Colossians 2: 10-11( NASB)

Gordon E. Johnson

Rio Grande Bible Institute

The heart of the believer/leader is seen as "encouraged, knit together in love (2:2), rooted and built up in Him and established in your faith and . . . overflowing in gratitude" (2:7). Paul then warns the Colossian believer now to walk with caution. He is surrounded by worldly philosophies that will dull his growth and deter his progress (2: 8). Literally we, too, are surrounded by a godless world. Paul, however, is not discouraged because he shares our source of strength. That strength is Christ in whom the Godhead verily dwells in a bodily expression. To this is added the boldest statement of all: "and in Him you have been made complete" (2:10). This statement is most emphatic: you are "filled full."

As Christ is the fullness of the Godhead in bodily expression, in like fashion we are "filled full" in union with him. Our fullness is such that we don't need to appeal to any other source for victory. He is the head, the vital source of life and energy, over all authority (2:10). This is the believer's standing before God. Don't minimize it; minimize rather your own fleshy efforts. Our best efforts to walk in Christ-like victory are bound to fail and they lead only to frustration.

Paul has set the standard high, but now he will give us a new point of departure. It will not be our best efforts, much less the legalism of our doing, but rather what Christ did, once and for all, at the Cross. Paul sets forth the very essence of the Christian life, not as we often present it, but rather as God has designed it.

The Christian life begins at the Cross. "And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ" (2:11).  This appears to be a very strange statement. But the comparison to circumcision takes us back to Abraham, the father of faith. Circumcision was the divine seal of his covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17:11).  The very essence of circumcision was a cutting, a severance from the old and a full acceptance of God's covenant of grace. The Jews wrongly magnified the external rite and missed the profound spiritual nature of it.

Moses saw its true meaning. After the question, "What does the LORD your God require from you?" (Deut. 10:12), he answers later: "So circumcise your heart and stiffen your neck no longer." (16). Later Moses will add another truth: "Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart . . . to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live" (Deut. 30:6). For Moses it was their obedient submission to God and yet equally God's action to effect the cutting, the severance from the fleshly. God must circumcise the heart; only then can there be true love for Him. The flesh cannot love Him as he requires.

You can see the immediate connection with spiritual circumcision, a cutting off of the human, the natural, the carnal to be able to love the LORD our God with all our heart.  Later Jeremiah will chide the nation, Israel: "Break up the fallow ground and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskin of your heart." (Jer. 4:3, 4).  It is against that spiritual background that Paul says we were cut off from the body of sin (Rom. 6:6; 7:25).  The Christian life, then, begins with that faith recognition, that illumination by the Holy Spirit, that we died with Christ. Our new point of departure is to believe as God affirms that we were, (past tense, definitive action), cut off from the old and raised to walk in newness of life (Col. 2:12).  It was his doing at the Cross and we accept it by faith today.  Victory begins with that fundamental fact.  We proceed from there.

Gordon E. Johnson
September 16, 2005