Colossians 2:16 Meaning: Are the Feast Days Still for Us?
There is a way of quoting Colossians 2:16 that is built to end a conversation. A family mentions its first Passover, a fellowship puts Tabernacles on the noticeboard, and the reference arrives on its own — no sentence around it, the way a citation gets filed in court.
Odd use for it, because the verse itself prohibits judgment of the people being addressed. Word for word: "Let no one therefore judge you in food and in drink, or in respect of a feast or a new moon or sabbaths." — Colossians 2:16. The Colossians 2:16 meaning that survives every translation is that one: a prohibition against judging the addressees, with festivals named in the list. The arguments are about the sentence after it, the sentence two before, and a harder verse in Galatians.
The verse has a target, and it is not the feast-keeper
The verb is krinetō, a third-person imperative, rendered "let no one judge." Paul addresses the Colossians while prohibiting others from judging them. That grammatical form does not by itself settle whether festival observance is required.
Then the list, three nouns in an order any reader of the Greek Old Testament would know: heortē, an annual feast, then neomēnia, a monthly new moon, then sabbata, the week — a trio that recurs across Chronicles, Nehemiah and Ezekiel for the whole cycle of Israel's public worship. Paul is naming a calendar in three words, not itemising a list. This page is about the first of them, heortē, the Gospels' word for the pilgrim feasts Jesus goes up to keep (John 7:2). The weekly end is do Christians have to keep the Sabbath.
The sentence opens with oun, therefore, and a conclusion is only as clear as what it concludes from. Eight verses earlier the real subject arrives: philosophia kai kenē apatē, philosophy and empty deceit, "after the tradition of men" (2:8). Two verses past ours, mēdeis hymas katabrabeuetō, let nobody disqualify you (2:18), and the disqualifiers are delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels. Ascetic, visionary, sold as the price of admission, and exactly what it was nobody can say.
The therefore reaches back the other way too, and that is the verse people mean when they say the feasts were nailed to the cross. "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us… nailing it to his cross." — Colossians 2:14. Cheirographon is a handwritten document, in ordinary Greek of the period characteristically the note a debtor signs himself, and what went up on the cross depends on which document it is. Read it as the law's own decrees and the appointed times are inside the thing removed. Read it as the record of debt run up against those decrees — the bond, not the statute — and the charge is cancelled while the feasts stay where verse 16 leaves them. English versions commit quietly, one way or the other. Interpreters disagree over how this debt-document imagery relates to the law; the word alone does not decide which observances continue. What moves is the picture: not believers quietly keeping Passover at home, but believers told they are second-class without a particular religious programme.
The Colossians 2:16 meaning hangs on one word in the next verse
Ha estin skia tōn mellontōn, to de sōma tou Christou. "Which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is of Christ." — Colossians 2:17. Two things in that half-verse do the real work, and honest readers split on both.
First, skia, shadow. One side takes it as Hebrews does — "the law having a shadow of good things to come" (Hebrews 10:1) — a shadow being what you had before the substance arrived, so keeping it afterwards prefers the outline to the face. The other side answers that a shadow is thrown by a real body and reproduces its shape, and that estin is present tense: these things are a shadow, not were. The grammar carries less than it is asked to, but the image cuts both ways.
Second, to de sōma tou Christou. Five words, no verb. Almost every English Bible supplies one — the substance belongs to Christ — and some literal versions mark the supplied verb. Greek commonly omits this sort of linking verb, so its absence is not by itself an argument against that translation. A minority reading takes sōma as this letter's most prominent use of it does, the church (1:18, 1:24), which turns the clause into a statement about who may arbitrate. Not the consensus, and not a question this page will close.
Paul never writes "stop keeping them," but verse 20 asks why, having died with Christ to the elemental things, you would still submit to decrees. Which of those governs the paragraph is not settled.
Galatians 4:10 is the harder verse
"You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have laboured over you in vain." — Galatians 4:10–11. That is alarm, plainly written. Paratēreisthe is middle voice, watching closely, keeping scrupulous track, and Paul's response is fear that his whole work among them has come to nothing.
The context still matters. Two verses earlier: "when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods" (4:8) — a pagan past, not a Jewish one. Then: how is it that you turn back again to the weak and beggarly stoicheia (4:9). The pagan past matters, but interpreters differ over whether the days are Jewish observances or a return to former calendrical practices. Paul's concern is renewed bondage; the circumcision dispute in Galatians 5:2–4 belongs to that context. The word "again" does not by itself identify the calendar at issue.
The split happens twice, not four times
Nobody in this argument disbelieves Paul. That is what makes it an argument. And the four positions people name are not independent guesses. They come out of two decisions, in order.
