Romans 2:25-29 The Key To Holiness
Besides the Jewish context, the Holy Spirit has used this text to demonstrate a larger point as well. The words circumcision and Jew point to larger things, circumcision meaning your system, your profession, your creed, and Jew meaning your place, your status, and your relationship to God. Circumcision described the whole Jewish system of belief and practice. When Paul says “Jew”, it is those who have a right relationship with God. The Jews thought they were by their birth, their customs, religious system, and their history, and Paul says these are good and right things, but they are forfeited by transgressing the covenant.
He gets to the point of saying only the Spirit can help us. He is showing us the seeds of where he is going. From 1:16 we saw the power of God for salvation, the gospel, and we have since seen that all are under the judgment of God and in need of the gospel. Paul will continue in chapter 3 using OT scripture to back up what he had been saying, but here he gives us a glimpse of hope. Hebrews 12:14 says without holiness we will not see God, but we can have holiness, we can have a right standing with God, we can be what Paul calls true Jews, there is a way, and the Spirit of God is involved in it. For non-believers this will help explain what we mean when we say that you must be holy, and that we are holy although our lives don’t always show it.
He is also planting the seed idea that you cannot make a decision for God, not in truth, not in saving way, without the help of the Holy Spirit. We begin to see how God has orchestrated the entire scenario, in order to bring about salvation from every nation, tribe, and tongue, and not just a physical people, but a spiritual one. Of course we do not know all of God’s sovereign plan from our standpoint as individuals, we are only told to trust and obey. Men are told to order their lives according to God's commands and not according to their subjective sense of His secret, sovereign decrees. God has a plan, and He is working it out, our job is to believe. He has shown us that all have broken the Law, and He will move on to the fact that Jesus paid the ticket for His people, and His people are not simply the physical descendants of Abraham, though some are.
The Jews had the advantages but some people have all the advantages and they don’t take advantage of them. When it comes right down to it, it isn’t pedigree it is performance. Similarly we have some who didn’t have any advantages at all but they still achieved a level of performance that put them above those who had it all but could do nothing with it. The ones who are truly skilled and devoted to their craft will be seen as such over the course of time. The pretenders will fade, and the performers will flourish.
But of course that is only a parallel to what we are talking about, and in the spiritual realm, no one is a true performer, we are all pretenders, only Jesus has performed to the level of perfection. Paul is telling us that we don’t have a performance driven faith, and it never really was, which is what Paul will get into when he starts discussing Abraham in chapter 4.
Paul is using a long drawn out case to prove that you don’t have what it takes, no one in history has had what it takes, and even the people God called out to be His, and gave favor to, and gave a system that pointed to His holiness, and an understanding of who He actually is, and gave prophets, and they saw signs and wonders, even these people haven’t had what it takes. What it takes is the Spirit of God to circumcise your heart.
Vs.25 – Your pedigree is of value if your performance matches it, you start out ahead but if you don’t keep with it, it is of no good. The Jews started out ahead, but they couldn’t keep up, of course no one can, that is the point. Your birthright is of value if you act in accordance with it, but your ritual and your practice is not enough because you have changed the Law into something you can manage. James 2:10 / Matthew 5:17-20 (48) – scary but we have a Savior.
Vs.26-27 – Paul is telling Jew and Gentile that if a man keeps the Law it will be as if he was circumcised, and if he fulfills the Law his testimony will stand in judgment of those who have not. Why the point about Gentiles becoming Jews? Paul brings up the issue of Gentiles becoming Jews to help the Jews see that they really have misread their Bibles and really do need salvation by grace through faith, the same as the Gentiles who are inheriting the very promises they thought belonged only to Jews (Ephesians 2:11-19). So in both verses 26 and 27, Paul pictures some Gentiles really being part of God's people and being saved from judgment, while some natural-born Jews are judged and perish at the judgment day. This underlines the need of Jews not to presume upon their privileged place as Jews. They are sinners like everyone else and liable to judgment. Even in the OT, and before Paul’s time, we see that true circumcision is of the heart (Leviticus 26:41 / Jeremiah 9:26 / Ezekiel 44:7,9 / Acts 7:51).
Looking at the Greek words used we see that doing the Law meant doing it all the way.
Vs. 25 (obey – ESV / keep – KJV)
Vs.26 (keep (s) – both)
Vs.27 (keep – ESV / fulfill – KLV) (stronger word here, fulfill, complete)
25-27 – you practice the Law as a habit you keep doing it continually and you finish it up – only Christ has done this all the way.
