Relief Society Lesson

Warning, this post is not a family or project update. It's not that entertaining, it's about circumcision. It's my religious thoughts. Read at your own risk.

I taught Relief Society today. For those of you not familiar with LDS lingo, the Relief Society is the organization of women in the church. This organization is primarily responsible for aiding members in increasing their faith and personal righteousness, strengthening families and serving the Lord and His children (pretty broad purpose, and I like it). We meet for an hour every week, customarily on Sunday after the main service. About 30 minutes of that hour is spent on a lesson, which is assigned by church headquarters. Every RS throughout the world teaches the exact same lesson on exactly the same day. So if you're travelling, and you go to a different congregation, you'll never miss a lesson. It's pretty fantastic.

One of my jobs in the organization is to teach the lesson once a month. This week's lesson was on covenants, and more specifically the Abrahamic covenant. I found the subject material fascinating. Honestly, I find all the lessons fascinating and spiritually filling. I never have enough time to teach all the great stuff I find. Even this week after judiciously crossing out the parts of my lesson that were less important (or perhaps slightly redundant) to leave time for the really important stuff, I still didn't have enough time. So I am left with this bottled up feeling of wanting to teach something I loved, but having no venue for the teaching. So, my readers, I have chosen this blog as my outlet. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

In my lesson we got through the part of 'what specific promises did God make to Abraham and Abraham to God?' (I found this to be very helpful in organizing my understanding of the Abrahamic covenant) and 'as children of Abraham, how does this covenant translate to our situation?' Much of the covenant is found in Genesis 17.

So the part of the lesson I didn't get to is about circumcision, of which I've never really understood the importance.

Genesis 17:10,11, "This is my ^acovenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be ^bcircumcised. And ye shall ^acircumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a ^btoken of the ^ccovenant betwixt me and you."

So it seems that circumcision was a sign of the covenant. The reminder of the promises you've made to God and He to you.

Verse 13 "He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an ^aeverlasting covenant." The line that I loved was "my covenant shall be in your flesh". So the covenant was written on their bodies, where they couldn't forget it. But couldn't they have tattooed themselves? Why cut reproductive organs? This probably seemed drastic to Abraham's camp, who were all circumcised that same day with Abraham. From the LDS Old Testament Institute Manual I found an answer which satisfied me. I quote it here:

“The Abrahamic covenant makes frequent reference to one’s seed. The organ of the body that produces seed and brings about physical birth is the organ on which the token of the covenant was made."

It especially makes sense in thinking about the Law of Moses, which was so much about the physical representations of the spiritual laws. The covenant was written in their flesh, on the part of their bodies which pertained to a hefty portion of the covenant.

But under the new law that Christ established during His mortal ministry (He fulfilled the Law of Moses) circumcision was no longer required. However, they continue to reference it a lot in the New Testament, saying that now God requires a circumcision of the heart, and that this was the point all along. So what is circumcision of the heart? More from the Old Testament manual:

"The organ of spiritual rebirth, is the heart. In many places the Lord speaks of true circumcision as being the circumcision of the heart. The heart that is “circumcised” is one that loves God and is obedient to the Spirit. The “uncircumcised in heart” are wicked, proud, and rebellious.”

So there is a correlation between circumcision under the old law, and loving God and obedience to the Spirit under the new law.

The Lord said in Genesis 17: 14 "And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be ^acut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant."

So following our deductive reasoning, I think it's safe to say that being disobedient and not loving God means we are breaking our covenants, breaking the Abrahamic covenant, and forfeiting the blessings that covenant affords: salvation and exaltation being the most important.

Jeremiah prophesies of change of the token. Jeremiah 31: 31,33

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a ^anew ^bcovenant with the house of ^cIsrael, and with the house of Judah: But this shall be the ^acovenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my ^blaw in their inward parts, and write it in their ^chearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people."

So the questions I would've discussed with my class, and I've been asking myself, and now I ask you, are these:

Is the law written in your inward parts? The token of the old law was imprinted on the people; is the new token as imprinted in the people? in you?

How does being the Lord's covenant people influence your actions, how you present yourself?

My answers are for myself to ponder on.

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