While the old law of Moses was replete with rituals and outward displays of devotion (read the book of Leviticus and you cannot overlook this emphasis), the emphasis of the New Covenant is not ordinances and physical rituals, but a spiritual kingdom and a symbolic circumcision of the heart. Colossians 2:11-13 suggests that baptism, the point at which sins are put off, is the spiritual circumcision of God’s people today. Notice this passage:
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,
having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,
by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
This he set aside, nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:11-14)
Baptism is God’s surgical removal of sin. We are spiritual Jews today, God’s chosen people, only if we have circumcised hearts.
For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God (Romans 2:28, 29).
Zipporah…she was just a wilderness shepherdess who came upon a man one day; a man who would see a talking burning bush…a man who, with the rod of God would turn a river into blood and part a mighty sea. Zipporah’s life was never to be routine or boring again. She was to learn from a personal vantage point the power of the Almighty and the blessings of being a part of his circumcised Israel.
* “Circumcision” World Book Encyclopedia, 1976 ed.
