Colossians 2:12

From verse 10, Paul began to transition from focusing on Christ to the spiritual identity of the believer in him when he started telling people not to fall into the hands of captivating speakers with appeals different from Christ.

verse 10: You have been filled in him

verse 11: in him you were circumcised

verse 12: buried with him and raised with him

After telling them that circumcision is performed in Christ, Paul mentioned that they were buried with him in baptism. This is a spiritual baptism, not performed with hands, just as the circumcision he describes in the previous verse is spiritual and not performed with hands. Paul is describing our spiritual reality in Christ.

In verse seven, he uses the language of farming and building, rooted and built up, to describe what Christ-centered teaching does to you.

So, between now and when Jesus comes back, we are supposed to be “rooted and built up in him” —a process. The next “in him” and “with him” phrases refer to our spiritual identity, such as being filled in him, circumcised in him, buried with him, and raised with him. Just as we have our spiritual circumcision, we also have our spiritual baptism.

In another place, Paul said the children of Israel were baptized into Moses (1 Corinthians 10:2). Paul used the word baptism as a metaphor for identification in the deepest sense, where you lose who you are to take on who someone else is.

Who I am is someone who was not on earth when Jesus died, but my spiritual identity is I was buried with Christ when he was buried, and I rose up with him when he rose from the dead. I was buried with him in baptism.

Moses raised his staff, and the sea parted, but it was for Moses that the sea parted, but through their identification with Moses, through their baptism into Moses, they came from oppression to freedom, and the same “baptism” was death to their oppressors (Colossians 2:14).

That is the sense in which being immersed means a dissolving of who you are to take on who he is. They were immersed in Moses. Buried with him in “deep level of identification” baptism.

Paul uses baptism as a stand-in for a “deep level of identification.”

When we read the word baptism, our minds tend to picture something done with water, but it was much more than that for the letter's original recipients. Baptism is indicative of transformation, a break from the past for a new beginning or a new being.

Just as physical circumcision and baptism must have an agent, the Holy Spirit is the agent for our spiritual circumcision and transformational identification with Jesus's death and resurrection (baptism). In plain language, Jesus being judged for our sins is our being judged for our sins. And him having a new life is our having a new life.

If Paul had just written, we are buried with him, there could be an argument, and people may claim Paul was hallucinating. But when he wrote that we were buried with him in baptism. The readers would say oh, I get it. You are using “we are buried with him” in a cultic/metaphysical/mysterious sense, meaning a special way that only the initiated have access to, in a way that space, time, dimensions, and consciousness are not limiting. And I am using the word cultic in a positive sense, not a negative sense, as something transcendent.

The point is that the word baptism in the lead verse does not mean water baptism; the letter's original recipients would not have thought it did. We would do well to explore what imagery comes up in the minds of the recipients of the letter rather than what it brings up in our own minds based on thousands of years of conditioning.

Paul's use of the word baptism would not conjure up water in the minds of the recipients. Buried with him is something that has happened that you were not aware of, meaning God already saw you in Christ in a mysterious way before since he is not constrained by time and space.

Our burial with Christ is not a physical burial but a spiritual burial. Paul would not be reinterpreting. Just as he used circumcision in a spiritual sense, he is using baptism in a spiritual sense.

People would want to say that Paul is talking about what the physical act of baptism that Jesus commanded points to. However, there is a limitation to this because baptism is just what you do to become a Christian. And there is nothing in the scriptures where that act is specifically mentioned as having to do with death and burial. But it makes more sense if baptism is used in a cultic sense, in a mystery sense, just as Paul says that in Israel, millions of them in one fell swoop were baptized into Moses and not one by one as we have the Jesus-commanded baptism. Remember, context is king when it comes to bible interpretation.

Sometimes, instead of context, we have a definition for a word like baptism and force that definition everywhere the word is mentioned. This is wrong. Words don't exist in isolation.

…you also have been raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

Your faith connects you with the reality of what is already done in Christ. God told Abraham I have made you the father of many nations, and Abraham believed made him line up (righteous) with what God did. The same here. Your death and resurrection in Christ is already a done deal, but your faith did not create that reality. It ensures that you, the elect, are lined up with that reality. You take delivery of what is already prepared for you.