A Matter of the Heart or a Matter of Lineage?

Paul ends Romans 2 with a strong and convincing argument that relying on outward culturally Jewish rituals to identify yourself as a child of God only serves to blaspheme his divine name among those who don’t know him when you break his law. He says that true circumcision which identifies you as part of God’s family is one that involves cutting away the sordid parts of your inner being. This “circumcision of the heart” results in new motives, new passions, a new mind, a new will, new desires, and a renewal of many other parts of your inner being. In other words, circumcision of the unseemly parts of an important male appendage is grossly inferior to a mental and spiritual circumcision of the heart. It's so inferior, according to Paul, that not even a Jew’s genetic lineage in conjunction with Jewish circumcision counted as highly as a Gentile’s circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:14-16, Romans 2:28-29) Paul’s argument would, no doubt, have been controversial and difficult to understand to any Jewish person connected to the religious elites. Paul anticipated that potential rejection of his argument by preemptively asking their question for them at the beginning of Romans 3.

So then, Paul asked, what good is being Jewish, and what value is there in ritual circumcision? He answers that question by acknowledging that both hold very great value. The value to the Jew is that his people have been entrusted with the oracles of God (Romans 3:2). This is a powerful claim Paul makes to endorse the historical Jewish role in God’s plan.  He is arguing that God effectively provided his actual supernatural words to both a genetic and national lineage of people who arose from Abraham and Sarah. Therefore, cultural circumcision identifies a Jew with the group of people who received that word, preserved it in scripture, encoded its truths into their culture, and curated the entrance of the Messiah who would eventually save all of humanity. The faith building wealth of knowledge to that people is astonishingly great. But one’s genetic or national Jewishness was never a sole guarantee of God’s favor or salvation (Isaiah 55:6-7, Romans 9:6-7, Galatians 3:6-9). 

The person who is a true child of God is the one who exercises the faith  that God has provided, and who is willing to trust God for salvation, and to love him with everything. It is the kind of person who is able to see his or her own sin, to recognize God as wholly good and wholly true, to see that all sin is against God, and that God’s words are always right (Psalm 51:4b, Romans 3:4b). 

Membership in the family of God is a matter of faith, trust, allegiance, and a circumcised heart. It is never a matter of outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7).