Cheryl

Don,
Thanks for your comments!

Circumcision was a sign of the family progenitor entering into the covenant but this doesn’t mean that a male was need to get into the covenant. The fact is that only males were required to be circumcised, but female slaves and single women did not need a male to be a part of the Abrahamic covenant. This brings up the question of why?

You are right in that it is absolutely true that anyone who is in Christ is part of the Abrahamic family of God. We all had our hearts filled with sin and it is Jesus Christ who removed the foreskin of our hearts. Removing the foreskin was a sign of removing the sin. The question that I was asking is why is the removal of the foreskin a sign of removing of sin? It is because the foreskin is a symbol or sign of sin. If is it true that we all have a spiritual foreskin that needs to be removed off our hearts, we need to also consider why it is that only men have a physical foreskin that needs to be removed that allowed them to come into the family of God in the OT? There was never one woman who was refused entrance because she did not have a male member of her family to bring her into the covenant. The covenant did not have a male mediator who brought the family into the covenant. The covenant was for each person individually. The father could not bring the sons into the covenant even if he was circumcised. The father’s circumcision was not good enough. Each male member had to be circumcised or they were out of the family of God. This is quite a sober warning of God that each son was rejected with or without their father’s own circumcision.

When we see the importance of the cutting off of the foreskin in the males as a sign of passing on of the inheritance of the sin nature, it should cause us to realize why God did not give the promise to Adam of his seed being the Savior and why it was the seed of the woman alone who became our Savior. So many say that the virgin birth is unnecessary but that is not correct. The virgin birth of Jesus has been and continues to be a important part of our faith. Jesus had to be the sinless lamb who was able to take away our sin. He could not have inherited a sin nature in any way and he could not have sinned on his own or he would not qualify to be our Savior.

It is interesting also to note that God rejected a sacrificial lamb that had any physical blemish. It wasn’t just the innocence of the lamb that was required but there there was also a requirement that there be no physical mark or blemish on the lamb in order for them to be a pure sacrifice for sin. Everything that God does is for a reason and each symbol has a meaning. Jesus as the lamb of God had to be physically without blemish (a sin nature inherited by birth would have disqualified him) and internally without blemish (without personal sin). If he failed in either way to be sinless then he could not be our Kinsman Redeemer.