In Whom or Wherein?

Colossians 2:12  •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 6
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At first sight it might seem to refer to the same as ὲν ῷ in vet 11, and those who punctuate by a comma after Χρίστοῦ in ver.. 11, and a colon after βαπτισματι in v. 12, would make it that. But I have felt that A. V., J. N. D., W. K., Green, Ellicott, Alford; were justified by the sense of the passage in rendering it "in which." We are συνταφέντες αὐτῷ ἐν τῷ βαπτίσματι, buried with Him, not in Him. We are raised up in baptism with Him. The ‘en ῷ of ver. 12 seems to me necessarily to refer to baptism. Buried with Him in it, we are raised up with Him in it. Baptism can never be obliterated; but, though buried, we are not always, as it were, under the water; we have to walk, act, and serve here. Hence resurrection comes in as a necessary consequence "buried with Him," " raised with Him."
Verse 11 gives the condition we have been brought into by the death of Christ, the putting off the body of the flesh; ver.12 is the position on earth, buried and raised with Him; ver. 13 the standing, once dead, but quickened with Him. All they wanted they had, then, in and with Christ. If you punctuate with a colon after βαπτίσματι, as Scrivener does in his G. T., as well as Griesbach and Scholz, you make the first clause of ver. 12 simply explanatory of ver. 11, and thereby, it seems to me, lose an important point-viz. that position, as well as condition, and standing, they had with Christ. I have taken the circumcision of Christ to be His death; for that alone deals with a nature, "the body of the flesh."