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Book of Colossians 2:16-19 Not Holding the Head

[Study Aired September 29, 2026]

“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God” (Colossians 2:16–19).

Therefore…

The last study ended at the cross. Something had been written against these people — a bond made of the ordinances of the law, holding them the way a signed note holds a debtor. Three things were done to it. It was blotted out. It was taken out of the way. It was nailed to his cross.

Now Paul draws the conclusion, and the first word of it is “therefore.”

“Let no man therefore judge (G2919) you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.”

The plain sense is simple. The writing is gone, so no man may sit over these people and pass sentence on them by what was written on it.

That is narrower than it may sound, and it is worth seeing how narrow before going on. Paul does not say here that no man may keep a day or refuse a food. He says no man may judge another by them. He handles the same matters the same way writing to Rome, and there the warning runs in both directions: “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge (G2919) him that eateth: for God hath received him… One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord” (Romans 14:3, 5–6). Paul puts a question to the man in that seat: “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth” (Romans 14:4). The servant is not his to judge.

The same word for judging, and the same subjects. A man may keep a day, and keep it unto the Lord. What is forbidden is the verdict. That is the first thing to hold onto in this passage: it is about who may sit in judgment, and on what grounds.

Four verses, and they move in four steps: a verdict forbidden, a shadow explained, an umpire exposed, and the Head he has let go.

Holyday, New Moon, Sabbath

Then the list, and it is not a random one.

Meat and drink come first, and the last study met them already. Hebrews assigned “meats and drinks, and divers washings” to the first covenant (Hebrews 9:10). Then come three more: a holyday, a new moon, a sabbath.

Those three travel together in the Old Testament. They are named as a set when the offerings of the law are ordered — “for the sabbaths, and for the new moons, and for the set feasts, as it is written in the law of the LORD” (2 Chronicles 31:3). They are named as a set when God says He will bring Israel’s worship to a stop: “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths” (Hosea 2:11) — the same three, and here in the very order Paul gives them.

So the list runs from the yearly feast to the monthly moon, to the weekly sabbath. The law itself calls certain days within the feasts sabbaths. The day of blowing of trumpets is “a sabbath” (Leviticus 23:24); the day of atonement, “a sabbath of rest” (23:32); the first and eighth days of tabernacles, each “a sabbath” (23:39). Then it sets all the feasts “beside the sabbaths of the LORD” (23:38). So the sabbath named third is the weekly one. It is the calendar of the law, whole, and no man may judge these people by it.

A Shadow of Things to Come

Then he says what that calendar is. He does not say it is nothing.

“Which are a shadow (G4639) of things to come; but the body (G4983) is of Christ.”

A shadow is what it sounds like. The word is skia (G4639), and Scripture uses it plainly: the sick were laid in the streets “that at the least the shadow (G4639) of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them” (Acts 5:15). It is also used as a figure, of those who “sat in the region and shadow (G4639) of death” (Matthew 4:16).

Where it is used of the law, it means something more particular. Hebrews says the priests “serve unto the example and shadow (G4639) of heavenly things” (Hebrews 8:5), and says it again in words very close to Paul’s: “the law having a shadow (G4639) of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect” (Hebrews 10:1). Things to come in Colossians; good things to come in Hebrews.

The point is this. A shadow is not a lie. It is cast by something real, and it carries that thing’s outline. A man who sees a shadow on the ground knows something stands between the shadow and the light. So Paul is not dismissing the feasts and moons and sabbaths. He is saying what they were for. They were the outline of something. A shadow was never meant to be held; it was meant to be followed back to what cast it.

He says whose it is: “the body is of Christ.” The KJV supplies “is”; the Greek sets the words side by side. Either way the sense is plain enough. The body belongs to Christ.

Which body? Here the verse allows two readings, and we name both.

The first is the one the contrast calls for. A shadow is set against the thing that casts it, so sōma (G4983) would mean the substance, the real thing — and the substance is Christ’s.

The second comes from how this letter uses the word. Paul has already called Christ “the head of the body (G4983), the church” (Colossians 1:18). He has spoken of “the body (G4983) of his flesh” (Colossians 1:22), and of “his body’s (G4983) sake, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24). Two verses on he will speak of “all the body (G4983)” growing from the Head (Colossians 2:19). On that reading, the body here is the same body — the church — and it belongs to Christ.

We do not choose between them here. On either reading, what is real belongs to Christ. The argument that follows rests on the first.

So the verdict of verse 16 is forbidden for a reason, and the reason lies in what a shadow is.

