"Open Wide!"

 "If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day?" (John 7:23 KJV)

  "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Galatians 3:24-29 KJV) 

 If you know anything about the Jewish law regarding circumcision, if a man is born on the sabbath, then the following sabbath he must be circumcised, even though it is actually the Sabbath Day. Basically, the promise is more important than the sign! Hopefully you get that, because it goes back to the contract that God signed with Abraham, which Abraham did not even sign! 

 Circumcision is a cutting away: in other words, the difference between what they allow to happen on the Sabbath, and what Jesus did on the Sabbath were totally completely opposite works! Jesus made a man whole, but circumcision takes away. As Matthew Henry points out: "Circumcision was a bloody ordinance, and made sore: but what Christ did was healing, and made whole. The law works pain, and, if that work may be done on the sabbath day, much more a gospel work, which produces peace." 

 Now about this weird title: Man is prone to be justified by works, whether that is based upon pride, or guilt, it really does not matter, because God's gift of salvation does not involve either one. This is not about what we are, what we have done, where we have been, or how much we might hurt: this is about who Jesus is, what He has done, where He now is, and the pain He suffered to make it all happen! 

 The mark that circumcision was all about was Abraham's showing that he had been chosen of God; much the same as we that are of Christ must demonstrate that we are chosen, by the cutting away of the things of this world. Not because we are mandated to do anything, because it is not a condition of our salvation; but it is a sign of being one with Christ! 

 The mark of a believer is that we are of Christ Jesus and not of this world...

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." (1 John 2:15-17 KJV)