A True Jew

Today the Lord is encouraging us to leave our old ways and do something new. It is futile to continue to hold on to what we did or what our friends did for us yesterday. We have to be people that are constantly looking forward to what God is doing in the days to come especially because of who he has made us to be and the new identity He has blessed us with. We have to be thankful to the Lord and understand the importance of our salvation through Jesus Christ.

In today’s verse, Paul reiterates that a true Jew is one whose heart is right with God. Once that place of being a child of God is reached, it is equivalent to being a partaker of all that is destined for Jews. Usually, we would think that someone born of Jewish parents or gone through circumcision after the eight days of their birth but here Paul is talking about a different category. He also shows that true circumcision is not just something that is done on the body but something in the heart. Circumcision in the old testament was the foreshadow of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a believer. When we come to a place where we seek praise from God, not people, we have made God the object of our Worship. If we seek praise from people around us we may not see it but those people we seek praise from become our idols.

The three things Paul emphasizes here is first having a right relationship with God go be a true Jew, secondly having the Holy Spirit in our Heart to help us cut off the old nature and understand the experience of being a truly circumcised child of God so the Holy Spirit and third is to produce a true result of that circumcision and changed heart which is seeking praise from God and not from people. Hoping that we will desire to be the true Jews that Paul has spoken of.