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St
Alban’s (Grand Cayman) & St Mary’s (Cayman Brac) |
THEOLOGICAL COMMENTARY
By
the Rev. Dr. Peter Toon
THE TWO CIRCUMCISIONS OF JESUS
Here I wish to offer reflection upon the Two Circumcisions of Jesus, the Christ as a meditation on New Year’s Day. January l is recognised by the Prayer Book as the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus Christ. But also Good Friday is the Circumcision of Jesus in St Paul’s theology.
As an infant, Jewish boy, Jesus (through the action of his parents) obeyed the command of the God of Moses and was circumcised. By this act he began his submission to the Law of God, which he would keep in letter and spirit until he hung on the Cross thirty years later.
Also by this act, he shed the first drop of his blood as the second Adam, the Representative of Man, and Jewish Messiah, for the human race; thirty years later on the Cross he would truly shed his blood to establish the new covenant, the saving relation between God and man.
The circumcision of Jesus when a week old was of course both physical and symbolical. The cutting off, the shedding of the foreskin of the male, is in Genesis 17 the sign and seal required by the LORD God of Abraham and his descendants. It points first to the covenant which God in his sovereign mercy had made with Abraham; and, secondly, and derivatively, to the human response to God, required by the covenant. Only the male is involved because he is considered to be the head of the family and thus the women of his family are covenant members because of their relation to him.
The apostle Paul, himself circumcised as a Jew, had long pondered the theological meaning and purpose of circumcision—as his frequent references to it in his Epistles shows. In Colossians 2:10-15 we find the result of profound meditation upon the relation of circumcision to Christ, his Cross, the Church, Baptism and salvation from sin. In this paragraph, Paul describes Jesus as undergoing or experiencing a unique form of circumcision, performed by God his Father on the Cross at Calvary. Of Jesus Paul writes: “he disarmed/stripped off (Gk—apekdusamenos) the principalities and powers…” (v.15). This cutting off, or stripping off, is not of the foreskin for that was already gone, 30 years earlier! Rather it is, through the act of offering up his weak, human body in physical death, the stripping off and the divesting himself of the spiritual, demonic powers of evil with which he had been at war, and which were still clinging to him, thinking that, in this final battle to death, they were the victors. However, says Paul, at the very moment when they seemed to have totally triumphed, they are cast off by Jesus and made into captives and conquered rebels, as he is raised from the dead triumphant over them. This is cosmic circumcision undergone on the hill, Golgotha, outside the city walls of Jerusalem. As a result the evil powers become subservient to the victorious Lord, who is raised from the dead in his new glorious body and crowned King of kings.
Paul also tells the baptized believers in the Colossian church that they also have been circumcised through their union (by faith and with the Holy Spirit) with the circumcised Christ on the Cross. In union with him, they participate in his circumcision and his victory over evil powers, and this is what was declared in word, symbol and spiritual power in their Baptism. That is, they experienced “a circumcision made without hands,” a work of God the Holy Spirit, in and upon their souls/hearts.
We may claim that it is only because of the TWO CIRCUMCISIONS of Jesus the Messiah and Saviour that from the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) both female and male persons who receive the Gospel (or who are the infant children of those who have received the Gospel) are provided with “ a circumcision made without hands” in the covenant of grace, sealed by Christ’s atoning blood. The outward and visible form and expression of this divine circumcision of the soul/heart (= regeneration) is water Baptism in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
For
further commentary and information see
www.pbsusa.org www.anglicanmarketplace.com www.anglicansatprayer.org