Circumcision and the Gentile Believers

Baptisms in the Jordan River

[This article was written in response to a question I was asked: Should believers be circumcised?]

Circumcision was given to Abraham as a sign in Genesis 17. I read the torah weekly in the order given in the Parasha, so I read this earlier in the year. The particular set of readings also gives a New Testament reading or two – on that day, these were from Romans 3v19 – 5v6 and Galatians 3v15-18. There were other readings as well, but these are the ones I want to concentrate on in this brief study.

The first thing to notice is when and for what reason God gave the sign of circumcision to Abraham. When Abraham was 75 years old (Genesis 12v4), God told him to leave his home and go to a place God would show him, but God did not tell him where he was going (see Hebrews 11v8). In faith and obedience, Abraham set out, resting in the promise that God had given him, namely, that God said ‘I will make of you a great nation, I will bless you, and I will make your name great; and you are to be a blessing….and by you all the families of the earth will be blessed’ (Genesis 12v2-3). We see in these verses two distinct promises. The first promise is that God would make of Abraham a great nation (the other promises about blessing Abraham and his descendants are directly connected to this promise); the other promise is that all the families of the earth will be blessed because of Abraham. So one promise is to the physical descendants of Abraham; the other is to the nations that are not directly descended from him.

It wasn’t until 24 years later that God reiterated these promises and explained them more fully, when Abraham had reached the age of 99 years. God appeared to Abraham and said, ‘I am El Shaddai (God Almighty). Walk in my presence and be pure hearted. I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will increase your numbers greatly’. Abraham had already trusted God (faith) and left his country (obedience); here God reiterates that He wants Abraham to follow Him (‘walk in my presence’) and renews the promise to increase his numbers (ie give him many descendants). He also renews the other promise: ‘you will be the father of many nations (plural)’ (17v4). Furthermore, God says, ‘I am establishing my covenant between me and you, along with your descendants, generation after generation, as an everlasting covenant’ (here we see that the covenant is permanent, everlasting, forever, throughout the generations); God continues, ‘I will give you and your descendants after you the land’ (this is the promise that Abrahams physical descendants will inherit the land of Israel as their permanent/everlasting possession – as long as they keep the covenant).

The sign of that covenant was circumcision: ‘Here is my covenant, which you are to keep, between me and you, along with your descendants after you: every male among you is to be circumcised…this will be the sign of the covenant between me and you’ (17v10,11).

The sign is not only for Abraham, but for all his descendants and is firmly restated with regard to the promised son, Isaac: ‘I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him…I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this time next year’ (17v19,21). Abraham already had a son at this point – Ishmael. God repeated His promise to Abraham to reinforce the fact that the covenant whereby Abraham would become a great nation and his physical descendants would inherit the land of Israel was to be through Isaac. Abraham then went and circumcised his entire household, including his servants that he had bought (ie that literally belonged to him) and also his son, Ishmael (Isaac was not yet born). Nothing in this passage says anything about the nations round about. The promise that Abraham would be the cause of blessing other nations is not mentioned here.

[A brief aside about the servants being circumcised: when a person was ‘bought’ and therefore ‘owned’ by someone, they became more than just ‘property’. If the ‘owner’ had no children of his own, his chief servant stood to inherit all that he had. This is seen in Genesis 15v2, where Abraham states that ‘Eleazar of Damascus is my heir’. Abraham had no children of his own, so his servant Eleazar stood to inherit all that he had. The servants therefore were counted as ‘belonging’ in more ways than just because they had been bought with money – they were ‘family’ of a sort. It is because the servants were members of Abraham’s household that he had them circumcised. The matter of having these people circumcised says nothing about whether or not Gentiles should be circumcised].

So that is where circumcision is first given as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham. God made two promises – firstly, that Abraham would be a great nation that would live in the land of Israel (the land God was giving him) and secondly, that all the (other) nations would be blessed through Abraham. The sign of circumcision was given when the promise of the land and being a great nation were reiterated.

So then we come to Romans and Paul’s commentary on this issue.

Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith. This faith preceded circumcision and preceded the giving of the law at Sinai through Moses. Abraham’s faith resulted in his obedience, but the promises were not given on the basis of obedience, but on the basis of his faith: ‘the account of someone who is working [works of obedience] is credited not on the ground of grace but on the ground of what is owed him. However, in the case of one who is not working but rather is trusting in Him who makes ungodly people righteous, his trust [faith] is credited to him as righteousness’ (Romans 4v4-5 CJB). So we see that Abraham was declared righteous by God not on the grounds of his works, or his obedience, or his status with regard to circumcision, but on the ground that he believed God/had faith in God/trusted God. Paul points out that Abraham was declared righteous *before* he was circumcised: ‘but what state was he in when it was so credited – circumcision or uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision!’ (4v10). He then goes on to say, ‘he received circumcision as a sign, as a seal of the righteousness he had been credited with on the ground of the trust [faith] he had while he was still uncircumcised’ (4v11).

