OH, THE MYSTERIES we uncover when we start delving into our past. Just this morning, I discovered something about myself that I didn’t know: I was baptized twice.

I remember the second one. That was a believer’s baptism, and done by my choice at the age of 18. After all, I didn’t grow up in a Christian family. It wasn’t until after I became a Christian on my first day of college that I joined a local church and was later baptized by the pastor.

But this morning, when I went rifling through our collection of official documents for the certificate from that baptism, I discovered — to my surprise! — a second one documenting that my parents had me baptized when I was a little over a year old. Obviously, I don’t remember that first baptism. But I didn’t even realize that it had happened. I suspect that my mother did this to make her mother happy, not because she found any meaning in baptism herself. And somehow, it seems, nobody bothered to tell me. Apparently, I’m now in possession of the certificate, which I inherited but never bothered to read.

Of course, it’s also possible that they did tell me and I forgot, because it meant nothing to me at the time.

That would not have been the case for any of the Gentile converts in Colossae, or for that matter, any of the converts connected directly or indirectly to Paul’s ministry. Baptism would have been a tangible sign of their entry into a new family with new loyalties. This wasn’t just a private matter of spiritual or religious preference. They would have been signaling to their neighbors that they, as Gentiles, were committing themselves to the Jewish Messiah in a context where the Roman emperor was to be worshiped.

Thus, as Paul teaches the Colossians the depth of what they already have in the gospel, he refers back to the new reality that began with their baptism. And he does this in the context of teaching them the meaning of true circumcision, probably as a counterpoint to some false teaching that led them to consider being physically circumcised themselves. Here’s the passage again, as translated in the New International Version:

In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col 2:11-12, NIV)

What Paul intends by this is not clear. Translations differ, and scholars debate the meaning of the words. The most difficult phrase is the one in the middle, which the NIV translates as “Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ.” By contrast, listen to how the New American Standard renders the same phrase: “in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.” That’s not any more straightforward, but it does have the virtue of being as close to a literal translation of Paul’s Greek as possible.

So what does Paul mean? Somehow, what Christ has done can be understood as a kind of spiritual circumcision, a metaphorical rather than literal removal of flesh. The noun translated as “removal” (or “put off” in the NIV) is only used once in the New Testament, though Paul will later use the related verb twice in Colossians. In chapter 3, for example, he’ll instruct the Colossians to live in a way that shows what it means to be in Christ. He tells them to “Put to death…whatever belongs to your earthly nature” (vs. 5) and to “rid themselves” of things like anger and slander (vs. 8) because they have “taken off” their old self and its practices (vs. 9). “Taken off”: that’s the verb that corresponds to the “removal” he mentions in our text from chapter 2. It pictures a decisive action, much as one might strip off a dirty or infected piece of clothing.

But what then is the “body of the flesh” that gets removed? Though the word can literally refer to the meat on our bones, Paul often uses it to refer to our sinful nature. That’s why the Common English Bible, for example, translates “the body of the flesh” as “the whole self dominated by sin,” even though the word for sin is nowhere in the verse. That certainly fits with what Paul will say in chapter 3 about putting our earthly nature to death and taking off the old self.

And it makes sense of his turn from the rite of circumcision to that of baptism. Circumcision is no longer the mark of one’s entry into the family of God, baptism is. Through baptism, we become identified with Christ and his crucifixion and resurrection. Listen to what he says in Romans, a letter that was probably written a few years before Colossians:

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. (Rom 6:3-7)

Our full bodily resurrection is for some day in the future. But for now, being united with Christ through baptism means dying to our sinful nature so that we can live new lives today, no longer as slaves to sin, but freely giving ourselves in obedience to God. That life is what both Paul and Moses mean by the circumcision of the heart, and baptism is its sign.

The Colossians don’t need to be circumcised. They’ve already had their fleshly nature circumcised by being baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. And as we’ll see, that has implications even for how the Colossians relate to the so-called “powers and authorities.”