And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.
For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
The covenant that God cut with Abraham was a covenant that was sealed by the circumcision of the flesh. That was the seal or token of the Abrahamic covenant. At ninety-nine years of age, Abraham was circumcised, himself and his entire household, every male. Though in some parts of the world, male children (babies) are circumcised on the eighth day, however, that doesn’t make those children partakers of the Abrahamic covenant. There are only two ways by which a man can be a partaker of the blessing of Abraham: it is either he is a Jew, the seed of Abraham after the flesh, or he is a Christian who believes in Christ Jesus as Abraham believed in Jehovah. However, in Christ (the seed of Abraham), our circumcision is not after the flesh, but of the spirit or of the heart. The Christian may or may not be circumcised after the flesh, for that does not mean anything. What avails much is the circumcision of the heart. Every child of God in Christ is already a partaker of this special kind of circumcision – the circumcision of the heart.
What does it mean to be circumcised? The moment you got born again, you were circumcised in your heart. The old life or nature was peeled off, the same way the foreskin is peeled off in fleshly circumcision. In the fleshly circumcision, there is the shedding of blood by the peeling off of the foreskin. In the circumcision of the heart, which is done without human hands, the shedding of the blood of Jesus in His substitutionary work for man, made our spiritual circumcision possible. Jesus paid for it; His blood was shed for it. This is a spiritual circumcision done without human hands (Colossians 2:11) What is the implication of circumcision? To activate the blessing, you must understand the effect or implication of circumcision. Philippians 3:3 says “for we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” We have no confidence in the flesh. We have reposed absolute trust in God. The circumcised have no confidence in the flesh; we have confidence in God and in the covenant only. So, the seed of Abraham shall live by faith, for the just shall live by faith (absolute reliance, absolute dependence on God). This means that we live by what God says, or what the Word of God says. We do not live by sensory perception. Our confidence is not in the flesh, our confidence is in the Word. We don’t lean on the arm of the flesh. We live by the Word of God. Whatever God says makes sense to us – WORD SENSE; that’s our sense.
My Solid Front (Confession):
In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I confess that I am the circumcision, that worship God in the Spirit, I rejoice in Christ Jesus, and I have no confidence in the flesh. I live by faith and not by sensory perception. I enjoy God’s grace perpetually through faith in Jesus Christ. Amen!
Further Meditation:
2 Corinthians 5:17; Colossians 2:11-15.