Sermon: “Circumcision and Righteousness”

TEXT:  Romans 2:25-27

REVIEW

1.  God will glorify His own name. God has determined to be faithful in his love and care for His elect because of His zeal for His own name.  When His Old Testament people caused His name to be blasphemed among the nations, He still was determined to rescue them.  Why?  Because He is committed to the glory of His own Name.  This is a good and right thing.

2.  No label can save us.  Only the righteousness of Christ saves.  We cannot pin our hopes for eternal security on any label.  God demands true righteousness.  We must have this perfect righteousness credited to our account.

TODAY’S PASSAGE:

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. 

²⁶ Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law,

will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? 

²⁷ And 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?

1. Circumcision explained

            Paul has made the point that the label of “Jew” will not save anyone from the righteous judgment of God.  Now he goes one step further in the verses before us this morning.  The Old Testament sacrament of circumcision, Paul says, will not guarantee eternal life to law-breakers.  What is this circumcision that Paul refers to in these verses? 

The ritual by which a man was known as a Jew was the sacrament of circumcision.  Circumcision was the removal of a small piece of skin from the body as part of a cutting ritual.  According to the ritual, the circumcised person was committing to obedience to God’s law (Genesis 17:1, Galatians 5:3).  If the person would turn against God’s law in disobedience, then he was to be cut off from the body of God’s people just as surely as this small piece of skin was cut off from his own body.

Circumcision was a sign established by God.  It was a command given to Abraham – a command that continued throughout the entire Old Testament era.  Through circumcision, membership in the covenant community was established.  Of all the signs of membership in His covenant people that God could have picked, why did he choose this one?  Consider that this cutting ritual was to be performed on boys at the age of eight days.  Before they had a chance to learn much of anything, their parents were already committing them to a life of perfect obedience to God and his revealed will.  If they would not be blameless before the Lord, then the circumcision ritual insisted that they would deserve to be cut off from the people of God.

Knowing the depth of God’s holy law, and our horrible bent toward sin and rebellion, how could any parent agree to the circumcision of their son?  It would seem to be a hopeless sign.  They will sin.  How will they escape being cut off?  But parents did have their boys circumcised, because they wanted their children to have the sign of the covenant.  They wanted them to be in the community where God’s mercy would be known.  Circumcision may not seem to be that hopeful of a ritual, but what hope could there be in being outside the covenant community?

Paul gives us some more help on this in Romans 4.   He says that the “sign of circumcision” was a “seal” of the righteousness of faith.  He is speaking specifically about Abraham who exercised faith in God before he was circumcised.  But the sacrament is what it is.  This cutting ritual was designed to be a seal of the righteousness of faith.  The thing that is most surprising is that God demanded that this sign and seal be applied to little boys who could not yet exercise faith.  How could this be?  Here is the answer.  Only by faith could a parent sensibly agree to the circumcision of a son.  It was the faith of the covenant community that God would show mercy through the provision of a Messiah.  Messiah would be cut off from the people of God for our transgressions against the law of God, and the righteousness of Messiah would be credited to us.  So circumcision was always meant to be sign and a seal of the righteousness that could only come to us by faith – faith in a substitute who would come for us.  (Read Colossians 2:11-15 and realize that the “circumcision” of Christ mentioned there is His death on the cross for us.)

But what happens when the sign is separated from its meaning? Over time, this sign that should have been so deeply humbling came to be treated as a badge of honor.  It came to be seen by many as an assurance of eternal salvation for all who possessed it.  We must see that there is no merit in the sign itself.  Without the Messiah, who supplies the needed perfect righteousness, circumcision would have only told a boy over and over again that he was destined to be cut off from the people of God because of his sin.

2. Profitable if you keep the law – not if you break the law

            Circumcision is a commitment to keep the law.  Even if the little child is too young to make his own promise, by the oath spoken for him and sealed in the ritual, he is consigned to a life of covenant obedience.  That would be profitable if you could keep the law.  But what if you do not keep the law?  Then you must be cut off from the community of the faithful.  Your circumcision is not a testimony for you then – but a sign that stands against you, and a seal of your own doom.

            For the law-breaker, circumcision has become uncircumcision.  He is outside of the place of hope.  This would have been a very radical idea for many Jews in Paul’s day who had seen this sacrament as their ground of hope.  Paul is deliberately removing that hope in order to replace it with a far better one.

3. Uncircumcised keep the law?  How?

            If the idea that circumcision would not be a thing of merit was a radical idea, Paul proceeds with another idea that is also very unexpected.  He suggests the case of an uncircumcised man who has perfectly fulfilled the law of God.  How could it be that someone outside the community of the law could be considered as having perfectly fulfilled the law?  Since circumcision itself was a law, the possibility of an uncircumcised law-fulfiller seems impossible by definition, unless, of course, provision is made for substitution.  If a circumcised law-fulfiller could stand in the place of the uncircumcised man, then the law would be fulfilled for him.

            But could this be fair?  Could it really be that another man’s righteous obedience would actually count for a sinner?  There is scarcely a more important question in all of Christian theology.  Try to think as an Old Covenant person would have thought about this issue.  Remember that substitution would not be some strange idea for Jews.  The entire Old Testament sacrificial system is built on the idea that substitution can work.  If the righteousness of the Son of God and the cross of Christ can’t count for a sinful man, then what were all those dead animals about?  Yes if the Lamb of God is cut off from the people of God in order that the elect (both Jew and Gentile) might be counted in, who are we to tell God that such a system of mercy and justice is not fair?  It is God who must be satisfied.  And the resurrection assures us that He was satisfied.  It is the Righteous One who has the right to judge the unrighteous one.  By substitution, the Gentile connected to Messiah will judge faithless Jews.  This is tough for people to hear who might have thought that their circumcision was their membership card into a heavenly kingdom.  But it is something that we all need to hear, even today when circumcision is not a sacrament of the church.

APPLICATION:

Hear this good news and take it to heart.  The One who has every right to be your judge and to seal your condemnation, is your Savior and has sealed your redemption.  Trust in the Savior, not the seal.  Then make good use of the seal by the power of the Savior.

            The seal of the righteousness of faith in the New Testament church is not circumcision, but baptism.  Baptism is not a cutting ritual, it is a water ritual.  Like circumcision, it can also go two ways.  It can speak for you, or it can speak against you.  It speaks a word in your favor if you obey, but it speaks against you if you don’t.  Here’s the symbolic idea behind a water ritual.  May I be drowned in the waters of God’s wrath if I do not keep covenant with God.  Perfect righteousness is still demanded.  How will you provide it?  Trust in Christ alone, and not in your baptism.  If you have not been baptized, turn away from all known sin, trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ for you as your substitute, and be baptized.  If you have been baptized, make good use of your baptism by considering that it is a sign and a seal of the righteousness of faith.  It is inconsistent with holding on to sin.  If you have been baptized, turn away from all known sin, trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ for you as your substitute, and live for Him.

            Do not expect your baptism to be the final story of salvation for you.  Live out your baptism as a man or woman who is committed to a life of repentance and faith as a part of the community of the faithful who know that their only hope is through the work of Jesus the Messiah.