The first is whether the shadow retires when the substance arrives. Most of the Western church answers yes, by two roads. The Reformed road divides the law into moral, civil and ceremonial and holds the ceremonial part abrogated in Christ, as its confessions state outright, so 2:16–17 reads straight off the page — shadow, substance, no obligation. Catholic teaching describes fulfilment through a different framework: the appointed times are fulfilled, taken up into the Paschal mystery.
The second decision faces only those who said yes, and it is where Rome and Geneva part. If Leviticus 23 is no longer kept as dates, does anything stand on the year in its place? Catholic teaching answers with the church's own year, not treated as optional decoration. Reformed churches differ over the annual church calendar, while giving particular weight to weekly worship; some reject observances not commanded in Scripture, rather than simply treating every annual festival as optional.
Two traditions answer the first decision differently. Messianic Jewish and Hebrew Roots congregations hold that fulfilment deepens a rehearsal instead of ending it, and for many Jewish believers the feasts are not a doctrine at all but the shape a family's year has always had. What nobody can do is quote them as a bloc. No single authority speaks for all these communities; organisations have their own standards, and practice runs from one seder a year to a full Levitical calendar. So "Messianic teaching holds that…" is a phrase to distrust on sight.
A traditional Seventh-day Adventist reading splits the verse's own list instead. The weekly Sabbath belongs to the moral law of the Decalogue and stands. The annual sabbaths of Leviticus 23 are ceremonial and do not, so Colossians 2:16 is read as addressing those. Other Adventist interpreters qualify this explanation. At its strongest the traditional reading is the moral-and-ceremonial division carried one distinction further than the Reformed draw it. Its weaker form leans on the Greek plural sabbatōn, which will not bear the weight — the plural is ordinary Greek for a single Sabbath.
Most people who quote this verse inherited the first decision before they could read, and never met the second. Which is why the comments so seldom move.
The one thing the verse forbids in both directions
Look at the traffic around this verse. Someone keeps a feast, someone else quotes Colossians 2:16 to stop them, and a sentence about not judging becomes a judgment. It runs the other way too, the direction feast-keepers rarely check: nothing in Leviticus 23 licenses watching a family eat ham at Christmas and drawing conclusions about where they stand with God. Romans 14:3 closes both lanes — the free are not to despise the scrupulous, and the scrupulous are not to condemn the free.
Which leaves the legalism question, real and almost always asked wrongly. Legalism is not a quantity of observance. It is a theory about what your observance buys. Roast lamb in the spring is not legalism, and skipping it is not freedom. The diagnostic is what you would feel if you missed it. Loss, or exposure.
That is also where a calendar app has to know its own size. Day 4 will name the appointed times on its Feasts screen and show on Calendar where they fall against the days you already keep — useful, and beside the point here, because this argument is not about dates. Whether any of it is required of you the app leaves alone, on purpose, for reasons set out in why Day 4. A witness may point at something. It is not allowed to summon you.
Common questions
What does Colossians 2:16 actually say about festivals and new moons?
It says let no one judge you in food and drink, or in respect of a feast, a new moon or sabbaths — the Old Testament shorthand for yearly, monthly and weekly worship, so Israel's whole calendar is in view. Paul addresses the Colossians while prohibiting others from judging them; that grammar alone does not settle the obligation to observe the days.
Does "a shadow of things to come" mean the feasts are over?
That is the honest fault line. Hebrews 10:1 uses the same image for something superseded, a strong case. Against it, a shadow is thrown by a real body and reproduces its shape, and Paul's verb is present tense. Serious readers hold both, and Day 4 does not claim to settle it.
Is it legalism to keep the appointed times?
Not by keeping them. What Galatians attacks is observance taken up to establish your own standing before God, and that can be done with a Passover table or a spotless Sunday attendance record. A feast received rather than earned changes nothing about how anyone is justified.
Can a Christian keep the feasts freely without being under law?
Many Christians read Colossians 2:16 that way: they distinguish voluntary observance from treating it as a condition of acceptance before God. Others understand the relation to the old covenant differently. Day 4 does not settle that wider argument, and this verse should not be used to police another household.
If you keep them, keep them freely
Read the whole paragraph before quoting a line of it. Verses 8 through 23 answer people who had turned religion into a gate, and lifting one line out to use as a gate is a peculiar way to honour it.
If you are still working out what the appointed times are, start with a plain guide to the appointed times. If the live question is the spring feast, that is should Christians celebrate Passover. Then decide in front of God rather than in a comment thread, and extend to whoever decides differently exactly what Paul told you to expect for yourself.
