There are several places on the internet where amateurs and professionals alike make a connection between circumcision and regeneration; however, I did not find any website where this is laid out as a doctrine. This is integral to the study of Gen. 17 and to understanding Paul’s dissertations on circumcision some 2000 years later. Therefore, the doctrines found here should explain what circumcision is all about.

This begins in Gen. 17:

Gen 17:1–12a When Abram was 99 years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be spiritually mature, that I may make My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you greatly." Then Abram fell on his face. And Elohim spoke with him, saying, “Behold Me! My covenant [is] with you and you have been the father of a multitude of nations. Your name will no longer be called Abram, but your name has been Abraham, for I have made you a father of nations.” I have made you exceedingly fruitful, and I have made you into nations, and kings will come from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants [lit., seed] after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants [lit., seed] after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants [lit., seed] after you the land of your wanderings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God." And God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you [all]. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised.

Circumcision is the cutting away of some skin at the end of a male’s phallus. Regeneration refers to the act of being born again. Circumcision represents the act of regeneration.

Circumcision Represents Regeneration

1. The circumcision of Abraham will establish new life in Abraham and new life in Sarah. At this point in time, Abraham is too old to have sex and Sarai is too old to conceive. God will change this. God will give them new life.

2. When Abraham steps out in faith and has himself circumcised, God will revitalize him sexually. His sexual organ will be brought back to life. In this way, Abraham will be reborn.

3. Circumcision is therefore connected to rebirth or to regeneration.

4. Abraham was sexually dead; God will make him sexually alive and potent. This is a picture of Abraham moving not only from death to life, but this is the key to the fulfillment of all God’s promises to him. As uncircumcised (sexually dead, unregenerated), none of God’s promises can be fulfilled to Abraham. As circumcised, Abraham is sexually revitalized, which represents regeneration; and so all of God’s promises to Abraham can be fulfilled.

5. So there is no misunderstanding, Abraham was spiritually regenerated many years ago. However, all of this is done to develop an analogy of rebirth, an analogy to rebirth that was set up 4000 years ago and still has meaning today.

6. Sarai had never given birth to a child, so we may reasonably assume that she was barren all of her life. Now, she is too old to have children. So, she is doubly-barren: barren throughout her life and now, simply to old to conceive.

7. As a result of God’s covenant, which included the circumcision of Abraham, Sarai will be made fertile. Her reproductive system will be given new life.

8. Circumcision therefore means, that which is dead is made fully alive.

9. In our illustration, Abraham and Sarah, who have never before had children of their own, and, therefore, cannot see God’s promises to them fulfilled, will be given life more abundantly than they ever had before.

10. Therefore, we need to understand that circumcision is taking that which was dead and giving it life again. Doctrinally, this is regeneration. Circumcision represents being born again.

11. Jesus explains the concept of regeneration (being born again) to Nicodemus. There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Him at night and said, "Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one could perform these signs You do unless God were with him." Jesus replied, "I assure you: Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." "But how can anyone be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked Him. "Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born?" Jesus answered, "I assure you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:1–12).

12. Paul expresses this doctrinally, tying circumcision to regeneration: And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses. He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and which was in opposition to us, and He has taken it out of the way by nailing it to the cross (Col. 2:13–14).

13. Understand that circumcision is a (visible) sign of God’s relationship to Abraham. It is a visible sign of this covenant between Jehovah Elohim and Abraham.

14. However, in most situations, we cannot simply look at someone and say, “Yeah, he’s circumcised.” Unless you go to the gym with your buddies, and use the showers there, you do not know which of them are circumcised and which are not. That is, a person who is circumcised is unknown to the outside world; your family members know this, but the rest of the world, for the most part, does not know. Therefore, circumcision is a good representation of regeneration, which occurs in a number of people, but you cannot just look at a person and say, “Oh, you are regenerated.” Circumcision is real but not something that we can readily see; regeneration is real, but not something that we can readily see.

15. Circumcision is a ritual, and, as a ritual, it must mean something. God does not have us go through meaningless rituals; all of the rituals in the plan of God have great meaning. Circumcision means that God will take that which is dead and make it alive. Abraham is sexually dead, and God is going to revive his sexual apparatus.

16. Note an additional piece of information concerning this ritual: God has come to Abraham right before he has been sexually revitalized. This represents regeneration. We are not regenerated on our own; God the Holy Spirit regenerates us.

17. All Jews must be regenerated (born again) in order to have a permanent relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Abraham’s son and grandson).

18. Every male Jew views his phallus several times a day when urinating, and he recalls this portion of the Bible, where God will physically regenerate Abraham’s sexual potency along with Sarai’s womb, and this represents the spiritual regeneration which establishes a familial relationship between man and God. The family relationship must take place in order for God’s promises to man to be fulfilled. Ideally speaking, all believers, several times a day, take note of their spiritual status and their relationship to God.

19. Every Jew, when he urinates, ought to recognize that he is related directly to God and that this ritual goes back in time 4000 years. It is God’s desire for such a one to ask himself, “Just what does this mean? Am I circumcised for no reason? Why did God, 4000 years ago, determine that all Jews would be circumcised?”

20. All rituals have meaning, and if we do not know what they mean, then we are wasting our time participating in them. The only clearly required ritual for the Church Age is the Eucharist, where Jesus’s death for our sins is represented by eating the bread and drinking the cup.

21. Regeneration means that, God takes that which is dead and He makes it alive again.

22. Our free will is a part of this decision process. I must admit, if I were Abraham, I may not have had the same faith to agree to circumcision. But Abraham, by an act of his free will, trusts God here; and he trusts that God will regenerate Abraham so that he is able to father children once again.

23. Even Moses later helped to interpret the concept of circumcision in Deut. 30:6 And Jehovah your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live. God will circumcise our hearts, with the purpose that, we will live. Since the ritual circumcision is performed upon living males, circumcision of the heart must therefore refer to an internal regeneration.

24. The physical act of circumcision is not the same as the spiritual act of regeneration; circumcision only represents regeneration.

25. God, through Ezekiel, describes this circumcision of the heart: “Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.” (Ezek. 11:19–20). “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” (Ezek. 36:26–27). God gives those with hearts of stone a new heart; God takes that which is dead and makes it alive so that they may live unto Him.

26. Paul teaches this in Rom. 2:28–29a For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that outwardly in flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart. Salvation is regeneration; not being physically circumcised. It is the circumcision of the heart which God looks upon. Jews were not related to God because they were physically circumcised; they were related to God because they had been circumcised of heart; their heart had been regenerated.

27. This is all related to the new covenant between God and Israel, which will come to pass in the Millennium: “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jer. 31:31–34).

28. Because circumcision is a ritual, it is not the ritual that is important but what the ritual represents. Circumcision represents regeneration. “You must be born again.”

29. We as believers in the Church Age are not called upon to be circumcised. Some of us are and some of us are not. God does not require us, when we are born again, to be circumcised. Paul explains that circumcision is a Jewish ritual, and that is has meaning, but it is not required of believers in the Church Age: In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of the Messiah. Having been buried with Him in baptism, you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive with Him and forgave us all our trespasses (Col. 2:11–13). God making us alive is regeneration. The key to our relationship with God is regeneration and not circumcision. Just as baptism represents being dead in our trespasses and sins, and then being raised up; so circumcision ultimately represents regeneration.

30. There were legalists who came into Galatia and tried to convince the gentiles in the Galatian church to be circumcised. Paul writes to them, saying: For both circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing; what matters instead is a new creation (Gal. 6:15). It is regeneration which is the key; not whether a person has been circumcised or not. In fact, Paul spends much of 2 chapters telling the Galatians that they do not need to be circumcised (Gal. 5–6). Since this was a problem in the early church, Paul reiterates this position in 1Cor. 7:18–19 Was anyone already circumcised when he was called? He should not undo his circumcision. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? He should not get circumcised. Circumcision does not matter and uncircumcision does not matter, but keeping God's commandments does.

31. Therefore, circumcision is a ritual which God required of the Jews. This ritual both emphasized regeneration and His familial relationship with the Jews.

To the best of my knowledge, I do not believe that this relationship has been formally established in theology before. Gill mentions it as an aside in his exegesis of Col. 2:11, as does the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary. The closest I saw to a completely developed doctrine was in some writings by Spurgeon.

However, there are several Christian individuals who have already recognized this relationship. And, unfortunately, this connection is posted on some legalistic websites and on, quite frankly, weird websites. Personally, I put together this concept, and then searched the internet to see if this had been developed before by anyone of note. So this relationship has been previously noted, but not really developed into a complete doctrine.

One of the fascinating things is, in do-your-own-thing, degenerate San Francisco, there is a movement to ban performing a circumcision in the city limits. This is simply one of the movements to separate the United States from her Judeo-Christian roots.

We studied just exactly how circumcision spoke of regeneration. After being circumcised, Abraham and Sarah would be both sexually revitalized, which represents the concept of new life. New lift is regeneration.

Now all of this is representative. Abraham was not born again because he was circumcised. He had been made righteous in God’s sight a very long time ago (Gen. 15:6). In this doctrine, we ran up against the expression a new heart and a new spirit. What are these things?

There are things in the Doctrine of Circumcision and Regeneration which need clarifying.

What is this New Heart?

1. Let’s go back to what is written in Ezekiel about the circumcision of the heart: “Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.” (Ezek. 11:19–20). “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” (Ezek. 36:26–27).

2. God originally created man in His image, and this would include us being created with a body, soul and spirit. The soul allows us to interact with man and the spirit allows us to interact with God.

3. In fact, this is one of the ways that we are made in the shadow image of God; God is a Triune Being, 3 Persons with the same essence; and man was created with a body, soul and spirit, a triune being of sorts.

4. However, when Adam sinned, he lost the human spirit. He no longer was able to communicate with God. He was afraid of God and he hid from God when God called him.

5. When God came to Adam and Adam believed in Him, communication was restored, which means, Adam was spiritually regenerated. In other words, God created within him a new spirit; God restored his human spirit to him.

6. This is what regeneration is. We are given the human spirit; or our human spirit is revived so that we may have fellowship with God again. It is the human spirit which is the target for our trust in Bible doctrine. Without the human spirit, we have only a human soul, which is unable to properly process Bible doctrine. But the soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1Cor. 2:14). Furthermore, it is Bible doctrine which is the key to our spiritual growth. Grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2Peter 3:18a).

a. The word used here and translated soulish is psuchikos (ψυχικός) [pronounced psoo-khee-KOSS], which means, soulish; natural; unregenerate. Strong’s #5591.

b. This word is built upon the Greek word translated soul.

7. We are born physically alive, but spiritually dead. Rom 6:23a The wages of sin is death. And Therefore, even as through one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed on all men inasmuch as all sinned (Rom. 5:12). See also Gen. 2:17 Rom. 5:17 7:24

8. The soul and the spirit are different and the Bible differentiates between the two. Heb. 4:12

9. It is because of Jesus Christ that we can be regenerated. It stands written, "The first man, Adam, became a living soul," the last Adam [= Jesus Christ] was a life-giving Spirit (1Cor. 15:45).

10. It is because we exercise faith in Jesus Christ that we are regenerated. “Truly, truly, I say to you, He who hears My Word and believes on Him who sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24).

11. David describes this regeneration in Psalm 51:10: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew [or, make anew, repair] a right spirit within me. The clean heart means that we have been forgiven of our sins and made positionally righteous; and the spirit being renewed is the human spirit being activated or made alive.

12. Jesus Christ insisted to Nicodemus that he must be born again. John 3:1–16

13. Given Psalm 51:10 and John 3:1–16, we can conclude that regeneration occurs in both the Old and New Testaments.

14. Regenerated man has a body, soul and spirit. 1Sam. 1:15 Job 7:11 1Thess. 5:23

15. The believer has his soul, spirit and body preserved. And may the God of peace Himself sanctify you, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelessly at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1Thess. 5:23).

16. Therefore, because we are born spiritually dead, we come into this world with just a body and a soul. When we are born again, our human spirit is made alive or activated. Before we are born again, we are soulish and unable to process spiritual information. After we are born again, we have a target for spiritual information: the human spirit. Before we were born again, we were estranged from God; we were unable to have fellowship with Him. After we are born again, we are able to know Him and to be in fellowship with Him, both of which are true potentials in the Christian life because we have a human spirit.

17. Jesus Christ, because He was born without sin (the sin nature is passed down genetically by means of the father, and Jesus did not have a human father), He therefore had from birth a body (John 1:14 Heb. 10:5), soul (Isa. 53:11 Matt. 26:38) and spirit (Luke 23:46 John 19:30). Jesus, therefore, did not have to be regenerated—He never lost fellowship with God.

18. One of the reasons the Jesus is called the Last Adam (1Cor. 15:45) is, both were born with a body, a soul and a spirit.

19. Adam sinned, so he had to be regenerated. Our Lord never sinned, so He did not have to be regenerated. 2Cor. 5:21 Heb. 4:15

20. Conclusion: being born again actually involves a change in our inner person; we are given a human spirit, which allows us to learn and understand God’s Word and allows us to have fellowship with God.

21. To sum up, both Adam and Jesus (the last Adam) were born trichotomous, with a body, soul and spirit. We are born dichotomus, with only a body and soul. The spirit is what allows us to have fellowship with God and where doctrine is stored. When Adam sinned, he lost the human spirit and God had to come to him. Because Adam sinned, we are all born spiritually dead—i.e., without a human spirit. We are born with a sin nature, something that we acquire from our human fathers. However, when we believe in Jesus Christ, we are regenerated, which includes having our human spirit activated or revitalized.

This may help to explain this whole circumcision thing. Abraham was circumcised and all of the males of his household were circumcised because this represented new life. The new life is both physical (he was sexually revitalized) but it was also representative of having new life as a result of being born again.

One more related doctrine:

The key to the relationship between God and Abraham’s seed is regeneration, which establishes a familial relationship between God and man.

The Familial Relationship between God and Abraham’s Seed

1. The ritual of circumcision establishes a familial relationship between God and Abraham (and his seed). Circumcision is a ritual, so, by itself, it means nothing. However, what is important is what circumcision represents. Circumcision represents sexual regeneration which establishes this familial relationship between Abraham and God.

2. At this point in time, this familial relationship between God and Abraham is undefined.

3. In fact, at this point in time, in Gen. 17, Abraham does not even have any children by his wife Sarai.

4. It will be prophesied and then it will come to pass that Abraham and Sarai will have a son.

5. This familial relationship is part and parcel of being born again. In regeneration, we have the option of knowing God and having fellowship with God.

6. God is personally involved in this regeneration. God the Father planned the cross, Jesus Christ went to the cross, and God the Holy Spirit both reveals this to us and regenerates us. Therefore, we have 3 “men” who will come to Abraham in the next chapter. This is representative of the Trinity involvement in our regeneration and in our spiritual lives.

7. Abraham is already regenerated spiritually. When he believed in Y^ehowah Elohim, God imputed righteousness to him. Gen. 15:6

8. However, what is being established here is a familial relationship based upon circumcision which represents regeneration.

9. God will continue to maintain His covenant with Abraham through his son Isaac and through his son’s son, Jacob, down through the ages.

10. The circumcision of Abraham will establish new life in Abraham and new life in Sarah.

11. At this point in time, Abraham is too old to have sex and Sarai is too old to conceive. God will change this. God will regenerate both of them sexually (which represents our spiritual regeneration to new life).

12. Abraham and Sarai do not have the ability to revitalize their own reproductive organs; only God can do this. Similarly, we have no innate ability to revitalize our human spirit. Only God can do that. Only God can regenerate us.

13. When Abraham steps out in faith and has himself circumcised, God will revitalize him sexually. He will become capable of fathering a child and Sarai will become capable of conceiving a child.

14. Circumcision is therefore connected to a rebirth or to regeneration.

15. God tells Abraham: “I will keep My covenant between Me and you, and your descendants after you throughout their generations, as an everlasting covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you. And to you and your offspring after you I will give the land where you are residing--all the land of Canaan--as an eternal possession, and I will be their God.” (Gen. 17:7–8).

16. Further, God tells Abraham: “This is My covenant, which you are to keep, between Me and you and your offspring after you: Every one of your males must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskin to serve as a sign of the covenant between Me and you. Throughout your generations, every male among you at eight days old is to be circumcised. This includes a slave born in your house and one purchased with money from any foreigner. The one who is not your descendant, a slave born in your house, as well as one purchased with money, must be circumcised. My covenant will be in your flesh as an everlasting covenant.” (Gen. 17:10–13). Therefore, every male child associated with the Jews is to be circumcised. The circumcision is a sign of their rebirth as well.

17. God has attached great importance to Abraham’s posterity and this covenant. They are related to Abraham and, somehow, they are related to God.

18. Every time a male Jew urinates, he looks down, and he is reminded of this familial relationship which is established, beginning with Abraham and going down through Isaac and Jacob. This is the visible sign between God and the Jews throughout all their generations.

19. Even very secular Jews today must wonder, now and again, what is my relationship with God all about? What is this circumcision all about?

20. Think about this for a moment—how would man come up with a concept like circumcision? What man, who knows nothing about circumcision, would look down on his phallus and say, “I’ve got a great idea: I think I should cut some of the skin away from this”? We have no idea how exactly circumcision originated; but God, in Gen. 17, uses it to establish a relationship between Him and Abraham.

21. Throughout history (until the Church Age), Jews will all be circumcised; Gentiles will not (although now, many gentiles are circumcised, particularly in countries where there are a lot of Christians). Therefore, every man who is circumcised is genetically (or in a familial way) related to Abraham (I am speaking in principle here; obviously, those coming from the outside and becoming Jews are not genetically related to Abraham; however, either their children or their grandchildren will be through intermarriage).

22. This is important because Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Universe, will be genetically related to Abraham, even though He existed in eternity before Abraham (“Before Abraham, I existed eternally” John 8:58).

23. From the very beginning, God has been establishing this familial relationship between Himself and regenerated man.

a. God said to the serpent after the fall: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Gen. 3:15). So there is a promise to be fulfilled in the Seed of the Woman, and the Seed of the Woman would crush the head of the serpent (Satan).

b. The woman later recognizes that God has given her a new seed in Seth, after Cain murdered Abel (Gen. 4:25).

c. God’s covenant would then be with Noah and his seed after him (Gen. 9:9).

d. God establishes his covenant with Abraham and his seed in Gen. 12:7 13:15 15:18 17:7–8 24:7; and continues this covenant with Isaac and his seed (Gen. 26:3–4). Isaac transfers this covenant to his son Jacob in Gen. 28:4, which God confirms in Gen. 28:13 35:12.

e. Jehovah God later promised: “The Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel [which means, God with us].” (Isa. 7:14). This is expanded in Isa. 9:6 “For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given; and the government shall be on His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

24. Through the virgin Mary, all of this would be fulfilled. Jesus would be born to her, a virgin, so that He is genetically related to Mary and therefore, to all Jews. Luke 1:35 2:11 Matt. 1:23 28:18 John 1:1–2, 14 Heb. 1:8 1John 4:14

25. Therefore, Abraham, the father of the Jews, is genetically related to Jesus Christ.

26. In fact, when a few of the genealogies of Scripture are strung together, we have a straight line between Abraham and Jesus.

27. In the book of Genesis are the seeds of many of the doctrines which would later be expounded upon as time went on. This is known as progressive revelation. We learn more and more about a doctrine as time goes on; God the Holy Spirit reveals more and more about a doctrine as time goes on.

28. Believers in the Church Age are sons by adoption. Rom. 8:15 Gal. 4:5 Eph. 1:5

29. Adoption in the ancient world is somewhat different than we think of it. A king or a rich man may look among his own sons and see no one worthy of taking his place or inheriting his fortune. However, he may have an adult slave who is hardworking, intelligent and moral. So, the king or rich man will “adopt” this slave as his son—even though he may be fully an adult—in order to inherit what belongs to the king or to the rich man. A familial relationship is established by means of adoption. This describes our relationship to God.

30. However, God does not look at us and think, “Yes, yes, yes, this person is worthy to be My son.” He looks at Jesus Christ, and He alone is worthy; but we are sons of God because we are in Him and we share His Sonship. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, coming into being out of a woman, having come under Law, that He might purchase those under Law, so that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father (Gal. 4:4–6).

31. The is established through faith in Jesus Christ. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26). See also John 1:12 1John 3:2

In conclusion, Jews are actually genetically related to Jesus Christ through the Virgin Mary. However, they must exercise faith in Jehovah Elohim in order to be regenerated (Gen. 15:6 2Kings 18:5 Psalm 2:12 5:4 9:10 13:5 Ezek. 36:26–27). In the Church Age, we are sons of God by means of adoption. We believe in Jesus Christ and we are adopted as God’s sons in the Beloved.

One of the things that Christians may find confusing is the fact that there is an actual genetic relationship between Jews and Jesus; but that the true relationship between Jews and Jesus is their exercising faith in Him so that they are regenerated (in the Old Testament, this was exercising faith in Y^ehowah Elohim). This is actually a clearer issue for believers in the Church Age—we are not Jews, so we are not genetically related to Jesus Christ (except in the sense of being human). However, we are adopted into the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul will spend an entire chapter of Romans discussing these issues, a study which we will insert into this Genesis series (in 10 or so lessons).

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