My Baptist Obstacles: Did Circumcision Come from a Works-Based Religion?

Continuity Over Replacement

The waterfall above shows water moving from one level of land to another, but the water is continuous – the same water. Some things are different about the Old and New Testaments, but salvation and grace are not part of those things. Salvation and Grace are a constant – a continuity. What does this have to do with baptism?

One thing that held me back from understanding baptism was my complete misunderstanding of the Old Testament – I misunderstood salvation, I misunderstood the reason for Jewish markers like the law and circumcision – I thought circumcision was part of a works based religion. So it was hard for me to hear any connections between baptism and circumcision. But I was wrong.

This week I will discuss the gracious, non-works based salvation of the Old Testament. Next week I will discuss the salvation of Gentiles in the Old Testament and the reason circumcision was only for Jews.

So let’s find out whether circumcision came from a works based religion. Without further ado, let’s back up to my late childhood:

One year when I was youngish, after my father pen-marked my height in the paint of a hall doorway, I remember having a child’s epiphany. I remember working over a specific deep though while I looked at the ink line on the jamb up close to my eyes. It wasn’t about ink or height; it was about Christians being the true Jews. I ran to tell my parents: Jesus was a Jew. God had “started” Christianity from the truest teacher of the Jews – Jesus. That meant that our religion, Christianity was the faithful continuation of God’s true religion. We had the true Judaism, and it was they who had rejected Jesus who had left.

I admit that I was under-informed at that age about the complexities of the situation.

I didn’t take into account an ethnic and national reality as a complexity to answer for. I didn’t take into account the large ritual and legal differences in Old and New Testament faithfulness. So yes, there are some differences. But something about what I thought was very right. I saw one God ruling over history, and assumed that continuity was to be assumed over replacement. I didn’t realize that the concept I was explaining was very different teachings of my largely dispensationalist culture.

Dispensationalism (which started in the early 1800s) had taken the bible apart into time periods where, they claimed, all the rules changed each time. Each period, or dispensation, (or economy), was a way of running things – God tried it one way, and it failed because of people, so he moved on to a new way – each period failing, and giving way to new rules.

One of the most powerful yet unbiblical teachings of dispensationalism was that the Old Testament people of Israel were given a religion of works. By contrast, Christianity was a religion of grace. The Jews, it was said, were saved by keeping the law, and they would someday have an earthly kingdom. The Christians were saved by grace, and would someday have a heavenly kingdom.

Did the Jews of the Old Testament live by Works of the Law?

I certainly did not know the full details of the most consistent dispensationalists as a child. But I did know what I had absorbed from around my Christian culture – the idea that in the Old Testament the people had to keep the law to be saved. I believed that Jesus was to be commended for rescuing us from the awfulness of that works based religion as he instead gave us grace.

I deeply lament that I or anyone ever should believe such a confusing and non-scriptural mistake. No one ever has been saved by keeping the law. This is plain in scripture:

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Romans 3.20, ESV

But also, just think about the contradiction of saying Jesus came to rescue us from a religion he himself authored and designed.

Anyone promoting this view tells you that Jesus came to rescue us out of the tyranny of works-based religion. Do they divide God?! The Old testament was given to us by God himself, the same God who is (in one of the three persons of the Trinity) Jesus. Jesus wrote the Old Testament law. Jesus led Moses in the wilderness. And while God did have reasons to run things differently in the Old Testament, his word proves over and over (read on) that no one was ever saved by works or law-keeping. All saved people have always been saved by grace.

Somehow in one breath these people say that we need grace because no one can keep the law without sinning and condemning himself, and yet in that same breath they say that God gave the Old Covenant people a works-based, law-keeping means of salvation! (Which, of course, they just said could not be done).

Let’s move from rolling our eyes at absurdity, to looking at scripture. I want to stick to two salient passages: Romans 4 and Psalm 130, with a sprinkle of Galatians 3.17 thrown in.

Psalm 130: All sin – so none are eligible for law-based-salvation, Any saved are saved by redemption and forgiveness.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
2 O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.

5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
8 And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.

Psalm 130, ESV

I could weep!!! What familiar grace! What familiar lack of trust in salvation by works! I think of this Psalm as a backwards time-capsule buried in the Old Testament for New Testament Christians to find, so we could look and say… hey, this is our religion! Hey, they thought like we do about sin and grace! But this is not an anomaly. This IS the way the Old Testament is framed. And if we need a reminder, let’s let Paul shove the proof in front ouf our faces.

Romans 4 and Galatians 3: ‘Salvation by faith’ is the context before and during the giving of the law.

Three events happen in order:

• Abraham is counted righteous by the evidence of his faith (Gen 15)
• Abraham is given the promise of inheritance ‘to you and your children’ marked by the sign of circumcision (Gen 17)
• The Law is added to the practice of Abraham’s faithful children (Exodus 19 and following).

This is the argument of Romans 4 and Galatians 3. It’s really quite plain: Faith-based salvation is an Old Testament thing. See Abraham was the example and it was WAY before the law. In fact, it was before circumcision too.

First Galatians –

17 This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.

Galatians 3.17, ESV

And then Romans –

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered;
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

9 Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 10 How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

Romans 4.1-13, ESV

Now, I do wish to point out that of the two, circumcision is closer in time and purpose to the faith of Abraham than to the Law of Moses. Yes, it is a fellow Jewish-marker with the law. And yes, if you want to be justified by either circumcision or the law, you will be yelled at by Paul. But Paul himself is the one that tells us that circumcision is a sign signifying FAITH. As we read above Paul said:

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

Romans 4.11, ESV

The Point – The Comparison to Circumcision Doesn’t Import Works-Based Salvation

Don’t fear the Old Testament. No one ever was allowed to be saved by works (Rom3.20). Law keeping was a privilege given to people already in a faith-based relationship with a God who was their God before they had the law (Gal 3.17, Ex 19.4-6, Ex 20.2). We’ll talk about why they had the law, and why Jews were temporarily separated from the Gentiles next week. But don’t let the feeling that the Old Testament was “worksy” make you afraid that circumcision is tainted by works as a concept.

When you read that we are still circumcised in heart in a circumcision without hands as we are buried with Christ in Baptism (Col 2.11-14), let the connection between the two make you happy. We are still those who, like Abraham, have faith. We are still saved by grace. We are still those to whom God promises to be our God. And even in the New Testament, that promise comes with a sign – this time Baptism. And just like when the promise and sign were given to Abraham for salvation by faith, it is still a promise for you and your children.

38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

Acts 2.38-39, ESV

ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES (LINKS):

• 1 Tell Your Children, “You’re A Christian!” (10/26/21)
• 2 My God From My Mother’s Womb (11/02/21 – reposted after deletion 11/23/21)
• 3 My Baptist Obstacles: What It Took to Change My Mind About Infant Baptism (11/9/21)
• 4 My Baptist Obstacles: Immersion (11/16/21)
• 5 My Baptist Obstacles: The Great Commission Says, “Baptize Disciples” (11/23/21)
• 6 My Baptist Obstacles: Did Circumcision Come from a Works-Based Religion? (12/1/21)

baptism, Circumcision, covenant, dispensationalism, grace, law/gospel, Paedobaptism, Theology