¹² Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—

³ For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires^(A)

⁷ who are always studying yet never able to recognize truth.

¹⁸ The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass.

¹⁸ Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions,^[a] puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking,^{[b] 19} and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with a growth that is from God.^(A)

Warnings against False Teachers

²⁰ If with Christ you died to the elemental principles^[c] of the world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations,^{(B) 21} “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? ²² All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings.^{(C) 23} These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.^[d]

¹⁸ Therefore I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white robes to clothe yourself and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.^(A)

¹⁴ But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel, so that they would eat food sacrificed to idols and engage in sexual immorality.^[a](A)

⁷ so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.^(A)

⁹ Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food,^[a] which have not benefited those who observe them.^(A)

⁹ But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.^{(A) 10} After a first and second admonition, have nothing more to do with anyone who causes divisions,^{(B) 11} since you know that such a person is perverted and sinful, being self-condemned.