16-17 So don’t put up with anyone pressuring you in details of diet, worship services, or holy days. All those things are mere shadows cast before what was to come; the substance is Christ.

18-19 Don’t tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They’re a lot of hot air, that’s all they are. They’re completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.

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17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come;(A) the reality, however, is found in Christ. 18 Do not let anyone who delights in false humility(B) and the worship of angels disqualify you.(C) 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,(D) from whom the whole body,(E) supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.(F)

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