04.32. Col_2:11-17.

Colossians 2:11-17.

‘In whom (Christ) ye also were circumcised with a circumcision not wrought by hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; Buried together with Him in your baptism, wherein also ye were raised up with Him through your faith in the operation of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He quickened together with Him, (The better authorities (אACKL) have here a second ὑμᾶς, repeated for the sake of emphasis, ‘you who were dead ... He quickened you.’) having forgiven us all our trespasses; Having wiped out the handwriting in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross; Having put off principalities and powers, He boldly made a show of them, while in it (viz., the cross) He triumphed over them.

Let no one, therefore, judge you in eating or in drinking, or in the matter of a feast, or of a new moon, or of Sabbaths; Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.’ The phase of false teaching which the apostle meets in this and other parts of the epistle to the Colossians, is somewhat different from any thing that presents itself in his other epistles. That it contained a strong Judaistic element, is plain from the injunctions pressed against a return to the distinctive rites and services of Judaism; but the parties espousing and propagating it cannot be regarded as simply Judaising Christians. For evidently a philosophical or Gnostic element mingled with the Judaistic, in this peculiar form of false teaching, laying an undue stress upon the possession of a speculative sort of knowledge, which sought to carry the mind beyond the province of Scripture, and to elevate the tone of the religious life by fancied revelations of the angelic world, and by the practices of an ascetic piety.

Apparently, therefore, the false teaching warned against was a compound of Jewish and Gnostic peculiarities, somewhat after the fashion of what is reported to have become known at a later period as the doctrine of Cerinthus, or is associated with the Gnostic Ebionites, who were probably a sect of Christianized Essenes. Neither the time at which this epistle was written, nor the region in which it contemplates the false teaching in question to have appeared (Phrygia), admits of our connecting it with the heretical parties just referred to. But there were tendencies working in the same directions, which found a congenial soil in that part of Asia Minor, and which, notwithstanding the remonstrances and warnings here addressed to the church of Colossae, continued long to hold their ground and to prove a snare to believers.

In one of the earliest councils of which the canons have been preserved, that of Laodicea, a place quite near to Colossae, it was found necessary to prohibit the practice of angel worship, and also of adherence to some Jewish customs. (Neander, ‘Planting of Christian Church,’ B. iii. ch. 9.) So late as the fifth century, Theodoret makes mention, in his comment on this epistle, of oratories still existing in that quarter dedicated to the Archangel Michael. In the passage more immediately before us, it is the Judaistic element in the false doctrine beginning to prevail about Colossae which the apostle has in view, and which he endeavours to expose by shewing how the design and object of the Jewish law, with its religious observances, had found their realization in the work and Gospel of Christ.

Pointing first to the initiatory ordinance of the old religion, he declares circumcision, not in form, but in spirit, to belong to those who have heartily embraced the Gospel of Christ—the great truth underlying it, and for the sake of which it was appointed, having, in the most effective manner, become exemplified in their experience. In whom ye also were circumcised with a circumcision not wrought by hands; that is, a work accomplished by the power of the operation of God upon the soul, as contradistinguished from a mere fleshly administration, which is elsewhere characterized as a thing wrought by hands. (Ephesians 2:11.) When applying the term circumcision in this way, the definite article should be wanting in the English, as it is in the Greek—for it could not be referred to as a thing familiarly known to the Colossians: it was not the, but a, circumcision, yet one which rose immensely in importance above the other, and could be made good only by a Divine agency.

