Complete in Christ (2:11-15)

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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; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. (2:11-15)

Healings were an essential element of our Lord’s earthly ministry. They established His messianic credentials, showed the tender compassion of God, and foreshadowed the millennial kingdom, when He will banish disease. Our Lord’s healings also illustrate an important principle about salvation. When Jesus healed someone, He made them completely healthy In Matthew 9:22 we read, “But Jesus turning and seeing her said, ‘Daughter, take courage; your faith has made you well.’ And at once the woman was made well.” Matthew 15:28 records the healing of a Canaanite woman’s daughter: “Then Jesus answered and said to her, ‘0 woman, your faith is great; be it done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed at once.” When the centurion’s servants returned to the house, “they found the slave in good health” (Luke 7:10). Jesus said to the multitude in the Temple, “If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath that the Law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath?” (John 7:23). Our Lord’s healing ministry can be summarized in the words of Matthew 15:31: “The multitude marveled as they saw the dumb speaking, the crippled restored, and the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel.”

Just as Jesus made people completely well when He healed physically, so also does He provide complete salvation when He heals spiritually. That salvation does not need to be supplemented by false human philosophy or psychology, ritualism, mysticism, self-denial, or any other human work. In Christ we “have been made complete” (Col. 2:10; cf. 2 Pet. 1:3). When a person comes to saving faith in Jesus Christ, “he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17; cf. Gal. 6:15).

Having stated the truth that Christians are complete in Christ in 2:10, Paul gives three aspects of that completeness in 2:11-15. In Christ we have complete salvation, complete forgiveness, and complete victory.

COMPLETE SALVATION

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; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. (2:11-12)

As already noted, the Colossian heresy was a mixture of pagan philosophy with Jewish legalism. Not surprisingly, the Colossian false teachers, like the Judaizers Paul confronted in Galatia, were teaching that circumcision was necessary for salvation.

Every Jewish boy was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth (Lev. 12:2-3). It was the sign that he belonged to the covenant nation (Gen. 17:10-14). Throughout Israel’s history there had been two schools of thought about circumcision. Some held that circumcision alone was enough to save, since it granted membership in the covenant nation. That view was wrong, since “they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel” (Rom. 9:6). Membership in the covenant community did not guarantee individual salvation. Paul writes in Romans 2:25, 28, “For indeed circumcision is of value, if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision…. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.”

The second view recognized that circumcision was only the outward demonstration that man was born sinful and needed cleansing. The cutting away of the male foreskin on the reproductive organ was a graphic way to demonstrate that man needed cleansing at the deepest level of his being. No other part of the human anatomy so demonstrates that depth of sin, inasmuch as that is the part of man that produces life—and all that he produces is sinful. That is the biblical view. From the beginning, circumcision was used symbolically to illustrate the desperate need man had for cleansing of the heart. In Deuteronomy 10:16 Moses commanded the people of Israel, saying “Circumcise then your heart, and stiffen your neck no more.” Deuteronomy 30:6 adds, “Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live.” The Lord commanded the Israelites of Jeremiah’s time to circumcise themselves to the Lord and remove the foreskins of their hearts (Jer. 4:4; cf. 9:26). God was always concerned with the heart, not with the physical rite.

The experience of Abraham illustrates the truth that circumcision does not save. Paul writes in Romans 4:11 that Abraham “received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised.” Abraham was not circumcised until many years after “he believed in the Lord; and [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). His circumcision was the outward sign of a heart already made righteous by faith.

The New Testament also emphasizes circumcising the heart. Stephen accused the Sanhedrin of being “men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart” (Acts 7:51). Paul defined true circumcision in Romans 2:29: “He is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart.”

For Christians, the physical rite of circumcision is unnecessary because we have already been circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. The object of the circumcision of Christ is the removal of the body of the flesh. The body of the flesh refers to the sinful, fallen human nature totally dominating believers before salvation. Christians have been cleansed of that sinful dominance and been given a new nature created in righteousness, having been circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, that is, not physical but spiritual. At salvation, “our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:6). As a result, “if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). Nowhere is it expressed any better than in the words of Paul when he wrote, “We are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3). Believers have been freed from sin’s dominance and judgment, though not yet from its presence.

