Colossians 2:11

in whom The truth of the holy Union of members and Head is again in view. What he is about to speak of was done by the fact of, by virtue of, their oneness with Christ.

are circumcised Better, were circumcised, when you entered "into Christ." They already hadthat Divine Reality, the sacred but obsolete type of which the new teachers now pressed upon them. As regarded order, ceremonial, deed and seal of conveyance, they acquired this in their Baptism; as regarded inward and ultimate reality they acquired it by believing on the name of the Son of God. See John 1:12; cp. 1 John 5:1. Baptism is the Sacrament of Faith, and never, in principle and idea, to be dissociated from its Thing (Res), as if its work was done where the Thing is not truly present.

made without hands It is a thing of the spiritual, eternal, order, the immediate work of the will of God. Cp. 2 Corinthians 5:1. Is this "circumcision" simply holy Baptism? No, surely, but that "inward and spiritual grace" of which Baptism is the sacramental Seal, "a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness" (Church Catechism). It is vital union with Christ, through faith, by the Holy Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 6:17), viewed as our separation from the condemnation (Romans 6:11) and power (ib., 12, 13) of sin, and so our real entrance into a position of covenanted peace (Romans 5:1) and a condition of covenanted grace. In both these aspects it is the Antitype of the type Circumcision, and the Reality under the seal Baptism.

the putting off The Greek is one strong compound word; "the entire stripping off." It was, in principle and as regarded the call and grace of God, a total breakwith the old position and condition; not a reform but a revolution of the man's standing and state. The physical imagery is drawn of course from the severe Abrahamic rite.

the body of the sins of the flesh Omit, on good evidence, the words "of the sins" which appear to be a (very intelligible) gloss or comment.

What is "the body of the flesh" ?Elsewhere in St Paul the word "body" appears never to mean anything but the physical frame, save in passages referring to the Church; but (in passages at all akin to this) it is that frame viewed as in some sense the vehicle of sin, or rather of temptation. Cp. Romans 6:6; Romans 7:24; Romans 8:10-11; Romans 8:13. As God's handiwork, the body is good, and on its way, in Christ, to glorification. As the body of man in the Fall, and as man's means of contact with a sinful external world, if in no other way, it is so conversant with and affected by evil as to be (in that respect) an evil. As such it is "the body of the flesh," that is, the body conditioned by, and reacting upon, our nature fallen and unregenerate. See our notes on Romans 8:4 and Ephesians 2:3, on the word "flesh."

In Christ, "by the Spirit," the Christian is empowered to "mortify the practices of the body" (Romans 8:13). In Christ, "the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body" (1 Corinthians 6:13). In this respect the man, while still liable to physical weakness and weariness, and truly capable of temptation, and as a fact never so using his "fulness" in Christ as to be wholly free (whatever his consciousness) from the burthen of evil in and through "the body of the flesh," yet stands on such a ground of vantage over the power of that body as to find by faith a noble practical reality in the strong words of this verse. See further, on the other hand, notes on Colossians 3:5.

by the circumcision of Christ Lit., in &c.; "as united to, interested in." What is this circumcision? that given by Christ, or that undergone by Christ? Much may be said for the latter. Our Lord was "circumcised for man," as the sacramental Seal of His "subjection to the law for man"; and so His historical Circumcision has a deep connexion with our possession, through Him, of acceptance and sanctification, the fruit of His Righteousness and Merits. But in this context the other reference is preferable. We have but just read of a "circumcision not made with hands" ;surely the same is in view here. Christ, Messiah (the word here is not Jesus, which might have better suggested the historical reference), gives usspiritual circumcision when He joins us to Himself (see notes above), and so the circumcision is "His."