William Burkitt's Expository Notes

Colossians 2:12

Our apostle here compares Christian baptism with the Jewish circumcision, and shews, that the signification and spiritual intention of both was one and the same, obliging all persons who took the outward sign upon them to put off the old man and put on the new; to die unto sin, and live unto God. Accordingly, the ancients made use of divers ceremonies in baptizing adult and grown persons, thereby to represent the death, burial, and resurrection fo Jesus Christ; immersion, or putting the person three times under water, either as our Saviour was under the earth three days, or in allusion to the three persons in the Trinity, in whose name we are baptized; and likewise emersion, their coming up out of the water, resembling our Lord's arising out of his grave.

Note here, 1. That baptism under the New Testament, succeeds circumcision under the Old, and as. right of imitation to Christians as circumcision was to the Jews: For the apostle here proves, that by virtue of our spiritual circumcision in baptism, we have no need of the outward circumcision in the flesh.

Note, 2. That baptism is undoubtedly Christ's ordinance for infants of believing Christians, as circumcision was of old for the infants of believing Jews: For if under the gospel, infants be not received, by some federal rite, into covenant with God, they are in. worse condition than children under the law; and the apostle could not truly have said, we are complete in Christ, that is, as complete without circumcision, as ever the Jewish church was with it, if we had not an ordinance, to wit, baptism, as good as their abrogated ordinance of circumcision. And the Jews would certainly have objected it to the reproach of Christianity had not the Christians had. rite of which sealed the covenant to themsleves, and their little ones, and was the door, by which all persons entered into the Jewish church.

Note, 3. The spiritual fruits and effects of baptism, namely, mortification of sin, and vivification in grace, by virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ, apprehended by such. faith as is of the operation of God, that is, produced by the energy of the gospel, and the efficacy of the Holy Spirit.

Learn hence, That neither sacraments, nor the death or the resurrection of Christ, in themselves, will avail to the mortification of sin, and the quickening of grace, if Christ himself be not applied to by such. faith, as is of the special operation of God, the faith of his working, and of his approving: This alone will effectually enable us to die unto sin and live unto God.

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William Burkitt's Expository Notes

Colossians 2:12

Old Testament

New Testament