Take care lest there be some one who leads you away as prisoners by means of his philosophy and idle fancies, following human traditions and the world's crude notions instead of following Christ.
A few of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also encountered him. Some of them asked, »What has this beggarly babbler to say?«»His business,« said others, »seems to be to cry up some foreign gods.« This was because he had been telling the Good News of Jesus and the Resurrection.
But I beseech you, brethren, to keep a watch on those who are causing the divisions among you, and are leading others into sin, in defiance of the instruction which you have received; and habitually to shun them.
For we overthrow arrogant `reckonings,' and every stronghold that towers high in defiance of the knowledge of God, and we carry off every thought as if into slavery–into subjection to Christ;
and how in devotion to Judaism I outstripped many men of my own age among my people, being far more zealous than they on behalf of the traditions of my forefathers.
Now, however, having come to know God –or rather to be known by Him– how is it you are again turning back to weak and worthless rudimentary notions to which you are once more willing to be enslaved?
which were once habitual to you while you walked in the ways of this world and obeyed the Prince of the powers of the air, the spirits that are now at work in the hearts of the sons of disobedience–to you God has given Life.
Let no one defraud you of your prize, priding himself on his humility and on his worship of the angels, and taking his stand on the visions he has seen, and idly puffed up with his unspiritual thoughts.
If you have died with Christ and have escaped from the world's rudimentary notions, why, as though your life still belonged to the world, do you submit to such precepts as
These rules have indeed an appearance of wisdom where self-imposed worship exists, and an affectation of humility and an ascetic severity. But not one of them is of any value in combating the indulgence of our lower natures.
Do not be drawn aside by all sorts of strange teaching; for it is well to have the heart made stedfast through God's grace, and not by special kinds of food, from which those who scrupulously attend to them have derived no benefit.
see to it, brethren, that there is never in any one of you –as perhaps there may be– a sinful and unbelieving heart, manifesting itself in revolt from the ever-living God.
knowing, as you do, that it was not with a ransom of perishable wealth, such as silver or gold, that you were set free from your frivolous habits of life which had been handed down to you from your forefathers,
You, therefore, dear friends, having been warned beforehand, must continually be on your guard so as not to be led astray by the false teaching of immoral men nor fall from your own stedfastness.