In Romans 2:25-29 the Apostle Paul gets to the heart of the question of what it means to be right with God. He does so by making the point that it is not enough merely to be a Jew outwardly. A true child of God must be a Jew inwardly. More specifically, to be a true Jew one needs God’s Spirit to change him inwardly. Paul writes,
For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. 26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? 27 Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. 28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
Physical circumcision is useless if the one circumcised breaks God’s law. The Spirit is the one who works true circumcision and his work is internal and changes the heart. Robert Haldane says that “Paul here pursues the Jew into his last retreat, in which he imagined himself most secure” (Commentary on 2:25).
To be called a “Jew” and to have the sign of circumcision were points of pride and spiritual security for Jewish people. They had the name and bore the mark of belonging to God. But Paul shows them that this is not enough to be right with God. To be a real Jew they need to be born of God’s Spirit.
Circumcision is useless to the person who does not keep God’s commandments. It becomes “uncircumcision” (25). To understand Paul’s meaning we must remember that circumcision was given to the Jewish people as a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham & his offspring (as Genesis 17:9-14 makes clear). It marked the Jewish people as belonging to God
The act of physical circumcision, however, was never intended to be the sum and substance of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The covenant that circumcision signified called the Jews to live righteously before God. When He instructed Abraham about using circumcision as the sign of the covenant God said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1).
So, the sign is only significant if they faithfully live the way that God calls them to live. “But,” Paul says, “If you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision.” That would have been a shocking revelation to the typical Jew of Paul’s day. Such a person would be offended at the thought that he was not in God’s good favor. After all, he had the sign of the covenant! He was circumcised!
Paul’s point is that circumcision—or any outward religious activity or ritual—is useless to a person who does not keep God’s commandments. In addition to this, the apostle goes on to argue in vv. 26-27 that the uncircumcised person who keeps God’s commandments is welcomed by God.
An uncircumcised Gentile who “keeps the precepts of the law” will be right with God because he trusts the Lord, submits to His ways, follows His precepts, and orders his life according to God’s revealed will. He will “be regarded” (λογισθήσεται) as one of God’s people. That is, God will judge him as being properly circumcised—as being exactly what circumcision signifies, which is devoted wholly to the true God.
The person who is submissive to God, who trusts and obeys Him, will find acceptance from Him. This is exactly what Paul means in Philippians 3:3 when he writes, “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.”
In vv. 28-29 Paul wraps us his main point by showing that the person accepted by God obeys God from the heart because he has been born of God’s Spirit. In words that would have shocked first century practitioners of Judaism Paul explains what it means to be truly, properly circumcised, and what it means to be a true Jew.
He writes, “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter….” (28-29). Paul uses three antitheses to make his point.
First, he contrasts outward Jewishness to inward Jewishness. To be a Jew under the Old Covenant was to be outwardly part of God’s people. But not every member of that covenant was included among the genuine people of God. Rather, “only a remnant of them will be saved” (Romans 9:27). The reason for this is that “not all who descended from Israel belong to Israel” (Romans 9:6).
The Jew who “is one inwardly” has more than the mere name of God, he has an inward reality that makes him genuinely a child of God. Paul elaborates on this inner reality in the other two antitheses.
The true Jew has more than physical circumcision, he has circumcision as “a matter of the heart.” This inner work of heart circumcision was required even under the Old Covenant as the admonition of Deuteronomy 10:16 makes plain: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (see also Jeremiah 4:4). It is this inner work of God that makes a person a true child of God, a true Jew. It is this work that Moses promised God would do in Deuteronomy 30:6, “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”
Paul states exactly what this work is in the third antithesis—it is the inner circumcision of the heart “by the Spirit, not by the letter.” What Paul is talking about is the promise that God made through Ezekiel when He said, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
This is what makes a true child of God, a true Jew, and what constitutes true circumcision. The physical sign points to the inward reality without which, no one can be right with God. One of the main differences between the Old and New Covenants is that members of the latter all know the Lord, they all have circumcised hearts, they all have the internal work of the Spirit.
Or we could say, only members of the New Covenant are Jews inwardly.
