Colossians 2:20-23: Do Not Handle, Do Not Taste
Short answer: In Colossians 2:20-23, Paul asks why believers who died with Christ from the world's elemental principles still submit to ordinances like do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. His point is not that God has no moral will; it is that humanly devised regulations about physical things cannot produce spiritual life or genuine holiness. Such rules have an appearance of wisdom in self-made religion, but Paul says they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. The passage does not abolish Christian moral teaching. It rejects the idea that extra-biblical prohibitions, treated as the measure of godliness, can change the heart. Only union with Christ does that, and the rule-keeping Paul describes is a denial of that union rather than a supplement to it.
What Paul is answering in Colossians 2:20-23
Paul writes to a church he did not plant, in a city he had not visited, and he addresses a teaching that had unsettled them. Some were being pressed to add observances to Christ: regulations about food and drink, festivals, and self-imposed austerity. The tone of Colossians 2:20-23 is not detached academic debate but pastoral exasperation. Paul asks why people who have died with Christ from the elements of the world still live as though those elemental powers still had authority over them. The question is rhetorical and its expected answer is that they should not.
The phrase about dying with Christ is not new in the letter. Paul has already argued that believers were buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him through faith. What he adds here is a consequence: if you died to a realm, you are no longer under that realm's jurisdiction. To submit voluntarily to its ordinances is not humility; it is a kind of relapse. The verb Paul uses for subjecting yourselves carries the sense of a self-chosen submission, which makes the situation more tragic. Nobody was forcing the Colossians. They were electing to live under rules they had already been freed from.
The ordinances Paul names are telling. They concern handling, tasting, and touching, which are physical, external matters. In the ancient world, and in religious systems generally, these prohibitions multiply because they are easy to measure. A congregation can inspect whether someone touched a thing. It cannot inspect whether someone loved God with a whole heart. Rule systems therefore tend to grow in precisely the places where internal reality is hardest to assess. Paul's objection is not to careful living; it is to the substitution of measurable externals for the inward work of God.
Note also the setting. Colossians 2:16-17 says, "Let no one therefore judge you in eating, or in drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day," and those are described as a shadow of the things to come, with the substance belonging to Christ. Paul is not anti-observance in every conceivable setting; he is anti-judgment. He refuses to let anyone make these matters the test of another person's standing. The verses that follow are his explanation of why such tests are illegitimate for those in Christ.
Why do not handle sounds wise but is not
Paul concedes something surprising. He says these regulations have an appearance of wisdom, which means they look reasonable on the surface. Self-imposed religion, false humility, and severity to the body all present as serious devotion. An outsider watching would conclude that these people take God seriously. Paul does not deny the appearance; he denies the substance. His verdict is that they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. That single phrase dismantles the whole system, because severity to the body appears to be exactly the way to subdue the flesh.
Consider the logic such rules follow. If I avoid this food, this drink, this garment, this activity, then I will be spiritually safe. The reasoning depends on a false diagnosis of the problem. If sin were primarily a matter of contact with defiling objects, then avoiding contact would cure it. But Jesus taught the opposite: defilement comes from within. Mark 7:14-23 records him calling the crowd and saying, "Hear me, all of you, and understand." He then explains that nothing entering a person from outside defiles him; the things that come out of the heart are what defile. Paul's argument in Colossians rests on the same foundation.
This is why severity to the body so often produces pride rather than holiness. The person who keeps the rule has something to point to. The rule becomes a ladder, and the climber begins to look down. Meanwhile the actual sins Paul lists elsewhere, such things as covetousness, malice, and self-exaltation, remain untouched because no external prohibition can reach them. The flesh is not subdued by being starved of certain objects; it is subdued by being crucified with Christ. That is God's work, applied by the Spirit, and it cannot be replicated by a list.
A further problem is that these rules are humanly devised, and humanly devised rules always drift. Once a prohibition is treated as the mark of seriousness, the bar rises. Those who cannot keep pace feel condemned; those who can keep pace feel superior. Congregations split over matters that Scripture never addressed. Paul's antidote is not to replace one list with another but to return to the person of Christ, in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and in whom believers have been made complete.
What died with Christ: the elemental principles
Paul's phrase about the elements of the world deserves attention. The Greek term refers to basic constituents or rudimentary principles, and in this letter it is associated with spiritual powers that held people in bondage. The Colossian error apparently combined Jewish legal observance with an ascetic mysticism, and both were being presented as necessary supplements to Christ. Paul's answer is that Christ has already disarmed the rulers and authorities and triumphed over them. To submit again to the elemental principles is to act as though that victory had not happened.
Galatians 4:9-11 makes the same move with different vocabulary. Paul asks, as Galatians 4:9-11 says, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, why do you turn back again to the weak and miserable elemental principles, to which you desire to be in bondage all over again?" The phrasing is striking because he calls them weak and miserable, not powerful and threatening. The danger is not that these principles are strong but that they are enslaving. They promise security and deliver bondage. Paul even says he is afraid he has labored over the Galatians in vain, so serious is the drift.
