Colossians 2
2
1I want you to know how hard I work for you, for the people of Laodicea, and for people I have never met. 2Because they are united in love, I work so that they may be encouraged by all the riches that come from a complete understanding of Christ. He is the mystery of God. 3God has hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Christ. 4I say this so that no one will mislead you with arguments that merely sound good. 5Although I’m absent from you physically, I’m with you in spirit. I’m happy to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.
6You received Christ Jesus the Lord, so continue to live as Christ’s people. 7Sink your roots in him and build on him. Be strengthened by the faith that you were taught, and overflow with thanksgiving.
Beware of Requirements Invented by Humans
8Be careful not to let anyone rob you ⌞of this faith⌟ through a shallow and misleading philosophy. Such a person follows human traditions and the world’s way of doing things rather than following Christ.
9All of God lives in Christ’s body, 10and God has made you complete in Christ. Christ is in charge of every ruler and authority. 11In him you were also circumcised. It was not a circumcision performed by human hands. But it was a removal of the corrupt nature in the circumcision performed by Christ. 12This happened when you were placed in the tomb with Christ through baptism. In baptism you were also brought back to life with Christ through faith in the power of God,#2:12 Or “through faith produced by God.” who brought him back to life.
13You were once dead because of your failures and your uncircumcised corrupt nature. But God made you alive with Christ when he forgave all our failures. 14He did this by erasing the charges that were brought against us by the written laws God had established. He took the charges away by nailing them to the cross. 15He stripped the rulers and authorities ⌞of their power⌟ and made a public spectacle of them as he celebrated his victory in Christ.
16Therefore, let no one judge you because of what you eat or drink or about the observance of annual holy days, New Moon Festivals, or weekly days of rest—holy days. 17These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body ⌞that casts the shadow⌟ belongs to Christ.
18Let no one who delights in ⌞false⌟ humility and the worship of angels tell you that you don’t deserve a prize. Such a person, whose sinful mind fills him with arrogance, gives endless details of the visions he has seen. 19He doesn’t hold on to ⌞Christ,⌟ the head. Christ makes the whole body grow as God wants it to, through support and unity given by the joints and ligaments.
20If you have died with Christ to the world’s way of doing things, why do you let others tell you how to live? It’s as though you were still under the world’s influence. 21People will tell you, “Don’t handle this! Don’t taste or touch that!” 22All of these things deal with objects that are only used up anyway. 23These things look like wisdom with their self-imposed worship, ⌞false⌟ humility, and harsh treatment of the body. But they have no value for holding back the constant desires of your corrupt nature.
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GOD'S WORD® Translation ©1995, 2003, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2020 by God's Word to the Nations Mission Society. All rights reserved.
Colossians 2
2
1 FOR I want you to know how great is my solicitude for you [how severe an inward struggle I am engaged in for you] and for those [believers] at Laodicea, and for all who [like yourselves] have never seen my face and known me personally.
2 [For my concern is] that their hearts may be braced (comforted, cheered, and encouraged) as they are knit together in love, that they may come to have all the abounding wealth and blessings of assured conviction of understanding, and that they may become progressively more intimately acquainted with and may know more definitely and accurately and thoroughly that mystic secret of God, [which is] Christ (the Anointed One).
3 In Him all the treasures of [divine] wisdom (comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God) and [all the riches of spiritual] knowledge and enlightenment are stored up and lie hidden.
4 I say this in order that no one may mislead and delude you by plausible and persuasive and attractive arguments and beguiling speech.
5 For though I am away from you in body, yet I am with you in spirit, delighted at the sight of your [standing shoulder to shoulder in such] orderly array and the firmness and the solid front and steadfastness of your faith in Christ [that leaning of the entire human personality on Him in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness].
6 As you have therefore received Christ, [even] Jesus the Lord, [so] walk (regulate your lives and conduct yourselves) in union with and conformity to Him.
7 Have the roots [of your being] firmly and deeply planted [in Him, fixed and founded in Him], being continually built up in Him, becoming increasingly more confirmed and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and abounding and overflowing in it with thanksgiving.
8 See to it that no one carries you off as spoil or makes you yourselves captive by his so-called philosophy and intellectualism and vain deceit (idle fancies and plain nonsense), following human tradition (men's ideas of the material rather than the spiritual world), just crude notions following the rudimentary and elemental teachings of the universe and disregarding [the teachings of] Christ (the Messiah).
9 For in Him the whole fullness of Deity (the Godhead) continues to dwell in bodily form [giving complete expression of the divine nature].
10 And you are in Him, made full and having come to fullness of life [in Christ you too are filled with the Godhead–Father, Son and Holy Spirit–and reach full spiritual stature]. And He is the Head of all rule and authority [of every angelic principality and power].
11 In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, but in a [spiritual] circumcision [performed by] Christ by stripping off the body of the flesh (the whole corrupt, carnal nature with its passions and lusts).
12 [Thus you were circumcised when] you were buried with Him in [your] baptism, in which you were also raised with Him [to a new life] through [your] faith in the working of God [as displayed] when He raised Him up from the dead.
13 And you who were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh (your sensuality, your sinful carnal nature), [God] brought to life together with [Christ], having [freely] forgiven us all our transgressions,
14 Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the note (bond) with its legal decrees and demands which was in force and stood against us (hostile to us). This [note with its regulations, decrees, and demands] He set aside and cleared completely out of our way by nailing it to [His] cross.
15 [God] disarmed the principalities and powers that were ranged against us and made a bold display and public example of them, in triumphing over them in Him and in it [the cross].
16 Therefore let no one sit in judgment on you in matters of food and drink, or with regard to a feast day or a New Moon or a Sabbath.
17 Such [things] are only the shadow of things that are to come, and they have only a symbolic value. But the reality (the substance, the solid fact of what is foreshadowed, the body of it) belongs to Christ.
18 Let no one defraud you by acting as an umpire and declaring you unworthy and disqualifying you for the prize, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, taking his stand on visions [he claims] he has seen, vainly puffed up by his sensuous notions and inflated by his unspiritual thoughts and fleshly conceit,
19 And not holding fast to the Head, from Whom the entire body, supplied and knit together by means of its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
20 If then you have died with Christ to material ways of looking at things and have escaped from the world's crude and elemental notions and teachings of externalism, why do you live as if you still belong to the world? [Why do you submit to rules and regulations?–such as]
21 Do not handle [this], Do not taste [that], Do not even touch [them],
22 Referring to things all of which perish with being used. To do this is to follow human precepts and doctrines. [Isa. 29:13.]
23 Such [practices] have indeed the outward appearance [that popularly passes] for wisdom, in promoting self-imposed rigor of devotion and delight in self-humiliation and severity of discipline of the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh (the lower nature). [Instead, they do not honor God but serve only to indulge the flesh.]
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