It was nothing, however, absolutely new; for in Old Testament Scripture, also, it was spoken of as a thing that should have gone along with the external rite, though too frequently wanting in the outwardly circumcised. (Deuteronomy 10:16; Deuteronomy 30:6; Ezekiel 44:7.) So much was this the case, that the apostle, in describing circumcision according to its true idea, denies it of the act performed on the body, as apart from the spiritual change this symbolized, ‘it is of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter,’ (Romans 2:29.) and what was merely in the letter he stigmatizes with the name of the concision—as if it were nothing more than a corporeal cutting. (Php 3:2) The spiritual act, the inward circumcision, is described as the putting off of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ. By the body of the flesh is undoubtedly meant the same as what is elsewhere called ‘the old man which is corrupt,’ (Ephesians 4:22, Colossians 3:9.) and by a still stronger term, ‘the body of sin,’ (Romans 6:6.) and ‘sinful flesh,’ literally, ‘flesh of sin;’ (Romans 8:3.) the bodily or fleshly part of our natures being viewed as the seat of the lusts, which are the prolific source of sin, and bring forth fruit unto death.

To have this put off, therefore, in a spiritual respect, is to be delivered from the dominion of sin, to die to sin as a controlling and regulating power, by the pure and holy principles of a Divine life taking root in the soul, and giving another tone and direction to the general procedure. When this spiritual change is accomplished, the flesh is, so to speak, evacuated of its sinful quality—instead of domineering, it becomes subservient to the good; and the change is wrought, the apostle says, in the circumcision of Christ, that is, in the spiritual renewal which a union to Him brings along with it. We are not, with some, to think here of Christ’s personal circumcision, which is entirely against the connection, since it would introduce an objective ground where the discourse is of a subjective personal operation.

The forming of Christ in the soul as the author of a new spiritual life—that is for the individual soul the circumcision of Christ, or, as we may otherwise call it, the new birth, which, by the Divine impulses of a higher nature, casts off the power of corruption. Essentially, it is the action of Spirit upon spirit; and the apostle elsewhere describes it as wrought by the Lord the Spirit, (2 Corinthians 3:18.) or as the result of Christ dwelling in him by faith. (Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 2:5-8.) But here, in what immediately follows, he couples it with baptism, to shew that, in this higher style of things belonging to New Testament times, there is substantially the same relation of the inward reality to an outward ordinance that there was in the Old.

Colossians 2:12. Buried along with him in your baptism, wherein also ye were raised through your faith in the operation of God, who raised him from the dead. It is clear that baptism is viewed here, as in the corresponding passage of Romans 6:3-4, in its full import and design, ‘in the spirit and not in the letter,’ as a practical and living embodiment of the great things which had already taken place in the experience of the believing soul. Baptism, in this sense, formed a kind of rehearsal of the believer’s regeneration to holiness—solemnly attesting and sealing, both on his part and God’s, that fellowship with Christ in His death and resurrection, on which all personal interest in the benefits of His redemption turns.

Commentators very generally assume that a reference is made to the form of baptism by immersion, as imaging the spiritual death, burial, and resurrection of those who truly receive it. This is not, however, quite certain, especially as, at the passage in Romans, he couples with the burial a quite different image—that, namely, of being planted together with Christ. Nor is it really of any moment; for beyond doubt the meaning actually conveyed in the language has respect to the spiritual effect of baptism as sealing the participation of believers in the great acts of Christ’s mediation—identifying them with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection.

The apostle brings prominently out the latter point of this fellowship with Christ, because the other was but as the necessary channel to it: wherein also (ἐν ᾧ καὶ) ye were raised up together with Him, so I think it is most naturally rendered, taking the ἐν ᾧ as referring to the baptism. It might certainly be understood, with many commentators, of Christ (in whom also); but it seems more natural to confine the reference to the immediate antecedent, and to regard the apostle as indicating, that the whole process of a spiritual renovation—the rise to newness of life as well as the death to the corruption of nature—has its representation and embodiment in baptism. And to shew how the outward is here based on the inward, and derives from this whatever it has of vital force, he adds, through the faith of the operation of God (that is, as the great majority of the better commentators understand it, faith in God’s operation, the genitive after πίστις being usually expressive of the object on which it rests); the spirit of faith in the baptized appropriates the act of God’s mighty power in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, as an act which transmits its virtue to all who in faith realize and lay hold of it.

