Proclaimer Blog
A difficult baptism text – but let’s be true to it
In their preaching groups, our second year Cornhillers are working through Colossians – a tough book for them, a real stretch. Last week we got to Colossians 2 and that particularly vexing baptism verse:
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col 2.11-12).
As I was studying, getting ready for my preaching group, it dawned on me that both credo-baptists (of which I am one) and paedo-baptists misuse these two verses.
- Credo-baptists misuse it by building a theology of baptism that says our baptism reflects events past which happened at conversion, namely that we have died with Christ and also have been raised with him. I confess to using it that way myself. But it's not precisely what the text says, is it? The text says that the dying and being raised happened with baptism, not that baptism is somehow a picture of what happened in the past.
- Paedo-baptists do not get off the hook either. This text is also used to make a link between the Old Covenant circumcision and New Covenant baptism. But that is also not what the text says. In fact, it makes no reference to Old Covenant circumcision at all. Rather it is referring to the circumcision of the heart (granted that is an OT phrase, see Deut 10.16) which is not a covenant sign but a conversion entry point.
We both need to be more humble before the text. Moo, BTW, has a helpful comment on this in his Pillar commentary:
The New Testament connects our coming to Christ (being converted and initiated into the new covenant community) to faith, to repentance, to the gift of the Spirit, and to water baptism, in various combinations. Any of these, in a kind of metonymy, could be used to connote the whole experience—implying, of course, in each instance, the presence of all the others. Water baptism, then, as a critical New Testament rite intimately connected to our conversion experience, could be used as shorthand for the whole experience. (p203)