“having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—” (NASB)
Did God’s Law get ‘nailed to the cross’? Were the feast days, sabbath, and the Law of Moses ‘against us’? Colossians 2:14-16 is commonly used to demonstrated that the Law of God was abolished, but was it? Investigate the meaning of Colossians from a pro-torah perspective to find out exactly what was ‘nailed to the cross’.
Colossians 2:14-16 and the Feast Days
What was ‘nailed to the cross’ in Colossians 2:14-17?
To understand the legal language of Colossians 2:14 it is necessary, first of all, to grasp the arguments advanced by Paul in the preceding verses to combat the Colossian “philosophy.” We noticed that false teachers were “beguiling” (2:4) Christians to believe that the observance of “regulations– dogmata” was needed in order to court the protection of those cosmic beings who allegedly could help them to participate in the completeness and perfection of the divinity.
Colossians 2:16-17 and the Feast Days
Colossians 2:16-17 is often employed to demonstrate that no one is permitted to judge Believers in relation to “eating or in drinking, or in respect of a feast, or of a new moon, or of sabbaths” (YLT). These things, as Paul writes, are “only shadows of the real thing, Christ himself” (NLT). Those who think that the Biblical holidays of Leviticus 23, the seventh-day Sabbath, and kosher dietary laws, have been done away, often use Colossians 2:16-17 as a proof text.