This brings up an important question –
Are you kept by God or are you keeping the Law (1 Peter 1:4-5 / Galatians 3:8-14)?
Vs.28-29 – the Holy Spirit makes uncircumcised Gentiles into circumcised Jews, namely, by circumcising their hearts. Circumcision is an internal change of heart, not an external change of the sexual organ. When he contrasts "letter" and "Spirit", he means that the Jews had been experiencing the Law at the external level ("letter"). But the Law called for an internal change produced by the Spirit, even if the Law itself couldn't produce that change (Romans 8:3-4).
Well, all of this shows that Paul has Christians in mind, because this is the way he talks about Christian conversion. 2 Corinthians 3:5-6 / Ezekiel 36:37b: (see also Ezekiel 11:19-20) / 1 Corinthians 7:19 / Galatians 5:6, 6:12-17 / Revelation 2:9, 3:9.
A gentile who keeps the Law will be considered as a true Jew, a true Jew is one who fulfills the Law, of course no one had, no one did, and no one will, the Law is meant to bring us to Christ, who fulfilled the Law for us. Then we, having received the Spirit by faith, are circumcised in our hearts, we receive the benefit of Christ having fulfilled the Law for us, we are made a true Jew, we inherit the blessings and promises of Abraham, and we inherit the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. Now our Law is spiritual, and Paul said it fulfilled in this one word (Galatians 5:14).
Holiness starts in the heart not in the hands. When you try an do the law without the Spirit all you are doing is the external ritual, a set of do’s and don’ts, as we saw Christ in Matthew 5 points out the fallacy of this thinking, and James 2:10 echoes this. Without the Spirit we either reject the Law of God out of hand, or we change it into something we can manage. And in either case we lose, and the Law condemns us: you can become a transgressor of the Law by rejecting it or by trying to keep it in your own strength. Paul calls the law minus the Spirit: "letter." (2 Corinthians 3:6).
Deuteronomy 10:16 – So the point is that a person is a true Jew, a true part of God's redeemed people, if he fulfills the Law, that is, if his heart is circumcised by the Spirit to love God (Deuteronomy 30:6) That's what Paul is talking about here, and you don't have to be a natural-born Jew for it to happen to you. Circumcising our heart to love the Lord (Deuteronomy 30:6) writing the Law of God on our heart (Jeremiah 31:33) freeing us from our need for the praise of man (Romans 2:29). All of this is what Christ obtained for us when he shed his blood to seal the new covenant (Luke 20:22 / Hebrews 13:20).
In Philippians 3:3, Paul points to the truth that the true Israel are the ones who are circumcised in their hearts (Romans 4:12 / Romans 9:6-8 / Colossians 2:11), and these are they who worship in Sprit (John 4:24). Let us realize that God created individual taste and culture, and that music style, etc., isn’t what is important, but the substance of our devotion and faith towards Him is. Paul was saying and is saying that we must not place our faith in the wrong thing; they had placed in what God had given not in God Himself. This is part of what Paul means by having no confidence in the flesh, our confidence in external rituals, which Jesus has done away with.
Ritual such as circumcision is obviously not worshipping in the Spirit, and worshipping God in the Spirit does not mean using spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 4:6-7) or a way of doing things, it is a way of not doing things in a sense. It is worship aided by the Spirit, yes, but it means heart matters, not outward show. This Bible condemns ritualism and going through the motions.
Are you just going through the motions? You can be coming to church, you could have been baptized, you could be taking communion, involved in projects, giving regularly, doing the Bible reading plan, and more. You can be doing all this and God still not have your heart. None of this is bad, it is good, we are supposed to do these things, but these things are not what saves us, these things are not what give us a right standing with God, these things are not what secure the blessings of God on our life, what God wants is your HEART!
Christianity is a heart religion. It isn’t if you give Him your hands He will move your heart it is that if you give him your heart He will move your hands. Let me now give you a summary of chapter two using our sermon titles, to put it all in perspective for you. Others may be worthy of judgment, but so are you, we have the ultimate issue before us, and there are no secrets before God, so don’t fool yourself, the key to holiness is the heart not the hands. However, we have seen repeatedly that Man left to himself can never climb his way out of his own heart. So the answer to the ultimate issue doesn’t lie within us, but within God. That is the gospel, that God has done what is necessary for us to be in right standing with Him, all we need to do is to give Him our heart. You can’t change your own heart but you can have a change of heart. Is God tugging at your heart today? Be holy, be a true Jew. Set yourself apart, let God have your heart.
He gets to the point of saying only the Spirit can help us. He is showing us the seeds of where he is going. From 1:16 we saw the power of God for salvation, the gospel, and we have since seen that all are under the judgment of God and in need of the gospel. Paul will continue in chapter 3 using OT scripture to back up what he had been saying, but here he gives us a glimpse of hope. Hebrews 12:14 says without holiness we will not see God, but we can have holiness, we can have a right standing with God, we can be what Paul calls true Jews, there is a way, and the Spirit of God is involved in it. For non-believers this will help explain what we mean when we say that you must be holy, and that we are holy although our lives don’t always show it.
He is also planting the seed idea that you cannot make a decision for God, not in truth, not in saving way, without the help of the Holy Spirit. We begin to see how God has orchestrated the entire scenario, in order to bring about salvation from every nation, tribe, and tongue, and not just a physical people, but a spiritual one. Of course we do not know all of God’s sovereign plan from our standpoint as individuals, we are only told to trust and obey. Men are told to order their lives according to God's commands and not according to their subjective sense of His secret, sovereign decrees. God has a plan, and He is working it out, our job is to believe. He has shown us that all have broken the Law, and He will move on to the fact that Jesus paid the ticket for His people, and His people are not simply the physical descendants of Abraham, though some are.
The Jews had the advantages but some people have all the advantages and they don’t take advantage of them. When it comes right down to it, it isn’t pedigree it is performance. Similarly we have some who didn’t have any advantages at all but they still achieved a level of performance that put them above those who had it all but could do nothing with it. The ones who are truly skilled and devoted to their craft will be seen as such over the course of time. The pretenders will fade, and the performers will flourish.
But of course that is only a parallel to what we are talking about, and in the spiritual realm, no one is a true performer, we are all pretenders, only Jesus has performed to the level of perfection. Paul is telling us that we don’t have a performance driven faith, and it never really was, which is what Paul will get into when he starts discussing Abraham in chapter 4.
Paul is using a long drawn out case to prove that you don’t have what it takes, no one in history has had what it takes, and even the people God called out to be His, and gave favor to, and gave a system that pointed to His holiness, and an understanding of who He actually is, and gave prophets, and they saw signs and wonders, even these people haven’t had what it takes. What it takes is the Spirit of God to circumcise your heart.
Vs.25 – Your pedigree is of value if your performance matches it, you start out ahead but if you don’t keep with it, it is of no good. The Jews started out ahead, but they couldn’t keep up, of course no one can, that is the point. Your birthright is of value if you act in accordance with it, but your ritual and your practice is not enough because you have changed the Law into something you can manage. James 2:10 / Matthew 5:17-20 (48) – scary but we have a Savior.
Vs.26-27 – Paul is telling Jew and Gentile that if a man keeps the Law it will be as if he was circumcised, and if he fulfills the Law his testimony will stand in judgment of those who have not. Why the point about Gentiles becoming Jews? Paul brings up the issue of Gentiles becoming Jews to help the Jews see that they really have misread their Bibles and really do need salvation by grace through faith, the same as the Gentiles who are inheriting the very promises they thought belonged only to Jews (Ephesians 2:11-19). So in both verses 26 and 27, Paul pictures some Gentiles really being part of God's people and being saved from judgment, while some natural-born Jews are judged and perish at the judgment day. This underlines the need of Jews not to presume upon their privileged place as Jews. They are sinners like everyone else and liable to judgment. Even in the OT, and before Paul’s time, we see that true circumcision is of the heart (Leviticus 26:41 / Jeremiah 9:26 / Ezekiel 44:7,9 / Acts 7:51).
Looking at the Greek words used we see that doing the Law meant doing it all the way.
Vs. 25 (obey – ESV / keep – KJV)
Vs.26 (keep (s) – both)
Vs.27 (keep – ESV / fulfill – KLV) (stronger word here, fulfill, complete)
25-27 – you practice the Law as a habit you keep doing it continually and you finish it up – only Christ has done this all the way.
This brings up an important question –
Are you kept by God or are you keeping the Law (1 Peter 1:4-5 / Galatians 3:8-14)?
Vs.28-29 – the Holy Spirit makes uncircumcised Gentiles into circumcised Jews, namely, by circumcising their hearts. Circumcision is an internal change of heart, not an external change of the sexual organ. When he contrasts "letter" and "Spirit", he means that the Jews had been experiencing the Law at the external level ("letter"). But the Law called for an internal change produced by the Spirit, even if the Law itself couldn't produce that change (Romans 8:3-4).
