Spiritual elitism, or legalism, attempts to exclude Christians based on religious performance. Paul names three specific forms of it here: majoring on the external, pretending to transcend the physical, and being known by your don'ts. The true Gospel opposes all of them, training us to distinguish shadows from substance, not to fight flesh with flesh, and above all to hold fast to the Head, Jesus himself. This inevitably means leaning in to the very place where spiritual elitism often thrives: the church.