God's Holy Spirit and the Circumcision of the Heart

This post is a continuation of the previous article, Becoming Circumcised as a Christian. As noted there, every Christian must be circumcised, but the meaning of "circumcision" is spiritual: physical circumcision is symbolic of the spiritual process of cutting out and putting away our inborn sinful nature. This post will elucidate the intimate connection between circumcision and receiving the Holy Spirit. Just as physical circumcision was rendered useless for a Jew who did not keep the law, so also spiritual circumcision is rendered useless for a Christian who does not keep the law.

Becoming Circumcised as a Christian

Thus far, I have examined the relationship of circumcision to the New Covenant in two parts: that it is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, which is the foundation of the New Covenant, and that it was an outward sign intended to mirror an internal spiritual process. In this article, I would like elaborate on how Christian circumcision, which is spiritual, differs from the physical circumcision undergone by Israel under the Old Covenant.

The Nature of Circumcision

In a previous article, I explained that both the Old and New Covenants have the covenant with Abraham as their foundation and that the practice of circumcision originally began as the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant. It was decided in Acts 15 that the physical act of circumcision is not required for an uncircumcised man who becomes part of the New Covenant; however, there are other NT scriptures which simultaneously assert that every person of God is required to be circumcised, and these concepts need to somehow be reconciled.

The purpose of the present article is to examine the nature of circumcision. As I will show, God viewed circumcision as a spiritual matter from the beginning, and this is precisely the point that the NT writers were striving to convince the Jewish converts of.