We are, presently, involved in a study of Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians, and we are in the second chapter of that epistle. With Paul’s mention of “all the fullness of the Godhead” dwelling in Christ (Colossians 2:9), he brings to his present argument (Colossians 2:11-15) his previous context of the preeminence of Christ (Colossians 1:15-20) by repeating what he claimed in Colossians 1:18. In other words, if Christ is truly preeminent in all things, what should that look like in terms of what he has done for humanity?
In our previous study we came to understand that the old creation (Genesis 1:1) has been destroyed in Christ’s crucifixion, through our understanding that he is the Beginning (Colossians 1:18; Genesis 1:1) of the creation of God (Revelation 3:14). In other words, Christ is the **Place** where creation takes place in the same way that the woman is the “place” where the ‘creation of family’ takes place (Genesis 1:27; 3:20). Therefore, by destroying the Beginning through Christ’s crucifixion, God brought the old creation (Genesis 1:1) to an end. Similarly, through Christ’s resurrection, vis-à-vis the new Beginning, God brought the new creation (1Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 2:10, cp. Colossians 1:18) into existence. This is summed up in our spiritual circumcision, wherein our “body of the sins of the flesh” (Adam) was put off (Colossians 2:11) through the circumcision of Christ, the Beginning (Genesis 1:1), who, through his crucifixion, was “cut off out of the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8).
In Colossians 2:12 Paul offers us another picture of what has taken place. The rite of the baptism of John was a baptism of repentance (Mark 1:4; Acts 13:24; 19:4) and a symbol of death, wherein the repentant sinner confessed his wickedness and was baptized to symbolize dying to his past behavior. Afterward, coming up out of the water symbolized the sinner’s intention to live a new life of righteous behavior. The problem with the rite was the repentant sinner was still in Adam, who had corrupted his race, vis-à-vis all his descendants (Genesis 3:20), and, although the repentant sinner might improve his behavior, he was unable to attain the life, which Adam lost (Genesis 2:16-17; Romans 5:12).
Nevertheless, if we are baptized into Christ, whatever occurred to him, vis-à-vis Christ, also occurs to us, because we are in him. Therefore, when Christ was baptized by John (Matthew 3:15), we who identify with Christ, as our Savior, also went down into the water with him, baptized into his death (Romans 6:4), symbolically buried with him. Moreover, as he rose up out of the water (Matthew 3:16), we, who have embraced him as our Savior, rise up together with him in a symbolic resurrection out of spiritual death (Ephesians 2:1, 5), and this is done and understood as a real event through our faith in the operation of God (Colossians 2:12). While John’s baptism was one of repentance, Jesus’ baptism is one of complete destruction or death of humanity, as pictured in the Genesis Flood (1Peter 3:21).
Thus, while we were yet dead in the uncircumcision of our flesh (Adam), God made us alive together with Christ, the Beginning (Colossians 1:18), through Christ’s resurrection, in that God has forgiven us our sins (Colossians 2:13). Everything that God creates is created in Christ, the Beginning (Colossians 1:18, Revelation 3:14). He is the Beginning and the End of all that God does (Revelation 1:8; 21:6; 22:13). Therefore, when God made a covenant with the nation of Israel (Exodus 19:5; 24:3-4, 7-8; 34:27-28), the covenant was made in the Beginning (cp. Genesis 1:1), vis-à-vis the God of the Jews. The covenant was a bilateral covenant, in that both God and Israel had their particular responsibilities. Either party could break the covenant by not living up to what they claimed they would do. Therefore, the Old Covenant, written down by Moses (Exodus 24:3-4, 7-8; 34:27-28), was what Israel agreed to do to attain the blessings the Lord promised them. It was a debt or a bond that was written against them, in the sense that it was their legal responsibility to do in order to receive the Lord’s blessings.
Nevertheless, it was something Israel was unable to do, vis-à-vis they agreed to do what they, as a corrupt race (Genesis 3), could not be faithful to do (Acts 15:10). Moses’ words (Exodus 24:3-4, 7-8; 34:27-28) were a debt or a bond Israel owed, but they were unable to pay. In a similar sense mankind is also unable to pay, because gentiles, by nature, agree with the Law, when they do the things contained therein (Romans 2:14). Therefore, the bond stood against mankind, not just Israel (Romans 2:14-15), because men agreed to hold up their end of the covenant in their own strength, which was insufficient for the task (Genesis 3). Nevertheless, God forgave men, blotting out our debt to the covenant, nailing it to the cross of Christ (Colossians 2:14), which he took with him out of the land of the living (Isaiah 53:8).
Nevertheless, through the resurrection of Christ, God wholly divested the authorities of this world of their power of judgment, when they oppose the will of God. In other words, the authorities of this world are powerless to keep us from crucifying our old creation by embracing the baptism of Christ, and rising with him in the new creation and submitting to his authority. In Christ’s resurrection God openly exposed the utter weakness of men to act against the authority of God, which he vested in his Messiah. Thus, God’s total victory over mankind’s rebellion is understood in the cross (Colossians 2:15), by bringing the old creation (Beginning – Genesis 1:1) to an end and establishing the new (Beginning – Colossians 1:18).
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