¹² If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,

³ For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.^(A) Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.^(B)

⁷ always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.^(A)

²⁰ In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use.^(A)

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) 21} “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? ²² These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish^(I) with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings.^{(J) 23} Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility^(K) and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

¹⁸ The wall was made of jasper,^(A) and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass.^(B)

⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness^(A) of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire^(B)—may result in praise, glory and honor^(C) when Jesus Christ is revealed.^(D)

⁶ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: