Romans 2:25 - 29

Romans 2:25-26
For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?

Circumcision is the sign of the covenant (and, along with the Law that laid out the covenant, was a source of boasting). Yet St. Paul aptly points out that sin, since it still supresses knowledge of the Truth (communion with Christ), removes one from the covenant. Circumcision, in the face of sin (breaking the Law) becomes uncircumcision. He uses this to argue the converse: would not then someone who keeps the Law be counted as a member of the covenant, even if they don't have some of the outward signs of the Law?

We can apply this easily enough to Christianity. We, too, have a covenant (the Gospels) and a sign of this covenant (baptism). We, too, are faced with the stark reality that membership in the covenant does not guarantee us justification. Rather, we must repent of our sins. And indeed, if we see another who does something righteous, then we know we have seen a miracle of God and, in this righteous act, that person is joined with the God who IS Righteousness. If the covenant is to be communion with God, then that person's righteousness has become "baptism" for them, even as, by sin, our baptism becomes "unbaptism" (and we go to confession to repent).

In other words, we should avoid judging others and celebrate righteousness (love) wherever we find it. Instead of feeling threatened by other religions and retreating into shallow arguments or accusations of their paganism, we should honor the righteousness they do produce while remaining faithful to what we find disagreeable in them. The asceticism of Buddhism is something we could all do to imitate. We can do so while still respecting that, ultimately, we find disagreement with concepts like reincarnation, monism, and the absence of God in Buddhist thought.

Just as importantly, we must be sober with regards to ourselves and the sin in our lives. At any point if I call myself "in" and others "out" I've probably got it backwards. Outwards signs (which are so easy to latch on to, being easy to see and comprehend) like baptism or even the Protestant "sinner's prayer" are merely a beginning. That isn't to undermine the importance of baptism or those first moments of repentance and turning to God. The beginning is a miracle and ought to be celebrated, but it doesn't give us a claim on God - as if He now owed us salvation in some way. Nor should it be a tool for judgment - as if we could tell who has and has not made a beginning based on something visible to our limited and sinful eye.

Romans 2:27-29
And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the Law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the Law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumsision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly (and circumcision is that of the heart; in the Spirit, not in the letter) whose praise is not from men but from God.

A few interesting things to note here: the saints will judge the world alongside Christ. Is this because the saints (true Christians) will have power separate from Christ with which they judge? Far from it. Rather, true Christians (true Jews) will be one with Christ. The judgment of God doesn't proceed from wrath or any kind of human judgment. It is, rather, the clear and present truth regarding someone's life - did they know God and does God know them? To what degree this will be required of us I cannot pretend to know, but as to whether or not we have lived by faith our own thoughts accuse us easily enough. If even our sinful thoughts can tell us we are absent from God, how much more aware of our illness would someone be if they weren't absent from God! The saints, being continously in the presence of God (as we ought all to be) will therefore judge us because Christ will be judging us through them.

Whether or not they were circumcised has nothing to do with it. "Jewishness" isn't a culture (a set of practices and norms like the ceremonial Law), rather, Jewishness is circumcision of the heart: the cutting away of our selfishness (like the cutting away of useless foreskin) so that we may be one with God through Christ. Circumcision is of the heart: the intuitive-mind by which we are to know God. IF our heart remains untouched then what has been accomplished? Heart here doesn't mean emotions - those happen in our brains and are based on sensory input like any other brain response. The nous is a spiritual matter. If it is still dead then we are dead with it. If it lives because that which kills it (unrighteousness) is removed, then we live with Christ.

Forgive me,
Macarius