And the LORD your God will circumcise the hearts of your offspring, so that you may love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. -Deuteronomy 30: 6
Circumcision has a wonderful spiritual significance. On the one hand, a believer cannot receive his inheritance until
circumcised. This was true outwardly for an Isrealite, and it is true inwardly for a Christian. There is no inheritance until we are circumcised in heart. God told Abraham that before he and his descendants could inherit the land of Canaan, they had to be circumcised (Genesis 17: 1-14).
Circumcision consists of cutting the meat. Spiritually, it is cutting off the sinful, natural Adamic nature with which we are born. Uncircumcision represents filth. It means that what we are born with has not yet been addressed. It means that the old nature, with its wrong desires, ways, thought patterns and responses, still remains.
“How can a young man cleanse his way? Hearing according to your word” (Ps. 119: 9). How does God circumcise our hearts? By the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God applied to our lives by the work of the Holy Spirit. There are some evidences of a circumcised heart:
(1) A circumcised heart is obedient. “Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stiffer” (Deut. 10:16). To be “stubborn” is to be rebellious, inflexible and stubborn.
(2) A circumcised heart does not resist Holy Spirit. “You stubborn in your neck and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your parents did, so do you” (Acts 7:51).
(3) A circumcised heart does not resist preachers sent by God (7:52).
(4) A circumcised heart is humble, broken and repentant. “But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their parents, with the infidelity with which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they have also walked against Me … if their uncircumcised heart humbles itself and accepts their guilt- -then I will remember to my covenant … ”(Leviticus 26: 40-42).
(5) A circumcised heart rushes to forgive and free people for the crimes they have committed. A hardened heart cannot forgive easily, but it remembers and holds a grudge (Matthew 19: 7-8; Mark 10: 4-6).
Ask the Holy Spirit to enter your heart and take up the sword of the Spirit to remove the unwanted nature of your flesh, which
you can enter into a more intimate relationship with God.