Colossians 2
v.2
My purppose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ,
v.3
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
v.5
For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.
“How orderly you are” cotains a military term connoting the ordely array of a band of disciplined soldiers. “Firm” (GK 5106) also belongs to military parlance and means solidity and compactness. If this is the imagery Paul intended, he sees the situation Colossians as being like that of an army under attack and affirms that their lines were unbroken, their discipline intact, and their “faith in [reliance on] Christ” unshaken.
v.6-7
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
v.10
and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.
This statement crowns Paul’s argument. Because Christ is fully God and really human, believers “are made full,” i.e., share in his fullness; “in him” denotes our vital union with the Savior. In union with christ, our every spiritual need is fully met. Possessing him, we possess all. There was no need, therefore for the Colossians to turn to the “philosophy” of the errorists, the ritual of the Mosaic law, or the spirit-beings worshipped by the pagan world. All they needed was in Jesus Christ… It is important to observe that though Christ is here described as head, the powers and authorities are not called his body. That distinction is reserved for Christ’s people.
v.14
having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.
In other words, the bond (the Mosaic law) has been removed permanently, so that its claims against us can never again alienate us from God… To sum up, the great principle asserted in v.14 is the destruction of the law in and by the cross of Christ. The law, however, is viewed in a certain character (i.e., as a bond of indebtedness or as an instrument of condemnation).
v.18
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.
“False humility” may be a technical term for fasting, since in the OT this was the usual way for one to humble oneself before God. Whether this be so or not, the word in this context appears to denote a mock humility. “Worship of angels” is an allusion to the deference the heretical teachers paid to the hierarchy of spirit-beings who, in their system, filled the whole universe. Perhaps the “humility” and the “worship of angels” were closely related. That is the say, the heretics probably insisted that their worship of angels, rather than appealed directly to the supreme God of all grace, was an expression of humility on their part.
v.19
He has lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
Each believer is thought of here as forming a vital connection with Christ the Head. Thus joined to him, they all become the joints and ligaments by which the church is supplied with energy and life. The heretical teacher, without this contact with Christ, has cut himself off from the source of spiritual vitality for God’s people and cannot possibly contribute to their growth.
v.20-23
Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rule: 21”Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!“? 22These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
Ascetics cannot enjoy material possessions. While as Christians, we must be generous and ready to share, and not fix our hope on material things, Paul taught that God “richly supplies us with all things to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17). Countering those who forbade marriage and advocated abstaining from certain foods, Paul said (1 Tim. 4:4), “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude.” Christians can rightly enjoy all of life under the lordship of Christ, including a good meal, the beauty of God’s creation, and the sexual relationship within marriage. Ascetics teach that such pleasurable enjoyment is wrong… The ascetic is often trying to make himself acceptable to God through harsh treatment of the body. By this he thinks he can atone for his sins or show enough contrition to merit God’s favor. But Christian self-discipline operates from the platform of knowing that God has accepted us in Jesus Christ on the basis of His grace. The motive behind self-discipline is not to gain His favor, but to be pleasing to the Lord because He loved me and died for me.
bibleorg Bible.org does a great job explaining this passage and its context in asceticism.
On the surface, they seem to be reasonable and wise. But this is only an appearance of wisdom. In reality these rules are expressions of “self-imposed worship” and spurious “humility.” The first expression denotes worship which people choose for themselves and without authorization from God. The context suggests that the errorists engaged in such “worship” (cf. v.18) in the hope that they would thereby acquire superior merit before God. “Humility” (GK 5425) must in this context refer to a mock humility (cf. v.18). The idea is that asceticism, while parading under the guise of humility, actually panders to human pride. “Harsh treatment of the body” is a reference to ascetic torturings of the body. “Lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence” translates a very difficult Greek construction. It suggests that the ascetics end up putting far more emphasis on the indulgence of the flesh than they ought to, and they are proud of it (cf. Gal 5:19-21). To sum up, v.23 teaches that ascetic rules have the appearance of wisdom for many people in that they seem to be expressions of devotion to God, of humility, and of a commendable discipline of the body. Paul, however, declares that these regulations have nothing to do with real wisdom, and the worship and humility they seem to express are both spurious. His final appraisal is that asceticism is a dismal failure and not the way to spiritual victory. Christianity is not a religion of prescriptions but of a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
See also Galatians 5:16.