Pause 2, Day 3 Treasures Of Wisdom

For I want you to know how greatly I am struggling for you, for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me in person. ² I want their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the riches of complete understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery—Christ. ³ In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

⁴ I am saying this so that no one will deceive you with arguments that sound reasonable. ⁵ For I may be absent in body, but I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see how well ordered you are and the strength of your faith in Christ.

⁶ So then, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, ⁷ being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing with gratitude.

⁸ Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ.⁹ For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, ¹⁰ and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority. ¹¹ You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, ¹² when you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. ¹³ And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses. ¹⁴ He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross.¹⁵ He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.

¹⁶ Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷ These are a shadow of what was to come; the substance is Christ. ¹⁸ Let no one condemn you by delighting in ascetic practices and the worship of angels, claiming access to a visionary realm. Such people are inflated by empty notions of their unspiritual mind. ¹⁹ He doesn’t hold on to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with growth from God.

²⁰ If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: ²¹ “Don’t handle, don’t taste, don’t touch”? ²² All these regulations refer to what is destined to perish by being used up; they are human commands and doctrines. ²³ Although these have a reputation for wisdom by promoting self-made religion, false humility, and severe treatment of the body, they are not of any value in curbing self-indulgence.