¹³ When you were dead in your sins^(A) and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you^[a] alive^(B) with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,^{(C) 14} having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness,^(D) which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.^{(E) 15} And having disarmed the powers and authorities,^(F) he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them^(G) by the cross.^[b]

Freedom From Human Rules

¹⁶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you^(H) by what you eat or drink,^(I) or with regard to a religious festival,^(J) a New Moon celebration^(K) or a Sabbath day.^{(L) 17} These are a shadow of the things that were to come;^(M) the reality, however, is found in Christ.

Released From the Law, Bound to Christ

7 Do you not know, brothers and sisters^(A)—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? ² For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him.^{(B) 3} So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress.^(C) But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴ So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law^(D) through the body of Christ,^(E) that you might belong to another,^(F) to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were in the realm of the flesh,^[a](G) the sinful passions aroused by the law^(H) were at work in us,^(I) so that we bore fruit for death.^{(J) 6} But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law^(K) so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.^(L)