“You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,”

Here in this verse we have the reason why God had to chose us first in order to save us and make us spiritually alive. Without the Lord we have no faith, no love and no hope. We are dead in our trespasses because of our sin and the sins that we commit daily. This sin separates us from the Lord and makes us insensible to His voice and His pleading. Only when the Holy Spirit works in our lives do we start to feel the destitute nature of our state and we begin to seek God. 

In our fleshly lives we are uncircumcised. We live our earthly lives lost to the Lord, with no love for Him or desire to know Him personally. As we have discussed in verse eleven, the circumcision that God requires is the circumcision of heart that binds us to God and takes us away from the things of this vain world. We would never choose God, left to our own devices, but we will cling on to the sin that so easily besets us, unless we are shown the seriousness of the consequences of it, and the cost to our eternal souls, if we neglect this great salvation. The consequences of rejecting the provision of God are so serious and everlasting, that we must consider the end of our choices and where we will spend the ages of eternity. We must be forgiven, for to face the holy God with no salvation is serious in the extreme. 

However, those who do come to God, are made spiritually alive in Christ and have the power of God residing in them, to give them desires after holiness and the humility to follow the Lord Jesus wherever He might lead them. God gives the ability to choose him, when our inner eyes are opened to see the truth about ourselves and the truth of the gospels message. He sets us free to make a good choice and not a wretched one. To be alive in Christ, and to Christ, is the greatest state to be in. To know His love in our lives and to be able to conquer the giants of doubt and temptation that infiltrate our thinking and doing, is the power of God. 

How wonderful to know for sure that your sins are all forgiven and you are regarded by God as a holy person, because of the Lord Jesus. We are forgiven because of Him and we continue to thrive in our Christian lives because of Him.

We fight the uncircumcised desires and practices of the flesh and put to death the desires of the physical life in this world that incline our hearts and minds away from Christ. Our redeemed self puts on righteousness and seeks the spiritual life found only through faith in Jesus. Anything else is worldly and unprofitable for it will not stand the test of God at the end of our lives. Many will find their work and witness for God as “wood, hay and stubble” which will be burnt in the fires of testing. There will be no works of righteousness to give to the Lord, for they are so contaminated by our flesh, that they will not survive. 

Beloved, we rejoice to know our sins are forgiven and cast into the sea of God’s forgetfulness, and we deny self and the flesh to put on righteousness and produce work fitting for the Lord. Then our hearts will be truly circumcised to God and acceptable to Him. Then we will be alive together with Christ. 

“He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities under foot; and you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”

Micah 7:19