FBC Daily Devotions

 ¹¹In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, ¹²having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.  ¹³When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

For the Old Testament nation of Israel, circumcision was performed as a physical sign of a covenant relationship between God and the nation. It was the sign that they were God’s and He was theirs. As one can read in various parts of the New Testament, that physical circumcision came with strings attached, and the people were unable to keep their end of the bargain. The rebellious nation of Israel, despite a commitment made by physical circumcision did not guarantee safe protection under God. In fact, their rebellion gave reason for them to feel unsafe under God. A broken covenant would surely bring fines and penalties, and in this case, the penalty was death. Could the covenant have been ratified to make it a little easier for mankind? That sure sounds appealing, but really, would it have mattered? We were to put it bluntly, “dead meat”.

The only real thing that could be done to secure our relationship with God would be to change our hearts, to change our natures. In effect, we needed a circumcision of the heart, not a circumcision of the flesh. And wasn’t that the point of the old covenant under the Law of Moses – to show just how impossible it was for us to keep our end of the deal? We needed so much more to get us out of the mess than physical circumcision, and fortunately for us, the mess was cleaned up by Christ, whom God sent to die for us. He took our flesh which was bound up with the guilt and penalty of sin, and he nailed it to the cross. A new covenant was ratified in Christ – a covenant resting fully on Christ and not in our ability (or rather inability) to maintain a sinless life. In Christ alone, we were made alive, our sins were forgiven, the laws and regulations that worked against us were taken away.

Now I know for many of us, this is nothing new to our ears. We have known these truths for a long time. But understand that Paul is writing this because the Colossians were in danger of reverting to a system of rules and regulations, ceremonies and the like. Paul wanted none of that. To pile on more stuff amounted to saying Christ was not enough. Over time that as rules and regulations mounted, Christ would be pushed out. Behavior would begin to take on an unbalanced emphasis. We would begin to focus on the activity rather than on Christ. Burning incense, as an example, sounds good, but we would begin to focus on doing it right, doing it at the right time of the day, doing it for the right amount of time, and one can see how this could lose the real matter of Christ. Prayer would take on an emphasis of saying it with the right words, with the right posture, the right time of day, and so on. I can see Paul looking ahead with fear that Christ would be replaced with what comes more natural for man – just tell me what to do! So not only would it be theologically dangerous to add rules and regulations and ceremony to Christianity, it would be practically dangerous as well.

But in Christ, we do everything for Him. Not just a bunch of rules, but a life fully immersed in Him. From the moment we wake up to our last thoughts as we lay down to sleep, we live for Him. That’s what Paul is getting at in his letters to the churches. Don’t fall into the ceremony trap! It’s not a list of rules, but a life in Christ. We live by the law of the Spirit these days. We are guided not by rules and regulations, but by the heart guided by the Spirit of God.

So let me ask you, do you feel like your life is governed by duty and obligation? Do you feel like the Christian life is made up of a routine of activities like reading the Bible in the morning, praying before you go to bed, going to church on Sunday, and so on? Is that really what the Christian life is supposed to be like? Well, yes and no. It can look like that in a good way (motivated by a love for God), but it is bad if we begin to compartmentalize our life in ways that look like a checklist. Listen, our life in Christ is an all day affair. It’s easy when there is a list of things that we can be done away with in order to “move on to more important things.”  Wow, that’s not at all what Paul wanted to see happen; hence, his strong rejection of and concern for the “hollow and deceptive philosophies which depend on human tradition” (v. 8). We’ll see more of this in next week’s passage, but for now, consider how you live your life. Do you compartmentalize your Christian life? If so, consider how you might move beyond that and into a life fully immersed in Him.