9 Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. 10 Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! 11 And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. 12 And he is then also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
Dig Deeper
One of the most hotly debated and contentious issues in American politics today, and there are plenty of contentious issues these days, is the degree and scope of the so-called doctrine of separation between church and state. The more liberal factions in society call for strict separation between church and state, although they usually limit that separation to Christianity. The more conservative aspects of society argue that the Constitution of the United States simply says that Congress is prohibited from making any law that prohibits religion in any way. So, from where does the appeal come of separation between church and state if not the Constitution? It is so accepted by most Americans today that a majority actually think it is in the Constitution, but those who support the doctrine and know that it is nowhere to be found in our country’s charter appeal to the writings of Thomas Jefferson. It was he, they correctly claim, that first penned a form of the phrase “separation between church and state.” He was, after all, the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and shouldn’t his thoughts on the topic hold great weight? That seems convincing until we look at the facts and realize that the Declaration, written 11 years previous to the Constitution, simply declared independence for the nation, it did not establish a government in any way. Further, Jefferson was in France when the Constitution was written, had nothing to do with its formation, and often pointed that out to people who asked him questions concerning it. Finally, the phrase about separation between church and state came from a private letter written to a church in which he was assuring them that there should always be a wall that protected the church from state interference and take over with no mention of keeping religion out of state affairs. When the facts are examined, it becomes obvious that Jefferson is not the correct founding father to appeal to in a debate over the proper role of religion in American government.
The Jews in Paul’s day also had a founding father to whom they appealed when questions concerning the law and religion came up. Their founding father was Abraham. It was he, they argued who had been given the covenant by God as well as the patriarch to whom the work of the law of circumcision had been given. If anyone wanted to be part of Abraham’s family, they needed to enter into the same way that Abraham did, by circumcision. That might sound convincing, and there were apparently many Jewish Christians who were going around convincing new Gentile Christian converts that they did not quite have the whole gospel because they needed to be circumcised to enter into Abraham’s covenant family and then follow the works of the law to distinguish themselves as the true people of God. Yes, that all sounds good, until one looks at the facts as Paul does in this passage. Was circumcision really needed to be fully demonstrated to be part of Abraham’s family? Were circumcision and the works of the law necessary to be justified as part of the covenant people of God? One need only look at Abraham for the answer. In this case, they were appealing to the right founding father but the wrong part of his life.
This is exactly the question that is naturally raised by Paul’s claim that the Old Testament had always pointed to God having a single family in whom sin would be dealt with and who would be enabled to keep in covenant with God. Is that blessedness, Paul asks frankly, only for the circumcised or for the uncircumcised? In other words, did God really mean it when he promised Abraham one family or was God now suddenly okay with the idea of having two families? Was the gospel, after all, going to create a class of Jewish Christians and a separate group of second-class Gentile Christians? This is the heart of the issue for Paul. We must remember that the primary theme of Romans is not about how Christians obtain salvation but about demonstrating that God is faithful to the covenant promises that he gave. Paul’s primary concern here is not with whether or not one can earn their salvation. Despite a general acceptance that this was the belief of ancient Judaism, it was not. Paul’s concern is with whether it is faith or law that demonstrate as a badge or uniform who the true people of God are. If it is the works of the law, that by their nature separate Jew from everyone else, then the gospel will do nothing but create two families of believers and force the Gentile family into taking action other than trusting in the life of Christ in order to be shown to be part of the family of God. If they are justified by faith, however, then God has been true to his promise to create one family. This is why Paul is so eager to show that from the very beginning, the evidence of being the covenant people, the people of promise, was faith, not the separating works of the law.
The Jews of Paul’s day knew well that the law had not come until the time of Moses, so they saw circumcision as the embodiment of the law in Abraham’s time. By becoming circumcised, they argued, Abraham was actually following an early form of the law even though it wasn’t written down yet. This is why he was allowed covenant status. But Paul is arguing something quite different. According to Paul, God made promises to Abraham and Abraham believed them and acted in obedience on those promises even when they weren’t in hand. It was that faith in God’s righteousness that allowed Abraham to enter into covenant with God. Circumcision was simply a seal or reminder of that faith (the law, as Paul states in Galatians 3 was a temporary measure that was given to keep Israel quarantined until the coming of the Messiah when the covenantal faith would be made available freely to all peoples through the life of the Messiah), inextricably linked to his faith at the time, no doubt, but it was not the source of covenant righteousness or faithfulness. In Genesis 17:11, God says that circumcision would serve as a sign of the covenant. Paul explains the meaning of that by saying that it was a “seal of righteousness.” Paul is not radically redefining what God had said but explaining it. This clearly demonstrates that the idea that righteousness was simply a state of moral goodness in Paul’s thinking, falls flat. It seems clear that Paul used the term “righteousness” in the same way that it was used in the Old Testament where it was used to refer to covenant faithfulness. Thus, circumcision was a sign of that justifying faith and faithfulness but not the condition of it.
Abraham believed that God would be faithful to his promises even when, after Isaac was born, God called on Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham was so fully convinced in the covenant faithfulness of God that he believed that if God called him to kill his unique, covenant bearing son, it was simply so that he could resurrect him (Heb. 11:17-19). Abraham didn’t just have faith, he had resurrection faith in God; the same kind of faith demanded of believers in the gospel. The gospel is, as Paul pointed out in Rom. 1:1-6, the declaration that sin and death have been defeated by the resurrection and made available in the life of Christ. Because Abraham was considered righteous (a faithful member of the covenant) due to his resurrection faith in the covenant-making God, he is the father of a covenant family that was, all along, by faith. This means that those who enter into the covenant family by dying to self and being baptized into the life of Christ (the only means given in the New Testament to enter into this family) are the spiritual children of the covenant family of Abraham. Paul is not merely using Abraham as an early example of someone who entered into the covenant by faith. He is demonstrating that the covenant family, going all the way back to the beginning, was a spiritual family and not an ethnic family. The law was good in that it kept Israel pure until the Messiah could come, but the law, because it kept Jew and Gentile separate, always worked against the ultimate purposes of the covenant itself.
But the problems in Rome were apparently not just Jewish Christians putting extra obligations onto Gentile Christians but also involved Gentile Christians impugning the point of continuing the mission of the gospel in the Jewish community. Why do that if the Jews were no longer the people of God? But Paul will have none of that argument either. Abraham is not just the father of the uncircumcised as though the Jews are now at a disadvantage. Jews are every bit as welcome into the covenant family of faith as the uncircumcised. Stepping into the life of the Messiah through resurrection faith is not something brand new for the Jew, says Paul. It is to follow in the footsteps of the path that Abraham walked down long ago. The resurrection of Christ, the preaching of the gospel, and the living the life of the Messiah through faith is not a brand new plan that God has unveiled. It is the culmination of the single plan through one family for the blessing of the whole world that God had given to Abraham and promised all along. In short, the gospel was God’s plan all along and it has now been fully revealed to the whole world.
Devotional Thought
How does it change your perspective on your Christian walk to view it as entry into a family rather than just a religion? How does that change the way that you interact with others in your church? How does it change the decisions that you make about your “personal” life when you view things in this way?
No comments:
Post a Comment