Daily Bible Reading 8th 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.
In vv 20-23 Paul comes to the heart of the matter (and in so doing he refers back to the multidimensional redemption accomplished once and for all in Christ). 'Don't you realise', Paul says, 'that you died with Christ on the Cross and that that death crucified your body of flesh and liberated you from the tyranny of the 'elemental spirits of the universe'. How come you are now turning back to these weak and miserable principalities and powers? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? (Galatians 4:3, 8-11). You are dead to all of that, so be dead!' Notice what Paul says in these verses about the origin of such legalistic rules and regulations. Such precepts are the devil-inspired religion of the world. These taboos about what you can and cannot eat or drink are merely passing human inventions (v 22) 'according to the regulations and doctrines of men', yet they are inspired by the father of lies himself. This is the hidden and sinister significance of the imposition of these rules. They emanate (v 20) from the basic principles of this world/the dark elemental spirits of the universe as Satan's dark host seeks to kidnap and re-enslave those who have been liberated. This, Paul says, is the dangerous reality of such legalistic scruples. Satan is happy to provide a 'religion' that can seem to satisfy people while it actually keeps them from God. His whole aim is to turn our eyes away from the eternal and the imperishable and to focus our attention on the temporal and the material. Matters of what we eat and what we drink are of no consequence as far as godliness is concerned, particularly when a test case is made of their abstinence or enjoyment (over-indulgence leading to gluttony and drunkenness is another matter altogether). Let us not get side-tracked onto the peripheral and the unimportant. We have died with Christ to the basic principles of this world.