Colossians 2:11

Paul has just told the Colossians to walk in Christ (Colossians 2:6), “rooted and built up in him” (Colossians 2:7), after setting out Christ’s preeminence over all creation and over the church (Colossians 1:15–20). Now he names the danger. Colossae was a city in Phrygia, in what is now Turkey, where many cultures, religions and schools of philosophy met. The church there faced a teaching that mixed Jewish observances such as circumcision, food laws and festivals (Colossians 2:16–17) with harsh self-denial (Colossians 2:21–23), the worship of angels (Colossians 2:18) and perhaps an early form of the claim to secret knowledge later called Gnosticism. It offered a deeper spiritual life beyond Christ. Paul, writing from prison, answers it by showing the Colossians how much they already have in Christ, and the verses that follow this passage deal with those practices one by one.

Verse 9 begins with “For” and gives the reason for the warning. The Colossians can let every rival teaching go, because God himself, in all his fulness, lives in Christ.

The verb katoikéō means to live or dwell in a place in a settled manner. The fulness of God has made its home in Christ, and it stays there. The word for fulness is plḗrōma, from the verb “to fill”, meaning what fills something, its full measure and sum. Paul adds “all” (pâs) so that the whole is meant, every part of it.

“And ye are complete in him” follows straight from verse 9. “Complete” is plēróō, to fill, the verb behind the plḗrōma of the verse before. Because all the fulness dwells in Christ, those who are in him have been filled. Paul uses a perfect passive participle, which speaks of something done with a result that lasts: God has filled you in Christ, and you remain filled. The word means to be fully supplied, with every spiritual need met.

John says that “of his fulness have all we received” (John 1:16), Hebrews says that by one offering Christ “hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14), and Peter says that God’s divine power has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). This fulness is God’s gift, received in union with Christ, and the Colossians had it before any teacher offered them more.

Christ is “the head of all principality and power”. The head directs and rules the body, and Christ rules every kind of authority there is. The word for principality, archḗ, means beginning, and in a separate sense a ruler or power, which is its sense here. “Power” is exousía, a word for authority that also covers plain power or ability. Together they take in every rank of spiritual authority, angelic or demonic, seen or unseen. The false teachers probably taught that the Colossians had to honour such powers, or rise through them, to reach God. Paul answers that every one of them is under Christ. God has set him “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion” (Ephesians 1:20–22), and the love of God in Christ holds us fast against every one of them (Romans 8:38–39). God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13), and our life is now “hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1–4).

Since Abraham, circumcision had been the sign of God’s covenant, marking the men of Israel as his people (Genesis 17:9–14). For Jewish believers, and for teachers who pressed the law on Gentile converts, it remained a mark of belonging and of righteousness, and the teachers at Colossae probably urged it, along with other rules, as the way to a higher standing. Paul tells the Colossians, many of whom were Gentiles, that they have already been circumcised.

The verb peritémnō means to cut around, the word for the rite itself. Paul keeps the word and shows what it now means for those in Christ. This circumcision is acheiropoíētos, “made without hands”, the work of God alone. It consists in “putting off the body of the sins of the flesh”. Apékdysis means a stripping off, the way old clothes are taken off and laid aside. The flesh, sárx, here means human nature in its fallen state, with its weakness, its passions and its pull toward sin, and “the body of the sins of the flesh” is that whole sinful nature. In Christ that old self has been cut away and stripped off, a decisive break with the rule of sin.

Paul calls it “the circumcision of Christ”. It is the circumcision that belongs to Christ and is worked through his own death and resurrection, in which he dealt with sin and the power of the flesh once for all. The Old Testament already looked for this. Moses promised that “the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart” (Deuteronomy 30:6), Paul writes that “circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit” (Romans 2:29), and he tells the Philippians, “we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit” (Philippians 3:3). The outward sign pointed ahead to an inward work, and that work has come in Christ, so that belonging to God rests on what God does in the heart. Paul can say “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20), because his old self died with Christ.

Paul goes straight on to baptism. As circumcision was the outward sign under the old covenant, baptism is the outward sign of the believer’s union with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection, the very union in which the old self is put off.

Believers were “buried with him in baptism”. Syntháptō means to bury together with. Burial marks the end of a life, and burial with Christ marks a complete and final break with the old life of sin. “Ye are risen with him” uses synegeírō, to raise together with. As we share his burial, we share his resurrection, and this new life is ours now as well as our hope for the day to come.

Baptism gives a picture of this. Going down under the water pictures burial with Christ, and coming up out of it pictures rising with him to new life. Paul makes the same point in Romans 6:3–7, where we are buried with Christ by baptism into death so that “we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). He tells the Galatians that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27), and the Ephesians that God has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:5–6).

The rising comes “through the faith of the operation of God”. Enérgeia, “operation”, is God’s active and effective working, his power at work. Faith trusts that working, and the work itself is all God’s. It is the same God “who hath raised him from the dead”, and the same power. Paul prays that the Ephesians may know “the exceeding greatness of his power” toward those who believe, the power God wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead (Ephesians 1:19–20). Christ is “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20), and he promised, “because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19).

