Wed.'s Devo - The Law Fulfilled

Read Romans 3
Paul asks them 2 important questions: what is the advantage of being a Jew? and what is the point of circumcision? Up till then God was the god of the Hebrews but that was never God's plan. The Jews were to be a picture to the world of how God lives and coexists with his people. Instead of God being able to bless them and show the world his goodness, he spent most of his time disciplining his wayward children and trying to woe them back. But his plan from the beginning was to save the whole world....."for God so loved the WORLD".
The advantage of being a Jew is the same advantage of being a saved Gentile. The Word was first given to the Jew, but it has always been for mankind. Even in the Old Testament God touched people who were not Jews. Jesus reminded the people of two of them in Luke 4:25-27: the widow from Sarepta and the leper from Syria. Jesus was making the point that he was not welcome in his home town which was a picture of him not being accepted by the Jews as the Messiah. But the Gentiles would welcome and recognize who he was. This made the people so irate they ran Jesus out of the city and were going to throw him over a hill but the Holy Spirit empowered him so that he walked right out of the middle of them. Their unbelief did not negate God's law. The core of the Bible is the law. The Good News is the fulfillment of the law.
So what is the point of circumcision? Just think about it; nowhere on the human body can you cut off that much flesh and it not make a huge disfiguration or mar. God made that unseen part on a man just for that reason. The cutting of the flesh was to be a picture of the Word (the knife) cutting the fleshly part of our heart and exposing the sin so you can be cleansed. Why did God come up with something just for the man and not the woman. I asked God and I feel like he showed me that the man stands for Jesus and the woman stands for the Bride. Jesus went through the pain of the cross and we watched as he took the pain for us. Our pain is seeing what he did for us just like the mother's pain of watching her son being circumcised. So the law of circumcision established the law. They did it by law and we do it by faith.
Lord, thank you for your great plan that includes us all.