Paul's view of baptism is developed in Col. 2.8-15. Here
we have the remarkable idea of believers being circumcised in Christ "in
the stripping of the body of flesh". "Here is a circumcision which
entailed the stripping off not of a small portion of flesh but the whole body -
a gruesome figure for death". The circumcision of Christ refers then not
to baptism but to the death of Christ, the baptismal language beginning in v.
12. The author stresses the participation in Christ's death (cf. Col. 1.22) and
this participation in Christ's death is related to baptism in Col. 2.12. We
were buried with Christ and raised with him "through faith in the power of
God, who raised him from the dead". The new life therefore comes into
being by the believer participating in the death of Christ and, according to
the precise wording of Col. 2.12, we were raised in Christ through faith. This
faith must be the gift and work of God. How else can a corpse believe?
Baptism, therefore, can be seen as a fundamental once for
all ritual which corresponds fully to the once for all ritual of Christ's
sacrificial death. As Fuchs graphically puts it:
In der Taufe geschieht
deshalb kein nochmaliges Sterben Christi und ebensowenig unser Sterben, denn
das hieße, Christus noch einmal kreuzigen. (Fuchs, Freiheit, 37) [RB:
In baptism, Christ does
not die again, nor does our death occur, because that would mean crucifying
Christ again]
Because baptism is so integrally related to the death of
Christ, it can be legitimately related to the "redemption from
Satan". I shall return to this in chapter seven below. So in baptism
"we have to do with realities, not merely with symbolical representations.
That which baptism symbolizes also actually happens, and precisely through
baptism." And it has this power because it is integrally related to the
sacrificial death of Christ. (Richard H. Bell, Deliver Us from Evil
Interpreting the Redemption from the Power of Satan in New Testament Theology
[Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 216; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2007], 269-70)
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