Forgiveness:
Wiped Clean, Forgotten. Colossians 2:12-14
We
are looking at the passage from verse 11 to 15 as Paul is beginning to lay this
foundation for his listeners. They were no different from us or any of the
other people that we know who are fighting all of the paganism in the culture
that surrounds us and trying to keep that from influencing our ideas. When Paul
begins to deal with the issues that are threatening them he goes back to the
foundation of our position in Christ. That position and the whole teaching that
we find in spiritual circumcision is directly related to what he covers in vv.
13-15 which grounded in understanding the doctrine of forgiveness. Forgiveness
seems to be the very focal point of understanding what took place at the cross
in terms of the character of God and His work for us.
We
have seen that the point of understanding circumcision is not the physical
ritual but what it stood for spiritually. It signified the separation, the
breaking of the power of the sin nature as we see it in the New Testament.
In
Ephesians chapter one there are a number of different things that Paul points
out that are parallel and which elucidate some of these same ideas that he has
in Colossians, especially in terms of this verse. Ephesians 1:3 NASB
“Blessed {be} the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
{places} in Christ”—every spiritual blessing. Nothing is left out. And it
is stated clearly that this is in Christ. That phrase “in Christ” is the
essence of the problem the Colossian believers are facing because there are all
manner of philosophical systems and world views, ideas and opinions on how to
live life, solve problems, to be fulfilled in life and reach a full potential,
etc. but they are not according to Christ. But in Christ we have everything and
we don’t need anything else. Anything else actually takes away from being in
Christ, from what we have in Christ, and eventually wipes out our spiritual
life. We have everything in Christ, and since Christ is fully God and God has
everything “in Him” by definition, then we have access to all that God is by
virtue of our position in Christ. That is part of what it means to be blessed
with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Paul states in Colossians 2:11 NASB
“and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands …”
He is distinguishing the physical act of circumcision, a physical rite which
stands for a spiritual reality. It is important to understand that. It is a
physical rite that is designed to teach certain things that are true in the
spiritual realm. And to capture fully what that physical rite represents is to
understand what it also foreshadows, which is our position in Christ.
In the Old Testament the two passages
we have looked at about being circumcised in the heart, that that was the real
issue that God was looking for among the Israelites, were Deuteronomy 10:16;
30:6. But there are also other verses in the prophets. For example, Jeremiah
4:4 NASB “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD And remove the foreskins
of your heart …” This isn’t physical circumcision. He is addressing the nation.
Jeremiah was one of the last prophets in the first temple period. He is
sometimes referred to as the weeping prophet because he wept over the
destruction of Jerusalem.
He is bringing a message that God is bringing judgment upon the southern
kingdom of Judah and is going to destroy them through the Babylonians. “…Men of
Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, Or else My wrath will go forth like fire
And burn with none to quench it, Because of the evil of your deeds.” Jeremiah
is constantly challenging the nation with their spiritual failure, and so the
command is to circumcise themselves to the Lord.
If
we look at the context in that chapter, in verse 1 Jeremiah says, quoting the
Lord, NASB “If you will return, O Israel,” declares the LORD, “{Then} you
should return to Me.” That word “return” is the Hebrew word shub.
In Deuteronomy there is the promise of curses and blessings at its end, and the
promise and the prophecy that at one point Israel will become so rebellious and
the Israelites so reject the God of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
and the God of the covenant with Moses, that God will remove them completely
from the land that He promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But God hasn’t broken
the promise, for that promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was an eternal
promise. And the sign of that was circumcision. But the promise in Deuteronomy
30 is, “When you return to me then I will bring you back from where I have
scattered you throughout the entire world, and I will restore you to the land.”
And the language there is the language of the establishment of the New covenant
promise in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, an everlasting covenant, and the establishment
of the eternal messianic Jewish kingdom. The condition though is this spiritual
circumcision. This isn’t a Pauline doctrine it was actually a Mosaic doctrine
that is being reaffirmed by Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 6:10 NASB “To whom shall I speak
and give warning That they may hear? ...” Their ear is
uncircumcised; it is not set apart to God. “…Behold, their ears are closed And they cannot listen. Behold, the word of the LORD has become a reproach to
them; They have no delight in it.” They are not
listening to God; they are listening to the empty, deceitful philosophies and
idolatrous religions of the world.
