Circumcision carried the promise of judgment for those who broke covenant with God. If someone rejected the covenant sign, he was rejecting the covenant Lord of the sign. If someone rejected the covenant Lord, he or she would incur the judgment of God. The act of “cutting” formed the signatory element of circumcision. The cutting away of the foreskin of the flesh denoted God’s promise to cut off covenant breakers from His presence, His people, and His blessing.

Early on in my pastoral ministry, I decided to preach a sermon series through Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Throughout the series, I dealt with the passages that referenced the old covenant sign of circumcision. After addressing the subject of circumcision several Sundays in a row, I was approached by a congregant who wanted to express his disapproval of me preaching “something of such a sensitive nature as circumcision” since young children were present. In response, I asked if he believed that I should faithfully preach God’s Word. He said, “Of course!” I then asked if he believed that I should faithfully preach from every part of God’s Word (i.e., Law, Wisdom, Prophets, Gospels, Epistles, and apocalyptic literature). “Absolutely,” he replied. Recognizing that he didn’t understand the prevalence of circumcision throughout Scripture or that God gave it as a sign of the covenant promise in the old covenant era of redemptive history, I explained that one would have to refrain from preaching a large portion of the Bible if he could not talk about the meaning of circumcision.

Misunderstandings about circumcision should come as no surprise to us. After all, even many in old covenant Israel failed to rightly understand the nature of the covenant sign of circumcision. Instead of trusting in the Christ to whom it pointed, they trusted in it as a badge of ethnic superiority. Instead of seeing it as the divinely appointed gospel sign of God’s covenant, they viewed it as a fleshly mark of merit. Several factors contribute to this ongoing misunderstanding of the nature of circumcision as a covenant sign in our day.

The first thing that contributes to misunderstandings about circumcision is that the Apostles largely spoke of it in negative terms when they referenced it in their preaching or included it in their epistles. This was necessary since the Judaizers (as well as other groups of Jewish false teachers) were spreading a false gospel among the members of the fledgling churches, insisting that circumcision was necessary for salvation (see Acts 15:1, 5; Gal. 2; 5:3; 6:11–15). To deal decisively with these errors, the Apostles spoke strongly against the need for circumcision. The Judaizers were telling the gentile Christians, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved” (see Acts 15:1). The Apostles made clear that this was a false gospel. As a notable exception, the Apostles also speak about the blessing of regeneration for elect Jews and gentiles using the term circumcision (see Col. 2:11–13).

The second contributing factor is that many people today have never been taught the typological function of circumcision in redemptive history. After giving Abraham exceedingly great and precious promises, the Lord commanded him to give the covenant sign of circumcision to all the males in his household on the eighth day (see Gen. 17:11–14).

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