CIRCUMCISION: TRUE *FOR* ME AND TRUE *TO* ME

CIRCUMCISION: TRUE FOR ME AND TRUE TO ME

I have never used the expression ‘positional circumcision’. My impression is that it has been used to set aside the subjective side, and I think you are right to raise ^[p. 70] the question if you think that any one means by the statement to make subjective circumcision unnecessary. It is in this way the expression — ‘the judicial end of man’ has been used, and it is most pernicious.

I see that our old man is crucified with Christ. That is ever true for me, though not true to me but as I reckon myself to be dead indeed unto sin. The assurance that the old man has been judicially set aside in the cross is the true scope and measure of my faith. I have nothing less to accept, and the more simply I do so, the more am I subjectively bearing about in my body the dying of Jesus. If the old man had not been judicially set aside in the cross, and if it were only true of me as I reckon myself to be dead, then there would be no standard, no measure to which I was bound to come, as that already true of me, and this would necessarily sink to self-occupation and admit of greater laxity. In the same way I should say that Colossians 2: 11 is ‘positional circumcision’, if by that is meant a work done absolutely for me; but the very fact of its being done for me makes it obligatory on me (for I am called to have Christ in me) to be in the truth of it practically, and I think if you had insisted on the subjective side in Colossians 3 you would have been quite right. I am sure that the tendency has been to make the circumcision effected for me sufficient, without any sense of the realisation of it. Now this realisation of being circumcised cannot be but as we are over Jordan, done (as you say) with this world. There is no circumcision in the wilderness. The objection to practical circumcision is that you must be in an out-of-the-world condition of things; and every one risen with Christ is on the ground where the old man has no more place, but where you are apart from it, as Peter walking on the water (as illustration). If there were only ‘positional circumcision’, then there would be no knowledge of acquaintance with the new order of things into which you are introduced by the resurrection of Christ. You cannot be with Christ at the other side of death and retain the man for whom He died. But on the other hand, if you were to say that there is no ‘positional circumcision’, that is, that circumcision had not been effected for me, then you would reduce ^[p. 71] circumcision to the measure in which you are practically dead, not to sins merely, but to the old man as to its lusts and habits; in short, you would reduce it to mere practice, instead of owning that the body of the flesh had been absolutely cut off in the cross, and that if you are raised up with Christ, which baptism points to (when there is faith), you must adopt in faith the circumcision which has been effected for you, and you, in fellowship with Christ in His life, realise that you have put off the old man and have put on the new, in very deed that you are “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3: 10).

In fine, if I make circumcision merely positional, I am practically antinomian, and if I make circumcision only subjective, I am legal and self-occupied, and my conscience is my standard and not Christ. The truth is, I believe that the circumcision has been effected for me in the cross, but that I am only in the benefit of it as I in faith accept it as really as it has been effected for me, so that I can stand apart from all of the old man, having put off the old and put on the new.