Eight days later, when the baby was circumcised, he was named Jesus. (Luke 2:21)
As we consider the wonderful story of the baby born to be our Savior, I think sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the reality that this baby was a Jew. One unmistakable sign of that Jewish-ness of Jesus is that he was circumcised (Luke 2:21).
While we rightly celebrate and proclaim his birth, his coming into the world, all the marvels that surrounded the announcing of his coming, I’m not convinced that we give enough reference to his entry into the world as a Jewish child. This act of circumcision certainly is an unmistakable indicator of that reality.
Circumcision has been described as the imparting of a physical sign that this male child belongs to the people of God. Thus, it was an act performed in community for the purpose of expanding the holy community, the fellowship of Yahweh’s people, following on from the earliest times of God’s giving of his covenant to Abraham.
This mark was a sign from the get-go (this one occurring on the 8th day of his life, according to God’s instructions) that this male child was set apart as a Jew, with the covenant marker unmistakably upon him. He was being readied for God’s service. It was the first of many actions into which he would be immersed as a Jewish male.
This baby underwent temporary pain and bleeding in the performance of this act, and for the first time he was “in the hands of the authorities”, the religious authorities who performed this ritual. I watched my own sons go through circumcision, but it was done at the hands of a doctor and done for different reasons. My sons are not Jewish, and it was not a sign of the covenant. So, it’s not the act itself which makes one a Jew.
But for Jesus it set him up, as a Jew, for the encounters to follow which are spelled out in the Gospels: the Jewish feasts he attended, the rituals of cleansing he performed, his interactions with the Pharisees and teachers of the Law of Moses. All were done within his context of Jewish-ness. And this ritual of circumcision, at which time he was also formally named Jesus/Joshua/Yeshua, is the one that set things in motion regarding his Jewish life.
There was no other sign at the start of life which set him apart as a Jewish boy of the covenant like circumcision. It grabs our attention, pointing to his Jewish-ness as an infant, and his preparation to live as a “son of the covenant” for a lifetime.
“Father, thank you that Jesus freely received the mark of the covenant and lived his life to fulfill that covenant.”
Freddy Boswell 