God's Initiative: Circumcision
God Always Takes The Initiative
God is the one who has always taken the initiative in showing us how much he loves us and inviting us to show our gratitude and love for him by being willing to repent and let him be LORD of our lives. It is God who causes us to want to go his way by doing a work of spiritual cleansing in our hearts, through a process of what the Bible calls circumcision of our hearts.
Circumcision Of The Heart By The Holy Spirit Cleansing Us From Rebellion
This act of spiritual circumcision is described in the Bible as a circumcision -
• not of the FLESH by human hands (as in the Jewish ritual of circumcising boys on the eighth day after birth)
• but of the HEART by the Holy Spirit of God as we repent of our fleshly rebellion against God
A quick survey of Old and New Testament passages on circumcision shows its importance in relation to God's covenant.
Old Testament
Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer DEUTERONOMY 10:16
The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. DEUTERONOMY 30:6
"If you will return, O Israel, return to me," declares the LORD. "If you put your detestable idols out of my sight and no longer go astray, and if in a truthful, just and righteous way you swear, 'As surely as the LORD lives,' then the nations will be blessed by him and in him they will glory."
This is what the LORD says to the men of Judah and to Jerusalem: "Break up your unplowed ground and do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, circumcise your hearts, you men of Judah and people of Jerusalem, or my wrath will break out and burn like fire because of the evil you have done — burn with no one to quench it." JEREMIAH 4:1-4
New Testament
A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God. ROMANS 2:28-29
There is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. EPHESIANS 3:30
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men) — remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. EPHESIANS 2:11
In Christ you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. COLOSSIANS 2:11-12
For 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
Those who are trying to force you to be circumcised want to look good to others. They don’t want to be persecuted for teaching that the cross of Christ alone can save. And even those who advocate circumcision don’t keep the whole law themselves. They only want you to be circumcised so they can boast about it and claim you as their disciples. As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world’s interest in me has also died. It doesn’t matter whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation. GALATIANS 6:12-15
