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Our apostle having warned the Colossians against the errors of the Judaizing teachers, comes next to warn them against the practice of the Paganizing Christians, who were directd by their guides to worship the angels, covering their error with a plausible shew of humility, pretending it was presumptuous to go to God immediately, without the mediation of those excellent creatures; but this the apostle tells them was a bold intruding into things they knew nothing of, God having neither revealed nor taught any such thing; and argued, that they were vainly puffed up with the foolish imaginations of their own fleshly minds.
Next he shews, that these angel-worshippers do not acknowledge Christ for the Head of the church, while they apply themselves to angels as mediators; whereas he alone discharges the office of the Head, completely giving life and growth to his whole church, and to every member therof; which members being furnished with spiritual life from him, and knit to him, and one another by the joints and bands of charity and other graces, they grow and increase with such an increase of holiness as is from God, and tends to his glory.
Note here, 1. That the nature of man is prone, extremely prone, to idolatry and false worship.
2. That it is a really idolatry to worship an angel, as it is to worship a worm; for divine worship is only due to a divine person.
Note, 3. That it is a renouncing of Christ, to make use of angels, or any other mediator, besides Christ, unto the Father: not holding the head. It was a notion that the minds of mankind, that God was not to be immediately approached to by sinful men; but that their prayers were to be presented by certain mediators and intercessors, who were to procure for them the favour of God, and the acceptance of their prayers.
Hence they worshipped angels, and the souls departed of their heroes, whom they canonized, and translated into the number of their inferior gods, by whom they addressed their supplications to their superior gods. With this notion Almighty God was pleased to comply so far, as under the Jewish institution to appoint Moses a mediator betwixt him and them; and now under the Christian dispensation to appoint Jesus Christ to be the only Mediator betwixt God and man.
Note, 4. That it is usual for idolaters, and false worshippers, to cover themselves sith a more than ordinary show of humility: Let none beguile you in a voluntary humility.
True it is, that all duties of worship ought to be voluntary, as voluntary is opposed to constrained; but they must not be voluntary, as voluntary is opposed ot instituted or appointed; God doth no more approve of that worship we give him according to our will, than he doth approve of our neglect of that which is according to his own will. But man, vain man, likes any way of worshipping God which is of his own framing, much better than that which is of God's own appointing.