1 For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen my face in the flesh,
2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all the riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,
3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
4 And I say this so that no one may delude you with plausible speech.
5 For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing and seeing your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.
6 As you therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,
7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
8 See that no one carries you off as spoil through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ.
9 For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,
10 and you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and authority;
11 in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made by hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,
12 having been 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.
13 And when you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having freely forgiven you all your trespasses;
14 having blotted out the handwritten bond of decrees that was against us, which was hostile to us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross.
15 Having disarmed the principalities and authorities, he made a public show of them, triumphing over them in it.
16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a feast or a new moon or sabbaths,
17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on lowliness and the worship of angels, intruding into things he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the growth that is from God.
20 If then you died with Christ to the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you submit to decrees:
21 "Do not handle, nor taste, nor even touch"
22 (which all go to ruin in the using), according to the commandments and teachings of men?
23 These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-chosen worship and lowliness and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.