Spiritually, they have thus already risen with Him; and therein have the pledge of a literal rising also, when the time for it shall have come. (All this, of course, is to be understood directly of adult baptism—the baptism of actual believers, or such as had the profession and appearance of believers. The application of it to the children of believers necessarily calls for certain modifications in the doctrinal aspect of the matter, as already stated in Lecture VIII. But it is unnecessary to enter on these here.)

Colossians 2:13-15. In these verses, there is nothing properly additional to what has been already stated regarding the work of Christ in its effect upon the soul; but there is a specific application of this to the believing Gentiles whom the apostle was addressing, and a more detailed explanation of the matters involved in it. First, their personal quickening out of a state of spiritual death and defilement: you being dead (or when you were dead) in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh; that is, the uncleanness which attached to them as abiding in their still unsanctified fleshly natures; this as the root of the evil, though from his particular point of view placed last in the apostle’s statement, and the other, the death in trespasses, the fruit that sprung from it, and gave evidence of its malignant nature; both alike were put away by the renewing and quickening energy which flowed into their experience from the risen life of Christ.

Then, as the essential groundwork and condition of this quickening, there was the free pardon of their sins: having forgiven us (the apostle including himself, and making the statement general) all our trespasses—χαρισάμενος, the indefinite past, indicating that the thing was virtually done at once, that forgiveness was secured through the vicarious work of Christ, as a boon ready to be bestowed on every one who might in a living faith appropriate the gift. Hence, thirdly, as the necessary condition of this, or its indispensable accompaniment, there was the removing of what stood in the way of their acquittal from guilt—the condemning power and authority of the law: having wiped out the hand writing in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. What here is meant by the handwriting in ordinances (χειρόγραφον τοῖς δόγμασιν) must be the same with that which fastened on them the charge of guilt and condemnation, and, as such, formed the great barrier against forgiveness. This, there can be no doubt, was the law, not in part but in whole—the law in the full compass of its requirements; called here the handwriting, with reference to the frequent mention of writing in connection with it; (Exodus 31:18; Exodus 34:1; Exodus 34:27; Deuteronomy 10:4; Deuteronomy 27:3, etc.) and this in, or with ordinances, namely, decretory enactments (the dative of instrument, as γράμμασιν at Galatians 6:11, the enactments forming the material with which the writing was made), pointing to the peremptory form which the revelation of law assumed.

The expression has already been under consideration at Ephesians 2:15. It cannot be limited to outward observances, though it is clear, from the use of the verb and its connection in Colossians 2:20, that these were here specially in view. Of the law thus described, the apostle says, it was against us, and as if this were not explicit enough, he adds the separate statement, which was contrary, or hostile, to us: not meaning, of course, that it was in itself of a grievous or offensive nature (he elsewhere calls it ‘holy, just, and good’ (Romans 7:12.)), but that it bore injuriously upon our condition, and, from its righteous demands not being satisfied, had come to stand over against us like a bill of indictment, or Divine summary of undischarged obligations.

But Christ, says the apostle, or God in Him, wiped out the writing (ἐξαλείψας, precisely as in Acts 3:19, with reference to sins, and in Revelation 3:5, with reference to a name in a book); that is, in effect deleted it, and so took it out of the way, carried it from among us, namely, so far as, or in the respect in which, it formed an accusing witness against us. But, plainly, this could not be done by an arbitrary abolition of the thing itself; moral and religious obligations cannot be got rid of in such a way; they must be met by a just and proper satisfaction; and this is what was stated by the apostle in the next clause under the figurative expression, nailing it to His cross. Ostensibly and really Christ’s body was the only thing nailed there; but suffering, as He did, to bear the curse of the law for sin, and actually enduring the penalty, it was as if the law itself in its condemnatory aspect toward men was brought to an end—its power in that respect was exhausted. ‘Never,’ says Chrysostom, ‘did the apostle speak so magniloquently (but this applies also to Colossians 2:15).

