What’s Happening?
In the garden, humanity reached for the power the serpent offered, grasping to become like God on their own terms. They were ruled by death instead of life, and that death has spread through the world ever since. But God set out to bring his life back, and his plan runs through a family. God promised Abraham a child, and through that child a whole nation, and through that nation blessing for the entire world. But Abraham and Sarah are old, and Sarah has never been able to have children. If this promised child is ever born, it will be because God brings life where there is none. Now God gives Abraham a sign of his promise—and the sign he chooses says exactly that.
As the rainbow was the sign of God’s promise to Noah and the whole world, this sign would belong to Abraham and the nation that would come from him. God instructs Abraham and his household to be circumcised (Genesis 17:11). The sign is cut into the body at the very seat of human reproductive power—and that is precisely the point. The mark declares that the promised life will not come by that power. The seed will be a gift of God’s Spirit, not the achievement of human strength.
There is more to the sign than this. Circumcision is a cutting-away, a small death worked into the body, so that the life of the promise comes through something cut and surrendered. The whole story of Genesis has been moving toward a descendant of Eve who would crush the serpent and undo the reign of death—and God has promised that this descendant will come through Abraham, the one through whom all nations will be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Circumcision becomes the constant reminder that the promised child comes through this family, and comes only the way God brings all life: through death turned to life.
With the sign, God gives new names. Abram becomes Abraham, father of a multitude; Sarai becomes Sarah, princess of a nation (Genesis 17:5, 15). The names are not decoration—they are the new reality God’s promise creates. Sarah, who has been barren her whole life, is named the mother of nations before she has borne a single child. God’s word names what God’s power will surely do.
Where is the Gospel?
The final son of Abraham, through whom all nations are blessed, is Jesus.
Jesus gives a sign greater than the one given to Abraham: not a circumcision of the body, but a circumcision of the heart, worked inwardly by the Holy Spirit (Romans 2:28–29). And he fulfills the deeper meaning of the sign. Circumcision was a cutting-away, a death-and-life worked into the body; in Christ, that cutting is made complete. When we die with Jesus and take up his cross, he cuts away the sin, rebellion, and death that have brought chaos into the world, and raises us into the ordered life of new creation with him (Colossians 2:11–12).
This is how the promised life comes to us, the same way it came to Abraham and Sarah—not by our own power, but by God’s. We can no more produce the life of God in ourselves than Sarah could produce a child from a barren womb. The Spirit brings that life from above, and the Spirit’s presence in us is God’s guarantee that every promise made in Jesus will be kept (2 Corinthians 1:22).
And as God gave Abraham and Sarah new names, God gives us a new identity in Christ. Joined to Jesus, we are made new creations—the old has gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). What we could never become by our own strength, God names over us and brings to pass by his Spirit: the children of promise, raised from death into his life.
See for Yourself
I pray that the Holy Spirit would show you the God of faithfulness who brings life where none is possible. And may you see Jesus as the final promised Son of Abraham, who cuts away your death, raises you into new creation, and gives you his Spirit as the seal of every promise to come.