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.
