Colossians 2 - Amplified Bible(AMP)

You Are Built Up in Christ

1For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have never seen me face to face.

2[For my hope is] that their hearts may be encouraged as they are knit together in love, so that they may have all the riches that come from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of the mystery of God, that is, Christ,

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

4I say this so that no one will deceive you with persuasive arguments.

5For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, delighted to see your good discipline and to see the stability of your faith in Christ.

6Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him,

7having been deeply rooted and now being continually built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing in it with gratitude.

8See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of mere men, following the elementary principles of this world, rather than following Christ.

9For in Him all the fullness of Deity (the Godhead) dwells in bodily form.

10And in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority.

11In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, but by the circumcision of Christ in the stripping off of the body of the flesh,

12having been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through faith in the working of God, when He raised Christ from the dead.

13When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh (worldliness, manner of life), God made you alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our sins,

14having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of legal demands against us and which were hostile to us. And this certificate He has set aside and completely removed by nailing it to the cross.

15When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public example of them, having triumphed over them through the cross.

16Therefore let no one judge you in regard to food and drink or in regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day.

17Such things are only a shadow of what is to come and they have only symbolic value; but the substance belongs to Christ.

18Let no one defraud you of your prize by insisting on mock humility and the worship of angels, going into detail about visions he has seen, puffed up by his unspiritual mind,

19and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, supplied and knit together by its joints and ligaments, grows with the growth from God.

20If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were still living in the world, do you submit to rules and regulations, such as,

21“Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!”?

22(these things all perish with use)—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men.

23These practices indeed have the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and mock humility and severe treatment of the body (asceticism), but are of no value against sinful indulgence.