The fulfilled old covenant was not circumcision of the flesh.
The fulfilled old covenant was faith and obedience.
The evidence of the fulfilled old covenant was circumcision of the flesh.
The fulfilled New Covenant is not circumcision of the flesh.
The fulfilled New Covenant is faith and obedience.
The evidence of the fulfilled New Covenant is circumcision of the heart.
God warns Israel in Leviticus 26:41-42:
“And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.”
Physical circumcision was intended to be a symbolic outward sign of inward spiritual circumcision of the heart under the old covenant. Notwithstanding, for someone to be considered a true covenant child in God’s eyes, in the old economy, the human heart had to be changed.
A circumcised heart in the Old Testament indicated that one was a true child of God. An uncircumcised heart in the Old Testament denoted one was a child of the devil.
John D. Meade expounds: “the uncircumcised heart in Leviticus appears in the context of the Holiness Code, which is emphasizing a demand for an inward holiness out of an already outwardly consecrated relationship to Yahweh … They were holy outwardly according to ritual … but they were in need of inward holiness – heart circumcision” (Circumcision of the Heart in Leviticus and Deuteronomy: Divine Means for Resolving Curse and Bringing Blessing).
Stephen used a similar term in Acts 7 to rebuke the hard-hearted Christ-rejecting Israelites:
“Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye” (Acts 7:51). This title clearly refers to the unregenerate in both economies
Evidently, these orthodox Jews would have been physically circumcised as infants. But this meant little without a new birth experience. It did not constitute favor with God or did it carry any spiritual merit. Only a renewed heart signified that one was a chosen child of God. The ‘uncircumcised hearts’ spoken about in these passages equates to “the heart of stone” mentioned in both Ezekiel 11:19 and Ezekiel 36:26. Dr. Andrew Fountain explains: “The uncircumcised heart is a heart of stone which does not want to obey God, or believe His promises” (How Old Testament saints were saved).
Moses exhorted the congregation of Israel in Deuteronomy 10:16 to
“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.” He instructed in Deuteronomy 30:6:
“the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.”
Here, the result of spiritual circumcision is a spiritual change that results in one suitably loving God for who He is. What is more, the result of this ‘circumcision of the heart’ produces a spiritual life. This reinforces the idea of a complete regenerative change of constitution that accompanied circumcision of the heart in the Old Testament saints, that enabled them to give God His due.
This begs an important question for our Dispensationalist friends: how possibly could the human heart be circumcised without the indwelling aid and work of the Spirit of God? Who else could change a hardened sinful heart that is hostile to God to a softened heart that wants to please God? Who could deny we are looking at regeneration?
John D. Meade comments: “In Deuteronomy 10:12-22 Moses exhorts the people to maintain covenant loyalty by balancing exhortations with statements about the character of Yahweh … The statements about Yahweh’s character become the grounds for the earnest pleas to be devoted to Yahweh, their God, and it is the theme of loyal devotion, which prompts the origination of the reference to heart circumcision.”
The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah relays the same truth to natural Israel, in Jeremiah 4:4, commanding:
“Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.” The prophet’s audience here was clearly physically circumcised Jews, but that was manifestly not enough. They needed to be spiritually circumcised to be authentically viewed as God’s people. While Jeremiah’s warning largely fell upon deaf ears, he nevertheless sounded the warning. The prophet later lamented over Israel’s rebellious state in Jeremiah 9:26:
“all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.”
While many gave lip service to Yahweh God, and the Hebrew men carried the outward sign of covenant, they were unregenerate in heart. They were unsaved. RC Sproul submits: “Circumcision, as the mark of the old covenant, never guaranteed that the Israelites would rejoice by faith in God’s special ownership of them, but the sign pointed to their need for their hearts to be set apart to love Him (Deut. 10:12–22).”
Circumcising the flesh in the Old Testament never saved any man. Circumcising the heart represented a spiritual transformation. It involved the regenerative power of the Spirit. Regeneration resurrects man’s spirit from spiritual death to spiritual life. It gave man a new heart. Eugene Merrill: “circumcision of the heart … speaks of internal identification with [the Lord] in what might be called regeneration in Christian theology” (The New American Commentary).
Ligonier Ministries has an article (Circumcision of the Heart) on its website that asserts: “In Jeremiah 4:1–4, the prophet reminds the people that they cannot rightfully trust in the mark of circumcision for covenant blessings; rather, they have to experience the inner reality of a circumcised heart that the circumcision in their flesh is to signify. The Lord’s covenant of salvation has always been a covenant of the heart.”
The prophet Ezekiel rebukes the rebellion of Israel in Ezekiel 18. He commands them to turn from their sin and receive a new heart and spirit. Ezekiel 18:30-32 records:
“Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”
When you see a demand for a change of heart you see the necessity of the Spirit to achieve such. It is impossible for man to change himself. It is God the Holy Spirit that creates the desires and it is Him that gives the power to perform such. The Old Testament saints required the same aid as the New Testament saints. They were no stronger or no better equipped to overcome their flesh than us today. As John de Hoog put it: “If there were no indwelling, transforming work in the OT, then the heroes of the faith are no less than superhuman individuals who have an amazing power to believe and obey apart from the Spirit’s work, a power that is not available to us” (The Holy Spirit’s Work in the Old Testament).