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It is the spiritual, not the material, attitude which matters

16-19 In view of these tremendous facts, don’t let anyone worry you by criticising what you eat or drink, or what holy days you ought to observe, or bothering you over new moons or sabbaths. All these things have at most only a symbolical value: the solid fact is Christ. Nor let any man cheat you of your joy in Christ by persuading you to make yourselves “humble” and fall down and worship angels. Such a man, inflated by an unspiritual imagination, is pushing his way into matters he knows nothing about, and in his cleverness forgetting his head. It is from the head alone that the body, by natural channels, is nourished and built up and grows according to God’s laws of growth.

20-23 So if, through your faith in Christ, you are dead to the principles of this world’s life, why, as if you were still part and parcel of this world-wide system, do you take the slightest notice of these purely human prohibitions—“Don’t touch this,” “Don’t taste that” and “Don’t handle the other”? “This”, “that” and “the other” will all pass away after use! I know that these regulations look wise with their self-inspired efforts at worship, their policy of self-humbling, and their studied neglect of the body. But in actual practice they do honour, not to God, but to man’s own pride.

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18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility(A) and the worship of angels disqualify you.(B) Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. 19 They have lost connection with the head,(C) from whom the whole body,(D) supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.(E)

20 Since you died with Christ(F) to the elemental spiritual forces of this world,(G) why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules:(H)

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