The question arises as to why Christians still sin if their sinful self has died. Paul gives the answer in a personal way in Romans 7:15-23:

The new disposition, which desires to do good and obey God, resides in the unredeemed flesh—humanness. That flesh is still subject to temptation from “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life” (1 John 2:16). Paul’s new self wished to obey God, but, he said, “I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.” (Rom. 7:23). The new creation is pure and holy. As believers we await only the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:23) to make them fully fit for heaven. (A fuller treatment of this marvelous truth is given in one of my other commentaries in this series, Romans 1-8, in the section on chapters 6-8.)

When viewed as a rite necessary for salvation, baptism is as superfluous as circumcision. Some see support in 2:12 for baptismal regeneration, but Paul would hardly replace one rite with another (cf. 1 Cor. 1:13-17). Arguing that the change from spiritual death to spiritual life is effected by water baptism would make Paul as much of a ritualist as those he was condemning. Water baptism is no more in view in 2:12 than physical circumcision was in 2:11. Both verses speak of spiritual realities.

Baptism pictures believers’ union with Christ. They have been buried with Him in baptism, the spiritual union of the believer with Christ that takes place at salvation (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13). Water baptism is only a picture of that reality. It symbolizes the believer’s identification with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (cf. Rom. 6:3-4).

Such a spiritual transformation can only be achieved through faith in the working of God. Working translates energeia, from which we get our English word energy. It refers to God’s active power—the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Those who believe that God raised Jesus from the dead will also be raised with Him. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

COMPLETE FORGIVENESS

And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. (2:13-14)

Paul here approaches the same truth he discussed in 2:11-12 from a different perspective. In 2:11-12 he emphasized that salvation is complete apart from any religious ritual. In these verses he emphasizes that forgiveness is complete apart from any human work. Forgiveness is perhaps the most exciting and comforting doctrine in all of Scripture, because it is what guilty sinners need to be made right with God.

Like all of sinful mankind, the Colossians were dead in their transgressions before their salvation (cf. Eph. 2:1). The Greek construction is a locative of sphere. Unbelievers exist in the sphere or realm of spiritual death. To be spiritually dead means to be devoid of any sense, unable to respond to spiritual stimuli, just as to be physically dead means to be unable to respond to physical stimuli. It is to be so locked in sin’s grasp that one is unable to respond to God. The Bible and spiritual truth make no sense to one in such a state. Those who are spiritually dead are dominated by the world, the flesh, and Satan and possess no spiritual, eternal life.

Paul describes the Colossians in their prior unsaved state as being dead not only in their sins, but also in the uncircumcision of their flesh. That phrase designates Gentiles, whose condition of uncircumcision demonstrated that they were outside the covenant. Paul wrote about them in Ephesians 2:11-12: “Remember, that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called ‘Uncircumcision’ by the so-called ‘Circumcision,’ which is performed in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” The Gentiles were therefore in a much worse state than the unbelieving Jews, who at least were a part of the covenant community that possessed the law of God. It is no wonder, then, that Paul describes them as “having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12).

Fortunately, the story did not end there. Because God is “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4), He made us alive together with Him. Paul again stresses the believer’s union with Christ (cf. 2:10, “in Him”; 2:11, “in Him”; 2:12, “with Him”). Those who were hopelessly dead in sin received new life through that union. God initiates the salvation process, because spiritually dead people cannot make themselves alive.

As a result of being made alive with Christ, believers have been forgiven of all their transgressions. The knowledge that all our sins have been forgiven brings great joy. “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!” (Ps. 32:1).

That God forgives the sins of those who trust in Him and includes them in His eternal kingdom and glory is the most important truth of Scripture. The psalmist wrote, “If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared” (Ps. 130:3-4). In Isaiah 1:18 we read, “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool.” Isaiah says in Isaiah 55:7, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” “Who is a God like Thee,” exclaimed the prophet Micah, “who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?” (Mic. 7:18).

