Circumcision: A Foreshadow of the New Covenant
God instigated the practice of circumcision to be a token, or a physical sign of the covenant that God made with Abraham and his seed (Genesis 17:11).
Have you ever wondered why the Lord would require the sign of this covenant to be placed on the most intimate part of a man’s anatomy; the appendage that is used to join a man with a woman to produce new life? What is God trying to say to us through this illustration?
I think we can summarize the whole concept by stating that circumcision is God’s way of showing us that He wants to be spiritually and intimately connected to His people. God used the practice of circumcision under the old covenant to illustrate this spiritual principle.
This symbol of intimacy with God was never fully understood throughout the ages that were classified as the old covenant, or testament. The intimacy that circumcision represents would not be achieved as long as the old covenant was in effect. During that time people could be moved and influenced by God’s Holy Spirit, but not indwelt. God was orchestrating a unique plan that would enable His Spirit to actually come into someone and the purpose of that union would be to produce the holy fruit of a transformed life; a new birth.
In order for God to achieve the intimacy He desires to have with His people, sin, the element that blocks that desired union, would have to be eliminated.
The foreshadow of this plan to remove sin is illustrated for us in the third chapter of Genesis. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they attempted to cover the evidence of their transgression with leaves; leaves that would eventually dry up, become brittle and wither away exposing their nakedness again. Their own efforts to cover their sin were worthless.
The prophet Isaiah must have had this incident in mind when he said, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6).
Then God did an amazing, loving thing. He clothed his two, shivering children with the soft, warm skins of the first sacrifice. He is showing us that man cannot cover or remove his sins by his own efforts; it can only be done by a sacrifice made by God.
Thus we begin the journey through time until we come to the fulfillment of the plan for man’s redemption that God initiated in Eden’s garden. The New Covenant would be established through the last sacrifice which was accomplished through the death of the Messiah Jesus, all of which had been prophesied in the writings of Moses and the prophets. Through repentance and faith in His death and resurrection from the dead a believer’s sins are removed enabling God’s Holy Spirit to fully penetrate the soul, unifying the person with God and enabling him to live eternally; for what God has joined to Himself, cannot be separated as long as the believer remains in that New Covenant.
The plan for the redemption of mankind, was foreshadowed in various ways throughout the old covenant and that was its purpose, to prepare the way for its fulfillment in the new. Jesus said, new wine cannot be put into old wineskins (Matthew 9:17). The old wineskins, the old covenant, would have to be replaced, cut off like a foreskin when the new covenant was instigated by Jesus’ prophesied sacrifice. Only then could the Holy Spirit actually enter a believer.
Through this new union with God, which is only made possible through Jesus’ sacrifice, we become the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are indwelt by God through His Spirit and can experience His presence in our lives thus fulfilling the foreshadow that God so skillfully portrayed through His instructions to Abraham.
The entrance of God’s Spirit, which is also the Spirit of His Son, the Messiah Jesus,(Romans 8:9), makes us truly one with God and He produces through this union a new creature, an inner transformation that the old wineskin was never designed to provide.
The Apostle Paul makes this analogy, comparing circumcision with baptism. We are buried in the waters of baptism, our old natures are symbolically cut off and left behind in the regenerating waters of new life (Colossians 2:11,12).
God wants to circumcise our hearts, cut off the things within us that are displeasing to Him and replace them with the divine nature of Jesus.
Under the new covenant we are not justified by works, we are justified by Christ alone, and in turn that faith, that relationship with Jesus, works in the believer to change us into the people He wants us to become. When we are led by the Holy Spirit of God, He moves us away from sin and we naturally will walk in the things that please Him.
However, for some, it is easier to follow a to do list than allow themselves to be reformed by the Spirit’s inner workings. People who have “religious spirits” tend to recoil from any teachings about intimacy with God. These ones are prone to legalism and the pride that enables them to believe that they are somehow capable of maintaining their salvation through their own righteousness. As we have been shown, we cannot do for ourselves what God has ordained for Him to do for us. Clothing ourselves in fig leaves will never work. Allowing God to circumcise our hearts with His Spirit by faith is the only circumcision that He has ordained under His New Covenant of eternal life.
Copyright 2020 by H. D. Shively