The Circumcised Heart
The New Testament links the “Promise of the Spirit” to the “Blessings of Abraham,” the promise that God would bless the Gentiles in the Patriarch, the same gift believers now receive “through a hearing of faith.” Thus, the Baptism of the Spirit was and is part of the Abrahamic covenant. At the conclusion of his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, Peter likewise connected the Gift of the Spirit to the “blessing” for the nations promised in the Book of Genesis.
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| [Brook - Photo by Marc Wieland on Unsplash] |
The Spirit received by the 120 disciples on the Day of Pentecost, and later that day by 3,000 converts in Jerusalem, was the outworking of what had been promised 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 shall call” - (Acts 2:38-39).
- (Genesis 12:1-3) - “And Yahweh said to Abram… So shall 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.”
Unfortunately, Israel failed to keep the covenant’s
requirements. Though the nation had sworn to perform “all the words which
Yahweh has spoken,” history attests to its failure to fulfill its obligations.
In fairness, the Israelites lacked the
ability to meet the covenant’s righteous requirements since they did not yet possess
the Spirit - (Exodus 24:1-8, Numbers 11:1-15).
CIRCUMCISION OF THE HEART
Nevertheless, the Mosaic legislation anticipated
Israel’s downfall and the need for something more than the written Law. After
predicting the dispersal of the nation, Yahweh promised that after Israel truly
repented, she would “return to me and obey my voice with all your heart and
soul.”
On that glorious day, He would gather the
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 taken up by the prophet Jeremiah. The day would
come when Yahweh would “make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the
house of Judah,” But NOT a covenant according to the one that He made
with the nation’s forefathers – (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
God would provide the New Covenant, one in which He would write His laws in the hearts of His people. This circumcision of the heart foreseen by Moses is actualized in the “New Covenant” prophesied by Jeremiah and implemented by Jesus of Nazareth.
The New Testament applies this same promise
to the covenant inaugurated by the death of Jesus. Likewise, the Prophet Ezekiel
employs the same theme, but he adds 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 shall walk, and my regulations you shall observe and do.”
SPIRIT AND COVENANT
Thus, Ezekiel combines the promises
of the New Covenant, the Spirit, and the circumcised heart. Centuries later, Paul
applies these promises to the congregation in 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 in Jeremiah and Ezekiel
point to the centrality of the Spirit in the New Covenant community. With the resurrection
and ascension of Jesus, the long-awaited New Covenant and the Gift of the Spirit
arrived among God’s people.
And especially in Paul’s letters, the connection
of the Gift of the Spirit to the Abrahamic covenant and the “New Covenant”
illustrates the continuity of what God is doing in His Assembly with His covenant,
and with His redemptive purposes for the nation of Israel.
Thus, neither the church nor the
receipt of the Spirit was an unforeseen interim stage or necessary detour in
the redemptive plan of God, but an integral part of His covenant from the very
beginning.
The covenant with Abraham finds its
fulfillment in Jesus and the new people of God, the “Assembly.” It is comprised
of Jewish and Gentile disciples who are filled with the Holy Spirit and follow
the Messiah wherever he leads.
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