Genesis 17:9,10. And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep My covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee, in their generations. This is My covenant, which ye shall keep, between Me and you, and thy seed after thee; every man child among you shall be circumcised.
The Christian’s walk through time to the glory of eternity is by faith and not by sight. Faith, however, is not a mere fancy or a vague conjecture. It is a sure and steadfast guide, and “the wayfaring man” cannot possibly err if he follows its direction. Faith is founded on the “exceedingly great and precious promises” of Scripture, all of which are as stable and immutable as God Himself. And faith is aided and confirmed by visible signs and seals, which God, in His abundant goodness and mercy, has been pleased to appoint.
There is little doubt that sacrifice, as a type of how the promised seed of the woman should destroy works of the devil, was the first seal appended to the promise. There is little doubt also that, by sacrifice, the early patriarchs received increase of faith and enjoyment of hope. God was pleased, in a time of extensive idolatry and corruption, to choose Abraham and his posterity. To them, as His particular people, God appointed the sign or seal of circumcision; by which the people of God were significantly represented as cut off from all inheritance of God’s presence or favour through their first father, that they might by adoption in the promised Christ – the second Adam – be introduced as children of God into unsearchable riches and eternal inheritance.
The ordinance of circumcision was an initiatory seal of the covenant of promise, to be observed so early as the age of eight days. It was declared of such importance that the uncircumcised male child was cut off from the people of God; he remained a condemned sinner in the first Adam and had no part in Christ, the second Adam.
To the Israelites in Egypt, however, God ordained the ordinance of the passover as a confirmatory seal, which the heads and all the members of families were bound to observe, under the same penalty as was annexed to the neglect of circumcision (Num 9:13). In the passover, as a type, the blood of Christ is clearly shown to be the sole fountain of man’s salvation (1 Cor 5:7). These two ordinances, or seals of the covenant of grace, continued in the Church of God, to aid and strengthen the faith of His people, until immediately before the blessed Lord’s crucifixion and ascension into heaven, when He was pleased to change the initiatory ordinance of circumcision into baptism, and the passover into the Lord’s Supper.
There is an apparent disparity between circumcision and baptism, which has led some Christians to question or doubt whether the latter superseded or came in the room of the former. Circumcision was suited to be applied only to males, while baptism is administered to children of both sexes. This disparity, however, is easily and satisfactorily accounted for, from the different condition and constitution of the Old and New Testament Churches. In the Old Testament Church, there were genealogies of families minutely and correctly kept, in order to maintain the distinction of tribes and the right of inheritance. In the New Testament, on the contrary, genealogies are condemned as endless and calculated to minister questions rather than godly edifying (1 Tim 1:4), and it is declared that “there is neither Greek, nor Jew . . . barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all” (Col 3:11).
In the Old Testament accordingly, the head of the family, the father or the husband, was responsible for the daughter or wife, and had power over her in all matters of religious vows or engagements. If the daughter or wife made a vow in the presence, hearing, or knowledge of the father or husband, it was binding on her – not because she had made it, but because her father or husband had approved of and confirmed it (Num 30:1-8); but if the father or husband disapproved of it at the time in which it was made, or when it came to his knowledge, it was a mere nullity, and no more obligatory than if it had never been made. The female was, therefore, in the Old Testament Church, viewed to a certain extent, in a religious point of view, as included in the male, and of course represented by him in the introductory rite of circumcision. But as there is no such arrangement in the New Testament Church, the introductory ordinance of baptism is administered to both the sons and daughters of believers.
The covenant of which circumcision was an appointed seal is most unquestionably the same as that to which baptism is affixed (Rom 4:11); and in Colossians 2:11, believers are said to have been circumcised in Christ, “with the circumcision made without hands”, because they had been “buried with Him by baptism”. That the Lord’s Supper is the Christian passover, cannot be questioned. It was instituted in the same night in which the Lord observed the passover for the last time. We read often, after the day of Pentecost, of the disciples partaking of the Lord’s Supper, but never of the passover; and the church in Corinth is exhorted to keep the feast of the Supper, not with “old leaven”, but with “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”, because “Christ our passover is”, of course, shown in it to be “sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5:7,8).
These two seals “of the righteousness of faith” are the only ordinances which Christ, the great King and Head of the Church, has been pleased to appoint, and their observance is to continue to the day of the consummation of all things. When Christ commissioned His apostles to go and make disciples, by baptism, in all nations, He expressly promised to be with them “unto the end of the world”, and Paul declares that the ordinance of the Supper shall “show the Lord’s death till He come” (1 Cor 11:26). Usurpation of the prerogative of the King of kings, or treason against Him, is surely a heinous offence against Him, just as similar crimes committed against earthly sovereigns are serious. Therefore the Church of Rome, and all other churches who have added to those ordinances – and the Society of Friends, who have laid them aside – have greatly erred.
Jehovah is a jealous God and will not give His glory to another, and He has solemnly declared that if any man shall add to God’s words, God will add to him the plagues which He has threatened in His Word; and if any man shall take away from God’s Word, God will take away that man’s part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city (Rev 22:18). These ordinances, however, are made effectual only by the operation of the Spirit of God. That is not circumcision which is outward, in the flesh, but which is of the heart and in the Spirit. Let all therefore, when they go to God in those ordinances, endeavour to make their calling and election sure, and to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, through these means of grace. Let them remember that it is not in man who walketh to direct his steps, and that it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure.