Gilgal: Circumcision, Positional and Practical.
Satan has lost his prey! “He who had the power of death, that is the devil” (Heb. 2:14), can go no further than death; there his power ends. He put forth his worst at the close of the Lord’s pathway here; but he was not subject to Satan’s power. It was sin occasioned his having this power, and there was no sin in Jesus. “The prince of this world cometh, and path nothing in me” (John 14:30). The Lord entered His domain and destroyed his power forever, for faith, and for God. He could not then bar the victorious exit of the people out of the house of bondage; nor, therefore, can he now hinder the entrance of the people into the land. If Christ died and rose for us and delivered us out of the one; we have died and risen with Him by faith, and entered in Him upon the other.
But if so, we must practically hold ourselves dead. Satan can work in this new sphere upon all that is in our hearts, if we do not reckon ourselves thus dead; this were ruin indeed, for there is no retrogression from the place of this heavenly warfare. Satan bestirred himself and the burdens were heavier to bear of old. Now he bestirs himself again on other ground. But he is cowed in the presence of the redeemed host of the Lord. He might be a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, in the wilderness journey, and frighten the people very much indeed; but here his heart melts “because of the children of Israel.” “And it came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, which were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were passed over, that their heart melted, neither was their spirit in them any more, because of the children of Israel” (Josh. 5:1).
Now his whole tactics are changed; a more subtle warfare than ever must now be carried on. “The wiles of the devil” are now the resource; a cowardly, hidden, plausible, but deadly strife. There never was a time when the children of God needed to believe it more than at present. You can hardly take up a book, even if endorsed by the highest names in religion and learning, without finding an adder in the path; a serpent in the grass. Some devilish heresy, or some infernal infidel thought, glossed over and covered up apparently with the garb and language of Christ! Religion, science, antiquity, Scripture, are all enrolled under his banners in this conflict against the Lord and His people. It is not a little open power (at least around us here); but the quiet deadly crusade against the truth, on all hands. Crowds have deserted the Lord’s standard, betrayed by his plausibility. Crowds have never found their place beneath its folds. The smoke from the pit clouds their perception, and stifles the consciences of His people. The very persons who profess to love Christ, and who take the place of conservators of the truth, are enlisted to stamp it out, or hinder those whom He loves from taking up the cross in this heavenly warfare.
The “world” is enlisted; and religion adopted as the fashion of the day. The “flesh” is in the saints of God; the “world” is the sphere where flesh can find itself at home when the heart is not with God. The old grossness of the “world” is abandoned: it is now “the thing” to be a religious man. The world has patronized Christianity, and is on its good behavior. But I must stay my pen. The Lord grant that His people may be able to say “We are not ignorant of his (Satan’s) devices” (2 Cor. 2).
What then must be the course of the Lord’s people in their divine warfare? Self must be the first thing dealt with (and that thoroughly), as that which the enemy can use. Give him nothing to work upon and he is foiled. “He that is begotten of God (i.e. who has this eternal life in Christ), keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not” (1 John 5:18). This is accomplished by the putting practically to death all that which is dead judicially, for God and for faith, through and by the death of Christ; everything that savors of the “old man.”
We never can accomplish this until we first consciously possess this heavenly life and place beyond death and judgment. This being true, we do not deal with ourselves in order to reach this new platform, but because we are there. Therefore, the wilderness was not the place for this kind of thing. They never were circumcised until they reached the land (see ch. v. 5, 6).
Here I would note what seems generally to have been overlooked; that there are, with us, two aspects of the truth of circumcision, as spiritually interpreted. Its practical side has frequently been examined; but the positional side seems generally to have been overlooked. Now both are true. “We are the circumcision”—that is not practical, but characteristic. “In whom ye have been circumcised, with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ” (Col. 2:11); this, too, is positional circumcision in Christ. No doubt we find further on, the practical side of it in the mortification of our members, and practically putting off the fruits of the old man (Col. 3). So also in Phil. 3. If he says “We are the circumcision,” see all that must go practically; his righteousness by the law, zeal, religiousness; everything must be cast aside because we are the circumcision. First we have the positional side or character; then follow the results which flow from it practically.
