You, therefore, dear friends, having been warned beforehand, must continually be on your guard so as not to be led astray by the false teaching of immoral men nor fall from your own stedfastness.

Spoil

Let no one defraud you of your prize, priding himself on his humility and on his worship of the angels, and taking his stand on the visions he has seen, and idly puffed up with his unspiritual thoughts.

But I beseech you, brethren, to keep a watch on those who are causing the divisions among you, and are leading others into sin, in defiance of the instruction which you have received; and habitually to shun them.

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is on account of these very sins that God's anger is coming upon the disobedient.

Do not be drawn aside by all sorts of strange teaching; for it is well to have the heart made stedfast through God's grace, and not by special kinds of food, from which those who scrupulously attend to them have derived no benefit.

Keep guard over yourselves, so that you may not lose the results of your good deeds, but may receive back a full reward.

Philosophy

A few of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also encountered him. Some of them asked, "What has this beggarly babbler to say?" "His business," said others, "seems to be to cry up some foreign gods." This was because he had been telling the Good News of Jesus and the Resurrection.

For when they had come to know God, they did not give Him glory as God nor render Him thanks, but they became absorbed in useless discussions, and their senseless minds were darkened.

For so it stands written, "I will exhibit the nothingness of the wisdom of the wise, and the intelligence of the intelligent I will bring to nought."

Let no one deceive himself. If any man imagines that he is wise, compared with the rest of you, with the wisdom of the present age, let him become "foolish" so that he may be wise.

But some one will say, "How can the dead rise? And with what kind of body do they come back?"

For we overthrow arrogant 'reckonings,' and every stronghold that towers high in defiance of the knowledge of God, and we carry off every thought as if into slavery--into subjection to Christ;

and their teaching will spread like a running sore. Hymenaeus and Philetus are men of that stamp.

But bad men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, misleading and being misled.

After the tradition

referring to things which are all intended to be used up and perish--in obedience to mere human injunctions and teachings?

"Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the Elders by not washing their hands before meals?"

(For the Pharisees and all the Jews--being, as they are, zealous for the traditions of the Elders--never eat without first carefully washing their hands,

and how in devotion to Judaism I outstripped many men of my own age among my people, being far more zealous than they on behalf of the traditions of my forefathers.

knowing, as you do, that it was not with a ransom of perishable wealth, such as silver or gold, that you were set free from your frivolous habits of life which had been handed down to you from your forefathers,

The rudiments

If you have died with Christ and have escaped from the world's rudimentary notions, why, as though your life still belonged to the world, do you submit to such precepts as

So we also, when spiritually we were children, were subject to the world's rudimentary notions, and were enslaved.

which were once habitual to you while you walked in the ways of this world and obeyed the Prince of the powers of the air, the spirits that are now at work in the hearts of the sons of disobedience--to you God has given Life.

After christ

But these are not the lessons which you have learned from Christ;

General references

But a stranger they will by no means follow, but will run away from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers."