Numbers 6:22-27/Galatians 3:23-29/St Luke 2:21
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Since the days of Abraham a mark had been cut into the flesh of very Jewish male. A sign to identify him as one belonging to the people of God. A sign to show his obligation to keep the covenant God had given. A sign of obedience to God and to His Law. Circumcision, the removal of the foreskin. It was a solemn rite performed on all Jewish males eight days after birth. And with it went the giving of the child’s name.
Now it was customary for the firstborn son to receive his father’s name or the name of a male ancestor. Consider the circumcision of St John. Remember that Zechariah had been struck mute by the angel for he doubted the Word of the Lord concerning his son, the forerunner. On the day of the circumcision, the child’s relatives would have called him Zechariah, after his father. But Elizabeth stopped them, saying, No, he shall be called John. They were confused, for none of his relatives had that name. His father, still mute, wrote, His name is John, and immediately his tongue was loosed and he blessed God in the words of the Benedictus.
Thus naturally one would have expected Mary’s Child to be named Joseph. But Joseph was not His father. He would not have the privilege of naming this Son. His own boys would receive familial names such as James, Joseph, Simon, and Judah.
But Mary’s Child is the Son of the Most High God, miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. And He was called “Jesus” - the Name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Jesus, which means, YHWH is salvation, or even, “the Lord God is doing His saving work.” It is entirely fitting that He received this Name on this day. For the circumcision of Jesus shows how He would do His saving work.
In theology we speak of Jesus’ two-fold obedience to His Father. His active and passive obedience. His active obedience is that He fulfills the Law precisely as God the Father intended it to be fulfilled. On Sunday you heard from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians, When the fulness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (4:4-5). That is His active obedience; taking our place under the Law and showing us what it means to live in covenant with the Father. His incarnation and circumcision mark His life as an unbroken “yes” to the will of His Father. As David prophesied in the Psalms, Behold, I have come; I delight to do your will, O My God; You Law is within My heart (40:7, 8). And Jesus said, I have come down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me (Jn 6:38).
That Jesus perfectly obeys the will of the Father is the best of news for us. The obedience that He renders according to the Law was not done for His own sake, but for ours. Jesus never does anything for His own sake. He doesn’t need the perfection of the Law. He is the Lord of the Law, the One who delivered it to Moses on Mt Sinai. He is co-equal with His Father in heaven. Yet “for us men and for our salvation, He came down from heaven and was made Man.” Because we needed His perfect submission to the Law, He entered our flesh and blood that He might give the Father on our behalf the obedience that is due Him from our flesh and blood.
For from the time of Adam and Eve we have failed to render that obedience. We have failed to live in the total and complete “yes” to the will of the Father. We have lived instead the sorrow of our own “My will be done.” In truth, we have lived as if God and His Law did not matter and as if we mattered most. He have not feared, loved, and trusted Him above all things. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.
Thus enters Jesus. He came not merely to show us another way - although He does that - but He came above all to be our Substitute. God’s Law demands nothing short of perfection. 100% love. 100% obedience. No let up, no exceptions. We are to joyfully render obedience to God the Father at all times or else the Law say we go to hell. No way out.
But Christ come into our flesh to perfectly fulfill the demands of the Law for us; to provide a way out. What we have not done and could not do in our sinful state, our Savior came to do for us. His “active obedience.” Indeed in Jesus God is at work saving.
But the circumcision of Christ did more than put Him under obligation to that active obedience. It also gloriously foreshadowed His passive obedience. He came not only to do what we failed to do, but also to suffer the consequences for our failure. The penalty imposed by the law on any failure to keep it at any point is death. It is written, Whoever keeps the whole Law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it (Ja 2:10). And, The wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23). Thus do you confess that you deserve both God’s temporal and eternal punishment. Not only by our actions this past year, but on account of our very nature itself we rightly ought to be eternally cut from the Source of all joy and light and life. We ought be circumcised from God.
Yet for this Christ has come. He who had no sin at all. And He never would. Yet into His flesh was cut a mark. His blood flowed. It was a promise of greater bloodshed still to come. The blood that would flow when that Child had grown to Manhood would appease the Father’s will. For in His flesh and blood He bore the guilt of the entire human race on the Cross and so atoned for the sin of all. The meeting of His active and passive obedience. He suffered what was placed upon Him. He took what He didn’t deserve so that we might receive what we don’t deserve. He bore our hell that we might have a share in His heaven.
This is how He saves: by perfectly keeping the Law for us and by bearing in His own body the penalty imposed upon our disobedience. His active and passive obedience bound together, foreshadowed in the circumcision of Jesus, culminated in His Cross. Here is the first sacrifice, there the last. Today a drop, then the full measure of His blood. The Feast of the Circumcision and Name of our Lord comes between Christmas and Easter, between the crib and the Cross. The Child is still in swaddling clothes and already His blood is shed for the sins of all. His Name is Jesus: the God who saves.
This is why St Paul writes to the Galatians, The Law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.
And elsewhere he writes, 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).
Your baptism cuts you off from your sin and its penalties. Your baptism gives you the blessing of the Lord. Now His gracious promises avail for you. Your baptism joins you to Christ, the Son of the Father. He now sees you as perfectly obedience, holy with the holiness of His Son. Thus your baptism gives you life, everlasting and overflowing. For your baptism lifts the countenance of the Lord upon you and gives you His peace. And this all because a little Child shed His blood today and embarked upon a path of obedience that would set you free.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Since the days of Abraham a mark had been cut into the flesh of very Jewish male. A sign to identify him as one belonging to the people of God. A sign to show his obligation to keep the covenant God had given. A sign of obedience to God and to His Law. Circumcision, the removal of the foreskin. It was a solemn rite performed on all Jewish males eight days after birth. And with it went the giving of the child’s name.
