Colossians 2:11 - Exposition

In whom also ye were circumcised, with a circumcision not wrought by hands ( Ephesians 2:11 ; Philippians 3:3 ; Galatians 5:2-6 ; Galatians 6:12-15 ; Romans 2:25-29 ; Romans 4:9-12 ; 1 Corinthians 7:18 ; Acts 15:1-41 :l, 5; Deuteronomy 30:6 ). Circumcision was insisted on by the new "philosophical" teacher as necessary to spiritual completeness; but from a different standpoint, and in a manner different from that of the Pharisaic Judaizers of Galatia and of Acts 15:1 . By the latter it was preached as matter of Law and external requirement, and so became the critical point in the decision between the opposing principles of "faith" and "works." By the philosophical school it was enjoined as matter of symbolic moral efficiency. So Philo speaks of circumcision ('On the Migration of Abraham,' § 16) as "setting forth the excision of all the pleasures and passions, and the destruction of impious vain opinion" (see also his treatise 'On Circumcision'). From this point of view, baptism is the Christian circumcision, the new symbolic expression of the moral change which St. Paul and his opponents alike deemed necessary, though they understood it in a different sense from him (see Acts 15:20-23 ). In this respect the Christian is already complete, for his circumcision took place in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ ( Colossians 3:5 , Colossians 3:8 , Colossians 3:9 ; Ephesians 4:22-25 ; Romans 6:6 ; Romans 7:18-25 ; Romans 13:12 ; 1 Peter 2:1 ; 1 Peter 4:1 , 1 Peter 4:2 ). The inserted "of the sins" is an ancient απ έκ δυσις , a double compound, gloss. ἁπ έκ δυσις found only in this Epistle (see corresponding verb in Acts 15:15 ; Col Colossians 3:9 ), denotes both "stripping off" and "putting away." "The stripping off of the body" was the ideal of the philosophical ascetics (see note on "body," Acts 15:23 , and quotations from Philo). The apostle adds "of the flesh;" i.e. of the body in so far as it was the body of the flesh ( Acts 15:13 , Acts 15:18 , Acts 15:23 ; Colossians 3:5 ). "The flesh" (in Colossians 1:22 that which Christ had put on; here that which the Christian puts off: comp. Romans 8:3 ) is "the flesh of sin," of Romans 8:3 ; Galatians 5:19 ; Ephesians 2:3 , etc. "The body," while identified with this "flesh," is "the body of sin" and "of death" ( Romans 6:6 ; Romans 7:24 ; see Meyer, Godet, or Beet); sin inhabits it, clothes itself with it, and presents itself to us in its form; and this being the normal condition of unregenerate human nature, the sinful principle is naturally called the flesh. So "the (bodily) members" become "the members that are upon the earth," employed in the pursuit of lust and greed, till they become practically one with these vices ( Colossians 3:5 , see note; also Romans 7:5 , Romans 7:23 ). Yet "the body" and "the (sinful) flesh," while in the natural man one in practice, are in principle distinguishable. The deliverance from the physical acts and habits of the old sinful life, experienced by him who is "in Christ" ( Colossians 1:10 ; Romans 8:1-4 ; 2 Corinthians 5:17 ), is "the circumcision according to the Christ," or here more pointedly "of Christ"—a real and complete, instead of a partial and symbolic, putting away of the organic life and domination of sin which made the body its seat and its instrument. The genitive" of Christ "is neither objective ("undergone by Christ"), nor subjective ("wrought by Christ"), but stands in a mere general relation—"belonging to Christ," "the Christian circumcision." The occasion of this new birth in the Colossians was their baptism—