Colossians 2:21

Here Paul gives the false teaching its own voice. Touch not; taste not; handle not are sample slogans of the regulations being pressed upon the Colossians -- a religion of mounting restrictions.

By quoting them so bluntly, Paul lets their emptiness show. Each command piles another negative prohibition onto the believer, multiplying rules about what may not be touched or eaten. There is no life-giving direction here, only escalating denial. Paul is not endorsing these commands; he is exposing them as the burdensome demands of people who confuse fussiness with holiness. The Colossians, freed by Christ, are being lured back under a yoke of petty prohibitions. Set against the fullness they have in Christ, this catalog of don'ts reveals how thin and joyless such man-made religion really is. Christ offers fullness; these rules offer only restriction.