The story continues with the Lord stopping Moses from going where He sent him, on penalty of death. Moses has to circumcise his sons to continue. What was circumcision? It was the sign of the covenant. They were God’s people and they would inherit the Promised Land.

We still have a promise from God, a covenant. We still show ourselves to be children of God by circumcision, a circumcision that cuts away the flesh. We die to self to live as Christ.

The Old Testament talks about a circumcision of the heart.

And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live. (Deuteronomy 30:6)

We need circumcision for life. It’s right there in the Bible. We need the circumcision of our heart to love our God with all our heart and soul. If the flesh remains, there will be a battle of loves, and sometimes the flesh will win out.

We need the cutting off. Romans 2 relates circumcision to obedience. Jesus said that if we love Him, we’ll obey His commands.

I used to think of that like Jesus’ love language was obedience, and I chose to obey because I wanted to show Him I loved Him. Now, I see obeying as what naturally happens when we love Jesus. When we don’t obey, we’re missing something about God’s love.

If you aren’t walking in obedience, then it’s showing you don’t love God. You can do what you know the Bible says is wrong and say, “Well, God knows my heart,” and you’d be right. He knows that your heart loves the flesh and not Him. He can see it in your actions.

Don’t deceive yourself over this. It’s a life and death matter. An uncircumcised heart is a heart of disobedience, and the wages of sin is death.

Didn’t Christ’s blood cover our sins? Moses was a “bridegroom of blood.” Once again, we see blood is required.

We need the blood of Christ to become children of God. Christ took our punishment, that death we deserved for our sin. But He didn’t buy us a pass to live in sin. He bought us entrance into His kingdom.

It’s not a future kingdom that we enter when we die. If you are truly God’s child, when you were washed with the blood, there was a transfer. You were taken out of Satan’s kingdom into God’s kingdom (Colossians 1:13).

That means today you are in God’s kingdom. In that kingdom, there is freedom from sin. That’s why we are free from death. We are free from sin, which causes death.

In God’s kingdom, we are free from sin and a slave to righteousness (Romans 6:18).

Have you truly been circumcised?