Today’s thought “Ability to circumcise your heart” (May 13)

Today’s thought

“Circumcise your heart”

(May 12)

⁶The Lord, your God, will circumcise your hearts^[a] and the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart and your whole being, in order that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:6 New American Bible Revised Edition)

¹⁶Circumcise therefore the foreskins of your hearts,^[a] and be stiff-necked no longer.(Deuteronomy 10:16 New American Bible Revised Edition)

Man had received the ability to spread all over the world and to meet others, choosing their friends, though it looks like it often man made the wrong choice of contacts. (Lv 26:41; Jer 9:25; Ez 44:7, 9) Very often man did not use his ability to hear God or did not want to listen to His advice. It was like the people of God sometimes had uncircumcised ears.

To whom shall I speak?
    whom shall I warn, and be heard?
See! their ears are uncircumcised,
    they cannot pay attention;
See, the word of the Lord has become for them
    an object of scorn, for which they have no taste. (Jeremiah 6:10 New American Bible Revised Edition)

In the 19th century Friedrich Nietzsche already saw how the citizens around him had closed their ears for the Voice of God and wandered not knowing where to find the truth and stability. It made him having the madman calling out that God was dead. Today, also for many the Word of God has become an object of scorn, having become contemptible to them they not finding any pleasure nor education in it.

Minor protest in front of Washington Conventio... — Minor protest in front of Washington Convention Center in connection with the American Association of Pediatricians annual meeting (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not able to find delight in reading the Holy Scriptures it is still funny that most people still do prefer to believe and follow human dogmatic teachings. In Belgium it has become so bad that in primary schools several pupils can be found who are frightened of hell and all sorts of punishments from God which would come over them. This week the organisation for the protection of the child pulled at the alarm-bell, seeing the danger of in-doctrinal Islamic teaching and looking at a return to the 1940-1950ies attitude of Roman Catholic parents trying to control their kids by stories of fear. But this fearmongering we notice also by several protestant groups, mainly of American origin. Each week we do receive loads of letters warning us that we shall burn in hell, because of our believes, which are not in accordance with their believes.

In the present times, coming closer to the end-times, God is able to see how stiff-necked mankind still is and how so many of our society do not want to learn from the past nor form God’s Word. History is such a unknown subject, that history can repeat itself.

Even if God’s fury would come forth literally like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of man’s doings, still lots of people would not have ears to the infallible sayings of the Divine Causer of all things.

Be circumcised for the Lord,^[a]
    remove the foreskins of your hearts,
    people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;
Or else my anger will break out like fire,
    and burn so that no one can quench it,
    because of your evil deeds. (Jeremiah 4:4 New American Bible Revised Edition)

Lots of Christians do forget that though we do not have to be circumcised literally, we still need to be circumcised figuratively, having us cut clean in front of the Most High. Even those who want to have circumcision like the Jews, should know that the external rite of circumcision accomplishes nothing unless it is accompanied by the removal of blindness and obstinacy of heart. Jeremiah’s view is reflected in Romans 2:25, 29; 1 Corinthians 7:19; Galatians 5:6; 6:13, 15.

What ever kind of circumcision that has only value if the person observes the law. Christians do not have to be a Jew but they have the ability to come under the same covenant as the Jews, becoming part of the chosen ones who shall be allowed to enter the Holy Land and be partakers of the Kingdom of God.

²⁸One is not a Jew outwardly. True circumcision is not outward, in the flesh. ²⁹Rather, one is a Jew inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter; his praise is not from human beings but from God. (Romans 2:28-29 New American Bible Revised Edition)

¹¹In him^[a] you were also circumcised with a circumcision not administered by hand, by stripping off the carnal body, with the circumcision of Christ.(Colossians 2:11New American Bible Revised Edition)

With several Messianic groups coming up, some of their members insisting all people should follow the law and keep Sabbath, we can only find it contradiction when some of them do not want to tithe nor want to have circumcision and as such excluding just those point they do not like to happen to them. Concerning the other matters of the law they seem not able to understand that being a follower of Christ is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.

²⁹Rather, one is a Jew inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter; his praise is not from human beings but from God. (Romans 2:29 New American Bible Revised Edition)

As christians we should have the ability feel that we can have all the richness of fully assured understanding, for the knowledge of the mystery of God, and that we can present ourselves to God as we are, in humbleness and truth. Always we shall be connected with our physical body, but as followers of Christ we have taken an oath to take distance from it, preferring to give preference to the spiritual body, where there is no penis to be cut. In a spiritual body there is no need of cutting off a foreskin, but well of the entire “body of the flesh.” the flesh having been cut of is the body of Christ, the Nazarene man. Jesus bore a pain much greater than the one he had encountered when only a few days on this world, when he became circumcised. At the stake he gave his total body to the altar of offering, cutting away the sins of all people. By Christ his flesh being cut away from this world we are liberated from any other cutting or offering. All offering to God is fulfilled with that great ransom offering.

Now man only has to accept that “cutting” or “circumcision” and then has to act according to that faith in Jesus Christ, doing the works of faith, which can not be symbolised by mutilation of the fleshy or physical parts of this world.

Much more than keeping to acts and tradition that everybody can see, we better make sure our heart is clean and that we bear God deep in it.

Preceding articles:

Today’s thought “Ability to receive ableness from God” (May 11)

Today’s thought “Ability to see that God is not dead” (May 12)

Condemnation of the World and Illustration of Justification

God who knows the heart

Hope by faith and free gift

Why we do not keep to a Sabbath or a Sunday or Lord’s Day #6 Sunday or the Lord’s day