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¹ For I wish you to know how great a conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and as many as have not seen my face in the flesh,² that their hearts may be comforted, being united in love, and to all riches of the full assurance of the understanding, to the full knowledge of the secret of the God and Father, and of the Christ,³ in whom are all the treasures of the wisdom and the knowledge hid,

⁴ and this I say, that no one may deceive you with enticing words,⁵ for if even in the flesh I am absent—yet in the spirit I am with you, rejoicing and beholding your order, and the steadfastness of your faith in regard to Christ;⁶ as, then, you received Christ Jesus the LORD, walk in Him,⁷ being rooted and built up in Him, and confirmed in the faith, as you were taught—abounding in it in thanksgiving.⁸ See that no one will be carrying you away as spoil through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the rudiments of the world, and not according to Christ,⁹ because in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,¹⁰ and you are made full in Him, who is the head of all principality and authority,¹¹ in whom you also were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of sins of the flesh by the circumcision of the Christ,¹² being buried with Him in the immersion, in which you also rose with [Him] through the faith of the working of God, who raised Him out of the dead.

¹³ And you—being dead in the trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh—He made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all the trespasses,¹⁴ having blotted out the handwriting in the ordinances that is against us, that was contrary to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the Cross;¹⁵ having stripped the principalities and the authorities, He made a show of them openly—having triumphed over them by it.

¹⁶ Let no one, then, judge you in eating or in drinking, or in respect of a celebration, or of a new moon, or of Sabbaths,¹⁷ which are a shadow of the coming things, but the body [is] of the Christ;¹⁸ let no one deceive you of your prize, delighting in humble-mindedness and [in] worship of the messengers, intruding into the things he has not seen, being vainly puffed up by the mind of his flesh,¹⁹ and not holding the Head, from which all the body—gathering supply through the joints and bands, and being knit together—may increase with the increase of God.²⁰ If, then, you died with the Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as living in the world, are you subject to ordinances—²¹ you may not touch, nor taste, nor handle—²² which are all for destruction with the using, after the commands and teachings of men,²³ which are, indeed, having a matter of wisdom in self-willed religion, and humble-mindedness, and neglecting of body—not of any value to satisfying the flesh.