What does the New Testament say about circumcision?

In Acts 15:1 we read of "certain men which came down from Judea" to Antioch, and taught the brethren, "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." Actually these men, by demanding circumcision, were seeking to put the disciples under the Law of Moses, and were, as Peter said, putting "a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear." (Acts 15:10). And Paul wrote: "I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing." (Gal. 5:2). This was a desperately important matter: important for us as well as for them: and the Church in Antioch decided to send Paul and Barnabas, with some others, to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question. At that time the apostles and elders in Jerusalem plainly stated that the Gentile disciples were not to be put under the Law of Moses, and were not to be circumcised: that "yoke" was not to be put upon their necks.

Some from Judea had taught the brethren, "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." It was an attempt to revive Judaism, and to impose its ritualistic observances on the Gentile believers as a condition of salvation. Peter had been taught the folly of this in a remarkable manner (see Acts 10:9-16); and for the time he learned his lesson, for he said to Cornelius, "Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath showed me that I should not call any man common or unclean" (v. 28); and after Peter had returned to Jerusalem he justified his conduct in eating with uncircumcised persons. Still further, when he went to Antioch he at first ate with the Gentiles; but when certain came from James, "he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision." (Gal. 2:12.) The effect was, Peter's influence being so great, "the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation." Paul was thus left alone in his contention, that "in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creature."

"Was any one called circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Has any one been called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping God's commandments. Let each abide in that calling in which he was called. Wast thou called [as] a bondman? Let it not be a care to thee; but if also thou canst be free, use [it] rather. For the bondman called in [the] Lord is [the] Lord's freedman: likewise he that was called free is Christ's bondman. Ye were bought with a price; become not bondmen of men. Brethren, wherein each was called, in this let him abide with God." (Vers. 18-24.) Christ thus raises the Christian superior to all circumstances. Hence, when called of God, it is not worth while to change. Why should the circumcised man care to disguise or obliterate the fact of his circumcision? Why should the uncircumcised seek or submit to it? It is no longer a question of distinctions in the flesh. What God values, and what the Christian should, is keeping His commandments, not forms of truth or schools of doctrine, which are an unquestionable danger. The believer is sanctified to obedience, and this, the obedience of Christ, not that of a Jew, as the apostle of the circumcision himself insists. (1 Peter 1:2.) So does the apostle of the uncircumcision here.

In conclusion, turning to Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, we learn of the attempts made by false teachers to put the Gentile believers under the law, saying that they should be circumcised. We are all aware of the vehemence of the apostle in dealing with the matter. “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law” (Gal. 5:2-3). The rite of circumcision had become tied-up with the law of Moses and the Galatians were in serious danger of becoming entangled in a yoke of bondage. They had started well but were being hindered. The law would only rob them of their liberty and draw their attention away from the source of their freedom, the Son of God, who loved them and had given Himself for them. Twice in Galatians and once in 1 Corinthians a very similar expression is used by the apostle. I quote from Galatians 5:6: “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love”. How vital this is. The two other references are in Galatians 6:15 and 1 Corinthians 7:19.

But there is another point of view, which it is especially the Apostle Paul's to bring out, that Christ has wrought a work by virtue of which even those who were under the law are completely brought outside its domain; and those not previously under it, i.e., the Gentiles, are proved to sin against their own mercies, if in any way they pass under its yoke. To this the Apostle Paul has come in our epistle: "Stand fast," he says, "in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage." Bear in mind this, too, that, among the Galatians, the character of the bondage was not so much what is called the moral law as the ceremonial. I am aware that many would think the latter much more serious than the former. But, on the contrary, the Christian's subjection to the moral law argues a far deeper departure from the truth than if it were the ceremonial; because the ceremonial law, every Christian must feel, derives its whole meaning and value from being a type of Christ. Not so the ten words, which are not a type of Christ, but the direct demand upon the strength and righteousness of men, if he have any. And, therefore, one can understand a Christian's getting entangled with types and shadows. A reasoning mind might say, Is it possible to believe that circumcision, on which God insisted so much with Israel, is to be given up now? If there were no value in it ever, why was it enjoined on Abraham's seed? And if it were so significant and obligatory then, why not now? Besides, does not Christ teach that it was not of Moses, but of the fathers?

All this might furnish a plausible platform for human feeling and argument; but the apostle was led of the Holy Ghost to deal with the question of introducing the thinnest wedge of the law. Take circumcision, the type of having our nature mortified: every believer has this verified in the death of Christ. But believers might have said, There ought to be the outward acknowledgment of it too: why not retain the rite which connects us with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! We are feeble and forgetful; why should we not keep up that which "the elders" prized so deeply, while we also enjoy the blessing that is new? But the apostle deals with it decisively in this epistle. Whatever the use to which God applied circumcision before Christ, it vanishes now. "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing" — that is, if you should be circumcised after this: it was not a question of those who had already been. But if they, as Christians, sought it, "Christ shall profit you nothing." He does not mean that, supposing any one had made the gross mistake of being circumcised, this could not be forgiven; but that, if they now passed through that ordinance as necessary to their complete justification, His efficacy was for them made void. Thus, not only is Christ a complete Saviour, but He is an exclusive one. The attempt to add to Christ is in fact to destroy salvation by Christ.

