Letters to the Churches

you were buried along with him by being immersed; and in union with him, you were also raised up along with him by God’s faithfulness that worked when he raised Yeshua from the dead.

You were dead because of your sins, that is, because of your “foreskin,” your old nature. But God made you alive along with the Messiah by forgiving you all your sins.

He wiped away the bill of charges against us. Because of the regulations, it stood as a testimony against us; but he removed it by nailing it to the execution-stake.

Stripping the rulers and authorities of their power, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by means of the stake.

So don’t let anyone pass judgment on you in connection with eating and drinking, or in regard to a Jewish festival or Rosh-Hodesh or Shabbat.

These are a shadow of things that are coming, but the body is of the Messiah.

Don’t let anyone deny you the prize by insisting that you engage in self-mortification or angel-worship. Such people are always going on about some vision they have had, and they vainly puff themselves up by their worldly outlook.

They fail to hold to the Head, from whom the whole Body, receiving supply and being held together by its joints and ligaments, grows as God makes it grow.

If, along with the Messiah, you died to the elemental spirits of the world, then why, as if you still belonged to the world, are you letting yourselves be bothered by its rules? —

“Don’t touch this!” “Don’t eat that!” “Don’t handle the other!”

Such prohibitions are concerned with things meant to perish by being used [not by being avoided!], and they are based on man-made rules and teachings.

They do indeed have the outward appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed religious observances, false humility and asceticism; but they have no value at all in restraining people from indulging their old nature.

So if you were raised along with the Messiah, then seek the things above, where the Messiah is sitting at the right hand of God.

Focus your minds on the things above, not on things here on earth.

For you have died, and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God.

When the Messiah, who is our life, appears, then you too will appear with him in glory!

Therefore, put to death the earthly parts of your nature — sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed (which is a form of idolatry);

for it is because of these things that God’s anger is coming on those who disobey him.

True enough, you used to practice these things in the life you once lived;

but now, put them all away — anger, exasperation, meanness, slander and obscene talk.

Never lie to one another; because you have stripped away the old self, with its ways,

and have put on the new self, which is continually being renewed in fuller and fuller knowledge, closer and closer to the image of its Creator.

The new self allows no room for discriminating between Gentile and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, foreigner, savage, slave, free man; on the contrary, in all, the Messiah is everything.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with feelings of compassion and with kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Bear with one another; if anyone has a complaint against someone else, forgive him. Indeed, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive.