Genesis 17

More waiting, more longing for some sign of the fulfillment of the promises of God, more living by faith... And now Abram was 99 years old, and the Lord appeared to him. God called him to a life of trust and blameless obedience. And the Lord kept speaking to this elderly man about His promise.

Now the Lord God Almighty gave Abram a new name, Abraham, to remind this man that he would be the father of a multitude of nations. God reiterated His pledge to be Abraham's God and the God of his offspring. There is an everlasting covenant here with one particular offspring of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom a multitude have found the blessing of peace with God.

God would give the land of Canaan not merely for a long period of time, but for an everlasting possession. Though Abram would only see the smallest beginnings of the Lord's eternal fulfillment in his own lifetime, the final yield that would come from these words of great promise would be far more than Abraham could ask for or imagine.

In addition to the Word of promise, and the special new name, the Lord gave Abraham a new sign that he would bear in his flesh as a reminder of his commitment to hear and obey the Lord. Earlier the Lord had given to Abram a different covenant ritual that was not to be repeated as the Lord symbolically passed through the cut up animals as a pledge of His own life for the eternal security of Abraham and all the chosen seed of God.

Now the Lord gave a second cutting ritual, but this one would be a sacramental obligation for all the centuries of Old Covenant life. This circumcision would be a commitment of blameless obedience, with a sanction upon the violator. The pledge was that the circumcised would keep the whole law of God or be cut off from the people of the Lord as this little piece of skin was cut off from the child's body. See Galatians 5:3.

How could any Israelite agree to such a pledge? The Apostle Paul shines a wonderful light on that great mystery when he reveals that the true meaning behind circumcision was always righteousness by faith. See Romans 4:11. Circumcision rightly practiced was a plea for a substitute. Knowing that every child would surely be a violator of the Law, circumcision was a plea before God that God would provide a perfectly righteous representative who would willingly be cut off from the body, so that we might be kept in the body of Christ. Our faith is in that Substitute.

This sign was a pledge to obey the Lord in all things, but it also was a sign of a promise of the Lord to provide an answer to our deepest need. Our longing for a righteous substitute who would be our obedience and who would then cover us by His blood is the key truth that makes sense of all biblical religion.

To turn away from this sacrament was a grave insult to God, one that almost killed Moses. See Exodus 4:24-26. In that symbol, the whole of the covenant life of God's people was shown forth. Circumcision could not save, but the truth behind circumcision, the story of the coming provision of a perfect Man who would die the perfect death for us, was hidden in this sacrament of the satisfaction of the Lord's holy demands through the gracious provision of His Son as our dying Redeemer.

This was a sign of the covenant between God and His people, a fearful sign of perfect and perpetual blamelessness, and a visual Word of faith that demanded a provision of the perfect Man from heaven. The Lord provided this ceremony as an everlasting covenant for the entire Old Covenant era. Now the meaning of this ritual in the death of Christ has come within our reach on the basis of New Testament revelation. See Colossians 2.9-15.

This sacrament was not a work of merit to earn God's favor, but a testimony of faith by the people of God that the Lord would surely find a way through a promised descendant of Abraham to be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in that Messiah. The coming of Jesus, and especially His death, has revealed the love of Christ more supremely than it had ever been presented to the people before. Circumcision is a type and a shadow. Christ and the cross are the real thing.

God used this occasion of the provision of the Old Testament rite of initiation to prepare Abraham and Sarai for the more imminent giving of a small down-payment of the promises of God in the wonderful arrival of their long-expected son Isaac. Sarai would now be Sarah, a name that spoke of the gift she would be given in a child. We now know that the Isaac they would greet with laughter would be far superseded by the gift of another child 2000 years later according to circumstances that would be far more miraculous.

Even the provision of one Isaac was so hard for Abraham to believe, yet this man somehow looked forward to the day of Christ and rejoiced. See John 8:56. Abraham was still asking God to bless Ishmael as the chosen child of promise. To think that Sarah would bear a child was too much for him. Yet Abraham somehow believed in the Jesus who was to come, this Man who was wounded for our transgression, and whose death has brought us life.

Abraham did believe the promises of God and He obeyed the command of circumcision, even for Ishmael. Christ received circumcision as well, not only the ceremony given to Him as a child, but the fullness of what that ceremony meant when He was cut off from the people of God in His death, so that we would be kept forever for eternal life.