The Circumcision And Name Of Jesus
Dear friends in Christ. Perhaps you were a little disappointed with this morning’s Gospel reading. Here we are the on eighth day of Christmas, here we are on the first day of a brand new year, and all we get to hear is one simple verse of Scripture! It is not even a seemingly very exciting verse. An angel is mentioned, but there are no choirs of angels; nothing outwardly exciting is mentioned; there’s no great miracle; there are no verses that are remembered or quoted or held up in football stadiums. All that we have is, as Walther mentions, an act that is disgraceful in the eyes of human reason. All that we have is a simple couple in faith doing what God commanded all Israelite parents to do. Is perhaps Christmas with its miracles and wonder perhaps already petering out on only the eighth day?
Dear Christian, just looking at our text superficially, yes, it does seem rather like a letdown following Christmas. But that is not the way to look at this text. Instead, let us closely examine this one verse Gospel account and there we will see that even if this were the only Gospel account we would hear this year, it would teach us all that we need to know about the Person and work of Jesus, all that we need to know for our salvation.
1. Our text begins simply enough: And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child… Here we again meet the Baby that was born in the manger in Bethlehem. He is now eight days old and it was the divine law that on the eighth day male Israelite babies were to be circumcised. This is again drives home to us the point that Jesus is indeed a true man, a true human being like you and me. Jesus did not merely drop down from heaven, but He lived every stage of human life from conception and birth, which we celebrated at Christmas, and now is eight days old.
On top of that Jesus was not just a generic person but He was born just as God had promised and had planned—an Israelite, a physical descendant of real people: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, and even Rahab and Ruth. As a true Israelite, one whose mother was an Israelite; as one born among the people of Israel, Jesus was subject to the law of circumcision. That act of circumcision formally, officially declared Him to be a member of the Jewish Church.
God had promised Abraham and his descendants that He would be their God and give them His word and would finally have the Savior of the world to be born one of them. Whoever received this promise in faith, that person’s faith was counted as righteousness, that is, he would have the forgiveness of sins for the sake of the future Savior Whom he then receives through faith.
God made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants over this promise. And the sign of this covenant would be that every baby boy would be circumcised on the eighth day after birth. Through circumcision God was continually offering His people His covenant and grace and sealing it to them; and through circumcision the believers entered into that covenant with God and seized the promised grace.
The simple words: And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child… preach to us once again this 8th day of Christmas the great Christmas mystery that Jesus is the God-man.
We still have the angel’s Christmas announcement ringing in our ears [Lk. 2.11]: For there is born for you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. The very Child that was born is Christ, that is, the Messiah, who is the Lord, that is, the very God of the Old Testament. That means that the One who was born, that One who is now eight days old, is also the eternal God. Here in our text, Jesus is according to His human nature, eight days old, even though according to His divine nature He is eternal, just as St. John says of Jesus, calling Him the Word [Jn. 1.1,2]: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. A close look at our text reinforces to us the Christmas miracle of who Jesus is so that we may rightly know Him: Jesus, the true God, is also true man. The true God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son, who is eternal, can, according to His human nature, also be a mere eight days old.
2. Not only do we see Who Jesus is—both true God and true man—but from our text we also come to see His work, His obedience. What we see here in Jesus’ circumcision is a picture of His entire life and work—He did not use His divine power and glory all for the sake of His saving work so that He could save us, the lost, condemned human race. Even though He is God, Jesus did not always make use of and show His divine power, glory and majesty: Jesus was born in a stable, laid in a manger with swaddling clothes. Now already for eight days He did not use His divine power and now on the 8th day He so humbled Himself to experience the pain and bloodshed of circumcision. His circumcision and the blood that He shed is a picture of what His entire life and work among us would involve.
Circumcision was for sinners—to bring them into God’s covenant of grace; it was a sign of God’s grace to them; it was instituted so that those conceived and born in sin could be received in God’s covenant and grace. But here Jesus is circumcised—why? He wasn’t a sinner in need of God’s grace. He is God; the Holy One who gave the Law. Even as man He is sinless as the Holy Spirit formed His human nature from the flesh of the Virgin in a miraculous, supernatural way. But here remember the prophecy [Is. 9.6]: For us a Child is born; for us a Son is given. That means that everything Jesus did, He did for us—that’s why He was born for us and given to us. Jesus’ circumcision is a picture of His work for us and our salvation: even though Jesus had no sin of His own, He took upon Himself the sin of all people; it was all laid on Him; He was the representative of the whole world. So here when Jesus, or representative, was circumcised, God offered the whole world His grace, to be brought under His covenant of grace. By the blood that He shed here, Jesus gave the down payment for redeeming, for saving the whole human race. St. Augustine used this explanation: The Lord Jesus follows a merchant’s practice. He came into the world so that He could buy us free from eternal damnation, not with gold or silver but with His own precious blood. Today he gives the first drops to the purchase of our souls; thereafter on the cross he paid the full price [HASSSO I 158].