Jeremiah 9:26 NASB “Egypt
and Judah, and Edom and the sons of Ammon, and Moab and all those inhabiting
the desert who clip the hair on their temples; for all the nations are
uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised of heart.” What
was their problem? The problem surface-wise was idolatry, but this was merely
the surface problem. The problem was an internal problem, a failure to be
oriented to God spiritually and to trust in Him. Idolatry was simply a symptom
of a deeper spiritual problem: they were not circumcised in the heart; they
were not set apart to God positionally.
Ezekiel uses similar terminology speaking of the future messianic kingdom when a new temple will be established in Jerusalem. There he says that none will enter into that temple who are uncircumcised in the heart and in the flesh—44:7, 9.
Circumcision was the sign of the Old
Testament eternal unconditional covenant that God made with Abraham. Three
aspects of that covenant need to be remembered. It is an eternal covenant, as
true today as it was then. That means that whether the Jewish people are in
obedience or disobedience to God they were still God’s people under the
Abrahamic covenant.
There are those today who think that it is great to have a foreign policy in this country where we treat every nation the same: we give every nation money or we don’t give any nation money. The flaw with that is that the Abrahamic covenant is as true today as it was in Abraham’s time. That means that the Jewish people are still God’s chosen people. That means that you never ever for any reason, no matter what you may think of their spiritual condition, treat Israel like they are any other nation. Because Israel never has been like any other nation and Israel never will be like any other nation. Israel and Israel alone is called by God is called by God as the apple of His eye, and they are in a personal, national, eternal, national unconditional covenant with God that will never ever change.
There are three aspects to the Abrahamic
covenant. God promised Israel a land, descendants or a seed which has its ultimate fulfilment
in the Lord Jesus Christ who is the one who will provide that ultimate
worldwide blessing—through the blessing of Abraham there would be
blessing of other kinds to all of the world, and we see that today.
Circumcision is the sign of that covenant.
Is circumcision phase one or phase two
of the plan of God? Can it ever be phase two and
relate to the spiritual life of the nation? No. How many times can you be
circumcised? Once. It’s like salvation; you are only saved once. So
circumcision spiritually always stands for that initial point in time in an
individual’s spiritual life when they are saved, justified, and they enter into
a personal relationship with God that never changes. However, because we sin we
constantly have to go back to the basis for our salvation and we confess our
sins—not to regain salvation but just to gain forgiveness. We see that
specifically in the events in Joshua.
In the book of Joshua we see a physical
battle taking place where there is a positional reality for the Israelites: the
land is theirs. But they have to take it experientially. That is very much the
theme of Ephesians and also part of the theme of Colossians. We have everything
in Christ, it is positionally ours just as the land of the Canaanites was given
by God en toto to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, but they had to take it experientially in battle. We have to exploit
what we have positionally in Christ in a spiritual battle so that we can then
take control of all of the areas of human viewpoints and sin that dominate our
own thinking. So in Joshua the historical events of the conquest illustrate for
us numerous spiritual principles in terms of exploiting what we have in Christ
so that we can experientially grow.
What was the role of circumcision in Israel? Joshua 3 relates
Israel’s entry into the land where they cross the river Jordan. As the priests
lead the nation into the Promised Land they come to the Jordan. The river is
full, a wide flowing spring-flood torrent, and as the priests carrying the Ark
of the Covenant as they approach the water, they have to trust God and just
walk into the flood level river. As they lower their feet to the water the water
recedes underneath their feet so that their feet don’t get wet. They have to
trust God though and the reality of God’s promise has to be more real to them
than their perception.
