Transcript

You should be able to see really quickly why I added verse 11 in here.

Because verse 11, what Paul does is a very consequential verse.

He makes clear that baptism, when he, which he's about to describe, is what he calls a circumcision made without hands, the circumcision of Christ.

Now, what he means by that last expression is not the circumcision that Christ experienced, that Jesus experienced when he was a baby, when Mary and Joseph brought him up to be circumcised on the eighth day.

What he means is the circumcision that belongs to Christ, meaning the circumcision that is given to those who are in Christ now, namely one made without hands.

Wha- what does he mean without hands?

It means it's not a physical, fleshly circumcision, like was required of Jewish males in the Old Testament, according to Genesis 17.

On the eighth day, every genet- Jewish male would have the...

every baby would have the, the flesh of his foreskin removed, right?

As a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham, between God and his people.

So here, in Colossians chapter two, Paul's saying that if you're in Christ, you were circumcised, whether you know it or not.

But you were circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands.

You were circumcised with the circumcision of Christ when?

How?

Where?

When you were buried with him in baptism, through which you also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

All right, so pause there.

So Paul is moving quickly , as his wont to do here, and he's assuming a lot, as he's also wont to do.

Uh, and so I just wanna unpack it here.

What Paul's doing is describing baptism, right?

The immersion in water through which a person is united to Christ as a kind of new circumcision.

As a new circumcision, right?

And the reason he can describe it that way is because he doesn't just see baptism as a kind of public profession of faith in Christ, or even as a kind of incorporation into the local Christian community, although it could function those ways.

He sees baptism as a death and a resurrection.

He sees baptism as a transition from one sphere of reality into another sphere of reality, from the old creation into the new creation.

And he's gonna make this clear as you go through the letter of the Colossians.

You can't see it from the, from the, um, the, the, the selection that we have in lectionary this week, but as you read through Colossians, this is gonna be a major theme.

And so, what Paul's doing is assuming that you understand that according to him, circumcision, fleshly circumcision, is something that belongs to the old creation, because it belonged to the old covenant, right?

And those who are now in Christ don't just belong to the new covenant.

They also belong to the new creation, because through baptism, they died to the old world, and then they were raised with Christ.

So Paul's point here is that although you were once dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, so he's talking about Gentiles.

Before they were baptized, they were uncircumcised in their flesh and they're living in a state of sin.

The people of Colossae, to whom he's writing the letter, are predominantly former pagans.

They're former Gentiles.

In fact, uh, the city of Colossae was known for being a kinda hotbed of pagan syncretism.

They had lots of different cults, lots of different gods and goddesses, lots of kind of mystical expressions of religion that were found there in that city.

And so Paul's addressing these former pagans and saying, "Look, you used to be dead in sin, you used to be uncircumcised in your flesh, but now you're not only alive with Christ, you've also been circumcised.

But it's not the same kind of circumcision as in the old covenant.

It's a circumcision made without hands that was given to you when you were baptized, right?

When you were put to death with Christ and raised with him through baptism." What's the significance of this passage?

Apart from its profound theology of baptism, uh, this passage in Colossians chapter two, when you throw in verse 11, like I did at the beginning there, is actually one of the main texts, one of the foundational texts for the early Christian practice of the baptism of infants.

Right?

So to this day, especially in Christian communities derived from the Protestant Reformation, there are Christians who think that infants should not be baptized, right?

There are Christians who object to infant baptism and say that in order to be baptized, to receive the grace of baptism, you have to be old enough to have reached the age of reason and be able to accept Christ for yourself as your personal Lord and Savior.

And there are a number of arguments that will be made in favor of rejecting infant baptism.

But one of the reasons that ancient Christians in both the East and the West did not reject infant baptism is because in ancient Christianity, it was recognized that baptism wasn't just a public profession of faith.

Baptism was a mystery through which a person participated in the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, and that baptism was a new circumcision.

That baptism is the new covenant analogy to circumcision in the Old Testament.

And in the Old Testament, you did not have to reach the age of reason in order to be given the grace of entry into the covenant, right?

Entry into the covenant was a gift that was given to infants as young as eight days old.

Therefore, if baptism is a new circumcision, a circumcision made without hands, then it's fitting and reasonable that it would not be withheld from infants.

Otherwise, the grace of God in the Old Testament would be more inclusive than the grace of God in the New Testament, right?

Um, so if you want an example of this, you can listen to the words of Cyprian, Saint Cyprian of Carthage.

So Saint Cyprian was the bishop of Carthage, a major Roman city in Northern Africa, in the middle of the third century AD.

And so in this letter on infant baptism, hear how, here's how Cyprian, Saint Cyprian argued in favor of the North African practice of baptism, baptizing infants in the third century.

Here's what he wrote, quote, "As for the fact that among the Jews, circumcision of the flesh was observed on the eighth day, that was but a holy sign, an anticipatory image, a prefiguring given in prophecy, which has been brought to reality and fulfillment with the coming of Christ.

That image has ceased now that the reality has superseded it, and we've been given circumcision of the Spirit.

And that is the reason why, in our view, no one is to be prevented from obtaining grace.

Rather, every man without exception has the right to be admitted to the grace of Christ.

No one is denied access to baptism and grace.

How much less reason is there then for denying it to an infant, who being newly born can have committed no sins?

The only thing he has done is that being born after the flesh as a descendant of Adam, he has contracted from that first birth the ancient contagion of death." What we would call original sin.

"And so our verdict at the council was this: We ought not to be the cause for debarring anyone from access to baptism in the grace of God, for he is merciful, kind, and loving toward all men." That's Saint Cyprian of Carthage, letter number 64, paragraph four and following.So, really clear profound statement of Saint Cyprian that already in the third century, there were some people questioning whether baptism should be restricted to adults.

And Cyprian and apparently a number of other bishops met in council at Carthage, and one of the things they decided was no, baptism cannot be denied to infants because baptism is, as Saint Paul says, circumcision in the spirit.

Right?

It's a circumcision not made without hands.

And therefore, if circumcision was not denied and the grace of the old covenant was not denied to infants in, in the Old Testament, how much more should the new circumcision, circumcision of the spirit, not be denied to infants in the new covenant as well?

It's a very fitting, very powerful argument from s- what we might call sacramental typology.

Right?

So although it's true that if you look at the New Testament, there's no verse that says, "Go out and baptize infants" explicitly, you can make an argument, a, an inferential argument from Paul's theology of circumcision as prefiguring baptism and baptism as a new circumcision, that it's fitting to give baptism to infants.

And in fact, the reality is, um, if you look at the Book of the Ac- Acts of the Apostles, for example, chapter 16, verse 30, 31, um, when the, when the jailer, when the gentile jailer converts, it says, "He and his whole household were baptized," his entire ɔikḫ.

That would mean him, his wife, his children, his servants.

Everyone in the household would be, would be baptized.

And, and, and that expression of the whole baptism, the baptism of entire households is something that happens on more than one occasion in the Acts of the Apostles.

And so w- apart from any explicit statement that the entire household was baptized except for the babies or except for the infants or except for the young children, the presumption is that when whole households were baptized, everyone was baptized.

Adults, young adolescents, and children as well, um, especially in those kind of extended households.