God of Heaven and earth, be found near to the heart of this dear reader in all they may face today. In Christ Jesus' name, amen.
For the Jews a decision is made for the male child that he be circumcised. It is a sign of the covenant between God and them. It began with Abraham and made it the most personal sign of their new faith. From the oldest to the youngest, God commanded, will bear upon their bodies this mark of the covenant. It always strikes me as humorous, though I know it probably wasn't, that those who did not hear the conversation between God and Abraham, had to hear the old man say, "Good news fellas, we have a God! The bad news? Drop your pants!"
What impact does a physical procedure have on faith? For the Jewish male child, the decision is made on his eighth-day birthday. The parents decide for that child that he will bear upon his body the mark of his faith. For the first part of our history as Christians, the great debate between Paul and the Disciples was on requirements for becoming a Christian. The Jewish Christians wanted circumcision as a part of formal entrance into the Christian faith, one must be a Jew, with all rights and privileges thereof (read, circumcision), then that person could be a Christian. Part of that debate is found in today's passage found in 4:9-12 of Romans:
9 Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, "Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness." 10 How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, 12 and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.
Faith came to Abraham first, Paul claims and rightly so. So, was circumcision required before faith? No. So, is Abraham father even of the uncircumcised? Yes! Those who come to faith do so spiritually. Paul knew the truth. It is not the marks we bear on our bodies that determine if we have faith or not. And to be a Christian does not require our becoming a Jew first. Yes, we do hold the scriptures of the Hebrew faith as sacred and that which introduces us to God and God's involvement in our history, but as Paul would argue, when Christ came, we received a new covenant open to all.
Let our life in Christ be one of honest and genuine faith. One that trusts God and allows us to walk and serve God like never before. God will not be interested in what we have done or not done to our body in obedience to Him, but how because of our obedience we have done for others.
PRAYER: Loving God, so personal and private is our faith that sometimes it becomes so easy to hide it from others and yes, You. Let me not hide my faith, let me joyously live it in a way that brings glory to You. I ask this in Jesus' Name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord!
Eradio Valverde
