Colossenses 2

¹ For I want you to know how much I struggle for you, for those in Laodicea, and for all who have never seen me face to face.

² Because they are united in love, I pray that their hearts may be encouraged by all the riches that come from a complete understanding of the full knowledge of Christ, who is the secret of God.

³ In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

⁴ I say this so that no one will mislead you with nice-sounding rhetoric.

⁵ For although I am absent in body, I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see how stable you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.

⁶ So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live in him.

⁷ For you have been rooted in him and are being built up and strengthened in the faith, just as you were taught, while you overflow with thanksgiving.

⁸ See to it that no one enslaves you through philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

⁹ For in him the whole fullness of God lives in bodily form.

¹⁰ And you have been brought to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.

¹¹ In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision performed without human hands by stripping off the corrupt nature in the circumcision performed by Christ.

¹² When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

¹³ Even when you were dead because of your offenses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with him when he forgave us all of our offenses,

¹⁴ having erased the charges that were brought against us with their decrees that were hostile to us. He took those charges away when he nailed them to the cross.

¹⁵ And when he had disarmed the rulers and the authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross.

¹⁶ Therefore, let no one judge you in matters of food and drink or with respect to a festival, a new moon, or a Sabbath day.

¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality belongs to Christ.

¹⁸ Let no one who delights in humility and the worship of angels cheat you out of the prize by boasting about what he has seen. Such a person is puffed up without cause by his carnal mind.

¹⁹ He does not hold on to the head, from whom the whole body, which is nourished and held together by its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that comes from God.

²⁰ If you have died with Christ to the basic principles of the world, why are you submitting to its decrees as though you still lived in the world?

²¹ “Don't handle this! Don't taste or touch that!”

²² All of these things will be destroyed through use because they are based on human commands and teachings.

²³ These things have the appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion, humility, and harsh treatment of the body, but they have no value against self-indulgence.