Sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision and the Name of Jesus
Galatians 3:23-29 + Luke 2:21
Happy 8th day of Christmas! The world moved on from Christmas already as of last Tuesday. But we haven’t moved on, have we? On the 8th day of Christmas, we celebrate what happened on the 8th day of Christ’s birth: His circumcision, and His naming ceremony. Why on earth has the Christian Church made this a part of the Christmas season? Why on earth make a big deal about the removal of a piece of skin from a little boy? Because that little boy was our Lord Jesus. He was the One who endured this momentarily painful procedure on the 8th day of His birth. And He endured it, because God had made it a big deal under the Old Testament. Without this event in the life of Jesus, He would never have been able to institute the New Testament in His blood. He would never have been our Savior from sin. So, if you would understand who Jesus is and why He came, and what the benefit is for us in being His Christians, then you have to understand this Biblical practice that was so important to God’s Church for 2,000 years before the birth of Christ, and that still has a spiritual significance for us, 2,000 years later.
As you certainly remember, circumcision was not a practice that the Jews just decided on their own one day to institute. God instituted it. God commanded Abraham, back in Genesis 17, I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your seed after you. Also I give to you and your seed after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” And God said to Abraham: “As for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised; and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations, he who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not your descendant. He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised, and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.”
If you want God to be God for you, if you want to inherit the promises made to Abraham and to his seed, if you want to be a part of the people of God at all, then you—if you’re a male 8 days old or older—must be circumcised; that’s the way it was from the time of Abraham till the time of Christ. It was the sign of the covenant God made with Abraham.
It seems like a foolish sign, doesn’t it? Human reason sneers at such a practice. What does this removal of a bit of skin have to do with a person’s spiritual state, with a person’s relationship with God, with a person’s eternal future? Well, God likes to spit in the face of our fallen human reason. It deserves it. He chooses things that human reason can’t grasp. He attaches His best promises to things that seem the humblest and the smallest and forces us to live by faith and not by sight, so that only those people benefit from God’s promises who trust in His Word, not in their own reason or strength.
Our Lutheran Confessions (printed on the back of your service folder) identify well the purpose of circumcision: (a) that Abraham might have a written sign in his body—a permanent mark on his body to remind him of the covenant God had made with him, to remind him that he was to fear and love God as one who had been made an heir of eternal life; (b) so that, admonished by this, he might exercise faith—so that he would keep trusting in God’s Word and in God’s promises all his life; and (c) that by this work he might also confess his faith before others and, by his testimony, invite others to believe. Obviously circumcision was a private kind of mark; no one would see it. But Abraham would tell other people of the covenant God had made with him, of the promises God had given to all those who were connected to Abraham, and he could use himself as an example of one who had been marked, according to God’s Word, for eternal life as a participant in God’s covenant, inviting others, including his own descendants to believe in this God and to join Abraham in this covenant of grace.
Abraham circumcised Isaac, the son whom God promised, on the 8th day of his birth, and so it continued among Abraham’s descendants until the practice was codified in the Law of Moses some 400 years later. It physically marked a man (and his family!) as belonging to the people of Israel, and it signified that the whole life of the circumcised should be lived under the Law.
By the time of Jesus, the Jews had begun to abuse the sign of circumcision. They had turned it into a meritorious good work—something that they did that made them worthy to be God’s people, worthy to inherit eternal life. They put their faith in their physical descent from Abraham and from their obedience to the Law that God had given to Abraham and to Moses. They boasted that, just as Abraham was justified by his good works, beginning with circumcision, they, too, would be justified by their good works.
It was the especially the Apostle Paul who demolished their false faith in Romans 4, where Paul points out that, according to the book of Genesis, Abraham was justified long before he was ever circumcised. He was justified, not by any work of his own, but by faith alone. Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness…He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had while still uncircumcised.
But none of that faith would matter, unless the sign of circumcision had been fulfilled and then set aside by Abraham’s true Seed and Heir.
So along came the baby, born of Mary, exactly one week after he was born, still without a name, because Hebrew boys weren’t given their name until after they were circumcised. And Mary and Joseph fulfilled for their Son what the Law required. Since He was the long-promised Seed of Abraham, this was the day that the whole Old Testament had been foreshadowing, the day when the Son of Abraham would be brought under the Covenant, under the Testament, under the Law that God had given to Abraham and to Moses, with all of its promised blessings for obedience, and with all of its promised curses for disobedience. This was the day that the Son of God entered into the Old Testament, to fulfill it and, later, to replace it with a New and better Testament: the New Testament in His blood—blood that was first shed on this day of His circumcision, a token of the blood that would be spilled about 33 years later on the cross.
What does all of this mean for us? It means that the baby Jesus, on the day of His circumcision, embarked on a lifelong journey of obedience to the Law, not as an example to us, but as a Substitute for us. As Paul wrote to the Galatians in chapter 4, When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
And how do we receive that adoption? You heard it this morning in the Epistle: For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
As those who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, believing in Him as your Savior from sin, you now inherit everything that Christ inherits, both as the Son of God and as the Son of Man, and that is…everything. But first and foremost, it’s the ability to call God your Father. He is not only the God and Creator of the universe. He is God for you. He claims you as His own son—as members of the one body of Christ. That’s why it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, Jew or Greek (or any other race), slave or free, rich or poor, because, in God’s sight you all wear Christ Jesus as a garment; you are all clean, holy, perfect heirs of heaven through faith in Him.
Now circumcision has been set aside as the entrance into God’s family and as the mark of His adoption. It has been set aside and replaced with Holy Baptism. Listen to how the Apostle Paul makes the connection between circumcision and Baptism as he writes to Gentile Christians in Colossians 2: In Christ you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
Circumcision used to be all-important for people to receive God’s forgiveness. It was all-important for Christ, in order for Him to be our Savior. But now, circumcision no longer counts for anything. Now, if you would have God for your God, if you would be counted among His children, then you must believe and be baptized in Christ Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Abraham. And if you have already been baptized, then you must keep using your baptism, as a sign and seal of the forgiveness of sins that is yours through faith in Christ, and as a constant reminder that, as a member of the New Testament in the blood of Christ, you are to live, not as pagans, not as atheists, not as idolaters who will perish in the judgment, but as baptized children of God who will live eternally with Him, and with your fellow baptized. As Paul wrote to the Galatians in chapter 5, Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters…For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.
That is the calling of the Christian: to be baptized, and then to live as baptized members of Christ, in love—in self-sacrifice, in self-denial, in devotion to God’s Word and in service to our neighbor, not in order to earn our salvation, but because we have been made members of Christ Jesus. Jesus. Savior. The name that was given to our Lord on the 8th day of His birth. Jesus. The name assigned to that child from eternity and proclaimed by the angel Gabriel to Joseph. Jesus. The name that is above every name, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Happy 8th day of Christmas! Amen.
