Col.2:11,12 – and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 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.
Circumcision was and is a huge thing in the Jewish world. This was first instituted when the Lord appeared to Abraham when he was 99 years old reconfirming God’s promise that Abraham would have a son. The Lord told Abraham to circumcise himself as the mark of the covenant between Abraham and and the Lord. Today we are not required to be circumcised physically but the Lord spoke to us through Paul about a circumcision of the heart through the work of the Spirit. Water baptism is closely related to this, we are baptized in water as we leave our old life and enter into the life of Christ. We walk in this new life as we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ on a daily basis. This is how Luther describes this.
“This act or ceremony consists of being dipped into the water, which covers us completely, and being drawn out again. These two parts, being dipped under the water and emerging from it, point to the power and effect of baptism, which is nothing else than the slaying of the old Adam and the resurrection of the new creature, both of which must continue in us our whole life long. Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, begun once and continuing ever after. For we must keep at it without ceasing, always purging whatever pertains to the old Adam, so that whatever belongs to the new creature may come forth. . . .
Therefore let all Christians regard their baptism as the daily garment they are to wear all the time. Every day they should be found in faith and with its fruits, suppressing the old creature and growing up in the new. If we want to be Christians, we must practice the work that makes us Christians, and let those who fall away return to it.”
I love how Luther describes our baptism, he said it was our daily garment that we put on by faith as we walk in the power of this spiritual renewal that is continually happening in us. Just as Abraham carried the mark of circumcision showing he was separated from the world and its culture, baptism becomes that to us. I passed through the baptismal waters of death and live in the baptismal water of life everyday.
