Do you therefore, beloved, because you know these things beforehand, be on your guard lest you be led astray by the error of the wicked, and so fall from your own stedfastness.

Spoil

Let no man at his will defraud you of your prize through his false humility and worship of the angels, taking his stand on the visions he has seen, and vainly puffed up by his material mind;

I exhort you, brothers, to keep watch of those who are causing the divisions among you, and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the teaching which you have learned.

Let no man deceive you with empty arguments, for it is these vices that bring down the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience;

Do not allow yourselves to be swept away by various and strange teachings. For it is a beautiful thing to be established in heart by grace, and not by regulations regarding food, from which those that occupied themselves with them have derived no benefit.

Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have wrought, but that you receive a full reward.

Philosophy

A few of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also encountered him again and again. Some were saying, "What has this beggarly fellow to say?" Others said, "He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods," because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.

For although they knew God, yet they did not glorify him as God, nor give him thanks; but became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.

For thus it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the philosophers, And the prudence of the prudent will I confound.

Let no one deceive himself. If any one of you supposes that he is wise in the philosophy of the present age, let him become foolish, so that he may be wise.

But some one will ask. "How are the dead raised? and with what body are they coming?"

For I pull down imaginations and every crag that lifts itself against the knowledge of God. And I carry every thought away into captivity and subjection to Christ;

and their teaching will spread like a gangrene.

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

After the tradition

"Why do your disciples keep transgressing the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands before eating?"

For the Pharisees and all of the Jews do not eat until they have ceremoniously washed their hands in obedience to the tradition of the elders;

and how in my zeal for Judaism I outstripped many of my own age and nation, in my special zeal for the traditions of my forefathers.

For you well know that not with perishable things, with silver or gold, were you redeemed from the emptiness of your manner of life, received by tradition from your ancestors;

The rudiments

If you died with Christ to the world's rudimentary notions, why, as if you still lived in the world, do you submit yourselves to dogmatisms found on teachings and doctrines of men??21 such as "Do not handle this," "You must not taste that," "Do not touch this"??22 all things which are intended to perish in the using?

So we Jews also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the empty externalities of the world.

in which you passed your lives after the way of this world, under the sway of the Prince of the Powers of the Air, the spirit who is now working among the sons of disobedience.

After christ

But you have not so learned Christ,

General references

"But a stranger they will not follow, but flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers."