Read Colossians 2:11-15 …
Circumcision, as a practice, was not specifically limited to the Old Testament Jewish community. The practice has been noted among other nations around Israel, including the Egyptians, “and so in itself is not a distinguishing mark.”[i] Yet for the Israelites, the rite was a distinguishing mark, one that identified the individual as part of the covenant people of God. That covenant goes back to the promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis 12, before Abraham ever leaves Ur of the Chaldeans, and that promise included three specifics: to bring Abraham to a new land, to greatly multiply his family, and that from him all nations will be blessed (v.1-3). Circumcision was added by God as a sign of that covenant in Genesis 17 – “This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised” (v.10, NKJV), and “He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant” (v.13).
So, for about 1800 years, the Israelites practiced the rite of circumcision as an identifying mark of the covenant people of God. Circumcision was so much a part of the identifying mark for the children of Israel, that when one comes to Judges 15, Samson uses the lack of circumcision to describe Israel’s enemies (v.18). Circumcision is so identified with the covenant made with Abraham that when Jeremiah tells the Israelites that their “ears are uncircumcised” (Jer. 6:10) it is an immediate indication that they are not listening to the words of God. Later Jeremiah identifies the real problem with the Israelite nation as a whole, “all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart” (Jer. 9:26). The physical practice might have been kept, but Jeremiah makes a powerful and plain point – keeping the physical practice of circumcision is good but keeping the laws of God from the heart cannot be ignored (see Lev. 26:40-42; Deut. 10:15-16; Acts 7:51).
Just as Moses, Jeremiah, and Stephen hammer home the truth that physical circumcision has no meaning if the heart is not circumcised, Paul, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has the final say regarding circumcision and the Christian. “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God” (Rom. 2:28-29). The real identification of a child of God is not an outward sign but a heart that turns to, obeys, and walks in the ways of the Lord. Further, Paul tells the Galatians – a people being told by Judaizing teachers it’s alright if they want to be Christians, but they still need to keep the Law – “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6) and “… neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation” (6:15). Physical circumcision is irrelevant to the New Testament Christian.
Considering this, when Paul tells the Colossians – “In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead” (2:11-12). Between Romans 2 and Colossians 2, Paul plainly says a “circumcision made without hands” is a circumcision of the heart in which a change in one’s life is produced. What circumcision did for the Israelites as an identification of being members of the covenant made with Abraham has no place in the life of the Christian. The relationship that Paul highlights in Colossians 2 is not that circumcision and baptism are both initiatory rites of some kind, but that “the physical removal of a bit of skin by human hands is a figure or a type of the spiritual removal of the old sinful nature ‘without hands.’”[ii]
Circumcision under the old covenant was performed upon those that were already a part of that covenant – born into something larger than themselves and therefore marked as a reminder of the obligation of which they were part. “In baptism, we contact Jesus’ saving grace. We reenact his death, burial, and resurrection. We also die to our old sinful selves and are raised a new person (Rom. 6:2, 6; see Col. 2:11, 12).”[iii] What the children of Israel failed to do is once again laid upon the children of God – let us be circumcised of heart; evidenced by a change of life.
[i] Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 148.
[ii] Jack Cottrell, The Faith Once for All: Bible Doctrine for Today (United States of America: College Press Publishing Company, 2002), 367.
[iii] David Stewart, Storehouse of Treasure: A Collection of Biblical Articles (Lawrence, Kans.: By the Author, 2002), 80.
the odd weekend preacher 