Christ Performed A Spiritual Circumcision

Christ Performed a Spiritual Circumcision

God commanded that Abram walk before him in obedience with a life-transforming thoroughness (Genesis 17:1). But then God announced with emphasis one specific requirement: “This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. . . . My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:10, 13, NIV).

God established this rite of circumcision as an outward, physical sign of the need for cleansing. By commanding that his people cut away a natural part of their bodies, God was illustrating the judgment a sinner undergoes that purifies. Circumcision was no mere badge of national membership in the Jewish nation, but a physical sign of a loving, cleansing, purifying, identifying, and defining relationship between God and his people.

This sign also pointed to a cleansing to come that would not only mark the body but change the heart. This ritual purification became an experienced reality when Christ provided the cleansing that circumcision pointed to. Jesus began by submitting himself to the rite of circumcision. “When the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law” (Galatians 4:4). In his circumcision on the eighth day, and later in his baptism by John, Jesus experienced this cleansing rite not for his own sake but for the sake of the sinful people he came to purify.

We experience what is symbolized in this old-covenant sign when our consciences are cleansed through the blood of the new and better covenant. We experience the circumcision of the heart that Moses spoke of (Deuteronomy 10:16) when the Holy Spirit gives us a heart that longs to please God in purity. “True circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by God’s Spirit” (Romans 2:29). Paul said, “We who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort” (Philippians 3:3).

You have circumcised me, Jesus—not by a physical procedure but by a spiritual one. You have cut away my sinful nature and freed me from its enslavement. I am marked by you as yours forever.