Gentile Christians and ritual circumcision. [2.2-5]

by Kent Leslie ✉️

When the LORD formally established his covenant (i.e. formal relationship) with Abraham, he had Abraham ritually circumcise himself and every male in his household. Ouch!—but that became expected for every Hebrew male who deliberately followed the One God.

So circumcision became a huge deal for Pharisees. It’s what they did with their converts. When a Pharisee convinced a gentile to follow Moses, first thing he’d have the convert do is not say the sinner’s prayer or get baptized—he’d have him ritually circumcised. (Unless the covert’s a woman; then she doesn’t have to do anything. Lucky.)

For Pharisees, circumcision wasn’t debated; wasn’t optional. If you kept your foreskin, you weren’t following Moses! And their knee-jerk reaction to these new Christian converts: They needed to do the very same thing. Otherwise they weren’t following Moses either; after all, didn’t Jesus follow Moses? (And yes Jesus absolutely did… but is ritual circumcision a command gentiles are required to follow?)

Acts 15.1-2: Some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 After Paul and Barnabas had engaged them in serious argument and debate, Paul and Barnabas and some others were appointed to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about this issue.

If you weren’t circumcised, Pharisees considered you ritually unclean. Ritually unclean doesn’t mean literally unclean; it only meant you weren’t prepared for worship. Can’t go to temple. Can’t go to synagogue. And if you touch a ritually unclean person, you turn them unclean. That’s why Jews wouldn’t eat with gentiles: They wanted to stay ritually clean as often as possible. Kinda impossible to do in a gentile’s house!

And while it’s not the same as being literally unclean, in some ancient Jews’ minds it was all kinda the same thing. Think of it like going to dinner at a dirty person’s house. Do you wanna eat off their plates? Do you trust the food? Do you even want your shoes to touch their floor? (And let’s be fair: Some people really don’t wash enough. Then and now.)

This is gross, but true: Pharisees actually called gentiles, and Paul actually calls gentiles this in Galatians 2.7, ἀκροβυστία/akrovystía, “foreskins.” Most bibles translate it “uncircumcised,” and aren’t you glad they do?

Anyway, the Holy Spirit dealt with this circumcision issue already. The Spirit ordered Simon Peter to go to a gentile Roman’s house and share Jesus with him. The Romans listened, believed, and the Holy Spirit filled them, and made them speak in tongues. Peter realized it’d be ridiculous to make gentiles jump through any other hoops before they became Christian, so he had ’em baptized. [Ac 10.44-48] And after Peter shared this story with the Christians in Jerusalem, they rightly stopped objecting: God lets gentiles into his kingdom! [Ac 11.18] Yay!

Is ritual cleanliness something any Christians have to worry about? Nope! When we come to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes into us—is sealed to us—and indwells us. [Ep 1.13] We Christians are the Holy Spirit’s temple now. [1Co 3.16] We’re never not in his presence. We’re always ready to worship. Ritual cleanliness is a thing of the past. Doesn’t mean we can stop taking baths and showers, and cleaning our houses. This only means we don’t need to be ritually clean—we needn’t worry about the ritual part.

Acts 15, year 49, the Christians in Jerusalem hold a meeting, which we traditionally call the Council of Jerusalem, presided by James (Jesus’s brother; the James who wrote the book in our New Testament), who was running the Jerusalem church at the time. James’s ruling was this:

Acts 15.19-20: “Therefore, in my judgment, we should not cause difficulties for those among the Gentiles who turn to God, 20 but instead we should write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from eating anything that has been strangled, and from blood.”

James (and the other apostles; he didn’t decide this without their input!) decided gentiles still had to avoid certain things which Jewish Christians found completely unacceptable: No idolatry, no immorality, no bloody meat. Ritual circumcision obviously isn’t on this list.

James’s ruling is kinda like a Supreme Court ruling. It’s meant to be final. But you know how people are: They don’t care what the Supreme Court says. They figure over time they’ll get it overturned. So even though James sent people to Antioch to explain the Council’s conclusion, [Ac 15.22-33] Paul still, and always, had to debate people who ignored James, and kept insisting gentiles must be circumcised—plus follow other ritual parts of the Law which aren’t necessary when we’re the Holy Spirit’s temple.

Paul calls these people ψευδαδέλφους/sevdadélfus, “false brothers.” Fake Christians. Not proper Christians. They’re teaching a false gospel of legalism and good karma. Not grace, not forgiveness, not generosity, not embracing the lost. Plenty of churches still teach this gospel, and yeah they’re wrong. I myself would go so far as to call them cults: Doesn’t matter how good their faith statements sound; if they don’t do grace, they don’t follow Jesus.

The bible’s commands can kinda be divided into three categories:

1. Moral commands, which we still oughta follow, like the Ten Commandments.
2. Ritual commands, commands about the religious practices and ritual cleanliness of ancient Israel. These are optional. We don’t need to practice them because the Holy Spirit indwells us; we worship God differently! But if you want to eat kosher, or do Daniel fasts, or put mezzuzahs on your doorposts, or practice other things which might help you focus on God better: Go right ahead. Nobody stopping you. Nobody condemning you—unless you make them mandatory, ’cause they’re not.
3. Judicial commands, civic laws for the people and land of ancient Israel. We can’t practically follow them, because we’re not Jews living in ancient Israel. (Heck, modern Israelis don’t follow these laws either.) You can try to turn ’em into American laws, but good luck; you’ve seen how some people pitch a fit when Congress or the president tried to forgive debts!

And at this point in history, the ancient Christians were just realizing their Law, which they had followed all their lives, which they were comfortable with living under, can’t apply to gentiles who lived outside Israel. And in many cases, don’t apply to them either! Because they have the Holy Spirit.

This was a massive shift in their thinking. A very hard shift to make, for many of them. You can see why they were so slow to make it—and how Barnabas and Simon Peter could easily fall right back into it.