Colossians 2:11-13
‘In Christ…dwells all the fullness of the Godhead…. In Him…you were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of sins…by the circumcision of Christ — buried with Him in baptism, wherein…you were risen with Him through…God Who has raised Him from the dead…. You, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has enlivened together with Him!’ Colossians 2:5-13.
Calvin comments: “When he (Paul) says that ‘the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ,’ he means simply that the whole God is found in Him. So that he who is not satisfied with Christ alone, desires something better and more excellent than God!…
“‘In Whom also you were circumcised’…. Outward circumcision, is here compared with spiritual…. The circumcision which is made in the heart, is ‘the circumcision of Christ’….
“Spiritual circumcision…we obtain…through baptism, so that it may be more clear that there is no practice of circumcision under the reign of Christ…. Christ, he (Paul) says, accomplished in us spiritual circumcision…by baptism….
“When he says ‘We are buried with Christ’…, this is done through baptism (as also in Romans 6:4)…. ‘In which also you were risen’….
“‘We are not only engrafted into Christ’s death,’ he says, ‘but we also rise to newness of life’ – ‘by faith’…. What faith?… He means that faith…founded upon the power of God…; that by which He raised Christ from the dead….
“‘You were,’ he says, ‘dead in uncircumcision’…. It is…customary in Scripture to denote deprivations of the reality, by deprivations of the sign. As in Genesis 3:22, ‘Lest peradventure Adam eat of the fruit of life — and live!’…. The tree did not confer life, but its removal was a sign of death…. They were sacraments of the grace of God. As Baptism and the Eucharist are to us, today!”
Calvin also says in his Institutes IV:15:5 & 16:20-21: “Baptism…shows us our mortification in Christ, and new life in Him…. We are ‘circumcised’ and put off the old man, after we are buried in Christ by baptism…. Children are baptized for…repentance and faith…. The seed of both lies hidden in them by the secret operation of the Spirit…. We are buried with Christ by
baptism…(Colossians 2:12).”
Calvin further says in his Psychopannychia: “As the Apostle says…’we die to sin’ when concupiscence is extinguished in us. So we also die to God, when we become subject to concupiscence living in us (Colossians 2:13)!… Such death as the soul endures, Christ underwent on our account…. His victory over death, He performed by His death!”
Have you been buried and risen and enlivened in baptism, together with Christ?