Verse 13 tells the same story from the other side, beginning with what we were. “And you, being dead in your sins”. Nekrós is the word for a corpse. Here it describes the state of a person apart from Christ: cut off from God, unable to answer his call or to live rightly, a far deeper condition than moral weakness. The sins are specific acts of wrong against God’s holy standard. Paul describes the same state to the Ephesians, who were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1–5).

“And the uncircumcision of your flesh”. Akrobystía means the foreskin, and so the state of being uncircumcised. Many of the Colossians were Gentiles, outside the covenant people of Israel and its sign, and the word also pictures the natural human condition before God renews the heart. God’s saving grace reached them as they were. Paul tells the Ephesians that Gentiles who were once far off have been made nigh by the blood of Christ, who is our peace and has broken down the wall between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:11–22).

“Hath he quickened together with him.” The “he” is God, and syzōopoiéō means to make alive together with. God gives life to the dead, and the life he gives is shared with Christ in his resurrection. Ephesians says that God “hath quickened us together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5), and Paul tells the Corinthians that “in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

“Having forgiven you all trespasses.” Paráptōma means a slip aside, a lapse or deviation, whether an error or a wilful wrong. Each trespass is a step off God’s path, and “all” means that every one is forgiven. In Christ “we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:14). That forgiveness cost the blood of Christ, for “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22), and “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Verse 14 shows how the forgiveness was won. “Handwriting” is cheirógraphon, something written by hand. In the Roman world it was a legal document, often a bond or certificate of debt signed by the debtor. The “ordinances”, dógma, are decrees or regulations. Here they are the decrees and requirements of the law of Moses, holy in themselves, which became a record of debt and a charge against us because we failed to keep them. “By the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). Paul says twice over that it was “against us” (katá hēmōn) and “contrary to us” (hypenantíos hēmîn), so that its hostility is plain.

“Blotting out” is exaleíphō, to smear out, wipe away or erase, as writing is wiped from a tablet or a debt from a ledger. The same word is used of pardoning sin and of wiping away tears. The record was erased completely.

“And took it out of the way” means that he lifted it up (aírō) and took it out of (ek) the midst (mésos), the place where it stood among us. The bond is gone.

“Nailing it to his cross” uses the verb prosēlóō, to nail fast. A cancelled bond was usually crossed out or torn up, and Paul pictures this one fastened to the cross where Christ died. Some connect the picture with the public posting of a cancelled debt or of a list of charges. The cross became the place where the bond lost all its force. Christ “hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). He made peace, reconciling Jew and Gentile to God in one body by the cross (Ephesians 2:14–16, 2:16). He entered once into the holy place by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:11–14). “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), and so “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1–4).

Verse 15 carries the work of the cross beyond forgiveness to victory. The “principalities and powers” are the same ranks named in verse 10, here the hostile spiritual forces that held people captive through sin, death and the law. Paul names them again when he tells the Ephesians that we wrestle “against principalities, against powers” (Ephesians 6:12).

“Having spoiled” is apekdyomai, to strip off wholly or to despoil. Christ stripped these powers of their weapons and their authority, so that their hold over those who are in him is broken and their accusations have lost their force.

“He made a shew of them openly.” Deigmatízō means to exhibit or put on display, and parrhēsía, “openly”, means plain speaking, frankness and publicity. Christ’s victory was public and undeniable, a shaming of the defeated in full view.

“Triumphing over them in it.” Thriambeúō means to lead a triumphal procession. When a Roman general came home victorious, he paraded his defeated enemies, his captives and his spoils through the streets of Rome as a display of his conquest. The Colossians knew the picture, and Paul shows Christ as the conqueror with the powers led behind him as captives. “In it” points back to the cross of verse 14. The cross looked like weakness and defeat, and there Christ won his greatest victory.

Christ took part in flesh and blood “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14–15), and he was manifested “that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God raised him up, having loosed the pains of death, “because it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (Acts 2:24), and seated him far above every principality and power (Ephesians 1:20–21). The risen Lord says, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore” (Revelation 1:18).

This victory also answers the teaching at Colossae. Whatever powers or elemental spirits the false teachers urged the Colossians to honour, Christ has stripped them and led them in triumph, and they have lost every claim on the worship and the fear of his people.

This passage gives us a test for every teaching we hear. We can ask whether it lifts Christ up or makes him smaller, and whether it leads to freedom in him or brings in a new bondage of human rules and clever ideas. That kind of discernment grows as we live in Scripture and rely on the Holy Spirit.

It also settles where our standing with God comes from. We are complete in Christ, forgiven every trespass, and the record against us has been blotted out. Our standing rests on his finished work, and growing in Christ means living into a fulness we already have. Obedience then becomes a glad answer of love to the One who paid our debt.

And the battle has been won. We stand in Christ’s victory, we fight from it, and we can face every spiritual power in the confidence of his triumph, because the one who led them captive is our Lord.