Colossians 2:11 Commentary and Bible Study

The apostle brings up the matter of circumcision, and he brings it up in rather combative language to show them the disaster of ever picking up or going back to circumcision. Of course, for them it was not going back because the Colossians were Gentiles not Jews, and they had never practised this. But the Judaizing heretics were going round the churches and they were telling people that they must be circumcised as Jews, and that Christ was no good to them, and they must begin to adopt the Jewish ordinances and rites and ceremonies, and so the apostle immediately comes to the point.But he is not going to just deal with that, he is going to at the same time explain to them the vastly superior form of circumcision, a circumcision not of made by human hands, but by the power of Christ, by the work of the Spirit, which they have experienced: he is referring to the circumcision of heart. This term was used by Moses back in the Old Testament, where he appealed to the Jews and told them they needed something more than rites and ceremonies; they needed this ceremony which is wrought in the heart, which changes a person entirely. Circumcision, he will tell them in due course, was just a symbol, and it spoke of their nation being separated from idolatry and worldliness. It was supposed to engrain in them the idea that they were a separate people, and should seek the Lord and live for him, but instead, so many of them took it as an efficacious rite. ‘By this ceremony, enacted in the flesh as a male baby, we are made righteous; it has made us acceptable. It has established us as the people of God.’ They did not see it as a sign that they must follow up on spiritually and sincerely in their hearts, but saw it as efficacious in itself.Now the Colossians and all Gentiles did have a weakness because in their former polytheism and their idolatry, they too had many rites and ceremonies. You had to know the ropes. When you went into the idol temple in those ancient times, you had to know whom and what to bow to, and what little rituals to go through as you made your food offerings to your ancestor gods or whatever it might be. The procedures were always elaborate. So they were used to this idea that any god expects a lot of rites and ceremonies. Even though they were converted, they were vulnerable to these lies of the Judaisers. ‘In putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh’ – that is so graphic. The apostle is picturing a body, but this body is made up entirely of sins. The head could be pride, the trunk lust maybe. The arms might be dishonesty and greed. It is a body composed entirely of parts and limbs of sin. That was us before conversion. That is how we are visualised in the apostle’s graphic. If only we could see ourselves. We are put it off, as you might take off an overcoat, throwing away the whole of the body of sin.