It helps to notice that the bondage is voluntary. Paul says the Galatians desire to be in bondage again. Nobody drags a believer back to rule-keeping; the heart reaches for it because rules offer a kind of control. A rule tells me exactly what to do and lets me measure the result. Faith in Christ offers no such leverage. It calls me to trust a person I cannot manipulate. The flesh prefers the leash it can see to the freedom it cannot control. That is the psychology behind every do not handle movement, ancient or modern.
So the death Paul describes is a death to a whole way of relating to God. It is not the death of obedience; it is the death of earning. The believer still obeys, but from a different root. Obedience flowing from union with Christ is the fruit of life already given. Obedience performed to secure standing is the flesh attempting what only grace can do. The two can look identical from the outside on a given Tuesday, which is why Paul goes after the underlying orientation rather than the specific behaviors.
The real target of Colossians 2:20-23
It would be a mistake to read this passage as a blanket rejection of all Christian moral instruction. Paul himself gives moral instruction elsewhere, and Jesus calls his disciples to holiness. What the passage targets is a specific thing: ordinances treated as the basis of spiritual standing, especially ordinances that go beyond what God has commanded. The phrase do not handle belongs to a category of prohibitions that human teachers add. Paul is not saying that God's own commands are worthless. He is saying that the additions have no power to produce what they promise.
The distinction matters for everyday church life. A congregation may wisely adopt practices for order, safety, and mutual care. What it must not do is treat those practices as the test of another's salvation. Romans 14:1-6 gives the pattern: "Now accept one who is weak in faith, but not for disputes over opinions." Paul goes on in that chapter to say that one person esteems one day above another while another esteems every day alike, and each should be fully convinced in his own mind. The strong are not to despise the weak, and the weak are not to judge the strong.
Notice the direction of Paul's concern in Romans 14. He does not resolve every dispute by declaring the stricter position correct. In some cases the stricter position is described as weakness, and the community is told to receive the weak without quarreling over opinions. That does not license contempt from the other side either. The one who eats is to do so to the Lord, and the one who abstains is to do so to the Lord. The unity of the body rests on the Lord, not on uniformity of practice in disputable matters.
Applying this requires honesty about which matters are actually disputable. Scripture has clear moral teaching, and Paul is not inviting us to relativize it. He is addressing food, drink, days, and ascetic practices, matters on which God has not legislated for the new covenant people as he once did for Israel. Where God has spoken, we obey. Where he has not, we extend the liberty he gives and refuse to bind consciences he has left free. When a church confuses the two categories, it reproduces the Colossian error in a new key.
False humility and the worship of angels
Paul links the regulations to what he calls self-made religion, false humility, and severity to the body. Each element reinforces the others. False humility says, I am unworthy to approach God directly, so I will approach through intermediaries and extra disciplines. Severity to the body says, I will punish the flesh into submission. Self-made religion supplies the rules and the vocabulary. The result feels deeply devout while quietly displacing Christ from his place as the one mediator and the one who accomplishes salvation.
This is why the passage ends where it does. If Christ is the head, from whom the whole body grows with a growth that is from God, then anything that inserts itself between the believer and the head is damaging. The mysticism Paul opposes involved visions and the worship of angels, and his verdict is that those who practice it are not holding fast to the head. The issue is not merely dietary. It is whether the Christian life is sustained by direct dependence on Christ or by a graded system of spiritual techniques.
Modern readers may not be tempted by angel worship, but the underlying pattern reappears easily. Extra disciplines get inserted between the believer and Christ: a particular schedule, a particular diet, a particular method of prayer, a particular experience that everyone must have. None of these is wrong in itself. They become wrong when they take the place of dependence on Christ and become the measure by which others are ranked. At that point the practice that began as devotion has become a new law, and Paul's verdict applies.
There is a pastoral tenderness in this passage that is easy to miss under the sharpness of the questions. Paul is not sneering at sincere people. He is protecting them from a system that will exhaust them and never declare them acceptable. The rules keep multiplying and the conscience never rests. Paul's alternative is rest in a finished work. That rest does not make a person careless; it makes a person free, and freedom in Christ has always produced more durable holiness than fear of a rulebook.
Guarding liberty without despising the weak
Liberty is easy to misuse. Paul anticipated this too, which is why he insists that the strong must not despise the weak and that liberty must be exercised with love. Knowing that food is not defiling does not entitle anyone to wound a brother over dinner. In Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8, Paul is willing to forgo a legitimate right rather than cause a weaker believer to stumble. So the doctrine of Christian freedom and the duty of self-limitation stand together, and anyone who claims Colossians 2 as a warrant for careless disregard of others has misread it.
1 Timothy 4:1-5 warns from the other direction. The Spirit expressly says that in later times some will fall away, paying attention to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, and the specific manifestation Paul names is forbidding marriage and requiring abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving. The passage then says that every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer. This is a sober warning against treating ascetic prohibitions as marks of superior faith.
