Is Your Heart Right with God?
Thinking about Romans 2:28-29.
For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God. (Romans 2:28-29)
After addressing what the Jews overlooked about circumcision, Paul addresses their heart and how they should have thought of their relationship with God.
Circumcision of the heart.
While the Jews thought the “outward” circumcision was all that mattered, Paul points out that they had missed the true significance of circumcision.
Moses calls Jews to have a circumcised heart (Deuteronomy 10:15-16). This call existed long before there was any question of the Church of Christ or a figurative “Jew.” Physical Jews were called to have their heart circumcised. Again in Deuteronomy 30:5-6 men whose fathers had possessed Palestine were promised a restoration to that land from their scattering if they would have their hearts circumcised. - McGuiggan, Romans, 108
Not only had they not kept the law of Moses, but their “uncircumcised heart” displayed their stubbornness and rebellion against God.
The “circumcision…of the heart” is parallel to what Paul said in Colossians 2:11, where he described “a circumcision made without hands.” This spiritual, inward circumcision did not come by the letter, that is, codified Law. Rather, it came by the Spirit. - Pollard, Truth for Today Commentary, 100
The Jew had missed the Scripture’s emphasis upon the “inward.” While the “outward” is not de-emphasized, the “outward” was not all there was to serving God.
I’m reminded of what Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! (Matthew 23:23-24)
For all their focus on the “outward” and how they thought that entitled them to different treatment by God at the judgment - they were wrong. They had missed the point entirely.
What God wanted was a life whose outward actions resulted from a submissive spirit, not just from the fact that God had written down the rules for behavior somewhere. - Reese, Romans, 110