Let’s examine the biblical-theology of circumcision.
Circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant but is now obsolete as a covenant sign in the new covenant age. It is important to understand why circumcision had to be abrogated in the new age.
Remember the context in which circumcision was instituted: Circumcision was commanded right after Abraham tried to produce the promised seed in his own strength with Hagar. The entire old covenant was focused on bringing the promised seed into the world — the seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3:15 and the seed of Abraham promised in Genesis 15:4.
Abraham had to cling to the promise of the seed by faith. He and Sara were barren, getting older, and still had no children. God had changed his name from Abram, meaning “great father” to Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude,” but he had no children of his own. Imagine Abraham introducing himself to strangers:
“Hello, my name is name ‘Father of a Multitude.’”
“Oh, really? How many children do you have?”
“Well, actually none….yet.”
“You look pretty old. How are you going to become the father of a multitude when you don’t have any children of your own?”
This was Abraham’s dilemma. This was his test. Could he trust in God’s promise or not? His body was as good as dead, and Sara’s womb was dead — would he remain that persuaded that God could do what he had promised in spite of the obstacles (cf. Romans 4:13-25)?
Abraham had to rest in God’s promise of a seed. But this is precisely what he failed to do at a key moment.
The sequence of Gen. 15-16-17 is critical. In Genesis 16 (following the misguided advice of Sara), Abraham tried to produce the promised seed in the strength of his own flesh. He got tired of waiting patiently for God to act, so he took matters into his own hands and slept with Hagar. Ishmael was the result. But Ishmael is not the promised the seed.
What does God do in response to Abraham’s failure to live by faith and instead rely on the flesh? God commands Abraham to institute the practice of circumcision. God commands Abraham to “weaken” the male organ of generation to remind Abraham that it is God’s power, not his own, that will bring about the fulfillment of the promise. The seed will come through the power of the Spirit, not the flesh.
Circumcision is simply the male equivalent of female barrenness. (Note how every patriarch’s wife in Genesis is barren!) It was a symbolic castration. It was God’s way of saying, “Not by the flesh, but by the Spirit, the promised seed will come.” Had Abraham been thinking it through to its logical end, he probably could have deduced from that time forward that the promised seed would have to come through a virgin birth.
All of this is right at the heart of the book of Galatians, of course, where Paul aims to refute the Judaizing party who are pressuring the Gentile Galatian Christians to submit to circumcision (and with it the entire system of the old covenant law).
It should now be obvious why circumcision can no longer function as the covenant sign. Now that God has provided the true promised seed, Jesus Christ, through the ultimate barren womb, that of a virgin, circumcision is obsolete. To go on circumcising (for covenantal purposes) is a denial that Jesus is the promised seed. It’s a denial that the new age has come. The irony is that while circumcision should have been a continual call to humility and self-abandoning trust for old covenant Israel, the Jews managed to turn it into its opposite – into a sign of Jewish pride and privilege. And so Paul rightly tells those who want to go on practicing covenantal circumcision to go the whole way and castrate themselves (Gal. 5:12).
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TL:DR: The point of circumcision as the sign of the Abrahamic covenant was to demonstrate that the promised seed would come not by the power of man’s flesh but by the working of God’s Spirit. The coming of the Messiah and his salvation would be a divine gift, not a human achievement. God cut off the flesh of man in a symbolic castration (equivalent to female barrenness) to prove that point that the coming of the promised seed of the woman/Abraham/David would be sheer grace.
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