Genesis 17:9-14 And God said to Abraham, You shall keep my covenant therefore, you, and your seed after you in their generations.… It is only in proportion as we know the spiritual meaning of circumcision that we can enter into the joyous appropriation of the friendship of God. But if we are willing, our Lord and Saviour is both able and willing to effect in us this blessed spiritual result. I. SEPARATION. Abraham and his seed were marked out by this rite as a separated people. And it is only as such that any of us can be admitted into the friendship of God. Bloodshedding and death — the cross and the grave — must lie between us and our own past life; yea, between us and all complicity with evil. II. PURITY (Colossians 2:11). There is hardly a single grace dearer to God than this: to keep lily-white amid the defiling atmosphere. Purity can only be attained by the special grace of the Holy Spirit, and by doing two things: first, by our turning instantly from paragraphs in papers, or pictures on the walls, and all things else, which excite impure imaginations; secondly, by our seeking immediate forgiveness, when we are conscious of having yielded, even for a moment, to the deadly and insidious fascinations of the flesh. III. OBEDIENCE. "Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." We do not obey in order to become friends; but having become friends, we hasten to obey. Love is more inexorable than law. And for the love of Him who calls us by so dear a title we are glad to undertake and accomplish what Sinai with all its thunders would fail to nerve us to attempt. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. |
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