At the same time, this is one of the places where faithful Christians differ over application. Some believers, convinced of a particular conviction about alcohol, entertainment, dress, or diet, will choose abstinence for reasons of conscience and testimony, and they should not be condemned for it. The problem arises when personal conviction is elevated into a requirement for others or into a test of salvation. The difference between a personal discipline and an imposed ordinance is precisely the difference Paul is addressing in Colossians 2:20-23.
A healthy church will therefore major on what God has revealed, extend liberty where he has been silent, protect the consciences of the weak, and refuse to let either the strict or the free despise the other. When disputes arise, the questions worth asking are these: Has God commanded this? Does this practice rest on union with Christ or substitute for it? Am I binding a conscience God has left free? Those questions do more to preserve unity than any policy can.
How this looks in ordinary discipleship
Most believers will not join a first-century ascetic movement, but many will build a private version of it. The signs are familiar. Assurance rises on a good week and collapses on a bad one. The measure of a day is whether the routine was kept. Other Christians are quietly sorted by how closely they match the routine. Prayer becomes a performance review rather than fellowship with a Father. When any of this sets in, the remedy is not to abandon discipline but to relocate it, from the ground of acceptance to the fruit of acceptance.
Practically, that means returning to the gospel regularly. It means preaching to yourself that your standing rests on the finished work of Christ, not on the quality of your morning. It means keeping disciplines as servants rather than masters, useful for training but never the basis of peace. It means being honest when a rule has become a refuge from trusting God, because the flesh would rather keep a rule than walk by faith. Paul's language about dying with Christ is not abstraction; it is the daily reorientation of a heart that keeps drifting back to law.
It also means patience with those whose conscience is differently shaped. The weak brother in Romans 14 is not the enemy. He is a person for whom Christ died, and the strong are commanded to bear with him. The strict sister is not a Pharisee by definition; she may be acting out of real devotion. The work of discernment is to distinguish between a conviction that is held before the Lord and an ordinance that is imposed on others. Only the second is the target of Colossians 2, and it is the second that divides churches.
Finally, this passage calls believers to rest. The regulations Paul describes cannot give rest because they can never be finished. There is always one more thing to handle or avoid, one more rule to add. Christ gives rest because his work is complete. To be found in him, as Paul says elsewhere, is to have a righteousness that is not our own. That is why the pressing question of Colossians 2:20-23 remains urgent: if you died with Christ from the elements of the world, why subject yourselves again to ordinances that cannot make you holy?
Biblical fidelity check
What Colossians 2:20-23 establishes is that humanly devised regulations about handling, tasting, and touching cannot produce holiness, and that submitting to them as a spiritual requirement is inconsistent with having died with Christ. The passage states that such rules have an appearance of wisdom but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. It does not establish that God has no moral commands, that Christian obedience is optional, or that a believer may ignore the needs and consciences of others. Paul is not arguing for license; he is arguing against a false foundation.
A common misreading takes the passage as proof that any serious Christian discipline is legalism, so that fasting, simplicity, or structured prayer are treated with suspicion. That is wrong because Paul's target is ordinances treated as the basis of standing, not disciplines pursued as the fruit of faith. Jesus fasted and prayed; Paul disciplined his body. The test is not whether a practice exists but whether it is trusted. If it is trusted for acceptance, it is the error Paul condemns. If it flows from union with Christ, it is the obedience he commends.
Other passages that speak to Colossians 2:20-23
The themes of this passage run through Scripture, and several studies develop them. What Does 1 Timothy 1:15 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application shows why the gospel's foundation in grace leaves no room for rule-based standing. 1 Timothy 1: Grace, Mercy, and Sound Doctrine traces how sound doctrine corrects the misuse of the law. 1 Timothy 3: Overseers and Servants in God's House addresses the character God requires of leaders, which is inward rather than merely external. 1 Timothy 4: Guarding Faith and Godliness confronts ascetic prohibitions that masquerade as devotion.
Frequently asked questions
Does Colossians 2:20-23 mean Christians can ignore all rules?
No. Paul's objection is to humanly devised ordinances treated as the basis of spiritual standing, not to God's moral commands. Scripture still calls believers to holiness, and Paul gives extensive moral instruction in his letters. The passage rejects additions to God's word and the pride and judgment they produce. It does not grant permission to sin. The question is not whether obedience matters but whether any rule can make a person acceptable to God. Only Christ's work does that, and obedience flows from it.
What does Paul mean by the elemental principles of the world?
The phrase refers to rudimentary or basic principles, and in Colossians it is linked to spiritual powers that held people in bondage. The Colossian teachers were pressing observances as necessary supplements to Christ, so Paul describes a return to these principles as a return to slavery. He uses similar language in Galatians 4:9-11, calling them weak and miserable. The point is that Christ has triumphed over these powers, so submitting to them again contradicts the believer's position in him.
How do I tell the difference between a good discipline and legalism?
Ask where the discipline sits in relation to your standing. If you trust it for acceptance with God, it functions as law, and it will produce either pride or despair. If it flows from gratitude and union with Christ, it is a discipline he can use. Ask also whether you impose it on others as a test. A practice held before the Lord is different from an ordinance imposed on the church. Pray for honesty here, since the same activity can be either, depending on the heart.
