Sabbath School Today, Volume 9 - Paul E. Penno

produce the promised child without exercising faith in God's creative powerjust
give him a fertile woman and he could accomplish the fact.
"Whoever trusts in himself is worshiping the works of his own hands
instead of God, just as truly as does anyone who makes and bows down to a
graven image." [3] But "to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of
grace, but of debt" (Rom. 4:4). "If we worked for righteousness, we would be
exercising only our own sinful human nature, and so would get no nearer to
righteousness, but farther from it." "So, then, we see that relying on the
works of the law does not mean that one is doing the law." [4]
By the time Christ came to our world, the Jews had lost sight of the true
meaning of circumcision. It had become nothing more than a religious
tradition, a rite signifying entrance into the tribe of Israel. They supposed
that it set them apart as God's "chosen people." They assumed that
circumcision and the "works of the law" made them a special people in the
eyes of God. But "God gave circumcision as a sign of faith in Christ. The
Jews perverted it into a substitute for faith." [5]
The apostle Paul's referral to circumcision in his letter to the Galatians
and elsewhere, was used "as the symbol of all kinds of 'work' done by men
with the hope of obtaining righteousness. It is 'the works of the flesh,' as
opposed to the Spirit." "That which was to be only the sign of an already
existing fact was taken by subsequent generations as the means of
establishing the fact." [6]
The argument in the early church, as it still is for many today, is the
"how" of salvation. "The question is how to obtain righteousness-salvation
from sin--and the inheritance that comes with it. The fact is that it can be
obtained only by faith-by receiving Christ into the heart and allowing Him to
live His life in us." [7]
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