Do you see what zeal he exhibits to have the handwriting made to disappear? To wit, we were all under sin and punishment: He being punished, made an end both of sin and punishment; and He was punished on the cross. There, therefore, He transfixed it (the handwriting), and then, as having power, He tore it asunder.’ Did with it, in short, what the satisfied creditor does with his charge of debt, or the appeased judge with his bill of indictment; cancelled it as a claim that could involve us any more in guilt and condemnation, if we receive and trust in Him as He is there presented to our view.

(It was chiefly on the ground of this passage, including also Ephesians 2:13-17, that a mode of representation, once very common among a certain class of preachers in this country, was adopted—namely, that in respect to sinners generally ‘all legal barriers to salvation have been removed by Christ.’ The representation is perfectly Scriptural and legitimate, if understood with reference to the objective manifestation of Christ, and the exhibition of His offered grace to the souls of men. It is undoubtedly under this aspect that the truth is here presented by the apostle; and it is quite in accordance with his statement, to go to sinners of every name and degree, and tell them to look in faith to Christ, and to rest assured, if they do so, that, by His work on the cross, all legal barriers have been removed to their complete salvation. But the expression may be, and undoubtedly has sometimes been, used as importing more than this; and consequently, if still employed, should be cleared of all ambiguity.)

Finally, a statement is made respecting the relation of Christ’s work for His people on the cross to what he calls the principalities and powers: the original is, ἀπεκδυσάμενος τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τὰς ἐξουσίας ἐδειγμάτισεν ἐν παρρησίᾳ, θριαμβεύσας αὐτοὺς ἐν αὐτῷ. The exact import of some of the words, and the proper mode of explicating the sentiment contained in them, have given rise to some difference of opinion, and are not quite easily determined. The general bearing of the statement, however, on the more immediate subject of discourse, is plain enough, and this, amid the diversity of opinion which exists in other respects, should not be forgotten.

Obviously, it is intended in the first instance to convey an impression of the completeness of Christ’s work on the cross as to the procuring of forgiveness for sin, and the effecting of a true cleansing or renewal of state in as many as believed: in this point of view, the scene of deepest humiliation had become the chosen theatre of Divine glory—the place and moment of victory over evil. Then, in token of this, we are told that whatever orders or powers of a higher kind had, or were anyhow supposed to have, an interest in retaining things as they were, and consequently in opposing this result, these, instead of triumphing, as might to the bodily eye have seemed to be the case, were themselves effectually overthrown on the cross—the ground and occasion of their power to carry it against men, being thereby taken out of their hand. So much seems plain; no one can well fail to derive this amount of instruction from the words; but when we go into detail, and ask, what precisely are to be understood by those principalities and powers, who are here said to have lost their ascendency and their means of strength, or how explain the specific acts to which the result is ascribed, there is some difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory answer.

By far the commonest, as it was also the earliest, view of commentators regarding the principalities and powers, holds them to be demons, the spirits of darkness, who, as instruments of vengeance, ever seek to press home upon men the consequences of their sin, but who by reason of the satisfaction given to the demands of God’s law through the death of Christ on the cross, have had the ground of their successful agency taken from them—the curse given them to execute has been fully borne and, instead of now being at liberty to spoil, and ravage, and destroy, they are themselves, as regards believers in Christ, in the condition of spoiled and vanquished forces—their prey gone, their weapons of war perished. Some, however (Suicer, Rosenmüller, etc.), have conceived that the principalities and powers in question are to be sought for in the earthly sphere, and are none other than the authorities, priestly and secular, who arrayed themselves in opposition to Christ, and thought by crucifying Him to put an end to His cause. More recently, Hofmann, (‘Schriftb.’ I. p. 350, seq.) Alford, and a few more, take the expression to refer to good angels, as having ministered at the introduction of the law, and thereby thrown around God a sort of veil, which hindered the free outgoing of His love, and shrouded His glory to the view of the heathen, and in a measure also to the covenant people—this, like an old vesture, being now rent off and cast aside through the atoning death of Christ, the angelic powers associated with it are said to be put aside along with it, exhibited as in a state of complete subjection to Christ, and made to follow, as it were, in the triumphal procession of Him who is the one Lord and Saviour of men.

