Romans 2:28

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and the circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit not is the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.

In these two verses, the principle is stated both negatively (Romans 2:28) and positively (Romans 2:29) that the rite of circumcision is useless unless the moral values of the law, which were pledged and symbolized by that circumcision, are also maintained. The false circumcision would therefore be the circumcision of one whose life showed no regard for the moral values of God's law; and the true circumcision would be the case of the circumcised person who regarded and honored such values. To make Paul's statement in this context mean that every external rite, such as baptism, which was commanded by the Lord himself, may be dispensed with, and that some vague inward experience or strong emotional commitment may be substituted for it, is to make it speak a falsehood. There is not a particle of evidence that Paul here had in mind Christian baptism, or that these words may be forced into an application to that rite. Paul was only declaring that the only circumcision that could avail the Jew anything was a circumcision honored by a life consistent with the rite.

In the spirit not in the letter ... does not mean that the external rite of circumcision, as commanded by the law, might have been dispensed with by the Jew and replaced by some "spiritual" experience, but simply that the external rite ALONE, without the God-honoring life that was supposed to accompany it, was worthless. The question before Paul in these verses is not a Christian question, but a Jewish one, and to get this all mixed up with baptism, as so: many of the commentators have done, is an error. These words, "in the spirit not in the letter" do not mean that the external rite of circumcision was not necessary under the law, any more than Peter's "not the putting away of the filth of the flesh" (1 Peter 3:21) means that the outward ceremony of baptism was to be omitted, but only that there was an inward meaning designed to accompany the outward act. The legitimate deduction is that: just as there was an absolute necessity under the law of Moses to combine the external rite of circumcision with a holy life, so there is for the Christian the absolute necessity of combining with the external ordinance of baptism that newness of life which there begins.

These verses refer back to Paul's introduction of this paragraph in Romans 2:17, where he said, in effect, "You call yourself a Jew"; and it is plain, from the definition Paul gave of who may qualify to wear such an honored name, that he did not consider the reprobate type of Jew under discussion in this chapter as any fit subject to wear it. True, the word "Jew" means praise; but Paul pointed out forcefully enough that "praise of God," not "praise of men," was meant.

Lenski, Hodge, and many others have built theological castles upon the five verses which conclude this chapter, expressed in many pages of eloquent denunciations of "moralists" who trust in outward rites instead of genuine faith in the Lord, no less than fifteen pages, for example, in Lenski being devoted to these five verses: But to borrow a word from Shakespeare, "Methinks thou dost protest too much!" It has already been noted that Christians, and things pertinent to their redemption, are not even under discussion in these verses, where Paul was dealing with the presumption of reprobate Jews whose reliance upon such an external rite as circumcision was both naive and unrealistic. What Paul said here, therefore, in order to take away that delusion from their hearts, and to prevent their influence from spreading among weak Christians, has no direct reference to Christians and can become meaningful to Christians only when Christians become blinded with the same delusions which deceived those ancient Jews. Has this occurred? There is the possibility, at least, that it might occasionally have occurred in a few instances; but in general, the answer to this question is ABSOLUTELY NOT. The stereotype "moralist" who is usually made the whipping boy by certain commentators, and who is heralded as the modern counterpart of those reprobate Jews, is nothing but a figment of feverish imagination, a straw man that does not exist, and probably never has existed within the confines of the Christian faith since the Middle Ages, and whose stereotype description fits nobody at all.

Where is that so-called "moralist" who thinks that merely because he has been baptized, he is thus, per se, entitled to heaven, regardless of his conduct? Within the forty years and more of this writer's experience as a minister of the gospel, he has never met even one Christian who believed anything like that. Where, then, do a hundred or more commentators, from Calvin and Luther to Lenski and Barrett, find their specimens of this strange, perverse person who is said to believe that baptism alone leads to eternal life, regardless of holiness or the lack of it, and who is diligently intent on leading the whole world through that door which, according to Lenski, is "not the door of heaven but the door of hell"? Any knowledge of Christians during the half-century immediately past, especially any knowledge of their earnest efforts to serve the Lord, must surely result in the conviction that the straw man so effectively shot at by so many for so long must long ago have disappeared. The stylized definition of that straw man is not only void of any resemblance whatever to the countless thousands of Christians this writer has been privileged to know, but is also void of any likeness to those reprobate Jews who were the object of Paul's warning here.

Despite the straw man mentioned above, to which such impossible attitudes are attributed, there is, nevertheless, real danger in supposing that mere outward compliance with the Lord's commandments, any or all of them, removes the need for true and genuine spirituality and devotion which are always the hallmark of authentic Christian faith. As Griffith Thomas summed it up:

While we must ever insist with all clearness and firmness on obedience to the ordinances of God, we must never fail to remember that the ordinances themselves, apart from genuine spiritual disposition of the recipients, never convey or guarantee the reception of grace. Ordinances are visible signs to which are annexed promises. Faith lays hold on the promises, and the signs are the pledges of God's fulfillment of them; but, if there be no faith in the divine promise, there is nothing left for the ordinance to seal.[23]

Thomas' final sentence, quoted above, seems to imply that submission to the ordinance of God is dissociated from "laying hold of God's promises," but such a view is wrong. In the case of baptism, for example, the submission to the ordinance is itself a part of the laying hold, for in that ordinance, faith becomes obedient; and the salvation Paul taught in Romans has nothing to do with anything else, other than an "obedient faith" (Romans 1:5; 16:26, etc.).

Having at this point completed his argument concerning the sinfulness of all people, Jew and Gentile alike, and having established the broad principles of it, Paul then proceeded in the next chapter to answer some objections to it, employing the device of the diatribe as a vehicle for the conveyance of his thought.