The hostile efforts of the Jews did not arrest the gospel in its triumphant career.  The truth prevailed mightily among the Gentiles, and the great influx of converts began to impart an entirely new aspect to the Christian community.  At first the Church consisted exclusively of Israelites by birth, and all who entered it still continued to observe the institutions of Moses.  But it was now evident that the number of its Gentile adherents would soon very much preponderate, and that, ere long, the keeping of the typical law would become the peculiarity of a small minority of its members.  Many of the converted Jews were by no means prepared for such an alternative.  They prided themselves upon their divinely-instituted worship; and, misled by the fallacy that whatever is appointed by God can never become obsolete, they conceived that the spread of Christianity must be connected with the extension of their national ceremonies.  They accordingly asserted that the commandment relative to the initiatory ordinance of Judaism was binding upon all admitted to Christian fellowship.  “Certain men which came down from Judea” to Antioch, “taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.” [79:1]

Paul was eminently qualified to deal with such errorists.  There was a time when he had valued himself upon his Pharisaic strictness, but when God revealed to him His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, he was taught to distinguish between a living faith, and a dead formalism.  He still maintained his social status, as one of the “chosen people,” by the keeping of the law; but he knew that it merely prefigured the great redemption, and that its types and shadows must quickly disappear before the light of the gospel.  He saw, too, that the arguments urged for circumcision could also be employed in behalf of all the Levitical arrangements, [79:2] and that the tendency of the teaching of these “men which came down from Judea” was to encumber the disciples with the weight of a superannuated ritual.  Nor was this all.  The apostle was well aware that the spirit which animated those Judaising zealots was a spirit of self-righteousness.  When they “taught the brethren and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved” they subverted the doctrine of justification by faith alone. [79:3] A sinner is saved as soon as he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, [79:4] and he requires neither circumcision, nor any other ordinance, to complete his pardon.  Baptism is, indeed, the sign by which believers solemnly declare their acceptance of the gospel, and the seal by which God is graciously pleased to recognise them as heirs of the righteousness of faith; and yet even baptism is not essential to salvation, for the penitent thief, though unbaptized, was admitted into paradise. [80:1] But circumcision is no part of Christianity at all; it does not so much as indicate that the individual