Colossians 2

¹ I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me face to face,

² so that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, and have the full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ,

³ in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

⁴ I say this so that no one may deceive you with persuasive arguments.

⁵ For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I am glad to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

⁶ So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him,

⁷ rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

⁸ See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental forces of this world rather than on Christ.

⁹ For in Christ all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form,

¹⁰ and in him you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every ruler and authority.

¹¹ In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not done by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ,

¹² having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

¹³ When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,

¹⁴ He canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

¹⁵ And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

¹⁶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.

¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

¹⁸ Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.

¹⁹ They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

²⁰ Since you died with Christ to the elemental forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules:

²¹ "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"

²² These rules are all about things that perish with use; they are based on merely human commands and teachings.

²³ Such rules indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and harsh treatment of the body, but they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.