So you, dear friends, now that you are forewarned, must be on your guard against being led away by the errors of unprincipled men and losing your present firmness.

Spoil

No one can put you in the wrong by persisting in studied humility and the worship of angels, being absorbed in the visions he has seen, and groundlessly conceited over his mere human mind.

I beg you, brothers, to be on the watch for those who introduce divisions and difficulties, in opposition to the instruction that you were given, and to avoid them.

Whatever anyone may say in the way of worthless arguments to deceive you, these are the things that are bringing God's anger down upon the disobedient.

You must not be carried away with strange varieties of teaching. The true way to steadfastness of heart is through God's mercy, not through scruples about food, which have never done their adherents any good.

Look out for yourselves, take care not to lose what we have worked for, but make sure that you are paid for it in full.

Philosophy

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some of them said, "What is this rag-picker trying to make out?" Others said, "He seems to be preaching some foreign deities." This was because he was telling the good news of Jesus and the resurrection.

for, though they knew God, they have not honored him as God or given thanks to him, but they have indulged in futile speculations, until their stupid minds have become dark.

For the Scripture says, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And I will thwart the shrewdness of the shrewd!"

Let no one of you deceive himself. If any one of you imagines that he is wiser than the rest of you, in what this world calls wisdom, he had better become a fool, so as to become really wise.

But someone will say, "How can the dead rise? What kind of a body will they have when they come back?"

I destroy arguments and every obstacle that is raised against the knowledge of God, and I take captive every thought and make it obey Christ,

and their teaching spreads like a cancer; men like Hymenaeus and Philetus,

and bad men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving others and deceived themselves.

After the tradition

"Why do your disciples break the rules handed down by our ancestors? For they eat their bread without first washing their hands."

For the Pharisees and all the Jews observe the rules handed down from their ancestors, and will not eat until they have washed their hands in a particular way,

and how I surpassed many of my own age among my people in my devotion to Judaism, I was so fanatically devoted to what my forefathers had handed down.

for you know that you have not been ransomed with anything perishable like silver or gold, from the futile way of living in which you were brought up,

The rudiments

If you have died with Christ to material ways of looking at things, why do you act as though you still belonged to the world, and submit to rules like

So when we were minors, we were slaves to material ways of looking at things,

in the midst of which you once lived under the control of the present age of the world, and the master-spirit of the air, who is still at work among the disobedient.

After christ

That is not the way you have been taught what Christ means,

General references

But they will never follow a stranger but will run away from him, because they do not know the voices of strangers."