The Circumcised Heart

The promise of the Spirit is vital to the redemption of humanity and the Covenant of God with His people, the Assembly of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament links the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessings of Abraham,” the promise that God would bless the nations through the Great Patriarch. The Spirit is the gift believers receive “through the hearing of faith.” It is part of the Covenant Promises given to Abraham, and the Apostle Peter connected this gift to the “blessings” for the nations during his sermon on the Day of Pentecost.

[Iceland - Photo by Derek Sutton on Unsplash]

The Gift of the Spirit received by the 120 disciples on that day, and later by 3,000 converts in Jerusalem, was in fulfillment of what God had promised Abraham centuries earlier.

• “The promise is for you, and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God will call” - (Acts 2:38-39).

• (Genesis 12:1-3) - “And Yahweh said to Abram <…> So will be blessed in you all the clans of the earth.”

• (Genesis 17:7) - “And I will confirm my covenant between me and you and your seed after you to their generations for an everlasting covenant.”

Israel failed to keep the requirements of the Covenant. Though the nation had sworn to perform “all the words which Yahweh has spoken,” history attests to its failure to fulfill its covenant obligations. The Israelites could not meet those requirements since they did not possess the Spirit. Without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, no man or woman can fulfill the “righteous requirements of the Law” - (Exodus 24:1-8, Numbers 11:1-15).

However, the Mosaic Legislation anticipated Israel’s downfall and the need for something beyond the written Law. After predicting the dispersal of the Nation, God promised that after the people of Israel truly repented, they would “return to Me and obey my voice with all your heart and soul.”

On that future glorious day, God would gather His people from all nations and “circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed to love Yahweh your God with all your heart” - (Deuteronomy 30:1-6).

The themes of renewal and circumcision of the heart are addressed in the Book of Jeremiah. God would “make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah,” but not a covenant according to the one He made with the nation’s forefathers at Mount Sinai – (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would provide a New Covenant in which He would write His laws and regulations in the hearts of His people. This circumcision of the heart foreseen by Moses and Jeremiah has become reality in the “New Covenant” prophesied inaugurated by Jesus through his sacrificial death (“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” – Luke 22:20).

Thus, the New Testament applies this promise to the Covenant based on the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Likewise, the Prophet Ezekiel described this same covenant but added the essential element of the Spirit - (compare Hebrews 8:6-12):

• (Ezekiel 36:24-28) – “Therefore will I take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the lands, and will bring you upon your own soil… And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and my spirit will I put within you and will cause that in my statutes you will walk, and my regulations you will observe and do.”

SPIRIT AND COVENANT

Thus, the Book of Ezekiel combines the promises of the New Covenant, the Gift of the Spirit, and the circumcised heart. Centuries later, the Apostle Paul applied these promises to the Church of Corinth:

• (2 Corinthians 3:1-6) – “You are our letter, inscribed in our hearts, noted and read by all men, manifesting yourselves that you are a letter of Christ, ministered by us, inscribed, not with ink, but with the Spirit of a Living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets which are hearts of flesh <…> Not that of our own selves sufficient are we to reckon anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us sufficient to be ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.”

The prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel pointed to the centrality of the Spirit. With the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus, the long-awaited New Covenant with its Gift of the Spirit was given to the people of God, beginning with the Spirit’s outpouring on the Day of Pentecost – (Acts 2:1-4).

The connection of the Spirit to the Abrahamic Covenant and the “New Covenant” illustrates the continuity of what God is doing today through His Church, and with His redemptive purposes for the Nation of Israel.

Neither the Church nor the receipt of the Spirit was an unforeseen interim stage or necessary detour in God’s redemptive plan. They have been fundamental parts of His Covenant from the very beginning.

The Abrahamic Covenant finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ and his people composed of Jewish and Gentile believers. With his Death and Resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit on his People, “no longer can there be Jew or Gentile.” Together, Jews and Gentiles become the “heirs” and “children” of Abraham, and “coheirs with Christ” of the promises of God – (Romans 8:17).

Regardless of race or nationality, the disciples of Jesus are filled with the Holy Spirit, and with their “circumcised hearts,” they follow the Messiah of Israel wherever he leads as “one new man” - (Galatians 3:26-29, Ephesians 2:15).

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SEE ALSO:

• The Spirit and our Inheritance - (The New Covenant includes the Gift of the Spirit, the first fruits of the New Creation, and the gathering of the nations)

• The Spirit is Life! - (The Spirit of God imparts life, especially the everlasting life of which the Gift of the Spirit is the foretaste and guarantee)

• The Promise of the Father - (With the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost, the blessings for all nations promised to Abraham have commenced)

• Circoncision du Cœur - (La promesse de l'Esprit est vitale pour la rédemption de l'humanité et l'Alliance de Dieu avec Son peuple, l'Assemblée de Jésus-Christ)