Joshua 4:1 NASB
“Now when all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD spoke to Joshua, saying, [2]
‘Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from each tribe, [3]
and command them, saying, ‘Take up for yourselves twelve stones from here out
of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests’ feet are
standing firm, and carry them over with you and lay them down in the lodging
place where you will lodge tonight.’ [4] So Joshua called the twelve men whom
he had appointed from the sons of Israel, one man from each tribe; [5]
and Joshua said to them, ‘Cross again to the ark of the LORD your God into the middle
of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to
the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel.” They are going to build a
memorial statue that will remind them through the generations of what God did
that day. It is a benchmark in time, that no matter what happens in the future
when doubts may arise, when their children need to be told who God is and what
He did for them, they can go to this physical memorial and point to it, and
they can tell what it means. [6] “Let this be a sign among you, so that when your children ask later, saying, ‘What do these stones mean
to you?’ [7] then you shall say to them, ‘Because the waters of the Jordan
were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD;
when it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.’ So these stones shall
become a memorial to the sons of Israel forever.” It was a teaching point, a
point that they could go back to and remind people in the future that this
actually happened.
After they had camped at
Gilgal. Joshua 5:2 NASB “At that time the LORD
said to Joshua, ‘Make for yourself flint knives and circumcise again the sons
of Israel the
second time.’” There had been an earlier time in a previous generation that
came out of Egypt, the exodus generation, when there had been a mass
circumcision. Flint knives that have been discovered through archaeology were
incredibly sharp, razor sharp. [3] “So Joshua made himself flint knives and
circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth
[the hill of foreskins]. [4] This is the reason why Joshua circumcised them:
all the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, died
in the wilderness along the way after they came out of Egypt. [5] For all the
people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the
wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised.”
So this generation needed to be circumcised. Why? Because this identified them
with the Abrahamic covenant; they were God’s chosen
people.
So when they come to Gilgal
they established this rock memorial to the fact that God has given them this
land, and the circumcision which happened one time identifies them positionally
with the Abrahamic covenant and the promise of God to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants this land. Under the Israeli
covenants of the Old Testament it is positional truth; it is being identified
with Abraham and his covenant as an analogy and foreshadowing of our
identification positionally with Jesus Christ at the instant of our salvation.
What is interesting about
Gilgal is that its name comes from this event. Joshua 5:9 NASB “Then
the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.’ So the name
of that place is called Gilgal to this day.” Then what happens? [10] “While the sons of Israel camped at
Gilgal they observed the Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the
month on the desert plains of Jericho.” So there is this sanctification, this
positional setting apart to God, an identification
with the Abrahamic covenant, that all that they are promised in Abraham is
theirs positionally—they have been identified with him. But now they have
to go into battle and they have to exploit their position so that they can have
in reality what they have been given positionally.
What we see throughout the
rest of Joshua and in subsequent times in the Old Testament is
that the Israelites come back to Gilgal again and again. In fact this was the
original place where they set up the tabernacle. Again and again they will come
back and will renew their covenant with God. It is like going back to the cross
when we confess our sins so that we can move forward and have victory in the
battle.
Another thing that we need
to recognize that is going on here because if its application in the New
Testament is that there is a physical rite (circumcision) that is a sign of
their position in Abraham. There is a physical rite for the Christian: baptism.
That is why in the early church believers’ baptism was something that took
place almost immediately after salvation. Why? When we trust Christ as saviour
that is an event that happens in the mental realm. If believers are baptized
immediately after salvation that is a physical memorial they can go to and say:
“I got baptized at that time. Baptism didn’t save me but I was taught that
baptism depicted my identification with Christ in His death, burial and
resurrection. And that physical act of baptism taught me that I am in Christ
and a new creature in Christ, and I have died to sin and raised to new life in
Christ”—Romans chapter six. That tells us that for the Christian, in a metaphorical
sense, the cross is our memorial. The cross is what we look to as where our sin
was paid for by Jesus Christ, where the debt of sin was cancelled, and that the
physical rite of believers’ baptism is just a memorial marker that teaches
something about our identification with Christ. So we can go back to that in
times of doubt and times of teaching. It didn’t save us but it helped to
understand in a physical sense, through a physical training aid, what happened
in the spiritual realm—that we were identified with Jesus in His death,
burial and resurrection so that we are freed from the tyranny of the sin nature
and can now live for God.
Believers’ baptism
signifies the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This becomes the foundation of what
we have in Christ in terms of our forgiveness. Colossians 2:12, 13 NASB
“having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with
Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you
were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made
you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.” That
is coming out of the water in the picture of baptism and that is the
significance of Spirit baptism—we are alive together with Him. Why? Because He has forgiven us all of our sins. It is all about
forgiveness.