Then He finished talking with him, and God went up from Abraham. (Gen 17,22)

Abraham was becoming a man of faith - without it, not only could he stand in his situation, but many things would not make sense to him. For they went beyond the dimension of his own life, they reached far into the future, even into eternity. If he only wanted everything good for himself, here and now, he could not have been impressed by them, they demanded a different view of this life. But they were so essential to God that they formed the content of HIS covenant - and Abraham, despite all his faults, was learning to think differently about the dimension of his life than before. God had now come to confirm His promises to him, but interestingly they were not new to Abraham: He repeated that Abraham would have a son and inherit the land, something He had promised before, but which had not yet come to pass. (As for the land, he was told that his descendants would not receive it definitively until 400 years later.) But Abraham understood that the time had just come, as far as the promise of a son was concerned, and that while it was always in God's plan for him, it was to be a different Abram who was to receive a son than the one he had been so far. It required faith - to dare to trust, to stake everything on the one card with the name of God on it, and to abandon all other possibilities and certainties - and Abraham dared.

The central and most precious thing the covenant brought, "I will be God to you and your descendants forever," meant for Abraham the gift of God's patronage over his race, but equally a special mission on this earth. And with it, perhaps, the germ of a specific conflict - Abraham's descendants would be different. As a sign of the one who would "carry" the true God on earth he was given circumcision. Even in our early school years we had our initials on clothing, and since then we have marked our possessions, houses and cars in various ways - just as God marks his people with special interest. For example, "a mark on the foreheads of men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in Jerusalem." (Eze 9:4) or "the servants of God upon their foreheads" Rev 7:3. This marking on the forehead (as a symbol of mindset) is visible to God and the spiritual world; it is not some physical mark to identify and recognize these people to one another. It is even possible that some of the marked will be taken by surprise - like those in Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats ("when did we see you sick or in prison, and came to you?") A favorite topic of discussion, then, is the mark of the beast in Revelation. Here again, however, it is likely that this sign is spiritual, not physical - it characterizes how one thinks (= forehead) and acts (= hand). After all, God already spoke of such a sign in Ex. 13:16, and the meaning is in every respect spiritual, not physical.

In contrast, a circumcision is the sign of which the circumcised is well aware - yet it is not obvious at first sight. Nor is the circumcision of the heart, in the meaning it still has for us today: "For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh..." (Fil 3,3)