Well, all of this shows that Paul has Christians in mind, because this is the way he talks about Christian conversion. 2 Corinthians 3:5-6 / Ezekiel 36:37b: (see also Ezekiel 11:19-20) / 1 Corinthians 7:19 / Galatians 5:6, 6:12-17 / Revelation 2:9, 3:9.
A gentile who keeps the Law will be considered as a true Jew, a true Jew is one who fulfills the Law, of course no one had, no one did, and no one will, the Law is meant to bring us to Christ, who fulfilled the Law for us. Then we, having received the Spirit by faith, are circumcised in our hearts, we receive the benefit of Christ having fulfilled the Law for us, we are made a true Jew, we inherit the blessings and promises of Abraham, and we inherit the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. Now our Law is spiritual, and Paul said it fulfilled in this one word (Galatians 5:14).
Holiness starts in the heart not in the hands. When you try an do the law without the Spirit all you are doing is the external ritual, a set of do’s and don’ts, as we saw Christ in Matthew 5 points out the fallacy of this thinking, and James 2:10 echoes this. Without the Spirit we either reject the Law of God out of hand, or we change it into something we can manage. And in either case we lose, and the Law condemns us: you can become a transgressor of the Law by rejecting it or by trying to keep it in your own strength. Paul calls the law minus the Spirit: "letter." (2 Corinthians 3:6).
Deuteronomy 10:16 – So the point is that a person is a true Jew, a true part of God's redeemed people, if he fulfills the Law, that is, if his heart is circumcised by the Spirit to love God (Deuteronomy 30:6) That's what Paul is talking about here, and you don't have to be a natural-born Jew for it to happen to you. Circumcising our heart to love the Lord (Deuteronomy 30:6) writing the Law of God on our heart (Jeremiah 31:33) freeing us from our need for the praise of man (Romans 2:29). All of this is what Christ obtained for us when he shed his blood to seal the new covenant (Luke 20:22 / Hebrews 13:20).
In Philippians 3:3, Paul points to the truth that the true Israel are the ones who are circumcised in their hearts (Romans 4:12 / Romans 9:6-8 / Colossians 2:11), and these are they who worship in Sprit (John 4:24). Let us realize that God created individual taste and culture, and that music style, etc., isn’t what is important, but the substance of our devotion and faith towards Him is. Paul was saying and is saying that we must not place our faith in the wrong thing; they had placed in what God had given not in God Himself. This is part of what Paul means by having no confidence in the flesh, our confidence in external rituals, which Jesus has done away with.
Ritual such as circumcision is obviously not worshipping in the Spirit, and worshipping God in the Spirit does not mean using spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 4:6-7) or a way of doing things, it is a way of not doing things in a sense. It is worship aided by the Spirit, yes, but it means heart matters, not outward show. This Bible condemns ritualism and going through the motions.
Are you just going through the motions? You can be coming to church, you could have been baptized, you could be taking communion, involved in projects, giving regularly, doing the Bible reading plan, and more. You can be doing all this and God still not have your heart. None of this is bad, it is good, we are supposed to do these things, but these things are not what saves us, these things are not what give us a right standing with God, these things are not what secure the blessings of God on our life, what God wants is your HEART!
Christianity is a heart religion. It isn’t if you give Him your hands He will move your heart it is that if you give him your heart He will move your hands. Let me now give you a summary of chapter two using our sermon titles, to put it all in perspective for you. Others may be worthy of judgment, but so are you, we have the ultimate issue before us, and there are no secrets before God, so don’t fool yourself, the key to holiness is the heart not the hands. However, we have seen repeatedly that Man left to himself can never climb his way out of his own heart. So the answer to the ultimate issue doesn’t lie within us, but within God. That is the gospel, that God has done what is necessary for us to be in right standing with Him, all we need to do is to give Him our heart. You can’t change your own heart but you can have a change of heart. Is God tugging at your heart today? Be holy, be a true Jew. Set yourself apart, let God have your heart.
6 comments:
All the Riverside (my church) people get to study ahead this week, as this is the sermon I am preaching tomorrow, January 14, 2007...
You have really gotten to the "heart" of the matter. Great sermon, Bro.
Thanks, Garry...
You need a heart transplant...to be right with God....let Him be the Great Physician...doctor's orders...
Hey,593, I see you found your header. Things were just a hoping this morning huh... well, for Riverside anyhow. Blessing to yours.
H-O-P-P-I-N-G!
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