Worsley - Colossians - 2

2:1  For I would have you know what a great conflict I have for you, and for those in Laodicea, and as many as have not seen me in person:

2:2  that their hearts may be comforted, being knit together in love, and to all the riches of a full assurance of understanding in these things, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of our God and Father, and of Christ:

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

2:4  And this I say, least any one should deceive you with fine speeches.

2:5  For though I be absent in body, yet am I with you in spirit, rejoicing and beholding your regularity, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ.

2:6  Therefore as ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him;

2:7  rooted and built up in Him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught it, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

2:8  Take heed least any one make a prey of you by philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ:

2:9  for all the fulness of the deity dwelleth personally in Him.

2:10  And ye are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

2:11  In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision not performed by hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision which is of Christ:

2:12  being buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are raised together with Him, through faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.

2:13  And when ye were dead in trespasses, and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses,

2:14  and cancelled the obligation we were under by ritual decrees, which was grievous to us, and hath taken it quite away, even nailing it to his cross.

2:15  And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made them an open spectacle, triumphing over them by it.

2:16  Let no one therefore judge you on account of meat, or drink, or in respect of a feast, or a new-moon, or sabbaths;

2:17  which are a shadow of good things to come, but the body is of Christ.

2:18  Let no one deprive you of your reward by an affected humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into what he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his carnal mind;

2:19  and not adhering to the head, from which all the body, being supplied and held together as by joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.

2:20  If therefore ye be dead with Christ from the elements of the world; why, as if living in the world, are ye subject to ceremonial ordinances,

2:21  (such as "touch not, taste not,

2:22  handle not," which all tend to corruption in the using,) according to the commandments and doctrines of men?

2:23  which things indeed have a pretence to wisdom in voluntary worship, and humiliation, and bodily penance, as having no regard to the satisfying of the flesh.