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Jim_M said:
#1 Ge 17:11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

Good. But there is more:

"So circumcise your heart, and stiffen your neck no longer" (Deut. 10:16). "Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live" (Deut. 30:6). "Circumcise yourselves to the LORD and remove the foreskins of your heart, men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, or else My wrath will go forth like fire and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds" (Jer. 4:4). "But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God" (Rom. 2:29). "He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised" (Rom. 4:11). "In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross" (Col. 2:11-14).

Circumcision was fundamentally about a heart dead in sins that was renewed by God, having the sin cut off, and turned in faith to Him. Why would God have infant boys circumcised on the eighth day if they were sinless?

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#2 Certainly not for the forgiveness of sin, any more than baptism has the power to remove sin, they are both a sign that sin will be forgiven if the heart is also right with God.

Neither circumcision nor baptism has the capacity to take away sin, but you are right that both signify that sin is forgiven when the heart is made right with God. With such a meaning, why would circumcision be applied to 8-day-old infants who have never sinned and are in no need of having any sin forgiven?

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You have assigned yourself the impossible task of proving that babies are guilty of sin. Why?

Because it's biblical truth. Newborn babies are innocent with referrence to other men, but they are not innocent with referrence to God. They are sinners like all of us, in need of having their sin washed away. Why do you find it impossible to believe? David did not, he found himself a sinner from the moment of his conception. David, the man after God's own heart!

And besides all this, even the cutest and sweetest of babies are wracked with infantile anger when they do not have what they demand. Because God is kind, our reaction is one of gentle tolerance toward these "innocent" outbursts. But they are indicative of the sinful nature which the child has inherited from Adam.

Kyle

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified.