Abraham's warring children
This week's study is on Romans 4:6-12:
These are the sort of verses you don't appreciate the first couple times you read the Bible. Speaking from personal experience, the first time through you're usually looking for stories of cool miracles and verses that tell other people not to do the sorts of things that annoy you. But then you have verses like these that help to bring peace to the different warring narratives in the Bible, reconciling the Old Testament law with the New Testament love. A good chunk of what the Apostle Paul writes tries to deal with tying these two things together and showing how love is better than legalism.
Paul himself started off in the Old Testament. He was famous for basically being a Jewish version of a Taliban leader, dragging people out of their homes and having them imprisoned or executed for what he felt was heresy. But then God knocked him off his high horse and he discovered Jesus and his new deal for mankind. So that brings him into the New Testament and makes him kind of a bridge between them both.
The Jewish Christians at the time were still culturally rooted in the Old Testament law. They circumcised their children, went to the synagogue, ate kosher, etc. When people became Christians who weren't originally Jewish, they tried to impose the Jewish customs on them, making the men get circumcised as adults (ouch!) asking people to stick to the dietary restrictions they were keeping, and so on.
Believe it or not, there are still people like this nowadays. I'm not talking about Christians who play at Jewish customs in the same way that a coffee snob might roast his own beans in order to feel more connected to the process. I'm talking about proselytisers who tell other Christians that Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough for them and that they have to start wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls and give up pork and keep the oven on during Sabbath. Imagine that coffee snob bugging customers at Starbucks, telling them their coffee is spoiled, sowing doubt as to the age of the beans or the quality of the water, and telling them they're making themselves sick if they don't roast their own beans. He'd get kicked out, right? That's the sort of conflict that was happening in Paul's day.
The Jewish Christians were claiming that they had an uninterrupted lineage back to Abraham, and used that to try to convince people that they would lose God's blessing if they abandoned keeping the Old Testament law. Paul turns that around to show that their claim doesn't hold up. He shows that the point where God declared Abraham to be righteous was before he had gotten circumcised. So, if circumcision was necessary for righteousness, God would have waited until after he had been circumcised. (As if God is going to say "I wish I could love you, but I can't until you get this surgical procedure done to make yourself acceptable to me.")
Because circumcision was a key part of the Jewish law, key enough for Paul to be able to refer to the law-keepers as "the circumcision" and have people know what he meant, his example disarms the whole argument that God's promise of blessing depends on keeping the Old Testament law. Like literally the guy they point to as the most righteous man in history during his time was uncircumcised when he was awarded the title. So while the circumcised believers can point to having something in common with Abraham due to having been circumcised, the uncircumcised believers have a tie to Abraham for having believed God's promise despite the difficulties surrounding it. Much as it is difficult for a childless man to believe God will produce a nation from his descendants, it is difficult for a dirty sinful man to believe that he will be cherished and accepted for eternity and avoid paying the cost of his sin. Circumcision is difficult, but so is faith.
As if Paul hadn't already won the point by taking their Abraham argument, spinning it over his head, and slamming it down like a WWE wrestling move, he uses King David's words like the wrestler's folding chair to the head to drive his point home. “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the one against whom the Lord will never count sin.” The other big name in Old Testament righteous guys has just weighed in on Paul's team now too! The Old Testament proselytes are standing friendless like chumps.
Circumcision (and the Old Testament law) isn't the source of their blessing and of Abraham's promise. Faith is. In believing Jesus that your sins are forgiven, you are every bit as much a part of the story arc of righteousness and blessing as a guy who got circumcised by the village rabbi. Circumcision is obsolete now that a better deal is on the table. There are no Jews and non-Jews who need to be at war with each other over the inheritance. There are only those with faith for whom there is enough to share.
So even David himself speaks regarding the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;
blessed is the one against whom the Lord will never count sin.”
