Abraham Justified Before Circumcision Series

4:9

“Does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only, or upon the uncircumcised?”

Is God’s blessedness, or happiness, which David just described, for only Jews, or can Gentiles get in on this? He doesn’t use those two terms though. He is making a point. Is a man made right and happy with God at the moment he meets the legal requirement of entrance into Judaism, namely circumcision? What if he is born Jewish but for some reason has not been circumcised? Or more to the point, what if he will never be circumcised because he was born in some other nation? This man can never be blessed, or happy?

“For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness.”

Okay, we have established from the Scripture that Abraham was made righteous before God simply by believing what God said, from his heart. As David said, Abraham had his lawless deeds forgiven. Abraham’s sins were covered. Sin was suddenly not imputed to our father Abraham. He heard from God, believed God, and God made him right, and very happy in the process. He was a blessed man. So the serious question is,

4:10

“How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised?”

Paul pushes the Jewish mind into a corner. Gentlemen of the Council, I ask you, when was it exactly that God justified our father Abraham? At what part of his life could he wake up and say, “I am a friend of God. I am free from sin and guilt. I have broken the bonds of my old life and am now free to experience all that Heaven has to offer.” When? Before or after he complied with the outward ceremony?

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Then he answers the question, and may every Jew or Christian wannabe, take note:

“Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised.”

What silence in the courtroom! Abraham made right before a holy God while he was still essentially a pagan? Before he became officially a Jew?

Paul would say, Not so! Because “official” Jewishness, says Paul earlier, is in the Spirit, not in the flesh. Point already established. Paul became a true Jew when He and God had that encounter of God speaking and Abraham believing. He became an outward Jew later.

Saved without the ceremony. Saved without doing. What religion offers such a thing? If the Jews had read the fine print, they could have seen that they were offered such a salvation. Paul is reading the fine print for them. And of course we are offered such a deal too.

Unfortunately, much of what is called Christian is not aware of this offer. For them, there is a place called purgatory. And with a lot of work or a lot of money you can get your relatives moved an inch or two closer to heaven. Go to the Shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico, for example. Crawl on your hands and knees for a quarter of a mile, go into the shrine, light a candle, and voila! a soul’s sentence in Purgatory is lessened. What is Purgatory like, you ask? Who knows? But it is an awful place, where you pay for the sins you committed here, even though Jesus paid the price in full for anyone who will call on His Name.

Saved without doing. What religion has it? Not the Hindus. Follow the holy worshiping men of the Hindu faith, watch them sit on beds of nails, walk over broken glass, lie down on hot coals, piercing their tongues so they can never talk again, or staring at the sun until they are blinded, or holding their arms up for years at a time until they are useless. They do all

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this to please some of their gods. Others are told that simply to bathe in a certain river will take them to heaven.

(Thanks to Macarthur for those insights.)

How did you find favor with God? Simple. He found favor with you in Christ, called you to Himself, changed you, and brought you along day by day, all by grace. It was a God thing, not a you thing.

Saved without doing. That’s us. Jews, actually saved without circumcision.

So why the circumcision to begin with? Why go on, if in God’s sight the deal is already done? That’s the point of verse 11:

But first, the Jewish answer of Paul’s day, against which he was fighting: The Jews were convinced that circumcision was the ticket in, and the security of their future. In their Book of Jubilees (15:25ff) we read, “… every one that is born, the flesh of whose foreskin is not circumcised on the eighth day, belongs not to the children of the covenant… he belongs to the children of destruction… he is destined to be destroyed and slain from the earth.”