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.

²⁰ In a large house there are utensils not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for special^[a] use, some for ordinary.^[b](A)

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

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)

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)

⁶ So, for the sake of your tradition, you nullify the word^[a] of God. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: