The Son of Man—The Circumcision

The Son of Man

The virgin has brought forth a son, and that holy thing born of her is called the Son of God. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but this does not make her condition different from that of any other mother, nor His condition, as to the flesh, less dependent upon her than that of any ordinary child is upon his mother.

She was unclean and fulfilled the seven days of her separation. Until these were ended, no act from God could reach that child. He is a holy thing that has been born of her, and He is called the Son of God; but He awaits the seven days appointed for other children, and the first act of God towards Him in His human condition, He meets at the same period, and in the same manner, as did all other children of the seed of Abraham.

And what was His first human experience of God’s way of acting towards Him? God came, and He inflicted pain—He demanded mortification. He took a part of the flesh of this Holy Child in place of the whole, and said, “It must be laid aside as unprofitable, until by the resurrection it is made profitable.” God’s covenant of grace cannot be established without being expressly attested by such a token of the unprofitableness of our flesh, our fallen humanity. This token was demanded even of that seed, who, although the Son of God, was also the Son of Abraham.

They circumcised Him, for they were faithful in the covenant. They kept, therefore, the ways and ordinances of God, and they “fulfilled all righteousness,” and circumcised the child.

And, what benefit came to the virgin’s Son by circumcision?

He had voluntarily assumed the same condition which humanity found itself in. What was this condition He found himself in? Weakness, sorrow, pain, a mortality that was a penalty from God—the result of the woman’s sin. All this he shared with all those who are born of a woman. Furthermore; a flesh to which the law of God was difficult, burdensome—to which the way of obedience was narrow, a way of self-denial, strewn with thorns—a nature to which righteousness must be brought, for it was not found therein; flesh and blood that could not inherit the kingdom of God: such was the possession on which He entered, by being made of a woman.

But fallen man had been helped by God. God had spoken to him words of comfort, revelation for faith to hang upon, promises by giving heed to which men might trust in God, and receive righteousness from God. By this means—by faith in Him thus revealed—generation upon generation had served and pleased God. When, therefore, the Son of God came into the world, He came to receive the best that was as yet in the world—not the best that the world can bestow and the world can give its children. For is He not here before us, laid in a manger? And all His life long He will have naught, He shall not have a place to lay His head. But, the best that had yet come to fallen man from God—whatsoever word God had spoken for human faith to grasp and keep hold of—whatsoever rite or ordinances God had appointed for binding men to Himself, for dedicating them to Himself, for sanctifying them as His, for giving men gifts, and for teaching them His truth and, guiding their hopes and meditations of the future—whatsoever means of approaching God, whatsoever acceptable worship had been made known to men by Jehovah: on the possession of all this must the Son of God enter. And He did so by being born a son of Abraham to whom the promises belong.

But even the seed of Abraham is excluded from the promises. These promises are only imparted to those who enter by the door of circumcision. That is why He entered through this door, although He was the very Seed to whom the promises were made. Also, His humanity received the sign of its futility, but rather to be marked as under God’s condemnation, to be rejected and made inconsequential. In order that He may take possession of all the riches of divine revelation. And therefore, that rite is fulfilled in Him.

He came under the law; He received the law as a gift of God, with its significant rites, observances, and uses. The Psalms and the Prophets were given into His hands with all their wonderful content, with all that the Spirit of Christ (who, as a child, lay under the knife of circumcision and whose name is Wonderful) had hidden there and cut off from His human understanding. All nearness to God which this imparts, all the advantages of man towards God which these things bestow, which are contained in this covenant relation, were bestowed upon this child through circumcision; and through these means He shall perfectly know God, worship Him, and perfectly render unto Him perfect obedience in all things.

Let us consider this rite of circumcision, as it was given at the first to Abraham. He received a promised seed in whom he should be the father of many nations. But the probabilities and possibilities of nature were against the promise. Abraham could obtain the promise, only by not considering them, he hopes against hope, believing in “God who quickened the dead, and calls those things which are not as though they were.” God encourages his faith by bestowing upon him a new name and conferring upon Sarai the same. Then, after the promise and the gift came the command to speedy obedience; yet its fulfilment could not take place without shame, pain, and self-denial.

Thus, Abraham received a perpetual token upon his body that he had entered into an eternal relationship with God. God’s covenant was upon his flesh. Thus the act of circumcision given to him signified that the fulfillment of the promise could not be made good by those who looked to themselves for its fulfilment. Only those who acknowledged that they were already as good as dead; who condemned their natural life as forfeit and corrupt; who denied their natural desires; who hoped against hope, looked towards the supernatural and hoped in God, He who calls things that are not as though they were, only such a one could obtain the promises.

And now it is manifest, and important to note, that whatsoever this rite signified to any child, the same it signified to this holy offspring of the virgin. For it is a rite transacted upon an infant; and an infant has no personal history of his own; and concerning an infant nothing more can be affirmed, than that he is the son of someone; and here of this infant, although God from all eternity, yet as to His manhood, and as to His appearance in this world, that He is a son of Abraham, a son of Adam.

As therefore the rite is transacted upon an infant, it condemns not anything that he has done, it casts away nothing that he has done, but it says to him, “hope not from the flesh; reckon it for dead, cast off, needing resurrection.”

It says to him, “you belong to God, and He shall bless and accept you if you will receive from Him by faith and abstain from offering unto Him anything of which the fallen creature is capable.”

The circumcision is of double significancy.

For towards God, it remains a permanent token of submission to Him, of yielding to His call, and of being subservient to His purpose. But the individual, on the other hand, it seals the new condition of an everlasting relationship to God.

