Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19) Commentary

At the time my wife and I knew Missy, she was the delightful 6 year-old daughter of our wonderful friends. She had an age-appropriate faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But while other Old Testament stories fascinated other children, Genesis’ account of Abraham’s circumcision especially fascinated Missy. She even retold the story in fairly graphic detail to her startled Sunday School teacher.

I sometimes wonder if this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson later fascinated Missy. After all, Paul makes repeated references to circumcision throughout it. So much so that the Spirit may even make it a “gateway” to sermons about this text.

Yet while circumcision is one of this text’s themes, at the beating heart of it is verse 6’s “So then [hos* oun], just as you received [parelabete] Christ as Lord, continue to live your lives [paripateite] in him.” Here Paul summons Colossae’s readers to basically continue what they started. Just as they received God’s grace with their faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord, they must continue to live in a faithful relationship with him.

The life that grows out of that relationship has a very Christocentric shape. Paul refers to it in verse 7 as being “rooted [errizomenoi] and built up [epoikodomoumenoi] in him, strengthened [bebaioumenio] in the faith you were taught [edidachthete], and overflowing [perisseuontes] with thankfulness [eucharistia].”

A life lived in submission to Christ’s lordship is, in other words, what The Message characterizes as deep rootedness in him and construction on him. Continuing in a faithful relationship with him includes, what’s more, knowledge, and practice of Christian faith as well as abundant thanksgiving.

Christ’s lordship is no trifling matter. After all, Christ himself is no trifling person. In language that echoes last Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, Paul professes in verses 9 and 10, “In Christ all [pan] the fullness [pleroma] of the Deity [Theotetos] lives [katoikei] in bodily form [somatikos], and in Christ you have been brought to fullness [pepleromenoi]. He is the head [kephale] over every power [arches] and authority [exousias].”

Those who submit to this sovereign Christ’s all-encompassing lordship don’t have to add anything to either his person or what he is and has done. In verse 8, for example, Paul insists Jesus’ servants don’t have to let anyone take us “captive [sylagogon] through hollow and deceptive philosophy [philosophias kai kenes apates], which depends on human tradition [paradosin ton anthropoi] and the elemental spiritual forces of the world [stoicheia tou kosmou] rather than on Christ.” We don’t have to submit ourselves or our beliefs to what humans have concocted. They’re little more than the creations of the creatures Christ helped create.

The Message’s paraphrase of this assertion is typically lyrical and evocative: “Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings.”

In verses 11 and following Paul implies that submission to such nonsense’s lordship rather than Christ’s is nothing but a step backward for those whom Christ has rescued from it. In our Lord Jesus Christ, he writes, we “were also circumcised [perietmethete] with a circumcision [peritome] not performed by human hands [archeiropoieto].”

This may at least hint at the nature of the “hollow and deceptive philosophy” the apostle condemns in verse 8. That philosophy may have advocated for a kind of Christian faith that necessarily includes keeping Torah. Perhaps Paul is alluding to a kind of “believe in Jesus but get circumcised too” philosophy. As he writes, he may even be looking past Colossae’s Christians to the Judaizers who insisted the reception of God’s grace with their faith isn’t enough to rescue us.

Paul strongly suggests that while Christ’s servant may choose to have their sons circumcised, they don’t need a mohel (a Jewish specialist in circumcision) to circumcise them. The apostle insists that God in Christ through the Holy Spirit has already circumcised us. We don’t need part of our bodies removed to be in a right relationship with the Lord. God has already graciously removed that which needed to be excised. Nor do Jesus’ friends need to add anything to Christ’s saving work. God completely finished God’s saving work.

Of course, while we’re saved by grace alone that we receive with our faith, we want to gratefully respond with our faithful obedience. For some Christians that includes keeping parts of the Torah. But we relentlessly remind ourselves and our fellow Christians that such obedience is “the fruit” rather than the “root” of our salvation. Faithful obedience is a product rather than source of our salvation.

In verses 11b and following Paul describes the kind of circumcision the Lord Jesus Christ performs on God’s adopted children. “Your whole self ruled by the flesh [somatos tes sarkos] was put off [apekdysei] when you were circumcised [peritome] by Christ,” he writes there.

Here the apostle seems to deliberately contrast two kinds of sarkos (“flesh”). Those who bear God’s image may choose whether or not to remove the “flesh” that is males’ foreskins. However, the removal of our “flesh” that is humans’ sinful nature is not optional. It must and, in fact, has already been graciously removed by Christ.

Paul goes on to link circumcision and baptism. Immediately following his description of God’s circumcision of God’s people he writes of how we have “been buried [syntaphentes] with [Christ] in baptism [baptismo], in which you were also raised with him [syngerthete] through your faith in the working [energeias] of God, who raised him from the dead” (12).

The apostle insists that baptism is, in other words, more than just the sprinkling or pouring of water on, or the immersion of one of God’s dearly beloved people. It’s even more than Christians’ incorporation into the Body of Christ. As circumcision at its best did for God’s Israelite people, the physical act of baptism symbolizes a spiritual reality.

In verses 13-14 Paul describes that spiritual reality: “When you were dead [nekrous] in your sins [paraptomasin] and in the uncircumcision [akrobystia] of your flesh, God made you alive [synezoopoiesen] with Christ. He forgave [charisamenos] us all our sins [paraptomata], having cancelled [exaleipsas] the charge of legal indebtedness [cherographon tois dogmasin] which stood against us and condemned [hypenantion] us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Preachers could spend a lifetime unpacking and preaching about this glorious gospel – and still not get to the bottom of its riches. But on this Sunday, we may need to say little more than this about what’s quite simply the greatest news we’ll ever hear: God graciously puts to death and buries the power of sin over those who receive God’s grace with our faith. When the Spirit baptizes Jesus’ friends, the Spirit breaks the chains by which Satan, sin and death kept us enslaved.

What’s more, just as God worked to raise Jesus from the dead, God works to raise Jesus’ followers from spiritual death to life. When God raised Jesus from death to life, God also somehow raised us from spiritual death to life. God graciously frees those whom the Spirit baptizes to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves.

In other words, when Jesus’ followers deliberately and stubbornly chose death for ourselves, God graciously chose life for us. Even when we still sometimes pile up a Mount Everest of spiritual debt, God deliberately cancelled all of it with a mighty swipe of the cross. God made us alive and free to respond to God’s amazing grace with our grateful obedience.

The Message’s paraphrase of this gospel is long, but perhaps worth quoting – in part if not the whole: “You’re already in —insiders — not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism.

“Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive — right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross.”

As a result, Paul continues in verses 16 and following, God’s adopted children don’t have to feel pressured into eating or worshipping in certain ways. Nor do we have to submit to the control of anyone or thing but our Lord Jesus Christ. God has graciously freed Jesus’ friends to serve our Lord Jesus Christ by joyfully and gratefully loving and serving God above all, and our neighbors as ourselves.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his entry “Baptism” in his Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith, Frederick Buechner properly provocatively wrote,

“Question: How about infant baptism? Shouldn’t you wait till the child grows up enough to know what’s going on?

“Answer: If you don’t think there is as much of the less-than-human in an infant as there is in anybody else, you have lost touch with reality. When it comes to the forgiving and transforming love of God, one wonders if the six-week-old screecher knows all that much less than the archbishop of Canterbury about what’s going on.”