For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and
for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to
face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in
love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding
and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are
hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in
order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For
though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing
to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.
Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,
rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as
you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty
deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental
spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the
whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in
him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you
were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting
off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having
been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with
him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him
from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him,
having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of
debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set
aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and
authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in
him.
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food
and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.
These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs
to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and
worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up
without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the
Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through
its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world,
why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to
regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring
to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human
precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom
in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the
body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the
flesh.
