NOTES for Col 2:8-12
Today the Orthodox Church celebrates the Circumcision of the Lord, remembering how the Lord Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day after His birth (Luke 2:21). The reading from the Letter to the Colossians reminds us that, being united with Christ, we also enter into His circumcision. "In Him," says the apostle, "you were also circumcised." What does this mean?
To understand this, we have to return to the Old Testament meaning of circumcision: the sign of God's covenant with Abraham. In His covenant with Abraham, God promised to make a great nation from him, to ensure that people's survival until all the families of the earth would be blessed in it, and in return He expected from Abraham and his descendants faith: trust in God, the entrusting of himself and his offspring into God's hands. The sign of such trust is circumcision, the cut-off piece of foreskin.
In Christ, however, absolute trust in the Father exists from eternity ("Before Abraham was, I am" - John 8:58). His circumcision is His sinlessness, flesh that has rejected sin, a sign not made by human hands of complete agreement with the Father. Therefore nothing sinful can be united with Him, and our baptism is at the same time our circumcision, cutting off sinfulness so that we may enter the body of Christ.