Homilist Romans 2:25-29 For circumcision truly profits, if you keep the law: but if you be a breaker of the law, your circumcision is made uncircumcision.… To be a Jew in the proper sense was a high privilege indeed. It was to bear "the highest style of man." St. Paul could give no sadder state of the unevangelised Gentiles than that they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. On the road to Damascus he had beheld the True Jew. This was the Messiah Himself, the only type and model henceforth of a Jew. Saul's zeal for Judaism was not diminished but rather increased by the heavenly vision. Yet it took a wholly new direction from the fundamental change in his conception of what Judaism was. True Judaism has three characteristics: — 1. It is not a thing of mere observances, but a hidden life, a sanctification of the affections, right direction of the will, a regal power which holds all inferior faculties in subjection, which mortifies all worldly and carnal lusts, and is in all things obedient to God's blessed will. 2. It is spiritual, not a literal Judaism, not in bondage to statutes and rules, but taking the principle of the law, which being written on the heart, the Lawgiver's intention is carried out in life. It is an energy which goes beyond the rules of justice to the unconstrained works of reverence, love, and pity. 3. And then, just because it is thus hidden and spiritual, the being and the beauty of it are manifest to God rather than man. Let us come to our Great High Priest for this circumcision of the heart. (Homilist.) Parallel Verses KJV: For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. |
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