This last mode of explanation manifestly carries a strained and unnatural appearance, and represents the angels of Heaven as standing in a relation to Christ and His people, which is without any real parallel in other parts of Scripture. According to it, they did the part not of subordinate agents merely in God’s earlier dispensation, but in some sense of antagonistic forces, and required to be exposed in no very agreeable aspect, nay, triumphed over, and driven from the field. There is nothing at all approaching to this in any other passage touching on the ministry of angels, and the endeavour to accommodate the language of the apostle so understood to the general doctrine of angels in Scripture, can only be regarded as a play of fancy.

The second view, also, which has never met with much acceptance, has this fatal objection against it, that the terms, principalities and powers, always bear respect in St Paul’s writings to spiritual beings and angelic orders; (Ephesians 1:21; Ephesians 6:12; Colossians 1:16; Colossians 2:10.) whether of a good or of an evil nature, is left to be gathered from the context. Of the two passages just referred to in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the first applies the terms to good, the second to malignant, spirits; and it can, therefore, be no valid objection to a like application in the latter sense here, that in two earlier passages of this epistle they have been used of the higher intelligences in the heavenly places. The things asserted of them in each case leave little room to doubt to what region they should be assigned, and with what kind of agency associated.

And here, both the natural import of the language, and the very general consent among commentators of all ages in the interpretation of it, seem to shut us up to the first view specified, and oblige us to regard the principalities and powers, whose ascendency and influence for evil received a fatal blow on the death of Christ, as belonging to the empire of darkness, and not of light. It is no valid objection to this view, that the definite article is used before the terms in question, as if pointing to the kind of principalities and powers mentioned in preceding passages; (Alford.) for at Ephesians 6:12 also, where the terms undoubtedly refer to hostile agencies, the definite article is employed, notwithstanding that, in the earlier passage where they occur, the words were used in a good sense. There can be no reason why the same peculiarity might not occur here; especially as the very nature of the subject implies a certain individualizing—the principalities and powers, not all such, but those who, from their antagonism to the good, occupied a hostile relation to Him who undertook the cause of our redemption.

But allowing this to be the kind of intelligences referred to, there is still room for difference of opinion respecting the specific acts of dealing said to have been practised upon them. These are in our version spoiled, made an open show of, triumphed over. The diversity turns chiefly on the first, and whether it should be having spoiled, divested them of, or having stripped off from himself, divested himself of. The former is the rendering of the Vulgate, expolians, which has been followed by all the English versions, and by the great body of modern expositors: ‘it contemplates the principalities and powers as having been equipped with armour, which God as their conqueror took from them and removed away.’ (Meyer.) And this, as preparatory to their being exhibited in humble guise and carried off in triumph, undoubtedly presents a quite suitable meaning, and has hence met with general acceptance.

But exception has been taken to it by some (Deyling, Hofmann, Ellicott, Alford, Wordsworth), on the ground that the verb ἀπεκδύω, in the middle, never bears that sense, and that the apostle himself very shortly after, in Colossians 3:9, uses exactly the same part of it as here, ἀπεκδυσάμενος, in the sense, not of having spoiled, but of having put off, or divested oneʼs-self of, namely, the old man and his deeds. This also is the meaning ascribed to the word by Origen (exuens principatus et potestates (Hom. in Joshua 8.)), by Chrysostom, who says the apostle speaks of diabolical powers here, ‘either because human nature had put on these, or, since it had them as a handle, He having become a man, put off the handle;’ and, to the like effect, Theophylact and others. Such, undoubtedly, is the more natural and best supported meaning of the expression; and the exact idea seems to be that our Lord (whom, and not God, against Meyer and Alford, we take to be the proper subject), when He resigned His body to an accursed death, that He might pay the deserved penalty for our sin, at the same time put off, or completely reft from Him, and from as many as should share with Him in His work of victory, those diabolical agencies who, by reason of sin, had obtained a kind of right to afflict and bruise humanity; this, as the house of their usurped dominion, or the victim they hung around with deadly and destructive malice, was now wrung from their grasp, and they were cast adrift like baffled and discomfited foes, their cause hopelessly and for ever gone.