Now this is where Paul brings together the two promises. Remember that God promised Abraham that his physical progeny would be great in number and would dwell in the land God was giving them and also that the nations would be blessed through Abraham. Paul explains that the reason God declared Abraham righteous *before* he was circumcised was in order that Abraham could be ‘the father of every uncircumcised person who trusts [has faith] and thus has righteousness credited to him’ (4v12) and also at the same time, be the father of those who were physical descendants and had received the sign of circumcision, but who also followed in the footsteps of the faith Abraham had when he was still uncircumcised himself (4v12b). In other words, a Gentile (person ‘of the nations’) who has faith though uncircumcised will be declared righteous by God just as a person who has faith and has been circumcised is declared righteous. Paul was expressing the fact that it is not by being Jewish (either by birth or conversion) that makes a person righteous, but it is faith and trust in God. We are Abraham’s children because of our faith, not because we have become legally Jewish by conversion and circumcision. And this, Paul continues, is the explanation of the statement back in Genesis that Abraham will be the father of many nations – not just Jews, but Gentiles (people of the nations) too.

And this is the exact point Paul is making in Galatians. There were some believers (most likely believers, though some suggest they might have been Jews who were concerned about the influx of Gentiles into the synagogues after they had believed in Messiah) who, being more strict in their observation of Judaism, were telling the Gentile converts in Galatia, that faith was not enough – they needed to be circumcised. Being circumcised was not just the medical procedure; it was shorthand for converting to Judaism. The Jews in the first century believed that salvation was the exclusive province of Jews. In order to be accepted by God, to inherit eternal life, you had to be a Jew. If you were not born a Jew, then you had to convert – and that meant, you had to be circumcised. So when Paul is writing to the Galatians, he is not speaking of mere physical circumcision, but the process of converting to Judaism. This is why he is saying that if a person is circumcised, they have ‘fallen from grace’ – they were seeking another method to be acceptable to God – that of being declared a legal Jew. It is *that* issue against which Paul speaks.

So where does that leave the issue of circumcision for Gentile believers? Physical circumcision was a sign to Abraham for his physical descendants; it is still a sign today for ethic Jews. However, my view (and I know it will not be accepted by everyone) is that Gentile believers do *not* need to be circumcised physically – we have actually been circumcised because of our faith: ‘It was in union with him [Messiah] that you [writing to a Gentile population] were circumcised with a circumcision not done by human hands, but accomplished by stripping away the old nature’s control over the body. In this circumcision done by the Messiah, you were buried along with him by being [baptised]…You were dead because of your sins, that is, because of your ‘foreskin’, your old nature’ (Colossians 2v11-13). The Berean Study Bible translates these verses: “And you have been made complete in Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. In Him you were also circumcised in the putting off of your sinful nature, with the circumcision performed by Christ and not by human hands. And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.”

In Romans 2, Paul makes further commentary on the necessity of physical circumcision: ‘True circumcision is not only external and physical. On the contrary, the real Jew is one inwardly; and true circumcision is of the heart, spiritual not literal’ (Romans 2v28-29).

This was not some new teaching that Paul dreamt up. Jeremiah speaks of those who are ‘circumcised yet uncircumcised’ (Jeremiah 9v25). He can only be speaking of those who have been circumcised physically, yet are not ‘real Jews’ as Paul put it. Furthermore, Jeremiah also speaks of circumcising the heart: ‘Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskins of your heart’ (Jeremiah 4v4).

On what basis, what authority, was Jeremiah (and later Paul) able to say these things? In Deuteronomy 30v6 we have the mention of circumcision of the heart being done not by human hands: ‘Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.’ So we can see that God predicted a time when He Himself would circumcise the heart, of which physical circumcision was a symbol. Paul in Romans, Colossians and Galatians was simply expounding on an already existent theme and declaring that the time had arrived when the prophecy of Deuteronomy 30 was being fulfilled.

Can a Gentile who becomes a believer in Israel’s Messiah go ahead and be circumcised simply because they want to and wish to be obedient to God? There is nothing actually stopping a person from doing so, but I do not believe it is a requirement. Also such a person needs to examine their motives very carefully. It is tempting to think that if God is the God of the Jews, then we really ought to be Jews – and that means being circumcised. But the scriptures tell us that faith is sufficient. With faith, we are circumcised in our heart. If we seek to become ‘more Jewish’, then are we, as the Galatians were in danger of doing, making an addition to the gospel itself? Are we saying we need to be ethnic Jews or at least legal Jews (ie Jews by conversion/proselytisation) in order to be accepted by God? If so, then we are in danger of substituting ‘another gospel’ and ‘falling from grace’. We are saved by grace, not because we are physically circumcised: ‘if the uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the torah, wont his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?’ (Romans 2v26).