Ver. 12. “Buried with him,” he saith, “in Baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him, through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” But it is not burial only: for behold what he says, “Wherein ye were also raised with Him, through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” He hath well 286 said, “of faith,”798 for it is all of faith. Ye believed that God is able to raise, and so ye were raised. Then note also His worthiness of belief, “Who raised Him,” he saith, “from the dead.” He now shows the Resurrection. “And you who sometime were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you, I say, did He quicken together with Him.” For ye lay under judgment of death. But even though ye died, it was a profitable death. Observe how again he shows what they deserved in the words he subjoins: Ver. 13, 14, 15. “Having forgiven us all our trespasses; having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the Cross; having put off from himself the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly,799 triumphing over them in it.” “Having forgiven us,” he saith, “all our trespasses,” those which produced that deadness. What then? Did He allow them to remain? No, He even wiped them out; He did not scratch them out merely; so that they could not be seen. “In doctrines”800 [ordinances], he saith. What doctrines? The Faith. It is enough to believe. He hath not set works against works, but works against faith. And what next? Blotting out is an advance upon remission; again he saith, “And hath taken it out of the way.” Nor yet even so did He preserve it, but rent it even in sunder, “by nailing it to His Cross.” “Having put off from himself the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” Nowhere has he spoken in so lofty a strain. Seest thou how great His earnestness that the bond should be done away? To wit, we all were under sin and punishment. He Himself, through suffering punishment, did away with both the sin and the punishment, and He was punished on the Cross. To the Cross then He affixed it; as having power, He tore it asunder. What bond? He means either that which they said to Moses, namely, “All that God hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Ex. xxiv. 3.), or, if not that, this, that we owe to God obedience; or if not this, he means that the devil held possession of it, the bond which God made for Adam, saying, “In the day thou 798 [The repetition of πίστεως, “of faith,” which Field had previously conjectured as required by the sense, is found in the Catena; and the simplifying group of documents changed it into “He hath well said so, for,” &c.—J.A.B.] 799 ἐδειγμάτισεν ἐν παρρησί& 139·, so commented on below as seemingly to require to be thus translated, “He inflicted disgrace on them through His confidence in dying.” 800 τοῖς δόγμασιν. Theodoret also takes it so, but the use of δογματίζεσθε, in ver. 20, agrees better with E.V. “The handwriting [bond] in ordinances,” and the Vulgate, Chirographum decreti. 504 Colossians 2:6,7