So that, by suffering for righteousness, Christ most effectually prevailed against the evil in our condition; (Hebrews 2:14; 1 Peter 3:18-22.) and thus turned the shame of the cross into the highest glory, (John 3:14-15; John 12:32.) made it the instrument and occasion of boldly (ἐν παρρησίᾳ, in an assured and confident manner) putting to shame the patrons and abettors of the evil, or exposing their weakness in this mortal conflict, and triumphing over them even amidst their apparent victory. Thus explained, though the radical idea is a little different, the general meaning is much the same as in the authorized version. In Colossians 2:16-17, we have the practical inference from the view that had been given of the work of Christ: let no one, therefore, judge you in eating or in drinking, or in the matter of a feast, or of a new moon, or of Sabbaths; which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.

The term βρώσις is not exactly food, but eating, the act of taking food—as appears by comparing Romans 14:17, 1 Corinthians 8:4, 2 Corinthians 9:10, with others in which the passive form, βρώμα, is employed for the thing eaten, or the food itself. (1 Corinthians 3:2; 1 Corinthians 6:13; 1 Corinthians 10:3, &c.) But what, of course, is meant by the expression is the kind of food which one takes, and which was limited by express enactment in the law of Moses. And the same also in regard to drink (πόσις)—though here there was no general limitation under the ancient economy; only in the case of the ministering priest, and of persons under the Nazarite vow, was a restraint laid in respect to the temperate use of wine. (Leviticus 10:9; Numbers 6:3.)

These cases, however, were so partial and peculiar, that some have supposed (in particular Meyer, Ellicott) that among the parties referred to additional practices of an ascetic kind had been introduced respecting drinks, of a theosophic or rabbinical origin. This is possible enough; but no special account can be made of it here, as the distinctions in question are presently affirmed to stand in a definite relation to the realities of the Gospel, and, consequently, are contemplated as of Divine appointment. When he says, Let no one judge you on the subject of eating and drinking, he may be understood generally to refer to articles of diet; in respect to these, the distinction as between clean and unclean was now gone; and whatever one might take he must not on this score be judged, or held to act unsuitably to the true ideal of a Christian life.

And, in like manner, with respect to, or in the matter of (for such undoubtedly is the meaning of ἐν μέρει (2 Corinthians 3:10; 2 Corinthians 9:3.)) a feast, a stated solemnity (such as the Passover or Pentecost), or of a new moon (not strictly a holy day, except the seventh, but one marked by a few additional observances), or of Sabbaths. That the latter include, and indeed chiefly designate, the weekly Sabbath of the Jews, can admit of no reasonable doubt, both from days of that description comprising by far the greater part of those bearing the name of Sabbaths, and also because nearly, if not all, the other days to which the term Sabbath was applied, were already embraced in the feasts and new moons previously specified. Thus the distinctively sacred days appointed in the Mosaic law, together with its stated festivals, its distinctions of clean and unclean in food, and, by parity of reason, other things of a like outward and ceremonial nature, are here placed in one category, and declared to be no longer binding on the consciences of believers, or needful to their Christian progress.

And for this reason, that they were all only shadows of things to come, while the body is of Christ; that is, they were no more than imperfect and temporary prefigurations of the work lie was to accomplish, and the benefits to be secured by it to those who believe; and as such, of course, they fell away when the great reality appeared. It might seem as if something further should have been concluded—not merely the non-obligatory observance of those shadowy institutions of the old covenant, but, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, the essential antichristiauism of their observance. There is, however, a difference in the two cases; the churches of Galatia had actually fallen back upon Jewish observances as necessary to their salvation, but the Colossians were as yet only exposed to the temptation of having in their neighbourhood persons whose teaching and practice lay in a similar direction.So far as yet appeared, correct views of the truth and of their liberty in Christ might be all that was required to guard against the danger.

