Mark of a gift: Messianic meaning of circumcision

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Modern society views the rite of circumcision to be backward at best and barbaric at worst. Yet, it actually is a cutting memorial of what God has cut away from the faithful — men and women — through the Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus).

This affects each of us differently. Each person has a different mark. God’s Torah records certain physical commands but these physical commands have a spiritual meaning. Today, I’m focusing on the command of circumcision. On the surface, this command applies only to men but it truly applies to women just as much, if not more than men. 

The first recorded circumcision is noted in Gen. 17:1-16 when God introduced the ritual to Abraham. God made two requirements of Abraham to receive these promises. God asks Abraham to be circumcised and to “walk blameless” before God. God gave Abraham this “sign of the flesh” but Abraham receives tangible benefits as a result of the establishment of circumcision. God gives Abraham several special benefits in this deal. 

1. Abraham receives a special relationship with God, Abraham’s descendants also receive this special status. 
2. Abraham is promised the land of Canaan. 
3. Abraham receives the promise of many descendants. 

Circumcision does not cover over a sin for which the death penalty is required. In the sad story of Ya’akov’s daughter Dinah, she was defiled by the prince of the city of Shechem. Dinah’s brother’s falsely told the men of Shechem that they would accept them as family if they would all be circumcised. The men of Shechem were told falsely that could buy their way into Ya’akov’s family. 

The reason you do something is more important than the act itself. The men of Shechem were not doing this ritual to join Jacob’s family but to join Jacob to them. Shechem was not repentant or apologetic in the least for his crime. They were still in a spirit of rebellion against God. They were not doing this in humility to accept God, but in arrogance to absorb Jacob’s family into their family and to make Jacob’s line of no consequence. 

This story, however, does have a sign of the Messiah. On the third day after the men of Shechem were circumcised, they were killed by Ya’akov’s son, and Dinah was restored back to her family. The death of Shechem himself paid for the crime of rape, not the circumcision afterwards. 

We read in Joshua 5 that during the 40 years in the wilderness, those who had been born in Egypt were circumcised but those who were born in the wilderness had not been circumcised and one of the last acts the children of Israel had to do to prepare for their entry into the promised land was to be circumcised. They had to get rid of the mark of their rebelliousness by removing their foreskins. 

In Deut. 10:12, we read that God gave the children of Israel were told to circumcise their hearts and to serve each other and those less fortunate as an acknowledgement of God’s blessing to them. They were told not to be stiff-necked and rebellious. Their circumcision were to be symbolic of their obedience. 

In 1st Samuel 18 we read that King Saul was so grateful to David for killing Goliath that King Saul offered his daughter as his wife, and therefore, he would accept David into his family as a son-in-law. David didn’t feel this was good enough for him to take Saul’s daughter as his bride be accepted as Saul’s son-in-law. So Saul tells David, “The king does not desire any dowry except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to take vengeance on the king’s enemies.” Saul wanted David to risk his life to win Michal. This was the same risk Messiah took to win His bride, He gave His life. 

David paid a lasting price for Michal, even when Saul gave her away to another man, David called her back to himself. He paid that price at the risk of his life when he gave Saul the 200 Philistine foreskins. 

In the time of the Maccabees, the Jewish people forbidden from circumcising their sons. The Jewish people rebelled against this unjust Syrian law by circumcising their sons. The Syrians were rebelling against God by killing the circumcised sons and their mothers. The Jewish rebellion against the Syrians in the act of circumcision was an act of obedience to God. The circumcision is a death of one’s rebellion against God. 

In Galatians 2, Paul says that he was sent to the uncircumcised by the same Messiah who had sent Peter, James and other Apostles to the circumcised. Paul warned the non-Jews in that congregation that if they were to succumb to the circumcision party, they would not buy anything. Like in Acts 15, the “circumcision party” of the Pharisees were teaching these Gentiles that if they would be circumcised they were enter the kingdom of God. Yet when they accepted Yeshua as their Messiah, the Messiah already gave them an inheritance in the Kingdom of God. 

In Romans 3, Paul tells us the advantage of Jewishness and circumcision as receiving the oracles of God. That point is elaborated upon in Heb. 1:1-3. These oracles that the Jewish people received were in the dreams and visions of the prophets. They also received guidance from face to face through Moses and even the priest’s breastplate. 

Those who had been “circumcised” “purchased” the TaNaKh (Torah, Prophets and Writings). Circumcision of the heart also “purchases” the right to learn and understand God’s law. 

The circumcision is symbolic of the death of Messiah and how He “rolled back” the reproach of sin in us. 

Any act of obedience to the Torah should be a response of love and obedience. It does not earn anything that is already a free gift from God. Every time you obey a law of God, you are cutting away a part of your rebelliousness. As you understand a little more, the more you follow, the more of the world you cut away from yourself. 

Speaker: Daniel Agee. Summary: Tammy.