Paul calls these things “a shadow of things to come,” and much in this letter still lies ahead; it waits for the day Christ “shall appear” (Colossians 3:4). Hebrews says of the same good things: “Christ being come an high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews 9:11). The copies differ over whether those good things are “to come” or already come, and we rest nothing on that. Every copy says Christ has come. What cast the shadow is not waiting.

Now picture a man who picks up the shadow and turns it into a measuring rod. He stands over people who hold Christ and tells them they fall short, because they do not keep the outline. He has it backward. He is measuring the substance by its own silhouette, and demanding from the shadow what it never had to give.

Paul says the same thing elsewhere, and says when the change came: “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:24–25). The schoolmaster was not a bad man. He had a charge, and his charge was to bring a child somewhere. Once the child is brought, his authority over him is finished. No man may hold another to the outline after the thing itself has come.

Let No Man Rule Against You

Paul now gives a second warning, and it is shaped like the first.

“Let no man beguile you of your reward (G2603) in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels.”

Two prohibitions, both beginning “let no man,” both about anyone who sets himself over these people and passes a verdict. Paul does not use the same word twice. What repeats is the sentence itself: no man is to sit over you and hand down a ruling.

The word here is katabrabeuō (G2603), and it is used nowhere else in Scripture. Its root names the umpire at the games — the one who decides who has run rightly. With a prefix meaning against, it means to rule against a man: to decide the contest against him, to disqualify him. Paul uses a plain form of the same root later in this letter, of the peace of God ruling in the heart (Colossians 3:15), and the figure is taken up there.

The whole English phrase, “beguile you of your reward,” translates one Greek word. There is no separate noun for “reward.” The translators drew the prize out of the verb, since an umpire rules over a prize, and that is a fair reading. However, the verse never says what the prize is or what a man loses.

The KJV used “beguile” at 2:4 as well — “beguile (G3884) you with enticing words” — but that is a different word, one for cheating a man with false reasoning. Here it is part of the umpire’s word.

Part Four sent the question of what a man loses to this verse, drawn by the KJV’s “reward”; Part Six moved it to the one place in the letter where a reward is named: “ye shall receive the reward (G469) of the inheritance” (Colossians 3:24). This verse could not have answered it in any case. As the next verse shows, the one who lets go of the Head here is the umpire, not the man he rules against.

No man has that seat to take. Paul denies it of himself and his fellows: “Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand” (2 Corinthians 1:24). If an apostle claimed no dominion over their faith, the man at the door has none.

What the verse does tell us is what kind of man takes that seat.

Humility, Angels, and Things Unseen

He comes with humility. That is the first surprise.

The word the KJV renders “humility” here is the very word Paul commands a chapter later: “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind (G5012), meekness, longsuffering” (Colossians 3:12). So the trouble is not humility; Paul demands it. The trouble is humility of a particular kind — a “voluntary” humility, the KJV says. The word returns at the end of this chapter, and the next study takes up there what kind of humility Paul means.

He comes with angels. An earlier study weighed this phrase, and nothing here reopens it. It will bear either sense: worship offered to angels, or the worship of angels the teachers claimed to have joined. Paul’s answer is the same whichever is meant. Christ made every such rank (Colossians 1:16), and He is head over all of them (Colossians 2:10). A man who reaches past Christ toward them is reaching toward what Christ made.

He comes with things unseen: “intruding into those things which he hath not seen.” The word is embateuō (G1687), and it too appears nowhere else in Scripture, so there is no second verse to weigh it against. The lexicons give it as setting foot on, stepping into, and so going into a matter. From its use outside Scripture, some take it as the step of entry into a sanctuary. Whether Paul means that cannot be settled from Scripture, and we leave it. The manuscripts also differ over whether the verse speaks of what “he hath not seen” or of what he has seen, and we rest nothing on that either. What stands in every copy is a man entering into things.

Last, Paul says what is really going on inside him: “vainly puffed up (G5448) by his fleshly mind.”

This is the diagnosis, and it turns on one word. Phusioō (G5448) means to swell, to be inflated. Every other time the word is used, it is in 1 Corinthians, and it is never once good. The Corinthians were “puffed up (G5448) for one against another” (1 Corinthians 4:6). Charity “is not puffed up (G5448)” (1 Corinthians 13:4). The place that matters most for a church being offered a higher knowledge: “Knowledge puffeth up (G5448), but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1).

Now see what Paul has done. The man comes humbled. He denies himself. He talks of angels, and of things he claims to have entered into. Paul says he is swollen. The lower he bows, the larger he gets — and the source is “his fleshly mind,” not the spirit of God. He is the one who wants the umpire’s seat.

