Colossians
Chapter 2
Overview
Paul writes to believers in Colossae and nearby Laodicea, many of whom have never met him in person. He wants them to know why he struggles so intensely for them: persuasive teachers are offering spiritual ideas, strict rules, and impressive experiences that may sound wise but pull attention away from Jesus. The chapter moves from encouragement and confidence in the Messiah to warnings about ritual calendars, angel worship, visions, and harsh treatment of the body. Paul’s guiding image is simple: a shadow may point toward reality, but it should never replace the solid reality itself.
1I want you to know how intensely I struggle for you, for those in Laodicea, and for everyone who has never met me in person.
2I struggle so that all of you may be encouraged and united in love. Then you may possess all the wealth of complete confidence that understanding brings, and truly know God’s mystery—the Messiah.
3Hidden in the Messiah are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
4I am telling you this so that no one deceives you with convincing-sounding arguments.
5Although I am physically absent, I am with you in spirit. I am delighted to see how well ordered you are and how firmly you trust in the Messiah.
6Therefore, just as you received Jesus the Messiah as Lord, continue to live in union with him.
7Let your roots grow deep in him, and let your lives be built up on him. Become stronger in your trust, just as you were taught, and overflow with gratitude.
8Be careful that no one takes you captive through an empty and deceptive philosophy based on human tradition and the elemental forces and principles of this world, rather than on the Messiah.
9For the entire fullness of God’s nature lives in him in bodily form.
10In union with him, you too have been made complete. He is supreme over every spiritual ruler and authority.
11In union with him, you also underwent a circumcision not performed by human hands. It was the Messiah’s kind of circumcision: the stripping away of the body controlled by self-centered human desires.
12When you were baptized, you were buried with him. In baptism you were also raised with him because you trusted in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.
13Though you were spiritually dead in your wrongdoings and physically uncircumcised, God made you alive together with the Messiah. He forgave us all our wrongdoings.
14He erased the written record of debt against us, along with its binding requirements. He removed it by nailing it to the cross.
15He stripped the spiritual rulers and authorities of their power, exposed them publicly, and led them as defeated captives in triumph through the cross.
16Therefore, do not let anyone judge you over what you eat or drink, or over your observance of an annual religious festival, a monthly new-moon celebration, or Sabbath days.
17These things are a shadow of what is to come, but the reality belongs to the Messiah.
18Do not let anyone cheat you of your prize by insisting on self-humiliation and the worship of angels. Such people dwell on what they have seen, while their merely human way of thinking puffs them up with empty pride.
19They do not hold firmly to the head, who is the Messiah. From the head, the whole body is supplied and held together by its joints and ligaments, and it grows with the growth God gives.
20If you died with the Messiah and were freed from the elemental forces and principles of this world, why do you submit to its rules as though you still belonged to it?
21Those rules say, “Do not handle that! Do not taste that! Do not even touch that!”
22All those things disappear as they are used. Such rules come from human commands and teachings.
23These rules certainly have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed religion, humility, and harsh treatment of the body. But they have no value in controlling self-centered human desires.