Deuteronomy 10:16

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart." Deu 10:16

What God wants is moral purity. We cannot live in rites and ceremonies. It was well to begin with the outward, but the meaning was that we should go forward to the inward and spiritual. Nor was this revelation of the spiritual purpose long delayed; even in the Old Testament we read, "Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah." Nothing would be more convenient or more pleasant to the carnal man than to merely observe some outward laws and regulations; but the word of the Lord is sharper than any two-edged sword, and its business is done in the innermost heart of man. "He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh.... Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter." There is, therefore, an evangelical or spiritual circumcision. "In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." If we have escaped that which is physically painful, we have come into that which is spiritually disciplinary. "Rend your heart, and not your garments." Man himself is called upon to do this, not that he has the ability to complete the circumcision, but any desire which he shows to begin it will call the almightiness of God to his aid.