Fragments Gathered up: Baptism

Paul alone puts baptism, as far as I am aware, on the ground of death and resurrection with Christ. Thus it becomes the means of doctrinally bringing the Christian on to the point, where, on the new ground and in a new position, he is united to Christ as Head.
In Romans he only carries it out to the individual position; but in Colossians he uses it not as union of course, but as that which, by taking out of flesh into what is beyond it, is the inseparable introduction into holding the Head. It is only life, but life hid with Christ in God. But He introduces holding the Head as the necessary and inseparable consequence: only the Holy Ghost is not brought out in this epistle. The connection is in chap. 1:18—not the same but connected so immediately in Christ. Hence it glimmers, though not unfolded, as in chap. 1:24, 25; 2:19.