In your opinion, what is the absolute WORST SIN – the most damning satanic HERESY ever devised? There could be some general answers like “unbelief,” but I’m thinking about more specific things. Someone might point to today’s rampant sexual immorality or some sort of other addiction. Another might refer to evangelistic easy-believism – salvation without repentance. Obviously, there could be several answers. But my opinion is: the one thing that has sent more people to hell than any other is infant baptism. There have been millions of people whose faith is based on what their parents did to them when they were ignorant babies. Many have actually used their paedobaptism as an excuse for not personally trusting the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And one of the arguments used to support this heresy is the Old Testament practice of circumcision. The rite of circumcision brought Jewish babies into the covenant made with Abraham. And circumcision’s supposed replacement – infant baptism – is believed to bring people into the salvation of whatever church is doing the sprinkling. That is our theme this evening.
In verse 1 Paul says, “Let me repeat myself.” And then in verse 2 he says, “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.” By “dogs” he isn’t talking about Rottweilers, Dobermans, Pit Bulls and Shih-tzu puppies. He is speaking of immoral people, who do nothing but corrupt the hearts of people around them. By “evil workers” he refers to wicked people, who put their evil to work – physically and religiously. And by “concision” Paul refers primarily Jews, and Judaisers, who demand physical circumcision. Then to clarify the last clause, he adds, “For WE are the circumcision” – WE are the TRUE circumcision.
Trying to be as discrete as possible, let’s consider Paul’s declaration: “We are the circumcision.”
First, we have to ask: “To whom was Paul writing?”
He was writing to the church in Philippi – to the entire church, not just the bishops and deacons. And while he may have had THOSE people in mind, the Holy Spirit had OUR church in mind. That church was more like our church than the church in Jerusalem. The impact of this statement may have been somewhat different if this letter was addressed primarily to a bunch of Jewish Christians, but it wasn’t. Paul almost always began his ministry in the local Jewish synagogue, but it never remained there long. He moved on to preach the Jewish Messiah as the Gentile Saviour – redeemer of Jews and non-Jews alike. There wasn’t a church anywhere, begun under Paul’s ministry, which was made up primarily of Jews.
The majority of the members of the Philippian church were Gentiles and therefore not physically circumcised. Someone might accuse me of speculation when I say the Philippian jailor and his family were never circumcised. If there is any responsibility here on this subject, it belongs to the Judaisers to prove that they were. There aren’t many names mentioned in this epistle, but those that are, are not Hebrew but Greek. Furthermore, there were ladies in that church including Euodias and Syntyche – they were not circumcised. And, obviously, not even the Jewess, Lydia, was circumcised.
So when the Apostle said, “WE are the circumcision,” I think he was referring Christians in general – and specifically to the to the membership in Philippi – all of the membership. He was writing to the Romans who had been saved and who were added to the church, such as the jailor. He was thinking of the Greek and Macedonian members – another variety of Gentile. And he was referring to the women as well as the men.
It is not unreasonable to conclude that as those Christians were “the circumcision,” and therefore that we are too. Even though we have no Jewish saints among us, “We are the circumcision.” And even though we are thousands of miles from Philippi and centuries removed, “We are the circumcision.” And yes, you Christian ladies are as well.
Now, I suppose it is important to consider: “Against whom is Paul making this contrast?”
Who were these “concision” of verse 2? Did you know that others beside Jews circumcised their children in Paul’s day? And Muslims practice circumcision today. I don’t know how common it was, but the Egyptians had been circumcising for several centuries before Paul came along. And among others elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians had followed their lead. But there is no reason to think Paul was referring to anyone but the Jews in these verses.
However, there were those Jews, who professed to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, who demanded that Gentile believers had to be circumcised. They were convinced that God promised His blessings to Abraham. And since God gave him the covenant sign of circumcision, Gentile believers had to receive it as well. In a sense, they demanded that Gentile believers had to become Jewish converts. But this was only their opinion and not the command of God. The Epistle to the Galatian churches expressly deals with these people, whom we call “Judaisers.” They were evangelists of a false gospel. They didn’t want to bring people to Christ Jesus necessarily, but rather to proselytize Gentiles to Judaism.
Their religion was in many ways a forerunner of Catholicism and several other false religions. Sure they were drawing people away from their old idolatries, but it was into a new idolatry. They were making laws and ceremonies things to be trusted, rather than the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. They were legalists – Pharisees – lawyers in a religious sense. They were not ambassadors for Christ; they were ambassadors for their corrupted religion. And, I’ll come back to this in a moment, some of them would claim to be ambassadors for Abraham.
It was into their faces that Paul shouted, “WE are the circumcision” – NOT you.
And here is the point and our application: “What should characterize true circumcision?”
