Has stopped holding on: this is how Good News Translation has translated the participle, stressing the cessation of an action; other translations which make this explicit are New English Bible New International Version Translator’s New Testament Barclay. Has stopped holding on to Christ may be rendered as “no longer holds on to Christ,” but the figurative expression “to hold on to” may be understood in some languages only in a strictly literal sense, and therefore, it may be necessary to express the meaning by some such phrase as “he is no longer loyal to Christ” or “ceases to depend on Christ.”

For the head see 1.18; here Good News Translation has made it explicit that Christ is the head. Because of the difficulties in the figure of speech involving body, it may be useful to make explicit again what body is being referred to. Therefore, one may say “who is the head of the body which is the church” or “who directs the church which is his body, and he is, as it were, the head.” By introducing “head” by an expression which makes it a simile, the meaning may be a good deal clearer.

Under Christ’s control represents the Greek “from whom” (Revised Standard Version), which describes Christ as the source of the body’s growth; in Greek “from whom” is masculine, the antecedent being “Christ,” who is implicitly referred to by the feminine noun “the head.” The phrase under Christ’s control must sometimes be expressed as a clause, for example, “Christ guides the body” or “Christ controls the body.”

Nourished and held together: the verb “to nourish” (see also 2 Cor 9.10, Gal 3.5, 2 Peter 1.5, 11) refers to the food the body receives to make it grow. Held together is the same verb which in 2.2 is translated “drawn together.” The emphasis is on the “communication of life and energy, and the preservation of unity and order” (Lightfoot). The body is completely dependent on the head, and if separated from the head, it cannot grow at all.

Joints and ligaments: as commentators point out, this is not an accurate scientific statement on how a body works, and must be understood as a popular view.

So much of this passage in Colossians is highly figurative, and therefore it is not at all strange if readers find difficulty in understanding the abundance of figurative expressions, many of which seem to be rather extreme. One can, in a sense, understand how the head is significant in nourishing the body since the food enters by means of the mouth, but it is not as easy to understand precisely the role of the joints and ligaments, and there is no explanation as to precisely what Paul has in mind. Furthermore, it may seem rather strange to speak of the body being held together by its joints, since the joints seem to mark divisions in the body rather than performing a unifying function. When there is no term in a language to identify all of the joints by some general term, it may be possible to simply speak of “at all those points in the body where different parts come together,” or “at all those points in the body where the body bends,” or “wherever in the body one can move.”

Grows as God wants it to grow (literally “grows the growth of God”) points to God as the one who ultimately determines the growth of the body, with Christ as the immediate source. Since Paul continues to speak of the church as the body with its joints and ligaments and growth, it is best to continue the figurative usage in the last clause, and therefore, one may say “and so the body grows just as God wants it to grow.” If, however, the body has been identified as the church in the first part of verse 19, the meaning should be clear that this is not Christ’s body or any particular body but a metaphorical body, namely, the church.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1977. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .