"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 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. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."
"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form..." Do you prefer picture books and/or movies to books with no pictures sometimes? I do. I like to see what I'm reading about. I'm very visual. If we want to know what God the Father and the Holy Spirit are like, we can just look to Christ. He is all the fullness of all of the Diety. As we read stories about Jesus in the Bible, we are also getting an exact picture of who "they all" are. Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
"In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands." Circumcision in the Old Testament was the symbol that you were consecrated (in covenant) to the service of God. It was a daily reminder Whose you were. I suppose some people may get tattoos or wear certain jewelry as reminders now, but Christ says that we don't need to be circumcised physically anymore in order to state our new covenant with Him. Christ is the One who performs our supernatural circumcision.
"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..." Our baptism is where Christ circumcised us! Because of Christ's burial and resurrection, we follow the new covenant. No more physical circumcision. Instead, our old sinful nature is symbolically "buried" as we are baptized, and we are "raised" in Christ because of our faith in Him. What a picture that is! We are symbolically circumcised (in a covenant of service to our God) in our baptism. (By the way, it's never too late to be baptized, or even re-baptized as a symbol to a new commitment to Christ. A woman in her 70s was re-baptized at our church recently, and it was an absolutely beautiful picture and reminder that God is never finished with us while we are still breathing on this earth.)
Not only that, but look what else God does when we decide to follow and serve Him with our lives:
"When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross."
We were doomed. God is perfect. We are a filthy, completely repulsive sight compared to him. We cannot stand before Him because of our condition. For all that we do and have done that God has told us not to do, we owed him a lot. We would never be physically capable of paying for all that we owe God because of our sin. We were doomed to Hell, with no possible way out the moment we first sinned! Until Christ. HE canceled all our debt while it was staring us in the face, condemning us to Hell. Jesus paid it. All of it. Oh, how easily I miss the incredible breadth of that truth!
"And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." Nothing and no one has more power than Christ! Jesus Christ is the only person, being, or thing that has ever defeated death. We can keep coming back to that. No feeling you may feel today, no situation you see in front of you, no person who is in a position above you, no illness, no tragedy -- nothing has more power than that of our Lord, Jesus Christ!
What a FULLNESS we have in Christ. Let us live with that reminder in our hearts today!
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