After all, who is a real Jew, truly circumcised? It is not the man who is a Jew on the outside, whose circumcision is a physical thing.

Rather, the real Jew is the person who is a Jew on the inside, that is, whose heart has been circumcised, and this is the work of God's Spirit, not of the written Law. Such a person receives praise from God, not from human beings.

Do the Jews then have any advantage over the Gentiles? Or is there any value in being circumcised?

Much, indeed, in every way! In the first place, God trusted his message to the Jews.

He was circumcised later, and his circumcision was a sign to show that because of his faith God had accepted him as righteous before he had been circumcised. And so Abraham is the spiritual father of all who believe in God and are accepted as righteous by him, even though they are not circumcised.

He is also the father of those who are circumcised, that is, of those who, in addition to being circumcised, also live the same life of faith that our father Abraham lived before he was circumcised.

The LORD your God will give you and your descendants obedient hearts, so that you will love him with all your heart, and you will continue to live in that land.

Keep your covenant with me, your LORD, and dedicate yourselves to me, you people of Judah and Jerusalem. If you don't, my anger will burn like fire because of the evil things you have done. It will burn, and there will be no one to put it out."

Once more I warn any man who allows himself to be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the whole Law.

As for us, our hope is that God will put us right with him; and this is what we wait for by the power of God's Spirit working through our faith.

It does not matter at all whether or not one is circumcised; what does matter is being a new creature.

You Gentiles by birth---called "the uncircumcised" by the Jews, who call themselves the circumcised (which refers to what men do to their bodies)---remember what you were in the past.

At that time you were apart from Christ. You were foreigners and did not belong to God's chosen people. You had no part in the covenants, which were based on God's promises to his people, and you lived in this world without hope and without God.

You boast about having God's law---but do you bring shame on God by breaking his law?

The LORD says, "The time is coming when I will punish the people of Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and the desert people, who have their hair cut short. All these people are circumcised, but have not kept the covenant it symbolizes. None of these people and none of the people of Israel have kept my covenant."

(SEE 9:25)

"How stubborn you are!" Stephen went on to say. "How heathen your hearts, how deaf you are to God's message! You are just like your ancestors: you too have always resisted the Holy Spirit!