Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

25. “For truly circumcision profiteth if you keep the law; but if you are a transgressor of the law
your circumcision has become uncircumcision.” We see from this verse the condemnatory verdict
of the ordinances when uncorroborated by a true and irreproachable Christian character. In that case
they become witnesses against us in the Judgment Day.
26. “Therefore, if the uncircumcision may keep the commandments of the law, will not his
uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?” “Man looks upon the outside, but God looketh on the
heart,” and sees our intrinsical character and estimates us accordingly. He can not be deceived.
27. “Truly that which is uncircumcision by nature, keeping the law, will condemn thee who,
through the letter of the circumcision, art a transgressor of the law.” From this clear statement of
the Holy Ghost we see how God will put the non-ritualistic holy Quakers on the witness block in the
Day of Judgment to testify against the millions who have received the ordinances and lived
unworthily.
28. “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is circumcision that which is outward in
the flesh:
29. “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and
not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God.” This beautiful and momentous affirmation
of the Holy Ghost modernized would read: “He is no Christian who is one outwardly; neither is
baptism that which is outward on the flesh: but he is a Christian who is one inwardly, and baptism
is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God.” From
these Scriptures we see most unequivocally the pure spirituality of the gracious economy; no mere
temporality like water baptism, eucharist or church rites having anything to do with it. When your
heart and life are right in the sight of God, you are all right every way without the slightest reference
to the external marks of a Christian profession. When I was a boy my father marked his sheep by
cutting their ears. Now it is customary simply to mark them with paint. So God marked His sheep
during the former dispensation by circumcision, a bloody and painful operation. Nowadays He marks
them by the simple rite of water baptism, the recognition perpetuated in the eucharist received ever
and anon. Yet this marking never did make a sheep. Neither do the ordinances have anything to do
with making Christians, any more than cutting the ears or branding with paint has to do with making
sheep. God makes the sheep and the people mark them. So God makes the Christian and the preacher
marks him. The sheep unmarked is worth quite as much as after he has received the mark. So is the
true Christian in the divine estimation worth as much without the mark as with it. Satan is always
putting God’s sheep-mark on his hogs, covering them with sheepskins and passing them for sheep.
They are readily detected, because they plunge into the first mud-hole they come to, perfectly
delighted to wallow in the mire; whereas a sheep will actually die before it will pollute itself in the
mud. Shall we never wake up to the fond trickery of the devil, fooling the poor, blind, carnal people
by the wholesale, bamboozling them with the nonsensical delusion that the Christian religion
consists in outward ordinances, external manifestations, shams and hoaxes? These Scriptures clearly
reveal not only the utter emptiness of all external forms, ceremonies and professions, uncorroborated
by the internal spiritual transformation wrought by the Holy Ghost in the heart; but the awful reality
that all of these things will only expedite the condemnation in the Judgment Day and augment the
damnation in eternity.