Genesis 17:7 - Meaning and Application

Here is the continuance of the covenant, shown in three ways. First, it is established. It is not meant to be changed or canceled. It is fixed and sealed, made as firm as God’s power and truth can make it. Second, it is passed on to Abraham’s descendants. It is not only a covenant with Abraham himself, which would have ended with him, but with his offspring after him, not only his physical descendants, but also his spiritual ones. Third, it is everlasting in the gospel sense. The covenant of grace is everlasting. It was planned from eternity, and its results last forever. Its outward sign is passed down with the seal to believers’ children, and its inward work continues by Christ’s Spirit in every age.

The covenant’s promises are the heart of it, and they are very great and precious. Two promises are enough to include everything else. The first is that God would be their God, in Genesis 17:7 and 17:8. All the blessings, joys, and hopes of the covenant are gathered into this one promise. No one needs anything more to be truly happy. What God is in himself, he will be to his people. His wisdom will guide and counsel them. His power will protect and sustain them. His goodness will provide for them and comfort them. Believers may expect from God what faithful worshipers have always hoped to find in him. This is enough, though it is still not all.

The second promise is that Canaan would be their lasting possession, in Genesis 17:8. God had already promised this land to Abraham and his offspring in Genesis 15:18. But here it is called an everlasting possession, so it clearly points beyond the land itself to the happiness of heaven, that lasting rest that remains for God’s people (Hebrews 4:9). This is the better country Abraham looked toward, and it is the fulfillment of the promise that God would be their God. Without this greater hope, God would have been ashamed to be called their God (Hebrews 11:16). Just as Canaan was secured to Abraham’s physical descendants, so heaven is secured to all his spiritual descendants, by covenant and as a truly lasting possession. The word offers this eternal life, and the sacraments confirm it to all who live under the covenant’s outward administration. The Spirit gives the earnest, or down payment, of it to all believers (Ephesians 1:14). Canaan is called the land where Abraham lived as a stranger, and heavenly Canaan is also a land for strangers, because what we will become is not yet fully seen.

The covenant also had a sign, circumcision. Because of that, Scripture calls it the covenant of circumcision (Acts 7:8). It is described as the covenant Abraham and his descendants were to keep, like a copy or outward form of it, in Genesis 17:9 and 17:10. It is called a sign and a seal (Romans 4:11). It was a seal, because it confirmed to Abraham and his seed the promises that belonged to God’s part of the covenant, assuring them they would be fulfilled and that Canaan would one day be theirs. The fact that this ordinance continued even after they possessed Canaan shows that the promise looked beyond that land to another Canaan still ahead (Hebrews 4:8). It was also an obligation, because it bound Abraham and his seed to the duty on their side of the covenant. This included accepting the covenant, agreeing to it, and putting away the corruption of the flesh, which circumcision first pointed to. More broadly, it bound them to obey all God’s commands whenever God made them known. Circumcision made a person responsible to keep the whole law (Galatians 5:3). Those who want God to be their God must agree to be his people.

Circumcision was a bloody ordinance, because the law dealt with cleansing through blood (Hebrews 9:22). See Exodus 24:8. But since Christ’s blood has now been shed, all bloody ordinances have ended, and circumcision has given way to baptism. It was given only to males, though women were also included in the covenant, because the man is the head of the woman. In our kingdom, the oath of allegiance is required only from men. Some think only the males’ blood was shed because the ordinance pointed to Jesus Christ and his blood.

It was the flesh of the foreskin that was cut off, because sin comes into the world through natural birth, and because the promised Seed was to come from Abraham’s own line. Since Christ had not yet offered himself for us, God required man to enter covenant by giving up part of his own body, and no part could be more suitably spared. It was a hidden part of the body, for true circumcision is that of the heart. In this way God gave honor to an unattractive part of the body (1 Corinthians 12:23, 1 Corinthians 12:24).

The ordinance was to be given to children when they were eight days old, not sooner. That gave them some strength to bear the pain, and at least one Sabbath would pass over them. The children of strangers who belonged to the household were also to be circumcised, in Genesis 17:12 and 17:13. This looked kindly toward the Gentiles, who would in time be brought into Abraham’s family by faith. See Galatians 3:14.

God required strict obedience to this command, with a very severe penalty, in Genesis 17:14. To despise circumcision was to despise the covenant. If parents failed to circumcise their children, they did so at their own peril, as in Moses’ case (Exodus 4:24, Exodus 4:25). If someone was not circumcised in infancy and then, as an adult, still refused the ordinance, God would certainly deal with him. If he would not cut off the flesh of his foreskin, God would cut him off from his people. It is a dangerous thing to take God’s institutions lightly or to live in neglect of them.