Not Holding the Head

Paul now names what that man has let go of. It is the sentence this study exists to face.

“And not holding (G2902) the Head.”

Everything in the letter so far has been setting up this Head. He is “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). He is “the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:10). And the man at the door, for all his humility and all his claims, does not hold Him.

The word for holding is krateō (G2902), and the Lord used it of men much like these: “For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold (G2902) the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups” (Mark 7:8). An earlier study met that verse at “the tradition of men” in verse 8. Now its verb comes round too. A man is always holding something. He holds the Head, or he holds what men have handed down about pots and cups and days.

What the Head is to the body, Paul says in the rest of the verse.

“From which all the body (G4983) by joints and bands having nourishment ministered (G2023), and knit together (G4822), increaseth (G837) with the increase (G838) of God.”

First, a small word with weight. The KJV reads “from which” here. Where Paul writes the same words to the Ephesians, the KJV itself renders them “from whom”: “which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted (G4822) by that which every joint supplieth (G2024)” (Ephesians 4:15–16). The supply does not come from an organ. It comes from a Person.

Next, what comes from Him. Epichorēgeō (G2023) means to supply, to furnish what is needed. Mostly Scripture uses it of God supplying: He “that ministereth (G2023) seed to the sower” (2 Corinthians 9:10), and He “that ministereth (G2023) to you the Spirit” (Galatians 3:5). But not always. Peter tells the saints themselves to “add (G2023) to your faith virtue” (2 Peter 1:5). And in the Ephesians verse just quoted, it is “every joint” that supplies.

So the supply has a source and a path. It comes from the Head, and it reaches the body through its joints and bands — through the members, one to another. That is why the man who lets go of the Head is not merely mistaken. He has let go of the source the whole body lives from.

Then “knit together.” The word is sumbibazō (G4822), and Part Seven marked it for this verse. It stood first at 2:2, where Paul strives from prison “that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together (G4822) in love.” That study said that whatever holds the body is not, on that evidence, a thing the body does alone. Here the letter says so outright. The knitting Paul labors for at 2:2 is the knitting the body has from the Head at 2:19. Ephesians says it, too, with the same word, rendered “compacted” in the verse quoted above.

Lastly, the growth. Paul prayed at the start of this letter that these people would be “increasing (G837) in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10). Here the same growth is named again, and now it has an owner: “the increase (G838) of God.” What he prayed for is God’s own increase. As he said of Apollos and himself, “God gave the increase (G837)” (1 Corinthians 3:6).

Notice who it is that does not hold the Head. It is the same man Paul has been describing since verse 18, the one puffed up by his fleshly mind. The sentence carries straight on: puffed up, and not holding. The verse lays no charge on the Colossians. It describes the man at their door.

That settles the other half of a question earlier studies sent here. What a man loses went to 3:24. How he is moved, and what he ceases to hold, they sent to these two verses. He is moved when he lets a man who has let go of the Head take the seat over him. That is why the warning is spoken to the Colossians — “let no man” — and why the next study will hear Paul ask them, “why… are ye subject (G1379) to ordinances” (Colossians 2:20). What he would cease to hold is exactly what that man let go of. Everything reaching the body comes from the Head: the supply, the knitting, the growth. Their charge is the one already given: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Colossians 2:6).

What These Verses Establish

Read whole, the four verses take the finished work of the cross and turn it into a boundary.

The bond was nailed up; therefore no man may judge these people by what was written on it. That writing held the whole calendar of the law — feast, moon, sabbath — and the calendar was a shadow. Not a lie. An outline cast by something real, and the real thing belongs to Christ.

Then the second warning turns from the calendar to the man who comes with a humility, a devotion to angels, and an intrusion into things he has not seen. He wants to sit as umpire and rule them out. Paul looks inside him and finds him swollen. His lowliness has puffed him up, and he has let go of the Head.

Against him stands the body as God made it. All of it is supplied from the Head. All of it is knit together — the very thing an apostle strives for in prison. All of it grows, and the growth is God’s.

The order this series has found through nine studies holds a tenth time. The bond was blotted out before any verdict was forbidden. The Head supplies before the body grows. The charge these people carry, to walk in Him, is given to men who already stand in a body whose every supply comes from Him.

What is new is that the danger now has a face. Earlier studies named a teacher at the door. This one shows what he is like inside: humble, devout, intruding into what he has not seen — and not holding the Head.

That man still comes to doors. He rarely comes with a calendar now. He comes with something to add — a discipline, a deeper experience, a higher way — and he comes humbly. The test Paul gives is not how humble he is. It is whether he is holding the Head.

Next study: (Colossians 2:20–23)

“Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.”