2:1 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.
2:2 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.
2:3 In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
2:4 I am saying this so that no one will deceive you with arguments that sound reasonable.
2:5 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.
2:6 So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in him,
2:7 being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.
2:8 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.
2:9 For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ,
2:10 and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.
2:11 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,
2:12 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.
2:13 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.
2:14 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.
2:15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.
2:16 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.
2:17 These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is Christ.
2:18 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.
2:19 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.
2:20 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:
2:22 All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up; they are human commands and doctrines.
2:23 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.
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