ROMANS Study Guide

circumcisions are heart circumcisions. It is a heart issue

that manifests itself in obeying God… the obedient Jew or non

Jew is acceptable to God. Vs.29

Conclusion: It is important here to recognize that Paul is not laying out how we are to seek justification through obedience to the Law. He is dealing with those who look to the Law as their means of justification. Paul is simply pointing out that those who look to the Law for salvation are in fact not keeping the law. The demand of the law is a simple one… it must “all” be obeyed for someone to be justified by it. Many Jews had come to accept that what they “knew” about the law was good enough for their salvation before God. Paul in answer to this assumption states “absolutely not!” Such thinking not only left them lost before God but also brought shame on the name of God. As Christians, we do not seek to be justified by the law but Jesus says if we love him we will seek to keep his commandments (Jn.14:15). We do not keep the law for salvation we keep it because of our salvation. The blood of Jesus keeps us forgiven even when we sin and break the law. But it is the grace flowing from the Holy Spirit in us that allows us to increasingly do the law out of love for God. But like the hypothetical Jew Paul speaks of how Christians can also be hypocrites before a watching world? To believe and teaching something that we are not living still brings shame on the name of Christ. (Matt.7:20)