COLOSSIANS CHAPTER 2 - CONTEMPORARY ALIGNED VERSION (SPIRITCODE)

1. Please be clear about the spiritual battle I am fighting for you and for the Christians at Laodicea, and for other Christians that I have not yet even met.

2. I want to encourage their hearts to be joined as one in bonds of love so that they can help one another to be absolutely confident in the full understanding and revelation of the wonderful plan of God concerning the Father and Jesus Christ.

3. The entire treasury of the wisdom and knowledge of all things is contained within Christ.

4. I’m telling you this so that no one can swindle you out of the truth with their deceptive yet persuasive double talk.

5. And even though I cannot be with you face to face I am with you in the Spirit, and it makes me so glad to see you living by God’s principles and your commitment to a life of faith in Christ.

6. So just as you first embraced the life of Christ Jesus the Lord, maintain that closeness as you walk with him through life,

7. With your lives embedded in him and growing in him, established in the way of faith that you have been taught, and giving thanks to him as it overflows in you.

8. Be careful that no-one snatches this away from you through impressive mind games and useless schemes that men have concocted. These are the ways of the world and not the way of life with Christ.

9. For he embodies everything that God is, and everything that God does.

10. And you will find everything you need to know, and to have, and to do, in him. He is supreme over every other authority and source of power that exists.

11. He is also the one who inwardly cuts away from your heart all of the old order of humanity that compels sin to enclose your life. He did that by the shedding of it from us in the purifying work of his death on the cross.

12. When you were baptized you were buried with him in his death, and you were raised with him in his resurrection. This is through your faith in the mighty act of God in raising him from the dead.

13. You were once separated from his life in the old order of self serving and sinful humanity, but now you share his risen life and all your sins have been forgiven.

14. He erased the written accusations with which the prosecution had legally charged us and abolished them entirely, nailing it all to his cross.

15. Then when he had totally crushed all opposing authorities and overcome their power he humiliated them by parading them in his victory march for all to see.

16.So now nobody can judge you for what you eat or drink, nor can they make you keep holy days, or festive seasons, or observe the Sabbath.

17. These natural religious observances foreshadowed the spiritual reality that was to come, and we now live in that spiritual reality of who Christ is.

18. Don’t let anyone disqualify you from claiming this trophy of yours by demanding that you pretentiously parade any religious piety. And don’t let them make you give angels a role in getting you closer to God, telling you tales of their special angelic initiation rites. Their pride has inflated their empty minds.

19. They are not recognizing the role of the supreme head and source of all things, from which, as his body, we are joined and bonded together, fed and strengthened and cared for, and growing, as we grow in knowing him.

20. So if you are dead, with Christ, to having to pay homage to the principles of worldly thinking, why do you subject yourselves to these things as if they played the major role in your life.

21. (Prohibitive regulations that forbid you to handle things, taste things, or even touch them;

22. Transitory things that are here one day and gone the next;) all given great meaning and significance as life changing principles by those who would impose them upon you.

23. These things might look stately and impressive with their show of sanctimonious self sacrifice, but they do more to keep self alive than put self to death.