Is this blessedness then for the circumcision or also for the uncircumcision? For we say, “faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness.” How then was it credited to him? Was he circumcised at the time, or not? No, he was not circumcised but uncircumcised! And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised, so that he would become the father of all those who believe but have never been circumcised, that they too could have righteousness credited to them. And he is also the father of the circumcised, who are not only circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham possessed when he was still uncircumcised.
These are the sort of verses you don't appreciate the first couple times you read the Bible. Speaking from personal experience, the first time through you're usually looking for stories of cool miracles and verses that tell other people not to do the sorts of things that annoy you. But then you have verses like these that help to bring peace to the different warring narratives in the Bible, reconciling the Old Testament law with the New Testament love. A good chunk of what the Apostle Paul writes tries to deal with tying these two things together and showing how love is better than legalism.
Paul himself started off in the Old Testament. He was famous for basically being a Jewish version of a Taliban leader, dragging people out of their homes and having them imprisoned or executed for what he felt was heresy. But then God knocked him off his high horse and he discovered Jesus and his new deal for mankind. So that brings him into the New Testament and makes him kind of a bridge between them both.
The Jewish Christians at the time were still culturally rooted in the Old Testament law. They circumcised their children, went to the synagogue, ate kosher, etc. When people became Christians who weren't originally Jewish, they tried to impose the Jewish customs on them, making the men get circumcised as adults (ouch!) asking people to stick to the dietary restrictions they were keeping, and so on.
Believe it or not, there are still people like this nowadays. I'm not talking about Christians who play at Jewish customs in the same way that a coffee snob might roast his own beans in order to feel more connected to the process. I'm talking about proselytisers who tell other Christians that Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough for them and that they have to start wearing yarmulkes and prayer shawls and give up pork and keep the oven on during Sabbath. Imagine that coffee snob bugging customers at Starbucks, telling them their coffee is spoiled, sowing doubt as to the age of the beans or the quality of the water, and telling them they're making themselves sick if they don't roast their own beans. He'd get kicked out, right? That's the sort of conflict that was happening in Paul's day.
The Jewish Christians were claiming that they had an uninterrupted lineage back to Abraham, and used that to try to convince people that they would lose God's blessing if they abandoned keeping the Old Testament law. Paul turns that around to show that their claim doesn't hold up. He shows that the point where God declared Abraham to be righteous was before he had gotten circumcised. So, if circumcision was necessary for righteousness, God would have waited until after he had been circumcised. (As if God is going to say "I wish I could love you, but I can't until you get this surgical procedure done to make yourself acceptable to me.")
Because circumcision was a key part of the Jewish law, key enough for Paul to be able to refer to the law-keepers as "the circumcision" and have people know what he meant, his example disarms the whole argument that God's promise of blessing depends on keeping the Old Testament law. Like literally the guy they point to as the most righteous man in history during his time was uncircumcised when he was awarded the title. So while the circumcised believers can point to having something in common with Abraham due to having been circumcised, the uncircumcised believers have a tie to Abraham for having believed God's promise despite the difficulties surrounding it. Much as it is difficult for a childless man to believe God will produce a nation from his descendants, it is difficult for a dirty sinful man to believe that he will be cherished and accepted for eternity and avoid paying the cost of his sin. Circumcision is difficult, but so is faith.
As if Paul hadn't already won the point by taking their Abraham argument, spinning it over his head, and slamming it down like a WWE wrestling move, he uses King David's words like the wrestler's folding chair to the head to drive his point home. “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the one against whom the Lord will never count sin.” The other big name in Old Testament righteous guys has just weighed in on Paul's team now too! The Old Testament proselytes are standing friendless like chumps.
Circumcision (and the Old Testament law) isn't the source of their blessing and of Abraham's promise. Faith is. In believing Jesus that your sins are forgiven, you are every bit as much a part of the story arc of righteousness and blessing as a guy who got circumcised by the village rabbi. Circumcision is obsolete now that a better deal is on the table. There are no Jews and non-Jews who need to be at war with each other over the inheritance. There are only those with faith for whom there is enough to share.
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