This principle is very important; because you will find it is constantly the resource of ignorance to say, Well, we all hold the same thing to a certain degree; the only difference is, that I believe something more than you do. Yes, but that "something more" is to extinguish faith, and annul the worth of Christ. Bring in anything, no matter what, necessary to be done by you — necessary as a means of "being justified in the sight of God," and I say unto you, warns the apostle, "Christ shall profit you nothing." Nay, look at circumcision, which God once instituted with peculiar solemnity, threatening with death him who did not submit to it; and now see how that same God, having given Christ, puts a stop to it all. It had done its office; and now to bring it in again would be to obscure, dishonour, and even destroy the work of Christ. God had shown by it, in a figure, that the old man was to be treated as a vile and dead thing. But Christ is come; and there is not now a mere disciplinary process on the old man, but a "new creature;" and the idea of mixing up something done to the old, along with the new, as a means of justification, is most offensive to the Spirit of God. "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing; for I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law." You may distinguish between the ceremonial part, that had such a blessed meaning, and the moral part, by which, you allow, man cannot be justified; but you know not what you do. You cannot separate circumcision from the law. God has embodied that rite so formally in the whole structure of the law, that though it had existed before, it became an integral part since, and henceforth amalgamates so intimately that you cannot separate the rite from the entire system. If you acknowledge any portion of the ritual as that under which you are, you are responsible for the universal legal system; you are debtor to all its demands. And I would call your attention solemnly to this — "a debtor to do the whole law."

This Christian liberty was denied if the Gentile Galatians became circumcised (v.2.) Evidently the judaizers were pressing this on the Galatians as a religious regulation, as had been the case with Jews under the Law. But adding such things to Christianity is subtracting from Christ. The mere form of circumcision did not do away with Christ, nor were those who had been circumcised before conversion thereby deprived of any benefit from Christ. But for the Galatians, after conversion to Christ, to be circumcised -- thus taking a place under the Law -- was a public declaration that their blessing was really coming from the Law, not from Christ. What profit is anyone receiving from Christ if he is occupied with law-keeping, which does not cultivate love and light in the soul, nor reflect the character of Christ?

These verses do not forbid circumcision as such, as might be desired by some for medical reasons, but are directed against the pride of adopting the practice of circumcision as a religious obligation, which the Jews had come to consider has some spiritual merit in it. For that reason some Jews were urging Gentile Christians to accept this.

There is perhaps no example of this more remarkable than that which Paul does with regard to Timothy. He uses circumcision in all liberty to set aside Jewish prejudice. It is very doubtful whether, according to the law, he ought to have been circumcised. Ezra and Nehemiah show us the strange wives sent away; but here, the mother being a Jewess, Paul causes the child of this mixed marriage to follow the rule of the Jews and submit to that rite. Liberty fully recognises the law in its place, although itself exempt from it, and distinctly states, for the assurance of the Gentiles, the absence of all pretension, on the part of the Judaean Christians, to impose the law upon Gentiles. Paul circumcises Timothy, and does not give subjection for an hour to those who would have compelled Titus to be circumcised. He would become a Jew to the Jews from love; but the Jews themselves must renounce all pretension to impose the law on others. The decrees given at Jerusalem are left with the churches — a plain answer to every Jew who desired to subject the Gentiles to Judaism. The decrees, we may remark, were those of the apostles and the elders.

Verse 3 should be read as a parenthesis. "But neither Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." In this Paul was very bold; yet it was not the boldness of defiance, but of Christian liberty. He took, in the face of all, an uncircumcised Gentile brother into the very centre of Judaism; and who that was taught of God (however full of Jewish feeling) could say him nay? Yet the apostle, we know, was always very considerate of Jewish scruples, making himself all things to all men for their blessing, as may be seen in his circumcision of Timothy in Acts 16, and in his instructions in Rom. 14. But Titus, unlike Timothy, was a pure Gentile, and it would have compromised the truth of the gospel to have circumcised him to please brethren among the Jews. Titus was saved as a Gentile, apart altogether from ordinances or works of law. This is brought forward here to show that even in Jerusalem was not required what the Galatians had proved themselves so ready to submit to.

The trouble entered amongst them in a very insidious way. Men who posed as teachers appeared in their midst and sought to make them, though Gentiles, conform to Jewish usages, and in particular adopt the practice of circumcision. It is quite possible that they did not advocate it as being absolutely necessary to salvation, as had previously been done (see Acts 15:1), but they evidently advocated law-keeping - of which circumcision was the symbol - as necessary to holiness of life, and also claimed the authority of the Jerusalem apostles as behind them. It is very instructive to see how Paul, inspired of God, treated the apparently trivial matter of these Gentile believers submitting to circumcision.

At the close of the epistle, the apostle plainly declares that, "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision" (Gal. 6:15; see also Gal. 5:6). The thing had lost all its force and significance for those in Christ Jesus, and hence, in a place where as yet circumcision had not been made a test question by Judaizing teachers, he had circumcised Timothy so that thereby he might have full access to Jews in his service, which would otherwise have been impossible since his father was a Greek and they knew it (see Acts 16:1-3). When, however, he had previously gone up to Jerusalem, as recorded in Acts 15, about this very matter of circumcision - since the Judaizing teachers had made it a test question both at Jerusalem and Antioch - he took with him Titus, who was not, like Timothy, partly of Jewish blood, but wholly of Gentile blood, and stoutly refused to circumcise him under any consideration. This he relates fully to the Galatians in Gal. 2:1-10.

(Vv. 18, 19). The Apostle has spoken of the call of God having come to a believer when linked with an unbeliever. He now speaks of the call coming to a believer when circumcised or uncircumcised. We know that Jewish training led some to set great value on the rite of circumcision, even going so far as to say that apart from circumcision Gentile believers could not be saved (Acts 15:1). Here the Apostle states that, for the Christian, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any value. Obedience to the word of God is of value in His sight, not mere religious distinctions in the flesh.