Cheryl

Don,
Thanks for clarifying what you meant. That was a very thoughtful answer.

Let’s have a look at the physical and spiritual meaning of protection over a sensitive part. First of all we can see that both men and women have a piece of skin that acts as a protection over a sensitive part. While it is fairly rare that women’s skin is removed by circumcision, that is the removing of the skin of protection over her very sensitive part, it is very common in the third world to have a young girl’s entire organ cut out resulting in genital mutilation. If we ignore the mutilation part, we can readily see that it is possible to remove the skin covering the sensitive part on both men and women. Agreed?

We should also be able to agree that removing the foreskin in the flesh is a fleshly act that is spiritualized by removing the foreskin of our hearts. Agreed?

Next I think that we can agree that God only required males to be circumcised in the flesh and there was no such requirement for the females even though females also had a piece of skin that covered their very sensitive part.

Let’s go on next to the spiritual end of the circumcision of the foreskin. Let’s look at Jeremiah 4:4 in the ESV.

Jeremiah 4:4 Circumcise yourselves to the LORD; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.”

The key words here are circumcise, foreskin, hearts, wrath, evil, deeds. So what is God saying? One thing that we know for sure is that each one of us has had a foreskin on our hearts. The foreskin of the heart is not limited to males as females also have it. God says that the foreskin on our hearts brings God’s wrath and what we need to have cut away has to do with evil deeds that have something to do with our heart.

Is God saying that we need to remove a piece of skin from our hearts that keeps us from being sensitive or we need to be made tender by the removing of the skin? Jeremiah 4:4 doesn’t appear to be saying this at all. Does God say that his wrath is to go forth like a fire because we are not tender? Or is God saying something else that is far worse? What exactly is it that God says that equates with the foreskin of our heart? Read on to see that God’s anger against us is because of the evil of our deeds. It is the evil that needs to be cut away from our hearts. Evil is sin. The evil of our deeds is the sinful thoughts of our heart that gives birth to sinful deeds.

The next problem I think you would have if you made removing the foreskin to be a symbol of making a person more tender, is explaining why only males are to be made more tender? There is no family mediator in the OT who speaks on his wife’s behalf to God thus answering for her sin. The sacrificial system shows that each person must made a sacrifice acceptable to God for their own sin. There is no required mediator of the family where the man’s circumcision covers other people. In fact it is very clear that a father’s circumcision does not even cover his own son. A circumcised father still will have his son rejected from the people of God if his son is not circumcised.

When I read scripture it is clear that the foreskin of the heart is a symbol of the sin and evil that is in our heart. When the evil and the sin that starts in our hearts is cut off, God says that he will give us a new heart one that follows hard after him. It is our sin that separates us from God and the foreskin is the symbol of that evil and evil is sin.