Circumcision Will Not Save Series

2:25

“For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.”

Paul is not trying to suggest the physically impossible. He’s stating a spiritual truth.

The Jews trusted in their heritage. They trusted in their law. And they trusted in circumcision, the sign of the covenant. Paul is about to dynamite all three confidences so he can plant confidence in another way of salvation.

Circumcision. Why? At the risk of being graphic I follow Macarthur here in saying “the very procreative organ needed to be cleansed of a covering.” He makes the point that this symbolic gesture shows that man at his core is sinful and needs cleansing. Like baptism, it was a picture of something. But like baptism, the Jew began to believe that the symbolism was the real thing.

If you were baptized to show God’s forgiveness and cleansing before you were forgiven or cleansed, maybe you need to be baptized again – assuming you have since been forgiven or cleansed.

Circumcision was valuable to the Jew who was keeping the law. It was a signal that he was in covenant relationship with God. It was not the relationship itself, only a symbol of it. So if you keep the law, the symbol is meaningful. Keep breaking the law, what does it mean? Nothing! It’s as though you had not been circumcised.

173

Once more the prophets come to our assistance, reminding us that Paul’s teachings are not his own. The Spirit of God had been saying this for centuries. Here’s Jeremiah (9:25-26).

“Behold, the days are coming that I will punish all who are circumcised with the uncircumcised – Egypt, Judah, Moab, and all who are in the farthest corners, who dwell in the wilderness. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.”

Sounds a lot like Paul.

2:26

“Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law…”

What is Paul saying here?! He has already concluded that Jew and Gentile alike are sinners condemned. And he has just argued again that the Jew who has the law but doesn’t do it is condemned. That the Jew who trusts in circumcision but doesn’t act like a covenant person is condemned.

Where is he going?

Suppose, he says, there was a Gentile who perfectly kept the law of God. Wouldn’t he be more acceptable to God than a circumcised Jew who did not keep the law? Just suppose…

“will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?”

Yes, says Paul. Definitely. God is interested in what’s on the inside, not the symbolic language of circumcision, Bibles stacked high in your church or home, water baptism, church attendance. That Gentile who obeys Me from the heart is more acceptable than the Jew who does not. Matthew 23 again, speaking to the ruling class of Jews, but to any Jew who had this problem:

174

“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you pay tithe of the smallest things in your possession, but you have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.

You clean the outside of the cup but the inside is full of extortion and self- indulgence. You’re like a whitewashed grave that appears beautiful on the outside, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones.”

Not only that,

2:27

“Will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law?”

Serious stuff here. Paul, the Jew, says to his own people, and himself, the former Pharisee, Not only is the Gentile equal to you now, he is above you and will sit in judgment over you. Trouble is, how do we find such a Gentile? That is, a Gentile who fulfills the law?

Thus Paul is setting up his case logically, one step at a time. Chapter 1, and 2:6: All men, Jew and Gentile, are worthy of judgment. But there is a third class of men, 2:7, who will not be judged because they are seeking God and doing good.

Then back to the universal judgment. First the Gentiles, 2:12-15, based on the law in their own hearts. Then the Jew, 2:17-25. who had a written law and a seal in their body. All condemned.

But then that other class, at present a theoretical group: 2:26-27, a class of Gentiles who actually could keep the law without Moses, without circumcision. Then Paul blows away the entire Jewish façade, the stranglehold that the Jews thought they had on God. Yes, they thought God had to save them. God was obligated to save them. They were descended from Abraham. They received the law from Heaven itself via