Daily Bible Reading 7th July 2025 // Colossians 2:16-23
16 Therefore let no one pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. 17 These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
20 If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— 21 “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? 23 These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
At Colossae, however, the scrupulous are threatening to impose their scruples, their rigid ascetic principles, on the rest of the congregation, and Christian liberty needs to be reasserted in the light of such false attempts to undermine it. Part of the problem at Colossae was that the false teachers made their prohibitions and ascetic lifestyle essential to salvation. They said, in so many words, 'Except you abstain from eating this and drinking that, unless you worship like this on that particular day...you cannot be saved.' In the light of this, Paul urges the Colossians: '...do not let...' (vv 16-19); see also Galatians 5:1). Paul recognised, you see, the issues which are at stake. He recognised that the imposition of such scruples (not the holding of the scruples but their imposition) cut at the very heart of the Gospel. It was an imposition of the shadow for the reality of Christ. It implied that Christ's redemption was not enough and that something extra must be added.