Introduction
As faithful readers of this blog will know, its title is taken from that revelatory stroll our Savior took with two of His dejected disciples on the day of His resurrection. As they plodded their way to Emmaus, Jesus came upon them and spent the rest of that 7-mile walk showing them how the Scriptures they had always known had revealed Him and the work He would accomplish. In like manner, I normally use this blog to write about those countless ways our Lord reveals Himself through the mundane objects with which we’re all familiar. But now and then I like to use a little sanctified speculation as to the kind of things Jesus might have talked about on that walk. While no particulars are given regarding the things He interpreted to them from “Moses to the Prophets,” (Luke 24:27) and being that it wasn’t that long of a walk, He couldn’t have covered every topic, still, I am fairly certain that circumcision was among the ones He did cover, being that it was the seminal sign of God’s covenant with His people and He had just accomplished what that sign had been pointing to all along.
There are many peculiar things about the sign of circumcision, so it’s important before we get started to settle it in our minds that it was not some barbaric invention of an Ancient Near Eastern tribe or one borrowed from their pagan neighbors. No, it was the divinely revealed sign of an everlasting covenant, given to Abram by God Himself and, as all covenant signs are, was chocked full of Gospel meanings. Paul even says that the Gospel was preached to Abraham at this initial moment in redemptive history (Gal.3:8), and I’m convinced that one of the ways it was preached to him was through the specific features of the sign itself. Allow me to explain.
It’s easy to see how many of the things found in the Old Testament point to Christ, such as the Temple, the Priesthood, and the entire sacrificial system. This is why it’s so odd when we come to that very first covenant sign of circumcision, that it is so often reduced to little more than an ethnic marker, merely about a sliver of Middle Eastern real estate. In other words, the popular view of it today is closer to that of unbelieving Jews than the glorious testimony God intended it to reveal. And when Paul, writing to Gentiles of the 1st century, teaches that our body of sin was done away with in the “circumcision of Christ,” (Col. 2:11) we’d do well to look a little closer at what we might be missing in our understanding of this sign. In this post and the two following it, I will cover three aspects of circumcision – its location, timing, and the sex of its recipient, that I’m convinced had been proclaiming glorious Gospel light though His people failed to see it.
Cutting a Covenant
While the covenant sign of circumcision is clearly associated with cutting, in reality, most covenants in Scripture were. When we read in our English Bibles that so and so “made a covenant”, that word translated “made” in these passages is the Hebrew word, karat, which literally means “to cut.” It was typical, when covenants were made, that animals would be cut down the middle and the two people making the covenant would pass between the pieces while they made their promises to one another, the general idea being, “As these animals have been cut in two, so shall I be if I do not keep my promises.” The difference with circumcision, however, is that the cutting wasn’t done to an animal but to the one entering the covenant. This covenant sign was left on his body, which brings us to the first unique aspect of this sign – its location.
Location
When I write of location, I’m not talking about where the procedure was performed, because there doesn’t seem to be any requirements regarding that. No, I’m writing about the location on the body, the foreskin of the boy’s organ of reproduction. There are at least two questions that arise from this location. First, why would the sign and seal of God’s covenant with His people be placed where no one could see it after the initial administration? After all, this was a physical sign marking God’s covenant people. Why have a physical sign and place it where no one can see it? Why not place it on the ear or hand, or some other visible spot? Secondly, if He didn’t want it visible, why not have the mark placed on the chest, next the the heart, or on the thigh, the symbol of the strength of a man’s stride? Why there?
To answer these questions, we must first remember that the sign was the seal of God’s promise to Abram, the seal of what God was going to do through Abram to bless the whole world. So the sign was pointing to how God would bring that blessing, and in so doing, exposed what our true need was. It was physical because it pointed to the very physical reality of our problem: we are truly connected to our father Adam and bear the fallen nature he passed on to each one of us. Circumcision highlighted the fact that in our flesh we are “cut off” from God and the only way to be rescued was to be united to the One who would be cut off for us (Isa. 53:8). Thus, no mere prayer of dedication could symbolize what must take place to save us. Something bloody and painful had to be performed because something bloody and painful would be required to save the world. Far from being the occasion of masculine bravado or the pride it would later become to the nation of Israel, the Lord meant it to be a harbinger of ultimate humility, of death, and its location there ensured countless times of undistracted reflection. The cutting on this part of the body spoke of the death of a lineage.
There’s a little passage in the story of Israel entering the Promised Land that’s easy to miss, but glorious if you don’t. You remember the scene, God commanded one stone for each tribe of Israel to be taken from the wilderness side of the river and placed in the riverbed, now dry because the priests, bearing the Ark of the Covenant, stood there. And then it says, “the waters which came down from upstream stood still and rose in a heap very far away at Adam…the waters failed and were cut off…” (Joshua 3:16) This is precisely what happened when our Great High Priest entered the waters of death for all men; Adam and his entire line was cut off at the cross. The “circumcision of Christ” was the cutting of the cross.
The location of this sign was meant to be a constant reminder to His covenant people, that the only way to continue with God is to first be cut off, cut out of the cursed line of Adam. But it wasn’t the removal of the organ itself, just the foreskin. Our God is a bountiful redeemer, not a sterilizer. The sign being placed there clearly spoke of continuation too. The un-rescinded command to “be fruitful and multiple” (Gen. 1:28) and the “godly seed He seeks” (Mal. 2:15) would be fulfilled. We will explore this in my third post. In the next, I will explore the prescribed timing of this covenant sign and seal, and point out the Gospel light displayed there.
