1For I want you to know how greatly I am struggling for you, for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me in person. 2I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the riches of complete understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery — Christ. 3In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Christ versus the Colossian Heresy
4I am saying this so that no one will deceive you with arguments that sound reasonable. 5For I may be absent in body, but I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see how well ordered you are and the strength of your faith in Christ.
6So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him, 7being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.
8Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ. 9For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, 10and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority. 11You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, 12when you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses. 14He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. 15He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.
16Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. 17These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is Christ. 18Let no one condemn you by delighting in ascetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm. Such people are inflated by empty notions of their unspiritual mind. 19They don’t hold on to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with growth from God.
20If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: 21“Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”? 22All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up; they are human commands and doctrines. 23Although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self-made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self-indulgence.