IV.
As we return to this passage, please notice the last sentence,

“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.”

What does this suggest to you is the goal of practicing the “regulations” identified here?

V.
Colossians 2:16-23 (NRSVue)

Therefore, do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food or drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths. These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the body belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, 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.

If with Christ you died to the elemental principles of the world, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. 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.

VI.
What do folk think they gain by practicing these “human commands and teachings”?

Do they want to improve their lives? Do they want to become more Christlike?

Do they want to become “wise, pious and humble” or do they want to appear to be so?

What do you think leads Paul to consider such “of no value in checking self-indulgence”?

What “self-indulgence” do they want to put behind them and what “self-indulgence” do they embrace?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}