Tusite Fepueli 7, 2023
מול A Covenant
in the Flesh
KOVINANITE ‘I HE KAKANO
GENESIS 17:10
"THIS IS MY COVENANT, WHICH YOU SHALL KEEP, BETWEEN ME AND YOU AND YOUR OFFSPRING AFTER YOU: EVERY MALE AMONG YOU SHALL BE CIRCUMCISED.
SENESI 17:10
Ko eni ‘eku me‘a te mau tauhi, ko e fuakava ‘a‘aku mo kimoutolu mo ho hako ‘amui, ‘ilonga ha‘amou fānau tangata ‘e kamu.
The verb mul means "to remove the foreskin." Many ancient cultures practiced circumcision, probably as a puberty ritual. But God took this existing practice and transformed it. To us, it might seem a strange place on the body for a "sign of the covenant," but it's quite fitting. God's covenant with Abraham is centered on the zera ("seed"), which means both descendant and semen. So the Lord selected the very organ from which this seed passes from man to woman as the sign-bearing body part. The removal of the foreskin was an indelible, lifelong sign that God would give seed to Abraham and Israel, children of the covenant.
When Jesus, the messianic seed, finally arrived, he himself was circumcised (Luke 2:21). The lawgiver kept his own law. In him, we too are circumcised (male and female), but "with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ" (Col. 2:11). How? Paul goes on: "having been buried with [Christ] in baptism" (v. 12). We, "dead in [our] trespasses and the uncircumcision of [our] flesh, God made alive together with [Christ]" (v. 13). Our baptism into Christ is the indelible, lifelong gift by which we belong to him.
O Lord, circumcise our hearts
and minds to hear your Word and to receive your life in Christ.
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