Circumcision reminds him that he is not “his own,” and forbids him to trust in the flesh, or to please the flesh, or to offer unto God that which is of the flesh, it assures him, at the same time, of divine gifts and of divine help proportionate to the demands of God’s will, whatever these at any time may be.

And in His life Jesus was the true and perfect example of the circumcised man.

The meaning and reality of that rite was first truly accomplished in Him. He did not obey, nor gratify, nor consider nature in His own person. He consulted not for its ease. He regarded not those things which addressed themselves to His holy mind through means of the flesh which He had assumed. He did in it, and by it, the will of His Father, allowing to the flesh no glory, holding it for dead, yet preserving it for the resurrection. He brought grace and truth, and by grace and truth He lived; and thereby He showed the true casting away of the flesh, which is not the removal of a substance, but the holding over of a substance in hope of change and glorification—not the death of a person, but rather the triumph of a person, through the will being sustained in holiness by the Holy Spirit. By that means He lived “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,” while yet among them.

And when the tempter came, he could find nothing in Him; he had nowhere to lay hold and nowhere to enter—so true was His circumcision. And those who sought to ensnare Him, and to entangle Him, were unable. Hunger, and all the appetites, were under His mastery, and Satan could not make them serve him. Desire of self-declaration,—although the knowledge of Him was to be the salvation of men,—was under His mastery, and He could wait for God’s time, and Satan could not make that desire serve him. Desire of possessing the kingdom which had been promised Him, although His reign was that which all creation was groaning for, although His reign was that which should bring to the earth righteousness, and peace, and joy, and the glory of God, and the eternal exclusion of all evil and sorrow; that desire was under His control, and He could abide by the counsel of God, and by the way which God had chosen, although in that way, evil and sorrow, unrighteousness, violence and death, were to exhaust themselves first on His own person; that desire was under His control, and again Satan could not make it serve him.

Yet while He rejected all that could be offered from the flesh or could be accomplished by its strength for fulfilling His Father’s will or eternal promises, He at the same time used all things, caused all to serve Him—to serve His purpose, and to become His instruments for that “business” about which He had come into the world. Through the reality of His circumcision, He feared not anything, found not contamination from anything, for He was dead unto them, and under the power of God alone. He came eating and drinking—not like John the Baptist, whose austerities were not the true thing, but rather part of his “cry,” a means of stirring up men to desire the true circumcision—for by His circumcision truly kept He was able to eat and drink and do all things to the glory of God.

Jesus was therefore always truly at hand for God, and when He called Him, He always said, “Here am I.” Whensoever God needed Him or sought Him, He was found. When He was sought as “a Lamb for the burnt offering,” He was present at the right time. He did not spare the body, which in the beginning had received circumcision, but yielded His circumcised body to be crucified and slain. And so, by keeping the covenant in body and in spirit, He inherited the promise.

And He was such a one that He could not remain alone. For as God has made a grain of wheat such that if it be cast into the ground and die, it cannot remain alone, but brings forth much fruit, so God has constituted this, seed. Faith in Him is proclaimed through the gospel. They that believe and are baptised become members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.

In Him they are circumcised

They become “Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.” This is our position. And we are to follow Him. The promise is given to us also. We have been baptised into His death, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin; but enter into His resurrection, that He may live in us and serve God in us. And in our baptism, He has sent upon us the Holy Spirit: in which rite also, He has given each of us a new name, our name as sons, not of men, but of God, our name as dead with Christ and in Him risen again. That has been done for us which circumcision could but signify. We are dead unto sin, and alive unto God.

Even as Abraham, so have we the promise to believe, and through the work of God to be accepted as His children. We are to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. And in following Him, and imitating His example, we are to renounce hope from the flesh; to confess that it is only by death and by the resurrection that we can be fitted for the kingdom of God. Through the death of Christ, we are to reckon ourselves, as dead to the fallen world, and alive unto God; to become as instruments of righteousness. We hold all things under our dominion, for our use, as the worshippers of God, His sons, and fellow workers together with Him. Knowing that all things are lawful, we are to refuse to be brought under the power of any.

Christendom as a whole utterly denies the mystery of our Lord’s circumcision, that fundamental work of God wrought upon Him who came into the world. How then shall she prize and understand the other things given in His Person and His work? All that we now behold does witness to the common apostasy from Christ’s circumcision, which yet is a circumcision for His people. The resurrection is no longer the living hope of them that name the name of Christ. Men turn to their nature, looking to its supposed inexhaustible fountain and powers as the means of bettering their condition. And where corruption and decay triumph, there liberty is proclaimed over the graves already heavy with their dead.

Yet God works. Everywhere He constrains the nations to make manifest their true condition before men and angels. Christendom has been called upon to declare, as by a universal poll, before men and angels, whether she will trust in the flesh, or in the promises and the faithfulness of God. And everywhere the answer comes—loudly or quietly, veiled or open—that the flesh is preferred. Men look for all things from man, from fallen man, from his inventions, his progress, his new devices and constitutions, and nothing from God.

But how is it with us? Are we saved by the mystery of our Lord’s circumcision? It is given us, by the putting off from our flesh, to serve God in our flesh, that is, in the body.

The circumcision of Christ is a continual work in the spiritual man. The Holy Spirit truly does perform this circumcision in us, when we yield ourselves unto Him. Thus are our hands filled with fruit unto eternal life. Thus, are we made conformable unto the death of Christ and His resurrection.