“Circumcision benefits you if you observe the law, but if you are a lawbreaker, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So if an uncircumcised man keeps the law’s requirements, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? A man who is physically uncircumcised, but who keeps the law, will judge you who are a lawbreaker in spite of having the letter of the law and circumcision. For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh. On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart — by the Spirit, not the letter. That person’s praise is not from people but from God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What is it that makes you who you are? Most people have some sort of identity that they count as defining of them. This identity is often at least somewhat connected to the tribe they consider themselves to be a part of. Actually, our tribal association very often plays a huge role in defining who we are. Although some people break from the tribe they were born into in order to intentionally join another one, most people stay at least mentally connected with the tribe they were born into throughout their life. We literally cannot understand ourselves apart from the framework our tribe provides…even if we don’t properly understand what that framework (i.e., worldview) is. If someone were to come along and tell you that everything you thought you knew about your tribe was wrong, to say this revelation would be disorienting (assuming you even gave them the time of day) is likely a rather dramatic understatement. Well, that’s what Paul does here. Let’s talk about it and what it means for us.

Every generation has their hot button issues. They tend to change like the weather. Some come and go in cycles. Others stay for a while and then vanish like the morning fog, never to really be considered again. Things one generation fights over tooth and nail don’t even register for another generation.

In Paul’s day, one of the biggest issues in the church was whether or not a man had to be circumcised in order to become a follower of Jesus. (The issue obviously didn’t register for women, but in the bigger picture, that was one of the broken points of that culture as a whole. The church is what changed that.) That particular debate gets mentioned several times in Paul’s letters. He comes down rather emphatically on the side that circumcision is not necessary for a man to start following Jesus. In fact, he gets awfully close to saying that if a Gentile man who has started following Jesus gives into the pressure to get circumcised in order to “really” be a follower of Jesus, he’s actually not following Jesus anymore.

The reason circumcision was such a big deal was that all Jewish men were, while basically all Gentile men weren’t. Because Jesus was a Jew, and because circumcision was such a significant physical and cultural marker as far as defining who was a Jew and who wasn’t, Jews who had started following Jesus had a really, really hard time accepting that there could be Gentile men following Jesus who weren’t.

That second reason the circumcision debate was so significant in the early church deserves just another second’s worth of attention. Circumcision was what defined whether or not someone was a Jew – that is, whether or not they were part of God’s covenant with Abraham to form a people who would be especially His. Way back in Genesis 17 we read about God’s giving Abraham the sign of circumcision. All of his children throughout all generations were to be so marked as evidence that they were part of the covenant God made with him to make a great nation from his descendants. Of all the other things God gave His people to help mark them out as His, this was the one they actually kept consistently.

By the time of what we know as the first century, the mark of circumcision was the primary way of knowing whether or not a man was a Jew. Yes, there was the Law of Moses, but someone could give lip service to that and put on a bit of a show without actually believing in the God who gave it. But circumcision? Especially as an adult? That was a step most people weren’t going to fake just to infiltrate the Jewish people for deceptive purposes. If you were a Jew, you were circumcised. If you were circumcised and were committed to the Law of Moses, you were a Jew. It was that simple.

All of that provides context for what Paul is talking about here. He is basically challenging one of the longest and deepest held beliefs about what makes someone a Jew. Because the practice of circumcision had been elevated so high, in the hearts and minds of many people, the Law came second to it. As long as you had the sign of circumcision, even if you didn’t keep the Law with the commitment of, say, a Pharisee, you were still part of God’s people. You were covered by the covenant, and exempt from God’s judgment. Paul here directly challenges that idea.

If you had the sign of circumcision, that was fine, but if you didn’t pair that with adherence to God’s law, then all you had going for you was a little less skin to carry around than the person without circumcision. Beyond that, you weren’t any different from anyone else. On the other hand – and here’s where things would have gotten even harder for Paul’s audience – if someone had not been circumcised, but that person faithfully kept the Law, that person was going to be considered part of the covenant in spite of their uncircumcision. “A man who is physically uncircumcised, but who keeps the law, will judge you who are a lawbreaker in spite of having the letter of the law and circumcision.”

In v. 28, Paul lands on his point with both feet: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh. On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision of of the heart by the Spirit, not the letter.” Let me translate. Being a part of God’s covenant people is not something physical or ritual. It is a condition of the heart. That is, as Paul will unpack in the next chapter, it is a matter of faith and faithfulness. If someone is committed to God and His ways in his heart, then that person is a part of God’s people. Whatever the people around him might think, “that person’s praise is not from people but from God.” And that praise matters most.

Let’s bring all of this into our situation today and draw out some implications. There are certain things that a person needs to believe in order to be a follower of Jesus. Well, that’s too broad. There’s really only two things a person needs to believe in order to be a follower of Jesus. You need to believe that Jesus rose from the dead and that He is Lord. If you accept those two things, all the rest of the Christian faith and worldview is going to gradually fall into place. And, yes, there are points that people who have accepted those two things are going to debate, but these debates are over non-salvific issues, and so they ultimately don’t matter.

That being said, there are all kinds of things believers and churches add to being a follower of Jesus today without which, they’ll argue, you aren’t really a follower of Jesus. Every generation has had their own list of things. And, surprise, surprise, the things on these lists have always tended to be a reflection of what the culture of the church in those particular eras has valued or considered important.

Not all that long ago, church membership was on that list. Now, I am one of the biggest advocates of the idea that you won’t follow Jesus well if you aren’t part of a church. Being a part of a church does not make you a follower of Jesus, but if you aren’t an active part of a church, you’re probably not really following Jesus. That aside, being a follower of Jesus does not depend on church membership. (I know there’s a movement, especially within the Baptist church, that would disagree with me on that, but we can have that debate another time.) Salvation is determined by faith in Christ, not church membership.

That being said, culturally speaking, it used to be that if you were a member of a church, you were set with Jesus. That is, if you had your name on the membership roles of a church, you were a Christian. I remember in the past having someone who was an active and core member of my church come and tell me that so and so was a good Christian and a member of our church who needed to be looked after just like all the other members when I had never met the person. And I have been pastoring there for more than five years. And there wasn’t anything physically wrong with the person to prevent them from coming to church. They just didn’t come. In the mind of that person, church membership functioned like circumcision did in the minds of first century, Jewish background believers.

Let me state it again rather bluntly: church membership alone does not make someone a follower of Jesus. Membership in God’s kingdom is not like membership at Sam’s Club. Anybody can go through the motions to join a church just like anybody can purchase a membership at Sam’s. You can be a member at Sam’s, though, whether or not you ever actually shop there. Being a follower of Jesus, on the other hand, means actually, you know, following Him. It means keeping His command to love one another the way He loved us. It means accepting Him as Lord. Church membership is important, essential even, but without the faithfulness, it doesn’t matter. To go back to James’ argument, faith without works is dead.

Membership in God’s kingdom is not determined by what we do. It’s determined by whether or not we are willing to accept Him as Lord. Our acceptance is demonstrated by our actions that are consistent with our confession, but those actions themselves don’t make us His. To put this another way, it’s a matter of the heart first. It is a function of faith. And it only takes a little bit of faith to get started. He’ll help us grow from there.

So then, do you really believe that Jesus is Lord? If you do, your actions will bear out that belief. If you don’t, they’ll bear out that belief too. Either way, faith is the key.