God’s forgiveness is also a prominent theme in the New Testament. Our Lord told His disciples at the Last Supper, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). Peter told those assembled in Cornelius’s house that “through [Jesus’] name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins” (Acts 10:43). In Acts 13:38-39 Paul said, “Let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.” To the Ephesians Paul wrote, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7). In Hebrews 8:12 the Lord says, “I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

What are the characteristics of God’s forgiveness? First, it is gracious. It is not earned, but is a free gift. Romans 3:24 says people are “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” Paul echoes that thought in Titus 3:4-7: “When the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

Second, God’s forgiveness is complete. Forgiveness, Ephesians 1:7 tells us, is “according to the riches of His grace.” God’s grace will always be greater than sin, because “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20). The apostle John flatly states, “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake” (1 John 2:12).

Third, God’s forgiveness is eager. “‘Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked,’ declares the Lord God, ‘rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?’” (Ezek. 18:23; cf. 33:11). “Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in lovingkindness to all who call upon Thee” (Ps. 86:5). Far from begrudging His forgiveness, God is anxious to give it.

Fourth, God’s forgiveness is certain. In Acts 26:18 Paul says that God sent him to the Gentiles “to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, in order that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in [Jesus].” Forgiveness is certain because it is based on God’s promise.

Fifth, God’s forgiveness is unequalled. The prophet Micah said, “Who is a God like Thee, who pardons iniquity and passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession?” (Mic. 7:18). The answer to his question is that there is none. None of the gods of false religion offers such forgiveness.

Sixth, God’s forgiveness is motivating. Ephesians 4:32 commands us to “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” God has forgiven us the huge, unpayable debt we owed Him. How can we do any less than forgive others the trivial debts they owe us (cf. Matt. 18:23-35)? That verse is further confirmation of God’s complete forgiveness. How could He command us to forgive others if He has not forgiven us?

Paul then illustrates God’s forgiveness. When God forgave us, He canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Certificate of debt translates cheirographos, which literally means “something written with the hand,” or “an autograph.” It was used to refer to a certificate of indebtedness handwritten by the debtor in acknowledgment of his debt. Paul describes that certificate as consisting of decrees against us. Dog-masin (decrees) refers to the Mosaic law (cf. Eph. 2:15). All peoples (including Gentiles, cf. Rom. 2:14-15) owe God a debt because they have violated His law. The certificate was hostile to us, that is, it was enough to condemn us to judgment and hell, because “cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them” (Gal. 3:10). Exaleiphō (canceled out) means “to wipe off,” like erasing a blackboard. Ancient documents were commonly written either on papyrus, a paper-like material made from the bulrush plant, or vellum, which was made from an animal’s hide. The ink used then had no acid in it and did not soak into the writing material. Since the ink remained on the surface, it could be wiped off if the scribe wanted to reuse the material. Paul says here that God has wiped off our certificate of debt, having nailed it to the cross. Not a trace of it remains to be held against us. Our forgiveness is complete.

COMPLETE VICTORY

When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. (2:15)

Having disarmed Satan (literally “stripping him”) and the rulers and authorities (fallen angels), He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. The imagery here is like that of a triumphant Roman general, parading his defeated captives through the streets of Rome. Christ’s victory on the cross halted the demons in their attempts to stop His redemptive work and stripped Satan of his powers. Hebrews 2:14 says, “Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.”

To worship such defeated and humiliated beings would be the height of folly. The cross is the answer to the Colossian errorists’ insistence on worshiping angelic beings. Through the Lord Jesus and His work on the cross (cf. Eph. 1:20-23; 3:10), God canceled the believer’s debt, defeating Satan and his fallen angels. That is why Paul can affirm in Romans 8:37-39, “In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Though we still wrestle against the forces of evil (Eph. 6:12), they cannot be victorious. Christ, the crucified, risen Lord of all, reigns supreme in the universe. To be united with Him is to be free from Satan’s dominion.

The death of Christ brings transformation, pardon, and victory. That adds up to complete salvation with complete forgiveness and triumph. No wonder Paul said, “May it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).