Adding to things Mathias said Sunday, Paul sets out three things which identify the people of God. “For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” Baptism is not the first thing on Paul’s list which identifies the circumcised – scriptural baptism or otherwise. In fact, baptism is not mentioned at all. The first characteristic of the child of God is not a photographic memory of “Strong’s Theology,” “Calvin’s Institutes” or “Gill’s Commentary.” The number one proof of someone’s salvation is not circumcision.
The first thing Paul mentions is “worship in the spirit.” Now please notice how those four words are printed in your King James Bible – “worship in the spirit.” The word “spirit” is not capitalized, meaning that it is referring to OUR spirit, NOT the Spirit of God. But there are other Bible versions – the RSV, ASV, ESV, ABC and XYZ – which capitalize “Spirit.” That is a purely arbitrary change, because the Greek text doesn’t call for it. But with that capitalization the message of the verse is completely changed.
The context of what Paul is saying is that the true saints worship God INWARDLY, not externally. Those who are God’s circumcision worship Him through prayer, joy, praise and inward peacefulness. They don’t worship by genuflecting, crossing their hearts and cutting tattoos of the cross on their arms. IF they worship through sacrificial giving, it is because they “first gave their own selves to the Lord… by the will of God” – II Corinthians 8:5. IF they serve God through evangelism, it is out of their love for the Lord, not because of some command. In fact, no matter what they do to worship their Lord and Saviour, it flows out of their heart before it reaches their hands or their lips.
What Paul is saying reflects perfectly what the Saviour said in John 4. (Please turn there) When the Lord Jesus was speaking with the woman of Samaria, she said in verse 20, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye (Jews) say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to pray.” Jesus replied in verse 4:23, “the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Notice how the word “spirit” is rendered throughout these two verses – When it is obviously referring to the Holy Spirit it is capitalized, but the rest of the time it is lower case. And interestingly, both the ESV, and ASV agree with the KJV in this regard. It is the human spirit. Those who are God’s circumcision worship God spiritually, not physically.
A few weeks ago, in our study of Genesis, we spent time considering God’s covenant with Abraham. Genesis 17:1 says, “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto Him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee…” Verse 9 – “And God said unto Abram, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee, Every man child among you shall be circumcised… He that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you.” This one of those things which the Jews took very seriously. As Paul will tell us later in this chapter, he was circumcised on the eighth day as God demanded. It wasn’t the seventh day or the ninth; it wasn’t “whenever” the way the Muslims do it. And for him it was a part of his perception of salvation – until the time when the Lord saved him.
Then he began to see that Abraham’s circumcision was only one of the many illustrations of salvation. Paul was given to know that there are physical children of Abraham, and there are spiritual children. And so he taught the Gentile believers in Galatia, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. It doesn’t matter if those people were circumcised Jews or idol worshiping heathen… Know therefore that they which are of FAITH, the same are the children of Abraham. So then they which be of FAITH are blessed with faithful Abraham” Galatians 3. It isn’t circumcision which ties people to Abraham; it is faith. Then to the Gentile believers in Rome Paul wrote in chapter 4 – Abraham “received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the FAITH which he had yet being uncircumcised; that he might be the father all them that BELIEVE, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also…” Salvation “is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law (the Jews), but that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all.” “Us all” – all of us who have come to God by faith, whether we are circumcised Jews or not. And to his Gentile friends in Colosse Paul wrote: “Ye are complete in (Christ)… in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made WITHOUT hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of CHRIST” – the spiritual circumcision which is performed by Christ.
The ministry of God in this spiritual circumcision should not have been something new to the Jews. As the life of Moses was coming to an end, the Lord used him to clarify many things to the new generation. In Deuteronomy 30:5 Moses said, “And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and He will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. And the LORD thy God will CIRCUMCISE thine HEART, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that mayest live.” It was in Christ Jesus that this blessing was to be fulfilled. And that spiritual circumcision would be shared with sinful Gentiles as well as sinful Jews.
We who are the true circumcision, rejoice in Christ Jesus, placing no confidence in the flesh. Those who are God’s people, have no confidence or trust in what a rabbi or surgeon might do to us when we are babies. And those who are spiritually circumcised place no trust in the water a fleshly priest declares to be holy. They don’t have to worry whether the man absolving them of sin is drunk or sober at the time. They don’t trust in the strength of their faith or in the depth of their repentance. Their worship isn’t dependent on how thorough their theology might be.
We who are God’s circumcision “rejoice in Christ Jesus.” In this particular case, the word “rejoice” comes across far too weakly to my weak mind. Twice as often as this Greek word is translated “rejoice,” it is rendered “boast.” And five times as often it is translated “to glory” or “to glorify.” “We are THE circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and GLORY in Christ Jesus.” Unlike the Judaising Jews, our glorying is in Christ – not Abraham. Our boasting is in the Lord – not the flesh. We testify to our relationship with God through the circumcision of our hearts not the circumcision of our flesh.
Going back to verse 2 – “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. Worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”