which has reached you as it spreads over all the world with fruit and increase. Such has been your life from the day you learned to know what God's grace really is.

For I wish you knew how great my concern is for you, and for those of Laodicea, and for such as have never seen me in person:

For even though I am absent [from you] in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, delighted to see your good discipline [as you stand shoulder to shoulder and form a solid front] and to see the stability of your faith in Christ [your steadfast reliance on Him and your unwavering confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness].

Such things are only a shadow of what is to come and they have only symbolic value; but the substance [the reality of what is foreshadowed] belongs to Christ.

Stop letting anyone, in gratuitous humility and worship of angels, defraud you as an umpire, for such a one is taking his stand on the mere visions he has seen, and is groundlessly conceited over his sensuous mind.

Such a person is not continuing in connection with the Head, from which the whole body, when supplied and united through its joints and sinews, grows with a growth that God produces.

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?

(such as "touch not, taste not,

Such practices have the outward expression of wisdom, with their self-imposed devotions, their self-humiliation, their torturings of the body, but they are of no value; they really satisfy the lower nature.

let the things above, and not such worldly matters be the object of your thoughts.

So, put to death [i.e., stop practicing the desires of] your physical bodies [such as] sexual immorality, [moral] impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is [in reality] idolatry.

For the wrath of God will come [upon disobedient people] for practicing such things.

Among whom you were living in the past, when you did such things.

But now you must also get rid of anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene speech, and all such sins.

[In this state] there cannot be [such distinctions as] Greek [i.e., Gentile] and Jew; circumcised people and non-circumcised people; barbarian and Scythian [Note: These last two words refer to foreigners whose language was unintelligible and who were uncivilized heathens], or slave and free person; but Christ is all [that is important] and [He is] in all [of His people].

Jesus, called Justus, also sends greeting. These three are Hebrew converts. They alone among such have worked loyally with me for the Kingdom of God--they are men who have been a comfort to me.