Why You Should Care about Circumcision
I once met someone who insisted that Christians need to be circumcised. After I got over my shock at this statement, I found myself wondering if that person had read the New Testament—where Paul repeatedly rails against the idea that believers must follow old covenant circumcision rules.
And then I started wondering why, in fact, Paul had given so much time to a topic which, to me, seemed so peripheral. Today, circumcision is not an issue that most of us think much about, especially in the context of our faith, but in the first century church, it was a big deal. The Greek New Testament makes a whopping 75 references to circumcision, and Paul taught on it in seven of his New Testament letters (Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Titus). Clearly, circumcision matters. The question is, why?
When God made his covenant with Abraham, he commanded Abraham to circumcise himself and all the males in his household (see Gen. 17:10-12). From that time forward, for the Jews, male circumcision served as an outward sign of their covenant with God, and it set them apart from the people around them.
But then Jesus died and rose again to forgive our sins and inaugurate the new covenant—a covenant available to all people, not just the Jews. And suddenly the early church had a big controversy on their hands. Should they require male Gentile (non-Jewish) believers to be circumcised like their Jewish counterparts? The book of Acts records some of this debate (see chapter 15), as do many of Paul’s letters. Ultimately, the apostles concluded that circumcision was no longer a requirement for covenant with God.
Yet a pro-circumcision faction, sometimes called simply the circumcision or the Judiazers, continued within the church, teaching people that followers of Christ must also follow Jewish law, including male circumcision. Paul gave so much attention to the topic of circumcision in his letters in order to combat this false teaching. He did not want the church to fall into legalism. He did not want to exclude anyone from the new covenant of faith.
For this reason, we find Paul declaring that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matters—but only “faith expressing itself through love” (Gal. 5:6) and “the new creation” (Gal. 6:15). He felt so deeply about this issue that he warned believers, “Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh” (Phil 3:2), and even said, “As for those agitators [Judiazers], I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves” (Gal 5:12). Clearly, Paul meant business.
Paul’s crusade against mandatory circumcision may seem like a two thousand-year-old argument with little relevance today, but it should matter to us for two reasons.
First, Paul’s crusade against circumcision was a crusade against any attempt to establish external requirements for entering covenant with Jesus. The only way we enter the new covenant is through faith in what Jesus did for us. While circumcision isn’t an issue of contention today, other forms of legalism have taken its place. Paul’s arguments against circumcision apply to them as well.
When Paul said, “Circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code” (Rom. 2:29), he meant that our relationship with God is all about the heart. Even in the old covenant, God had prophesied a time when he would circumcise people’s hearts (see Deut. 30:6). The new covenant is the answer to that promise. The new covenant is evidenced by transformation in our hearts, not by our ability to follow rules. True followers of Jesus are those “who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3).
Second, Paul’s crusade against circumcision was a determined defense of the new and inclusive sign of the covenant—water baptism. Paul directly compared the old covenant sign of circumcision to the new covenant sign of baptism, calling it “a circumcision not performed by human hands” (Col. 2:11). In other words, while circumcision was an outward sign that changed a man’s physical body, baptism is an outward sign that changes a person’s soul. It is a spiritual rebirth, in which we are symbolically buried with Christ in baptism and then raised to life with him through our faith (see Col. 2:11-12).
But baptism is not just a sign of inner transformation. It is also a sign of God’s desire to include all people in his family—his desire to include not only Gentiles but also women. No woman could fully participate in a covenant symbolized by male circumcision. But any woman can step into the water to receive baptism.
Now, when I think of circumcision, I remember Jesus’ fight for the oppressed and overlooked. I remember that Jesus did away with the old covenant of circumcision and initiated the new covenant of baptism—a covenant in which all people (male or female, Jew or Gentile, rich or poor) can find a home in him.
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