God told Abraham, “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you; every male among you shall be circumcised” (Ge. 17:10). As commanded, on the eighth day every male child was circumcised, and at that time given his name (Luke 1:59).
Paul wrote the Colossian church and stated that “in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism.” In doing so, “He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us our transgressions” (Col. 2:11-13).
The baptism of Christ is a “type” of the old Jewish rite of circumcision. It was mandatory, so is baptism. As the flesh was cut off, so is the sinful flesh removed in baptism. It is an act of new birth, as in baptism and we are raised to walk a new life. Circumcision admitted one into the Jewish nation, as baptism enters us into Christ’s kingdom. At Circumcision the Jewish boy received his name, so in baptism we now are “called by a new name” that of a “Christian” (Isa. 62:2, Ac. 11:26). Such an important comparison, and a powerful teaching about the necessity and importance of the “circumcision of Christ.”
-Dennis Doughty
