48 “An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the LORD’s Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land. No uncircumcised male may eat of it.
If this were the requirement for membership in the Church, we would have very few adult male converts! What is interesting is that research has found that if the men in a family come to Jesus then the rest of the family follows. Males have a huge role to lay in the spiritual life of the family. Too often we are neglecting this role. With all the multiple demands on families these days, the spiritual often gets neglected. Our society lures and entices each of us in so many directions that pull us away from our primary role in life: reflecting God’s character and love. In recent years pressure on men to not be the leaders in their homes has increased. The anti-male backlash has been enormous. Now men often feel like they just can’t win. If they are standing up for what they believe, they are labeled sexists, women-bashing bigots. If they don’t stand up they are labeled wimps. So most men have just given up trying to be leaders in their homes, and the women have been more than happy to step up and lead. The women have believed the message that men are not needed, that women are identical to men, that they are in fact superior to men because they don’t want to “go to war and kill people.” But the Lord has special requirements for the men in this ancient world. They had to spill their own blood in order to bring their family into fellowship with the community and with the Lord. This was a personal sacrifice they made on behalf of their families. If they were a foreign born individual, then blood came from their adult body. If they were of Hebrew descent, it came as an infant. But their blood was shed. They were marked permanently as someone who was part of this community.
The Arnold Journey 