Spiritual Circumcision And What It Means To The Child Of God. Series

SPIRITUAL CIRCIMCISION AND WHAT IT MEANS TO THE CHILD OF GOD

COLOSSIANS 2:9-15

Greenmount and O’Leary Churches of Christ

November 27, 2016

Audio link to listen to this sermon: http://chirb.it/b6NFAL

INTRODUCTION:

1.) As the Church of Jesus Christ, we usually do not address the subject of Circumcision.

2.) Usually that is a subject that we think as applying more for Jews and for Jewish Christians rather than for most of us who are in the church today.

3.) Yet today we continue our series of messages from the book of Colossians.

A.) One of the things which Paul addresses is the matter of spiritual circumcision.

B.) Today I want us to look at Spiritual Circumcision and what it means to the Child of God.

I) THOSE WHO ARE IN CHRIST HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE FULLNESS OF GOD IN CHRIST.

1.) We have already seen that in Christ all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form.

A.) The powerful truth that God has come to this earth in the form of a man is truly part of the greatest event that has ever happened for the human race.

B.) In Chapter one of Colossians, Paul has established that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Col. 1:15), and that God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.” (Col. 1:19)

C.) Certainly it is an encouragement to every child of God that Jesus came to this earth bringing the fullness of the godhead in himself.

ca.) The human race was in a desperate situation.

cb.) Man had sinned and had no way back to God.

cc.) What a blessing that God became a man so that we could go back into forgiveness and fellowship with God.

D.) I think even the very Apostles of Christ at times had trouble with this concept.

da.) They knew, worked with and had come to love Jesus.

dab.) Yet as great of a relationship as these men had with Jesus, it was still difficult for them to understand God and His love for them.

dac.) It was only after this when they saw the love of God on a cross that they could understand who Jesus was, and at least a degree of God’s love for them.

.01) Shortly before Jesus went the cross for his crucifixion, Jesus and Thomas had a bit of a discourse which we find in:

.011) John 14:1-9a.

.0111) We can rejoice in this truth.

db.) Jesus did not come to this earth as merely a man, but he came as the earthly presence of God Himself.

dba.) As great as this news is, it gets even better.

2.) If we are in Christ we have been given the fullness of Christ.

A.) The significance of that is that as children of God we who have come to Christ now have the fullness of God dwelling within us.

aa.) We do not have a partial measure of the presence of God, but rather we have the fullness of the person of God, and His presence within us.

B.) God has chosen us as His personal temples upon this earth.

ba.) Certainly the generations that have come and gone since Jesus was on this earth are the most blessed of all generations.

baa.) I say this because previous generations looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, and wondered at what that would mean.

bab.) Since the time of Christ, Christians have not had just the hope that one day God would come to this world, but the greater reality that the God who created this world is dwelling within us today.

II) THOSE WHO ARE IN CHRIST HAVE RECEIVED A SPIRITUAL CIRCUMCISION.

1.) Spiritual circumcision is not done by human hands or by men.

A.) Certainly in the first century the concept of physical circumcision was very familiar to all.

aa.) The earliest converts to the Christian faith had come from Judaism.

ab.) From the time of Abraham onward, God had required every Jewish male child to be circumcised on the eighth day of his life.

aba.) The requirement of God was so rigid that any male child who had not received this would be cut off from among God’s people.

B.) Even while Circumcision was being carried out in the Old Covenant era, God had prophesied a new day coming when circumcision of the body, would be replaced with a circumcision or transformation of the heart.

ba.) This transformation of the heart would not be for just the Jewish people, but for all of mankind, and would be accomplished through God’s Son coming to this world.

bb.) When Jesus came to the cross he completed the old system, and initiated a new circumcision of the heart.

C.) Spiritual circumcision is the putting off of the sinful nature.