Colossians 2

¹For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you and [for] those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me face to face,

²that they may be encouraged in heart, knit together in love, and filled with [the] full riches of complete understanding, so that they may know the mystery of God, [namely] Christ,

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

⁴I say this so that no one will deceive you by smooth rhetoric.

⁵For although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, [and] I delight to see your orderly condition and firm faith in Christ.

⁶Therefore, just as you have received Christ Jesus [as] Lord, continue to walk in Him,

⁷rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith as you were taught, [and] overflowing with thankfulness.

⁸See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, which are based on human tradition [and] the spiritual forces of the world rather than on Christ.

⁹For in [Christ] all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form.

¹⁰And you have been made complete in [Christ], who is the head over every ruler and authority.

¹¹In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of [your] sinful nature, with the circumcision [performed] by Christ [and] not by human hands.

¹²And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with [Him] through [your] faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.

¹³[When] you were dead in [your] trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with [Christ]. He forgave us all [our] trespasses,

¹⁴having canceled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, 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].

¹⁶Therefore {let} no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath.

¹⁷These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body [ that casts it ] belongs to Christ.

¹⁸[Do not let anyone] who delights in [false] humility and [the] worship of angels disqualify you with speculation about what he has seen. [Such a person] is puffed up without basis by his unspiritual mind.

¹⁹He has lost connection to the head, from whom the whole body, supported and knit together by [its] joints and ligaments, grows as God causes it to grow.

²⁰If you have died with Christ to the spiritual forces of the world, why, as though you still belonged to [the] world, do you submit to [its] regulations:

²¹“{Do} not handle, {do} not taste, {do} not touch!”?

²²[These] will all perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings.

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