Now it was customary for the firstborn son to receive his father’s name or the name of a male ancestor. Consider the circumcision of St John. Remember that Zechariah had been struck mute by the angel for he doubted the Word of the Lord concerning his son, the forerunner. On the day of the circumcision, the child’s relatives would have called him Zechariah, after his father. But Elizabeth stopped them, saying, No, he shall be called John. They were confused, for none of his relatives had that name. His father, still mute, wrote, His name is John, and immediately his tongue was loosed and he blessed God in the words of the Benedictus.
Thus naturally one would have expected Mary’s Child to be named Joseph. But Joseph was not His father. He would not have the privilege of naming this Son. His own boys would receive familial names such as James, Joseph, Simon, and Judah.
But Mary’s Child is the Son of the Most High God, miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit. And He was called “Jesus” - the Name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Jesus, which means, YHWH is salvation, or even, “the Lord God is doing His saving work.” It is entirely fitting that He received this Name on this day. For the circumcision of Jesus shows how He would do His saving work.
In theology we speak of Jesus’ two-fold obedience to His Father. His active and passive obedience. His active obedience is that He fulfills the Law precisely as God the Father intended it to be fulfilled. On Sunday you heard from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians, When the fulness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (4:4-5). That is His active obedience; taking our place under the Law and showing us what it means to live in covenant with the Father. His incarnation and circumcision mark His life as an unbroken “yes” to the will of His Father. As David prophesied in the Psalms, Behold, I have come; I delight to do your will, O My God; You Law is within My heart (40:7, 8). And Jesus said, I have come down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me (Jn 6:38).
That Jesus perfectly obeys the will of the Father is the best of news for us. The obedience that He renders according to the Law was not done for His own sake, but for ours. Jesus never does anything for His own sake. He doesn’t need the perfection of the Law. He is the Lord of the Law, the One who delivered it to Moses on Mt Sinai. He is co-equal with His Father in heaven. Yet “for us men and for our salvation, He came down from heaven and was made Man.” Because we needed His perfect submission to the Law, He entered our flesh and blood that He might give the Father on our behalf the obedience that is due Him from our flesh and blood.
For from the time of Adam and Eve we have failed to render that obedience. We have failed to live in the total and complete “yes” to the will of the Father. We have lived instead the sorrow of our own “My will be done.” In truth, we have lived as if God and His Law did not matter and as if we mattered most. He have not feared, loved, and trusted Him above all things. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.
Thus enters Jesus. He came not merely to show us another way - although He does that - but He came above all to be our Substitute. God’s Law demands nothing short of perfection. 100% love. 100% obedience. No let up, no exceptions. We are to joyfully render obedience to God the Father at all times or else the Law say we go to hell. No way out.
But Christ come into our flesh to perfectly fulfill the demands of the Law for us; to provide a way out. What we have not done and could not do in our sinful state, our Savior came to do for us. His “active obedience.” Indeed in Jesus God is at work saving.
But the circumcision of Christ did more than put Him under obligation to that active obedience. It also gloriously foreshadowed His passive obedience. He came not only to do what we failed to do, but also to suffer the consequences for our failure. The penalty imposed by the law on any failure to keep it at any point is death. It is written, Whoever keeps the whole Law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it (Ja 2:10). And, The wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23). Thus do you confess that you deserve both God’s temporal and eternal punishment. Not only by our actions this past year, but on account of our very nature itself we rightly ought to be eternally cut from the Source of all joy and light and life. We ought be circumcised from God.
Yet for this Christ has come. He who had no sin at all. And He never would. Yet into His flesh was cut a mark. His blood flowed. It was a promise of greater bloodshed still to come. The blood that would flow when that Child had grown to Manhood would appease the Father’s will. For in His flesh and blood He bore the guilt of the entire human race on the Cross and so atoned for the sin of all. The meeting of His active and passive obedience. He suffered what was placed upon Him. He took what He didn’t deserve so that we might receive what we don’t deserve. He bore our hell that we might have a share in His heaven.
This is how He saves: by perfectly keeping the Law for us and by bearing in His own body the penalty imposed upon our disobedience. His active and passive obedience bound together, foreshadowed in the circumcision of Jesus, culminated in His Cross. Here is the first sacrifice, there the last. Today a drop, then the full measure of His blood. The Feast of the Circumcision and Name of our Lord comes between Christmas and Easter, between the crib and the Cross. The Child is still in swaddling clothes and already His blood is shed for the sins of all. His Name is Jesus: the God who saves.
This is why St Paul writes to the Galatians, The Law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.
And elsewhere he writes, 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).
Your baptism cuts you off from your sin and its penalties. Your baptism gives you the blessing of the Lord. Now His gracious promises avail for you. Your baptism joins you to Christ, the Son of the Father. He now sees you as perfectly obedience, holy with the holiness of His Son. Thus your baptism gives you life, everlasting and overflowing. For your baptism lifts the countenance of the Lord upon you and gives you His peace. And this all because a little Child shed His blood today and embarked upon a path of obedience that would set you free.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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