Circumcision first came in, in the case of Abraham. (Gen. 17) He had sought to possess the promises of God as to the heir, by the energy of nature. Then, by circumcision, which he learns practically, that he cannot get the promise by the power of the flesh; and Ishmael, the fruit of it, must go. In him—type of the Jew after the flesh—we find what we may term ritual circumcision; i.e., merely the outward observance without the inward reality. But when Isaac was born he was circumcised after eight days, and in him we have one in whom both sides of the truth are illustrated. He was born of a circumcised man—this was, so to speak, positional. Thus we are begotten from on high, from the sphere into which Christ has entered as man, dead and risen, and thus circumcised, or completely separated to God. But Isaac was also circumcised the eighth day.
So in Abraham you have practical circumcision. The putting down and refusing the workings of nature, which sought to act in divine things and only frustrated the divine ends.
In Ishmael you find ritual circumcision “not of the Spirit,” “but of the letter;” and,
In Isaac, a type of both positional and practical-born of a circumcised man, but circumcised the eighth day.
But to pass on. We are wholly separated to God by the circumcision of Christ. We have begun in the new order of things, in Him “ who is the beginning of the creation of God.” Then we must enter upon that order of dealing with self, by the application of this truth spiritually to our souls, so that Satan may have nothing to work upon, no material on which to act; and thus that we may present an impenetrable front to the foe.
Here the Lord directs Joshua “Make ye sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel.” They still bore the traces of the slavery of the land of Egypt. “The reproach of Egypt” was still clinging to the Lord’s Host: all must now disappear. This, beloved reader, is very quiet, unseen work with God. It has no outward show whatsoever; nothing to attract attention in this heavenly warfare. But in it we find the first requisite—the sine qua non of all real spiritual power. To remain at Gilgal and do nothing, in order that all fleshly energy may be broken in us, seems a strange process. But so it must be that we may learn the lesson of that utter weakness, which is really the condition in which divine strength works; then the power is really of God and not of us. If this lesson were truly learned by many who go on in fleshly energy, what different results would be seen. Then we should find that if we were always at Gilgal, it would only be a step from that place of strength to victory.
See Paul one who possessed an energy which puts us to shame. He went into the synagogue in Damascus to preach as soon as he was converted (Acts 9); but Paul’s fleshly energy was not yet broken. The Lord loved him too well to allow him to go on in the energy of his nature, and he must be a broken vessel, that the excellence of the power might be of God, and not of Paul. So he has to fly from Damascus. What a sorry spectacle he presented, as he was let down the wall in a basket! And Paul has to go again and stay there three years and do nothing. What a lesson for his ardent nature! But Paul wanted God, and God did not want Paul yet, and so he must stay at his Gilgal. What lost time! exclaims one or another; but it was time well spent, for he came forth a broken vessel, but a vessel filled with the power of Christ, and the fleshly energy of his nature subdued and broken.
Moses too must learn that, in his divine warfare, the flesh and its energies only lead into trouble; he too must have his Gilgal at the “ backside of the desert” for forty years, ere he is a vessel meet for his Master’s use.
The fine warm-hearted, impulsive Peter, alas! must have a sad and grievous fall, to teach him what his flesh was capable of, and what Satan’s power was, before he was prepared to go forth in the boldness of grace, and in the power of the Spirit of God. And Peter gained strength, by learning that he had no strength but that of the flesh, which is only sin.
The knife of circumcision must cut deeply and unsparingly all that is of the flesh in us; but it is a true mercy, for that with which it deals would only lead to ruin and defeat if allowed to work. If we were always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, self would never be seen, and Christ would always be seen. This would be true victory in the heavenly warfare. The Lord’s Host, thus, as circumcised people, bear the marks of their heavenly citizenship, and the traces of Egyptian bondage are rolled away.
Suppose you see one who is a child of God running after fashions, the world, and the like. Well, you say, you may be dead and risen with Christ, but you need to visit Gilgal that you may practically learn the meaning of circumcision. But it is as we have noticed before, quiet, secret work with God, which brings no elect with it, and has nothing to show to others; but by and by the strength of God is seen working in and by him who is truly and spiritually circumcised.