But was there no danger from the apostle’s own doctrine in another direction? In coupling Sabbath days with the other peculiar observances of Judaism, as things done away in Christ, does he not strike at the obligation of maintaining the observance of one day in seven for the more especial service of God, and break the connection between the Lord’s day of Christians and the Sabbath of earlier times? So it has often been alleged, and, among others, very strongly by Alford, who says, ‘If the observance of the Sabbath had been, in any form, of lasting obligation on the Christian church, it would have been quite impossible for the apostle to have spoken thus.

The fact of an obligatory rest of one day, whether the seventh or the first, would have been directly in the teeth of his assertion here: the holding of such would have been still to retain the shadow, while we possess the substance.’ To this Ellicott justly replies, that such an assertion ‘cannot be substantiated. The Sabbath of the Jews (he adds), as involving other than mere national reminiscences, was a σκιὰ (shadow) of the Lord’s day: that a weekly seventh part of our time should be specially devoted to God, rests on considerations as old as the creation: that that seventh portion of the week should be the first day, rests on apostolical, and perhaps, inferentially, Divine usage and appointment.’ Substantially concurring in this, I still deem it better to say, that in so far as the Sabbath was a shadow of any thing in Christian times, it was, with all of a like nature, abolished in Christ; and on that account particularly (though also for other reasons), the day which took its place from the beginning of the Gospel dispensation, and had become known and observed, wherever the Christian church was established, as emphatically the Lord’s day, was changed from the last to the first day of the week. The seventh day Sabbath had been so long regarded as one of the more distinctive badges of Judaism, and had also, as an important factor, entered into many of the other institutions of the old covenant (the stated feasts, the sabbatical year, the year of Jubilee), that it necessarily came to partake, to some extent, of their typical character, and, in so far as it did so, must, like them also, pass away when the time of reformation came.

But this is only one aspect of the sabbatical institution—not the original and direct, but rather a subsidiary and incidental one. As in a peculiar sense the day of God—the day, as Jesus Himself testified, which was made for man, and of which He claimed to be the Lord, (Matthew 12:8; Mark 2:27-28.) the Sabbath was essentially one with the Lord’s day of the Christian church, which, when the apostle wrote, was everywhere recognised and observed by believers. For in that respect there was nothing in the Sabbath of earlier times properly shadowy, or typical of redemption.

It commenced before sin had entered, and while yet there was no need for a Redeemer. Nor was there any thing properly typical in the observance of it imposed in the fourth commandment; for this was a substantial re-enforcement of the primary institution, in its bearing on the general relation of men to God, and of members of society to each other. When associated with the typical services of the old covenant, the same thing virtually happened to it as with circumcision, which was the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant of grace, and had no immediate connection with the law of Moses; while yet it became so identified with that law, that it required to be supplanted by another ordinance of nearly similar import when the seed of blessing arrived, in which the Abrahamic covenant was to find its fulfilment.

So great had the necessity become for the abolition of the one ordinance and the introduction of the other, that the apostle virtually declares it to have been indispensable, when he affirms (in his Epistle to the Galatians). of those who would still be circumcised, that they were debtors to do the whole law. At the same time, as regards the original design and spiritual import of circumcision, this he makes coincident with baptism (Romans 2:28-29; Romans 4:11.)—speaks here (Colossians 2:11) of baptized believers as the circumcision of Christ; and so presents the two ordinances as in principle most closely associated with each other, differing in form rather than in substance. We have no reason to suppose his meaning to be different in regard to the Sabbath; it is gone so far as its outward rest on the seventh day formed part of the typical things of Judaism, but no further.

Its primeval character and destination remain. As baptism in the Spirit is Christ’s circumcision, so the Lord’s day is His Sabbath; and to be in the Spirit on that day, worshipping and serving Him in the truth of His Gospel, is to carry out the intent of the fourth commandment. (See ‘Typology of Scripture,’ Vol. II. p. 146, from which some of these later remarks are taken.)