Last year for the 1st Sunday after Christmas I emphasized vs. 22ff of Luke 2, but today I am going to focus on Luke 2:21. The Advent midweek theme was all about the names given to the promised child of Bethlehem. In today’s text, we hear again that name given above all other names. In one little verse in Luke, easily overlooked in the midst of the narrative of Jesus’ birth and infancy and the account of Simeon and Anna. We have “at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” Luke 2:21 

Up until this verse, Luke does not refer to Jesus by name. In Bethlehem’s manger he is simply a baby, a swaddled newborn with no name. When the shepherds visit, they don’t ask what most people ask when a child is born, “What’s his name?” He didn’t have a name at Christmas. But He received His name the name the day He got the mark of the covenant: circumcision.

The official day which the Church observes this festival of His circumcision is Jan. 1, eight days after Jesus’ birth. While the rest of the world will be nursing its new year’s hangover and wishing one another “Happy New Year!” and settling in for some college bowl games and parades, we of the Church see January 1, the eighth day of Christmas, as a day to celebrate the naming of and the Circumcision of Jesus. Unless you are Jewish by background, this seems like a really weird thing to celebrate.

The 8th day is prescribed in the Levitical law by God’s command. There was no notion of waiting until the child was old enough to decide for himself whether or not he would be circumcised. There was no sense of an age of accountability or any such thing. Circumcision was God’s way of teaching about humanity’s sinful and helpless condition. God was showing the OT believers that sin was something that was part of them from birth, something that needed to be removed in order for them to belong to God’s people. All people are sinful by nature and need to have their sin taken away and destroyed in order to belong to God. You need someone else’s help to overcome your sinful nature, and that help needs to be drastic – drastic like taking a knife to the one body part that least wants to feel a knife. No eight-day-old baby is going to grab that knife and circumcise himself. It had to be done for him, when he could not do it himself, before he could be God’s. Therefore, on the eighth day every baby boy born in Israel received this sign of the covenant and became a son of the covenant, an Israelite, a son of Abraham and an heir of promise redeemed from the curse of his father Adam, cut out from the world. With this identity, he now was to get a name.

And so it went with this child. He is given the name Y’shua: Jesus, which literally means “Yahweh is salvation”, as the angel had said “for He will save His people from their sins.” How will He accomplish this? How will He save His people from their sins? By becoming obedient to the Law, by becoming a son of the covenant, by shedding His blood under the Law to redeem those who were under the Law, those held captive by sin and death. This is precisely why the Son of God became Flesh and was born. He was “born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law.” And here is His first act of obedience for the redemption of mankind.

The sweet little Christmas lullaby speculates, “but little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes.” I doubt that was true when He laid Him in a manger. I doubly doubt it was true on the eighth day when He experiences in His own infant flesh what it means to be “under the Law.” Think of this as a prelude to the pain and cries of the cross. In order to understand this day and the significance of Jesus’ circumcision, you need to understand fully who Jesus is as the Son of God become flesh. He really is the second Adam, the truer Adam. He’s all of humanity in one Person. He is the Stand-in for the entire human race, and He embodies all of humanity in His own body.

The apostle Paul explains this for us in his letter to the Colossians. “For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” (Col 2:9-12)

What’s Paul saying? First, that in Jesus the fullness of divinity dwells bodily. That means that even as an 8 day old baby boy, Jesus is fully God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God. Fully divine as well as fully human. And that union of divinity with humanity means that He is able to embrace others into Himself so that what happens to Him also happens to them in Him.

Now in that truth understand this, that in Him, all of you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands in the circumcision of Christ by the power of God. That includes the boys and the girls. This cutting out wasn’t done on you, it was done on Jesus, and being done on Jesus, for His sake, you were included. In other words, you might say that when Christ was circumcised and became a son of Israel, so did you in Him. And that’s why circumcision was no longer a binding law in the New Testament, it became something completely free, optional, and religiously unnecessary. Because, when Jesus was circumcised, the old Law was fulfilled in Him and all believers in Him are now assumed into Israel.

Circumcision represented the putting off of the body of the flesh, the mortification of the old Adam. Adam has to die, sin needs to be cut off and cut out. Circumcision signified that, but now something more has accomplished this, for you were buried with Christ and had the old Adam drowned in Holy Baptism. So not only did you become an Israelite in Christ, you were also joined to Him in His death and burial through Holy Baptism. You were raised with Him through faith from your weakness, death, and sin to His life, pure, and holy. In a way, you are even exalted, seated and glorified at the right hand of God in Christ, but only in Christ.

You are still existing in this body of death, in this old Adam that needs to be threatened, punished, disciplined, and put to death in confession and absolution remembering your baptism day in and day out. But now you, by faith in Christ, are reckoned perfectly free, perfectly alive, justified, forgiven, sanctified, and even glorified in Christ.

In His circumcision two gifts from God in Christ are extolled and glorified: His obedience under the Law and His Name. His obedience is the undoing of Adam’s sin. As Adam brought all of humanity into Sin and Death, so Jesus takes all of humanity into justification and life. As in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive. He kept the Law perfectly in your place. That perfect obedience is yours, your clothing, your covering, your justification before God. You have been baptized and now the name of the Triune God and Jesus Christ identify who you are as a Christian believer, and you can stand before God, forgiven, rescued, redeemed for His sake alone.

Now you are free from the selfishness of Adam and your flesh to be who you really are in Christ, to do the goodness and mercy of God for your neighbor, for those around you. You are free to lay down your life in service of others, not to please God nor to earn His favor and forgiveness, but as one redeemed and saved in the name that is “above every name.” An ordinary, common human name. But joined to His divinity, the name of Jesus becomes the fulfillment of “Yahweh is salvation” for you. For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we are saved.
With His Name comes the promise of His presence, that where two or three are gathered in His Name, there He is in their midst. With His Name comes the mandate to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to the ends of the earth. With His Name is the promise of prayer, that whatever you ask in His Name, His Father and your Father in heaven will grant it. With His Name is the promise of forgiveness, of life, of salvation, of peace: Peace which the world cannot give, but can be given in His name, in His body and blood given and shed for you for your good, for your life unto eternal life.

Baptized with Jesus Christ circumcised on the eighth day and raised on the eighth day of the week, you also have the sign of eight upon you. That is the sign of the new day of the new creation, of eternal life for soul and body forever redeemed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which is our hope.
None of us knows what the new calendar year will bring in terms of health, wealth and love. The days and the seasons are the Lord’s, and everything we do always is within the framework of “If the Lord be willing” as James rightly says.

But we do know this and have it as our certainty in the midst of uncertainty: We have Jesus’ obedience under the Law, His perfect righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. And we have His Name which is now our name, the Name by which we are saved from our sins.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Pr. Aaron Kangas