It’s a great question, and one worth digging into carefully! When you read the verse in its full context, Paul isn’t talking about the weekly seventh-day Sabbath at all — he’s addressing a very specific set of ceremonial observances.

Look at the list Paul gives: “food or drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day” (v. 16). That grouping — food and drink offerings, festivals, new moons, and sabbaths — is the exact language the Old Testament uses for Israel’s annual ceremonial calendar (see Leviticus 23, 1 Chronicles 23:31, and Hosea 2:11). In fact, Leviticus 23:37-38 specifically distinguishes these festival days as sabbaths that existed “besides the sabbaths of the Lord” — meaning the weekly Sabbath and the ceremonial feast-day sabbaths were always understood as two different things.

Paul explains why these could be set aside just two verses earlier: they were part of “the handwriting of requirements that was against us… nailing it to the cross” (v. 14) — the sacrificial and ceremonial system that pointed forward to the Messiah. That’s why he calls them “a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ” (v. 17). Once Jesus came, the sacrifices, festivals, and ceremonial rest days that pictured His work were fulfilled in Him.

The weekly Sabbath is a different category entirely. It wasn’t given to Israel as a ceremonial shadow — it was instituted at creation, before sin even entered the picture, when God rested on the seventh day and “blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it” (Genesis 2:2-3). It’s woven into the moral law itself, written by God’s own hand as the fourth of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11). And Jesus was clear that He didn’t come to abolish that law: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil… till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law” (Matthew 5:17-18).

So Colossians 2:16-17 is actually good news twice over: it confirms that the ceremonial sabbaths tied to Israel’s sacrificial system found their fulfillment in Christ, while the Sabbath He rested on at creation — the one He kept “as His custom was” (Luke 4:16) — remains a standing invitation to rest in Him each week.