2Verse 1I want you to know how great is my concern for you and those in Laodicea, even all who have not met me personally,+Verse 2that their hearts may be encouraged, being united in love and into a great wealth of confident understanding,+into a real knowledge of the mystery of the God and Father and of the Christ,+Verse 3in whom all the treasures of the wisdom and the knowledge are hidden.+Verse 4Now I say this so that no one may deceive you with specious arguments.Verse 5For although in fact I am physically absent, yet my spirit is with you, rejoicing as I observe+your orderliness and the firmness of your faith in Christ.Verse 6So then, keep on walking in the Christ, Jesus the Sovereign, just as you received Him,Verse 7having been rooted and being built up in Him+and being established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.
Christ VS ‘the world’
Verse 8Be careful that no one captures you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ.+Verse 9Because all the Fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him in bodily form,Verse 10and you are complete in Him who is the head over all rule and authority.+Verse 11In Him you were also ‘circumcised’ by the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, not with a circumcision done by hands but with the circumcision of the Christ,Verse 12having been buried with Him in the baptism.+In Him you were also raised together through your faith in the productive power of the God who raised Him from among the dead.+Verse 13Yes you, though being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh—He has made you alive together with Him; having forgiven us all our trespasses;+Verse 14having wiped out the written record about us that was against us (based on the ordinances),+indeed He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross;Verse 15having stripped the principalities and the authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, having triumphed over them by it [the cross].+
Don't be disqualified!
Verse 16So do not let anyone judge you about food or drink, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or Sabbaths,Verse 17which things are but a shadow of those to come, while the body is Christ's.Verse 18Nor let anyone disqualify you,+taking pleasure in a subservience and devotion to the angels, ‘taking possession’ of things that he has not+seen, being puffed up by his carnal mind to no useful purpose,Verse 19and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, supported and held together by its joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.Verse 20Now then, since you died with Christ away from the basic principles of the world, why, as though still living in it, are you subjecting yourselves+to regulationsVerse 21—Don't handle! Don't taste! Don't touch!—Verse 22(all of which result in corruption through overuse)+according to the commands and teachings of men?Verse 23Such things do indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and subservience and asceticism, but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.+