It’s hard to forget the price David paid for his first wife, Michal: 200 Philistine foreskins.  (Cue teenage girl saying, “Ewww!  Gross!”).  Now, there’s only one way a Philistine would part with his foreskin, and that’s if the whole man died.  So David was giving Michal’s father, Saul, 200 dead soldiers.  That meant Israel’s enemy was 200 spears lighter.  What a gift (1 Sam. 18:27).

So…what does this have to do with anything?  Can we change subjects?  Not yet.  Colossians 2:11 says, “You were also circumcised in Him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of the Messiah.”  Paul here likens the crucifixion of Christ to circumcision.  The body of flesh is that which is sinful in us.  Circumcision pictured the “cutting away” of the body of flesh that happened at the cross.

Now, we’re as attached to our sin as a Philistine to his foreskin.  The only way for God to remove our sin was to put us to death.  Romans 6:6 says it this way: “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that sin’s dominion over the body may be abolished, so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin….”  To deal with sin in us, God had to deal with the whole of us.

            The circumcision of the cross was the price Jesus paid for us, His bride.  In Him, we are separated from sin and self.  We are joined to Jesus—a pure bride for a pure Groom.  The vows we exchange don’t include, “‘til death do us part.”  Death cannot part those who share an indestructible life (Heb. 7:16).