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. |
2:2 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. |
2:3 In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. |
2:4 I say this so that no one will mislead you with nice-sounding rhetoric. |
2:5 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. |
2:6 So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live in him. |
2:7 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. |
2:8 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. |
2:9 For in him the whole fullness of God lives in bodily form. |
2:10 And you have been brought to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. |
2:11 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. |
2:12 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. |
2:13 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, |
2:14 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. |
2:15 And when he had disarmed the rulers and the authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross. |
2:16 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. |
2:17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality belongs to Christ. |
2:18 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. |
2:19 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. |
2:20 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? |
2:21 "Don't handle this! Don't taste or touch that!" |
2:22 All of these things will be destroyed through use because they are based on human commands and teachings. |
2:23 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. |