How an intimate surgical procedure became an idea that can change the world – Advent Peace, Part 2

Can you guess what intimate surgical procedure the title of this post is referring to? Some people consider it barbaric. The National Institutes of Health reports that 80% of eligible people age 14-59 have had this procedure. What do I mean by “eligible people”? I’m being intentionally vague so as not to give away, just yet, which procedure I’m referring. Keep reading, and see if you guessed it correctly. (At the end of this post, I’ll link NIH article with the stat I mentioned.)

In our Advent Week 2 devotions, we are working our way through Ephesians 2:11–22, and in the previous post, I mentioned that verse 11 includes some curious words. In yesterday’s post, we looked at the first curious word, Gentile.

Paul is writing to Gentile Christians in the Greco-Roman city of Ephesus.  He had spent lots of time with them, which you can read about in the books of Acts chapters eighteen through twenty.  He was with them for more than two years.  He knows them.  He knows they are Gentiles.  He knows their heritage.  Notice, though, that Paul uses the word “formerly.”  Something about these non-Jews had changed.  Something was different.  Did they become Jews? 

No.  They were still Gentiles.  They were still non-Jews.  But what was different?  In the second half of verse 11, we learn the second curious word, circumcision.  If you read through Paul’s epistles, he talks about circumcision frequently (by my count, about 30 times).  To our 2024 American mindset, it would be totally normal for us to think, “It is odd that circumcision is such a prevalent topic in Paul’s letters.”  It IS odd.

We rarely talk about circumcision in our culture. It’s not as if it is a forbidden word or concept, but it is rare that we talk about circumcision, except briefly, if at all, when a baby boy is born.  It comes up in health class or anatomy classes.  But for Paul, circumcision is so significant, he talks about it often.  Why is Paul fixated on circumcision?

What Paul is saying here in verse 11 is that from the Jewish point of view, Gentiles were uncircumcised.  On the one hand, when Paul says “you are Gentiles by birth and uncircumcised,” he is simply described the cultural reality that physical circumcision was rarely practiced by Greeks and Romans in the first century.

On the other hand, Paul is speaking about a spiritual reality.  Jews viewed the world through the lens of the circumcision.  The Jews saw themselves as the circumcised group, and they saw everyone else as the uncircumcised group.  The Jews were not simply referring to a medical surgical choice made by parents when their baby boys were born.  When Jews self-identified as the circumcision group and when they identified Gentiles as uncircumcised, they were also referring to each group’s relationship with God. 

In other words, they were talking about the spiritual IN group and the spiritual OUT group (see the previous post where I talk about being on the outs with people).  To put it in Christian terms, the Jews believed that they were saved, and they believed Gentiles were unsaved.  The Jews believed they had a privileged access to God that no one else had, and here’s where it gets really odd, they believed their privileged access to God had everything to do with circumcision of their baby boys.  Strange, right?  Why did they believe that?

In Genesis chapter 17, when God made his covenant with Abraham, the grandfather of the Jewish people, we read the following

“Then God said to Abraham, ‘…This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.’”

From that day forward, circumcision became the physical outward symbol of a spiritual inward reality, the covenant between God and Israel. 

But does God really care that much about circumcision? Listen to what God says to the people of Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 10,

“Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”

Do you see the connection between circumcision and peace?  God wasn’t really concerned about doing surgery on baby boys.  God wanted the people of Israel, the Jews, to be people who gave their whole lives to him to follow his ways, which included making peace with foreigners, Gentiles. 

What God is teaching the Jews in Deuteronomy 10 is that there is a much deeper, more important way to look at circumcision.  The circumcision that God really desires is an idea that has everything to do with peace.  When you circumcise your heart, you are saying, “Lord, I give you my life.  I want to follow your ways.  I want my heart to be like your heart.  I want to love the things that you love.”  Clearly God says in Deuteronomy 10, he loves not only Jews, but foreigners.  God loves Gentiles.   Thus he wanted the Jews to love the foreigners, the Gentiles, too.  He wanted the Jews to make peace with the Gentiles. When we love people as God loves them, we desire to be at peace with them, no matter who they are.

Except that in Paul’s day, the Jews did not see it that way. How did the Jews view the situation? We find out in the next post.

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

NIH article about circumcision here.