2.9 KiB
Chapter 2
- For I want you to know how greatly I am struggling for you, for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me in person.
- I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the riches of complete understanding and have the knowledge of God's mystery--Christ.
- In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Christ versus the Colossian Heresy
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I am saying this so that no one will deceive you with arguments that sound reasonable.
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For I may be absent in body, but I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see how well ordered you are and the strength of your faith in Christ.
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So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him,
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being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.
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Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ.
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For the entire fullness of God's nature dwells bodily in Christ,
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and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.
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You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ,
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when you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
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And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses.
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He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.
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He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.
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Therefore, don't let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day.
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These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is Christ.
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Let no one condemn you by delighting in ascetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm. Such people are inflated by empty notions of their unspiritual mind.
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They don't hold on to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with growth from God.
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If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations:
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"Don't handle, don't taste, don't touch"?
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All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up; they are human commands and doctrines.
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Although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self-made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self-indulgence.