2:1 For I desire to have you know how greatly I struggle for you and for those at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh;

2:2 that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and gaining all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God,

2:3 in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.

2:4 Now I say this that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech.

2:5 For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in the spirit, rejoicing and seeing your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

2:6 As therefore you received Jesus the Messiah as a teacher, walk in his guidance,

2:7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, even as you were taught, abounding in it in thanksgiving.

2:8 Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elemental spirits of the world, and not after Christ.

2:9 For in him dwells the fullness of God’s revelation and guidance,

2:10 and through his teaching you are made complete in obedience to God, who is Lord over all principality and power.

2:11 You were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh,

2:12 having been purified in baptism, in which you were also raised through faith in the working of God, who raised the Messiah from the dead.

2:13 You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. God made you alive, having forgiven us all our trespasses,

2:14 wiping out the record of ordinances which was against us. He has taken it out of the way.

2:15 He disarmed the evil powers and exposed them openly, triumphing over them.

2:16 Let no one therefore judge you in eating or drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day,

2:17 which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s.

2:18 Let no one rob you of your prize by self-abasement and worshiping of the angels, dwelling in the things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,

2:19 and not holding firmly to the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and ligaments, grows with God’s growth.

2:20 If you died with Christ from the elemental spirits of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances,

2:21 “Don’t handle, nor taste, nor touch”

2:22 (all of which perish with use), according to the precepts and doctrines of men?

2:23 These things indeed appear like wisdom in self-imposed worship, humility, and severity to the body, but aren’t of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.