It’s another thing to live up to the meaning of
circumcision. To have physical circumcision meant there’s a physical mark that says you are a part of the Abrahamic family. But to be a part of Abraham, to be embraced in Abraham, is to be embraced in a faith community.
Abraham, 15:6 of Genesis, he believed in God before circumcision. He believed in God, and that was a content to him for commitment and righteousness with regard to God. To have his circumcision, to have the mark on your flesh,
was certainly a part of the glory of the Jew. We bear the mark, they would say, of the covenant God made with Abraham. Which Abraham are we talking about? We’re not talking about a faithless Abraham. We’re not talking about merely a fleshly person Abraham. We’re talking about the faith-filled
faithful, believing and trusting in God, Abraham. And if your circumcision in the flesh would be like the circumcision in Abraham’s flesh, if it doesn’t mean to you what it meant to Abraham, circumcision means nothing. If you’re circumcised, but you don’t
live out the meaning of circumcision. You might as well not have it. So, circumcision means not that.
means not that. He would say in 1 Corinthians 7,
7:19
Circumcision doesn’t nor does uncircumcision count. Neither one of them counts. What counts is keeping the commandments of God, living in honor and happy allegiance to God. So, in chapter 2 of Romans, he said, circumcision, it doesn’t mean anything.
if you don’t have Abraham’s faith. But that’s not quite true, what I just said. It does mean something. It becomes your judge. You bear in your physical body the mark, and that mark becomes your accuser, for you have the physical mark, but you don’t have the heart, the faith.
So for you who are faithless, and that’s how they’ve been in history, don’t you see? For you who are a faithless nation, circumcision is no profit at all.