A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on June 16, 2024.
And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons” (Luke 2:21–24).[1]
When we hear the word covenant today, (in addition to the name of our church!) we may think of something like a contract or agreement. But the biblical understanding of the word is something richer, relational, and remaining. A covenant commits a person to another person, typically involving a verbal oath and sometimes a visible symbol. To break a covenant involves a violation of the terms of the covenant resulting in due consequences. For example, a Christian marriage is in essence a covenant ceremony in which one man and one woman exchange vows of commitment and rings as “token and pledge” of their “constant faith and abiding love.” The covenant is in force “til death us do part,” unless the covenant is broken by sexual infidelity or abandonment resulting in due consequence. But while marriage serves as a helpful example, when Scripture speaks of God making a covenant there are notable distinctions.
When God makes a covenant, it is divinely initiated and sovereignly administered. Like the marriage covenant, God may give a verbal oath and a visible symbol of commitment, but unlike marriage a divine covenant is, as O. Palmer Robertson defines it, “a bond in blood, or bond of life and death, sovereignly administered.”[2] In fact, the very Hebrew expression typically translated “to make a covenant” literally means “to cut a covenant,” [3] which helps, I think, with the imagery of the shedding-of-blood seriousness of a divine covenant. As Scripture tells us that life is in the blood (Lev. 17:11), shedding blood symbolizes the judgment due the covenant-breaker.
What does all this have to do with our passage today? What we read in Luke 2:21-24 is descriptive of the active obedience of Mary and Joseph and therefore the passive obedience of Jesus. But what underlies the ceremonial requirements they obey is God’s Covenant of Grace, which is reiterated and reinforced in the covenants throughout Scripture, from the Noahic Covenant to the Abrahamic Covenant to Mosaic Covenant to the Davidic Covenant on to the New Covenant. In our short passage today, we first read that Jesus received the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham. Second, Jesus is presented as Mary’s firstborn son according to the Passover sign given to God’s covenant people in Egypt, and including in the law given to Moses at Sinai. And third, a purification offering is given following Mary’s delivery and Jesus’ birth, according to the law. Behind these few verses, there is a rich history of divine covenants but most importantly a praiseworthy testimony of our covenant-keeping Lord.
Covenant Faithfulness
In what may sound like a passing comment (“at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised”), we read that Jesus received the covenant sign received by every male son of Israel, as was first given to Abraham. I want us then to think back to Abraham, when God called him and promised him that he would make a great nation of him, to bless him and make his “name great” that he might “be a blessing” (Gen. 12:1-3). And Abraham heeded God’s calling. Later God promised Abraham, who had no children, to bless him with a son and that his offspring would be like the stars in the sky. Abraham believed this promise too, and Scripture says that God “counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:1-6). And God cut a covenant with Abraham, a bond in blood sovereignly administered, and visibly testified to it by his manifested presence in a unique sacrificial ceremony (Gen. 15:9-11).
Then, in Genesis 17, when Abraham was a young ninety-nine years old, God gave Abraham a fleshly symbol of his covenant, circumcision, to be kept between God and Abraham and Abraham’s offspring after him. God commanded that every male receive the sign at eight days old “throughout your generations,” an “everlasting covenant, and any male who would not receive the sign was a covenant breaker (Gen. 17:10-14). So integrally connected was the sign with the covenant that the Lord identified it as the covenant. And so serious was the sign, that any son who did not receive it was cut off from the covenant community.
Circumcision as a sign testified to a divinely-initiated relationship, which cannot be undone, so to speak, serving as a perpetual witness. The literal removal of flesh symbolized cleansing, the necessity for purity before a holy God and communal solidarity. Furthermore, as the reproductive seed passes from the man, so God’s covenant with Abraham would be perpetuated to his offspring, symbolized quite graphically in each male child. Furthermore, the sign of circumcision testifies not to the child’s active obedience but his passive obedience through the obedience of his parents, such as Abraham and Isaac, emphasizing what O. Palmer Robertson calls “the principle of solidarity between parents and children in the covenantal relationship.”[4] This we see in Jesus’ circumcision on the eighth day through the faithful obedience of his earthly parents, including the purification rite according to the law.
But what we also see is the faithfulness of God who called Abraham, established a covenant with him, and blessed him according to his promises. Generation after generation, in times of obedience and disobedience, God was faithful to his covenant, preserving his people that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law …” (Gal. 4:4-5). As a divine covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly administered, God sent his son to not only keep the covenant in his obedient life but to shed his blood for our disobedience and atone for our sin. As he was circumcised on the eighth day, so he was named Jesus, “the Lord saves,” who has saved us from the divine justice due our sin, reconciling us to God, and making us the very children of God. Our covenant-making God has been faithful to keep the covenant for us in Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Covenant Obedience
In addition to Jesus’ circumcision, Luke tells us, “And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord” (22). This was done in obedience to the law, as recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Exodus (Ex. 13:2). The firstborn son was to be ceremonially set apart to the Lord. That Jesus was presented is of course ironic, as Mary’s firstborn son is the eternally begotten Son of God, but like his circumcision, we witness in his presentation continued obedience.
Accompanying his presentation, a purification sacrifice was offered for Mary’s post-partum purity, that she might be restored to communion within worship with God’s covenant people. The sacrifice required was “a lamb a year old for a burnt offering and a pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering” (Lev. 12:6). In the case of Mary and Joseph, the sacrificial birds were offered rather than the more costly lamb, revealing they were a family of meagre means. The King of kings and Lord of lords was born not into a rich family of the upper class but a poor couple of no regard from nowhere, revealing not only Christ’s humility but, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, “he helps the offspring of Abraham,” and “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:16b-17).
Now, consider in our passage the offering given, a blood sacrifice. As the writer of Hebrews explains, “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22). As a covenant is a “bond in blood,” the recurrence of blood sacrifices signifies a judgment on life. Such is the seriousness and severity of a divine covenant: nothing satisfies for covenant disobedience other than the shedding of blood.
Though obedient in worship, neither Joseph nor Mary was sinless, as “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). The sacrifice was necessary since without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins, but what they offered pointed to a greater, final sacrifice to come. As we read in the tenth chapter of Hebrews,
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (Heb. 10:1-4).
Though Mary and Joseph could only offer a sacrifice afforded the poor, God offered his only Son as the spotless lamb of God to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God.[5] And so by faith, we look to Christ’s obedience, passive and active, for our obedience, and to Christ’s sacrifice for our sin.
While we see in our passage the beautiful example of Mary and Joseph’s obedience to the Lord, most importantly we see our Lord’s obedience through them. He obeyed to the ultimate point of his death on the cross that we might obey God with liberty and life. Now, the world, the flesh, and the devil would have us believe that obedience is optional and that a life well lived is lived for self. But they are lies, leading to sin and misery. To disregard obedience to the Lord and to live for self will leave you miserably self-centered, yielding nothing but the fruit of your sinful flesh. But obedience to the Lord, that he has secured for us in his life, death, and resurrection, yields the joy of our sanctification and the abundant fruit of the Spirit. Most importantly, our obedience pleases and glorifies our Lord, in whom, through whom, and for whom we obey. The obedience of God’s covenant people is a beautiful thing to behold.
Covenant Fulfillment
In looking back at Abraham and the sign of the covenant, the apostle Paul explains that circumcision was not an end in itself but “a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith” (Rom. 4:11). God promised him an heir, and “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3). Paul goes on to say that God’s purpose in the sign and seal of circumcision “was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised” (4:9-11). Circumcision was indeed God’s given sign and seal upon his covenant children, but it pointed to a greater reality, a circumcision of the heart through the cleansing of faith and the sealing of the Holy Spirit.
Because Christ was circumcised and kept the covenant for us, we are, as Paul explains to the Galatians, Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:28). Abraham’s true heirs then are not of the flesh but of the Spirit. In Christ, Paul says in Colossians, “you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2:11-12). Baptism, as the circumcision of Christ, is then the new sign of God’s covenant with us. It is no longer restricted to male sons of ethnic Israel but to Gentiles too, male and female alike. It is received by adults, like Abraham, who have professed faith in Christ, and the offspring of believers, like Isaac, who are set apart as children of the covenant. We are then the recipients of Christ’s fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham, and therefore a people set apart by the sign of the covenant, to worship our Savior forever.
As children of the covenant fulfilled in Christ, we and our children then receive the sign of the covenant, as the Westminster Larger Catechism explains,
Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, and so strangers from the covenant of promise, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him, but infants descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptized.”[6]
We and our children are then God’s covenant people, set apart by the sign of the covenant, living in obedience to him. And we have gathered this Sabbath Day to worship our faithful God, for he is the Lord of the covenant.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1980), 13.
[3] For example, see Genesis 5:18. However, the expression is found throughout Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, as well as occasionally in Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekial, Hosea, Haggai, and Zechariah.
[4] O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1980), 149.
[5] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 25, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 371.
[6] “The Larger Catechism” Q. 166, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 318-319.
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