Romans 2:25-29

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? ²⁸ For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; ²⁹ but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God. [NKJV]

Along with the Law, circumcision was, for the Jews, another sign of their special standing with God. He had given His people the tablets of the Law through Moses, and through Abraham He gave them circumcision as a symbol of the covenant He made, promising to be a God to him and his descendants (Genesis 17). So, possessing the Law and carrying the mark of circumcision, the Jewish Christians in Rome felt secure in their standing before God. But Paul, a Jewish Christian himself, challenges this.

First, Paul re-asserts the fact that possession of the Law is not enough: you actually have to obey it too. Circumcision on its own is only valuable if accompanied by obedience, otherwise that circumcision is void. Remarkably, Paul also makes the assertion that someone who is uncircumcised (i.e., a Gentile), who obeys the Law, is as good as if he was circumcised. In other words, his keeping of the Law effectively circumcises him, making him as much one of God’s people as the obedient Jew. More than that, in a reference back to the beginning of the chapter, the uncircumcised keeper of the Law will judge the circumcised possessor of the Law who doesn’t keep the Law. To put it simply, the faithful Gentile is in a position to judge the unfaithful Jew. That’s why the Jew shouldn’t lord his heritage over the Gentile, especially if he is a hypocrite.

And now Paul gets to the heart of the issue: being a Jew, being of God’s chosen people, is not a matter of outward form, circumcision, birth, and so forth. God’s people are those who have been changed inwardly. It is the circumcised heart that obeys the righteous requirements of the Law, not to please people, but to honor God. Everyone, Jew or Gentile, that has received this heart-circumcision, regardless of their external state, is chosen by God.

Thought from the passage: If you are a mature Christian, do you know younger Christians who show remarkable godliness and piety? Sometimes we are tempted to mock these as being over-zealous, or “too Christian,” as if it’s a fault. Such an attitude usually comes from a private conviction over our own apathy. Let’s be sure we allow ourselves to be instructed by this, and never let ourselves become too proud to learn from the faith of even our younger brethren.