Circumcision - Ritual or Requirement?

The ritual of circumcision has always made me uncomfortable.  It seems so barbaric, bloody...and permanent.  Paul seems to say we don't need to fulfil this law, and the church certainly seems to agree.  

Am reading Genesis 17 this week, and began to research and think...

Walk BEFORE Me and be perfect (blameless, complete)

There is a picture here of walking according to God's sight, not ours. Walk through 'God's eyes', not our eyes.

The next line reads 'I will set my covenant between Me and you...'

Here's a picture of something between God and man. A go-between, a mediator, something bonding one to an unlike thing.  Like can bond with like, but like with unlike requires a mediator.  The Covenant seems to be pictured as this mediator.
 

The name God chooses to describe Himself to Abraham is 'El Shaddai'. This name means 'the mighty one who is able, who has sufficient power to grant His mercies, to fulfil His promises'.

God calls Abraham 'the father of many nations', which calls to mind the part of Adam's commission to be fruitful and multiply.  Adam was fruitful, but only after he'd failed and been corrupted through adultery; through partaking of the tree of the adulteration of good with evil, of function with dysfunction, of 'tov' with 'ra'. 

The Hebrew word translated 'covenant' is 'brit', and it literally means to cut.  Cut pieces are joined through the covenant.  The covenant is the mediator, the thing that brings together.  There is a requirement of cutting in this word. The covenant is symbolically made by passing between pieces of flesh.

This is My covenant with you: you shall be a father of many nations...I will make you most exceedingly fruitful.

I will ratify My covenant between Me and you...as an everlasting covenant...I will be a Mighty One to you and your offspring after you...I shall give you and your offspring after you the land you are living in as an everlasting possession, and I shall be a Mighty One to them.

These are the things God promises.  Next, God tell Abraham his part...what his responsibility will be in accepting this covenant...

And as for you, you shall KEEP My covenant - you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. 

Now it seems as if God gives Abraham a covenant for HIM to keep!  God has made one with Abraham (which seems to have been the one in Genesis 15), now Abraham is given one to keep with God. 

Covenants or promises had visible signs accompanying them.  In Genesis 9 its the rainbow, in Genesis 20 it was silver, in Genesis 38:18 it was a staff and signet, in Exodus 4 it was the plagues.

Circumcision was the sign God gave for the covenant Abraham was to keep.

God was telling Abraham that this fruitfulness would come even though Abraham would cut off part of the very organ through which that fruitfulness would be accomplished!  Not only that, but every member of Abraham's household would also be reduced in this way!  And every child born to them. 

What an astonishing test of faith! 

What did Abraham do?  He obeyed on the very day God had spoken to him (verse 23 and 26). 

And what does the church say?  And on whose words does it base its teaching on circumcision?  Those are questions worth asking.

And it does bear repeating that no ritual serves to establish a real covenant that isn't there in spirit first.  Its a sign of the covenant, its not the covenant itself.

Why Work?

I came across an interesting perspective the other day, while researching a question about 1 Thessalonians 4.  The question was part of a christian Bible study booklet about work.  It asked what the goal of our work is to be.  

Here’s the context of 1 Thessalonians 4:

verse 1: live to please God, and do so more and more in your life

verse 3: God intends us all to become ‘holy’ or whole, perfect images of who HE is, faithful representatives

verses 4-9: work to cultivate the gifts and talents God has given you to honour Him and to care for His creation

verse 10: like verse 1…live to please God and do so more and more in your life
verse 11: cultivate your OWN ground!  Work and rest in the pattern God gave in creation.  Do this because you love, honour and trust Him.
Verse 12: If you do this (live as instructed in the previous verses) you will be a faithful and honest witness of God's power in your life, and you will be a proper encouragement and model to others, and not be seen to be lacking towards the responsibility God has given you. 

The context of verse 11 isn't really the labour done in a job (a job to make money), its talking about a more important work, the similar kind of ‘work’ that Adam was given to do, work to rule over and to maintain the creation in the pattern God gave.  A ‘job’ is just a small part of this.

If you translate verse 11 simply from the Greek that the letter we have was first recorded in, it could say:

Because you love to honour God, be faithful in accomplishing what He intends for you to do.  ‘Sabbath’ or cease from YOUR will and rest and trust in God’s will.  Make it your practice to exercise God’s will, not yours.  Do this in God’s pattern, by the help He gives in His Word, and YOU do it, not relying on another to do it for you.

So the two reasons God has given us to work, could be seen as to honour Him (to love Him) and to be an effective and encouraging model for others (to love others).  The two greatest commandments!