Re:Verse passage – Colossians 2:8-15 (day three)
“a circumcision made without hands…”
Modern Westerners get a little squeamish regarding language that refers to the human body. But unless we face forthrightly the practice and place of circumcision in Hebrew civilization, we will have no reference point by which to comprehend the meaning of Paul’s language. The cutting of the male body in this way stood as an irreversible and visible sign that the spiritual realm was making an inroad into the material realm so that the totality of the human person—spirit and mind and body and social context—was now devoted to God. This is why Paul adopts such a metaphor. The church’s irreversible and visible devotion to Christ will be conveyed in human language by nothing less than such a drastic term. The beauty of Paul’s metaphor will trump any polite squeamishness.
