Therefore let no one judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a feast, a New Moon, or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ.
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what he has seen; he is puffed up with idle notions by his unspiritual mind. He has lost connection to the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and knit together by its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
If you died with Christ to the spiritual forces of the world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its regulations: “Do not handle,” “Do not taste,” “Do not touch”? These will all perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such practices indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self-imposed worship, false humility, and harsh treatment of the body, but they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
The Substance is Christ
The cross has triumphed—and therefore, religious judgment must be silenced. Paul is emphatic: let no one judge you based on external regulations. The old distinctions between clean and unclean, feast and fast, Sabbath and New Moon, have been rendered obsolete by Christ. These things were shadows, temporary signs pointing forward. But now the substance has come—and the substance is Christ (cf. Hebrews 8; Hebrews 10).
To submit again to the shadows is to step backward into what has been fulfilled. The feast days and Sabbaths were part of the Mosaic covenant. But that covenant has been fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and believers now live under a New Covenant (cf. Romans 14; Galatians 4).
Paul next warns against mysticism and asceticism—forms of religion that seem impressive but disconnect the believer from Christ. The one who boasts in visions or worship of angels, who parades false humility, has lost connection to the Head. And without Christ, the body withers. But in union with Christ, the whole body grows with growth from God—a growth that is organic, spiritual, and rooted in grace (cf. Ephesians 4).
Paul presses further: “If you died with Christ…” That is the decisive truth. The believer’s death with Christ means death to the old world and its religious systems. Why then live as if you still belonged to it? The rules—“Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch”—are man-made regulations, not Spirit-given commands. They perish with use and have no power to subdue the flesh.
These religious practices have an appearance of wisdom, but only an appearance. They promote self-imposed religion, false humility, and harsh treatment of the body, but they fail to conquer sin. What the law could not do, God did by sending His Son (cf. Romans 8).
This section is a declaration of spiritual liberty. It announces that believers in Christ are no longer under the rule of Sinai, no longer measured by diets and days, no longer controlled by visions and asceticism. The age of shadows is over; the Light has come. In the New Covenant, Christ is our holiness, our rest, our feast, and our sufficiency.
Moe Bergeron 
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