Colossians 2:16-17: Let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day – things which are a shadow of what is to come, but the body of Christ.
When Paul talks about regulations of food and drink and time-keeping, he is always talking about the old Levitical system, which is full of prohibitions: “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch.”
Paul warns about these things because they are part of the dim world of the old covenant. To observe purity rules, food laws, or the Jewish calendar is to live in a cave where we see only shadows playing on the wall.
But those shadows, like all shadows, were cast by a body. In Christ, we rise and turn to leave the cave, and we see what makes the shadows, something that Paul calls the “body of Christ.”
“Body of Christ” means the physical body of the Son of God, incarnate as Jesus. It is the corporate body of the church. It is the body offered at this table. All this was shadowed ahead of time to Israel.
What Old Israel saw only in dancing shadows, we see in reality. The Father gives us the body of His Son and says, Handle, touch, taste and see that the Lord is good.
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