"And Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also." Romans 4:11One of the defense mechanisms that we have evolved to have is one of classification. We can classify those who are with us and those who aren't in order to maintain our own safety. However, we have allowed this classification to go too far, where we are considering other human beings, other people who are living the same life with all its challenges, to be the other.
Even worse so, we isolate people from our faith communities. We turn our churches into social clubs, where people have to come in with a set of prerequisites in order to participate, but they can only participate with a certain set of ideas.
But Paul is telling us about something else. Despite the fact that the Jews of the time discriminated against those men who were uncircumcised, calling them faithless or heathens, Paul says that the Gospel was not restricted by that specific ritual. In fact, faith itself transcends all signs. He states that there were those who were circumcised who were faithless and/or wicked. In the same way, there are many out there today who are baptized who are wicked; and, there are those who are not baptized who are faithful.
God doesn't require signs from us. God gave us these signs so that we would have something tangible to represent a difficult concept. Faith is not that easy to grasp, but it is something that we can grow. And what's the only way to grow a good plant than to take care of it?
We need to tend to our faith so that it may grow and prosper. God calls us to live our faith, that all things we do are in good faith, living the Gospel at all times. We need our faith to become something so great that we no longer need a sign to represent it.
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