“Whatever happens, my dear brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. I never get tired of telling you these things, and I do it to safeguard your faith. Watch out for those dogs, those people who do evil, those mutilators who say you must be circumcised to be saved. For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort, though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!”
Circumcision is a big deal in the Bible. It all goes back to Genesis 17 when God made a promise to Abraham. At that moment, God chose Abraham and his descendants to be his special people. They would be set apart from all the other people groups on earth. In the ancient world, that meant that Abraham would worship a very different God than the other gods in the cultures around him. As a sign of that special relationship, God told Abraham to be circumcised and to have all males circumcised just after birth. Any male who was not circumcised would be excluded from God’s promise.
So why is Paul saying here that evil mutilators are pushing circumcision to be saved. Isn’t that the exact system God set up? Jesus seemingly came and disrupted a system that was thousands of years old and established by God himself. Now worshiping the Holy Spirit reveals who is “truly circumcised”? You are either circumcised or you aren’t. And what does any of this mean for us today, particularly for those of us who are women?
It’s true that God set up a system of circumcision as a sign of his promise with Abraham and Israel. But that’s all it was ever supposed to be: a sign. A reflection of a deeper reality. Circumcision wasn’t the saving grace. It was God’s love and his heart for humanity that held that promise in place. The Jewish teachers who were preaching salvation by circumcision had missed the whole point. Kind of like focusing on the letter of the law rather than the spirit. In the Old Testament, God required blood and sacrifice to atone for sin. In the New Testament, God offered the permanent and everlasting blood of Jesus as a sacrifice to atone for sin. Death could not be overcome without an exchange — a payment of death. God ripped himself apart, Father from Son, to seal the promise of salvation. You may see quite easily how your own effort is really ridiculous compared to that. Jesus is the only hope for men, women, and people of all nations.