What is it that we see today? We see the first glimmer of Good Friday; we see Jesus’ entire work of bringing about the salvation of the world foreshadowed as He was traveling for us that path of obedience and suffering. That’s the Gospel—Christ Jesus taking all our sins upon Himself and suffering God’s wrath and punishment over them for us. That’s the Gospel, as St. Paul puts it this way [2 Cor. 5.21]: For [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Hearing of our Lord’s circumcision today points us forward to His shedding His blood for us on Good Friday and reconciling us to God; it points us forward to our salvation.
This is what is called Jesus’ passive obedience; it is all that He endured for us, all of His suffering for our sin that He willingly suffered, His Passion, that is, His suffering and death. Our text today not only shows us Good Friday as here Jesus allowed Himself to suffer, to endure the circumcision, to shed His blood, but we also see foreshadowed in our text all of Jesus’ work for us leading up to Good Friday, that is, our text also teaches us Jesus’ active obedience. That means that Jesus went about actively seeking to fulfill every one of God’s commandments and so keep all of God’s Holy Law, in our place just as God demands of us.
With His circumcision here on the eighth day, for Jesus to be circumcised, means that He placed Himself under all of God’s Law. That’s what Paul writes in the Epistle [Gal. 5.3]: And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. That’s the work of Jesus that we see here with His circumcision—He placed Himself under God’s holy Law in order to keep it for us so that God’s holiness might be satisfied and that we might be saved. Jesus, the true eternal God, is above the Law; He’s the one who gave it. But here by His circumcision He places Himself under the Law to keep it for us.
Jesus came not only to suffer and die for our sins and so reconcile us to God but also to keep God’s holy Law for us because God, as a holy and righteous God, demands both that sin/ sinner the punished and that His holy Law to be kept. By placing Himself under the act of circumcision, Jesus is clearly showing us here already on the eighth day out of the womb that He is going about actively fulfilling God’s holy Law for us. Later Jesus would preach [Mt. 5.17]: Do not think I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. Everything that God demands of us, Jesus has fulfilled for us! That’s what His circumcision on the eighth day of His life already shows us! And that’s precisely why He came—to be born under the Law and so do for us what we can’t do ourselves—keep the Law of God and have righteousness. For us Jesus kept every bit of God’s holy Law.
Now that Jesus has come and has obeyed the holy Law of God it has been fulfilled—by Him for us. That means that we are free from the curse of the Law. Does the Law accuse you by your conscience? Know that the Law that you sinned against has been kept by Christ for you. The Law can accuse you all it wants—and rightly so because you sin against it all the time—but all the accusations amount to nothing because the Law has been kept—by Jesus, for you— and Jesus’ perfect keeping of it is credited to you; Jesus gives you and covers you with His perfect righteousness and through faith in Him and His work you grab ahold of it and make it your very own. Yes, you sin; yes, you rightly feel the Law’s condemnation; but do not let it bring you into despair. Jesus is your righteousness; in Jesus is the forgiveness of your sin.
By His passive obedience, what He suffered, the blood He shed, that paid for the price of your sin. By His active obedience, what He willingly took upon Himself to do and actively set out and accomplished, He gave the obedience God demands and rendered the righteousness by which heaven is now open to us. Both these things we see in this account of Jesus’ circumcision. That’s why it is the most glorious word to hear this first day of 2012.
Our text of this simple act of our Lord’s circumcision is a rich comfort for us and sets the tone for us this new year as it contains in a nutshell both the Person of Jesus—that He is the eternal God who also became also a true man who on the 8th day of life was circumcised; that He is the God man—and the work of Jesus, the God-man, to be our Savior, namely that He willingly placed Himself under the Law of God to keep it for us; and that He is the perfect once for all sacrifice for all our sins. Here is what we need to know and believe to be saved.
As we enter the new year, we hear once again the glorious Gospel in all its truth, mystery, simplicity and comfort so that if we are burdened by our sin that we carried over from last year or that we will commit in the new year, we look to our Gospel today and there take comfort that Jesus is always and forever the true God who saves us. The first blood that He shed here on this day is our certainty of it. INJ Amen.