making a beeline for the gospel for an unveiling of the Lord Jesus Christ, our minds are left to wander with vague thoughts about heavenly things, suggestive of something other than (though certainly related to) Jesus Himself. (We don’t think of Jesus as things either.) Sadly, we miss Paul’s point and have unwittingly been shifted from the hope of the gospel that he warned us about (1:23). The gospel starring our preeminent Lord Jesus is “the above” we’re to seek, not blurry “things that are above” for our imaginations to wander (and wonder) about. The throne imagery—”Christ…seated at the right hand of God”—is not the main point. It’s a supporting actor to rocket our minds skyward to contemplate just how powerfully alive and active Jesus our king is in the gospel.
Biblical authors employing visual imagery to communicate spiritual truth is not unusual. Consider the book of Revelation with its fantastic, imaginative, symbolic imagery. While Paul’s letter doesn’t strain our imaginations quite like John’s does, it’s the same underlying principle. In reading Revelation this catch phrase helps me out: things are not as they appear but as they are. Jesus doesn’t actually look like a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. But that’s what He is. Seven is a symbol for completeness, horns for power, and eyes for understanding. So this bizarre image conveys what Jesus is: all-powerful and all-knowing. These fantastic mental images stick in our brains for our faith to dwell upon. In Ephesians, Paul wrote how God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 1:6). When we look at Christians assembled in chairs, they don’t look like they’re in seated up in heavenly places. But they are. That’s the unseen spiritual reality that we’re to take by faith. The “up” language of “heavenly places” or “the above” communicates a spiritual reality of God in heaven that’s at work “down here” on earth. It’s the way things are, not how they appear. So Christ seated at the right hand of God is equally true visibly in heaven and invisibly in the word of God proclaimed on earth. Jesus, who created all invisible thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities, Colossians 1:16 asserts, occupies the preeminent invisible throne—in His exalted word!
Therefore, since you have been raised with Christ, seek the above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Author’s translation
The way Paul co-mingled Jesus seated at God’s right hand with “the above” of the gospel still blows my mind! I admit it’s been tough to get my mind wrapped around it, but I know it’s true. My inadequate perception of the gospel has been shaken up. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:16). Right. But Paul’s masterful weaving together of Jesus’ preeminence with the gospel has startled me with fresh insights of just how awesome and wonderful is this gospel as the power of God. All through Colossians Paul has been promoting a radical mindset of the transcendence of Jesus above everything—in the universe, in the church, in wisdom, everywhere really. So it should come as no surprise that Paul should wow us with Jesus’ preeminence in the gospel, too. He’s not just preeminent on a throne somewhere up there but near us in the gospel down here! “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him…just as you were taught” (2:6,7). It was through the ordinary means of the teaching of words that opened up receiving the extraordinary Lord Jesus Christ! At that epic moment the Father “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (1:13). That’s throne language! To regard Christ seated at God’s right hand is to envision kingly authority, dominion, and power. By seeking the above, the gospel, we encounter Jesus Christ Himself in all power and authority! His throne has wheels; it’s not just stationary in heaven. His throne is always on the move, on the go, as His people proclaim those gospel words. Heaven’s rule through Christ comes through the proclamation of this Good News by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.
Paul, by superimposing Christ on His throne onto “the above” of the gospel, drove home to this discouraged band of brothers in Colossae why their hope should be in the gospel alone. That’s where they’d first encountered Jesus and all His authority. Seek that because that’s where they’d again experience Him. I heard recently of Jews parading the Torah around their synagogue, reverently kissing the scroll. When asked why they did that, they replied, “The Word of God is the closest you can get to God.” I have this mental metaphor of the word of God as a forest of trees from which Jesus emerges. It is as we draw near to the written word that Jesus, the living Word, manifests Himself to us. “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn 14:21).
In an unclouded expectation of Jesus serving as king found in the gospel teaching, these do-nothing messages of false teachers lose all their luster. That’s why the enneagram can’t hold a candle to the supernova brilliance of the gospel we first received. Can wisdom with earthly, unspiritual, and demonic origins, even though it be baptized with Christian concepts, introduce us to the Creator-King Jesus Christ like the gospel can?
Glory Unveiled: Discovering Jesus 