[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =For circumcision indeed profits you, if you carry law into practice;= in that case circumcision is for you God's seal upon God's own promises to the true sons of Abraham's blood _and faith_. Are you indeed a practiser of the holy Code whose summary and essence is love to God and love to man? Can you look your Lord in the face and say--not, "I have satisfied all Thy demands; pay me that Thou owest," but, "Thou knowest that I love Thee, and therefore oh how I love Thy law"? Then you are indeed a child of the covenant, through His grace; and the seal of the covenant speaks to you the certainties of its blessing. =But if you are a transgressor of law, your circumcision is turned uncircumcision;= the divine seal is to you nothing, for you are not the rightful holder of the deed of covenant which it seals. [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =If therefore the uncircumcision,= the Gentile world, in some individual instance, =carefully keeps the ordinances of the Law,= reverently remembers the love owed to God and to man, =shall not his uncircumcision,= the uncircumcision of the man supposed, =be counted as if circumcision?= Shall he not be treated as a lawful recipient of covenant blessings even though _the seal_ upon the document of promise is, not at all by his fault, missing? [Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =And= thus =shall not this hereditary (ἐκ φύσεως) uncircumcision,= this Gentile born and bred, =fulfilling the law= of love and duty, =judge you, who by means of letter and circumcision are--law's transgressor,= using as you practically do use the terms, the letter, of the covenant, and the rite which is its seal, as means to violate its inmost import, and claiming, in the pride of privilege, blessings promised only to self-forgetting love? [Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =For not the (Jew) in the visible= sphere =is a Jew; nor is circumcision in the visible= sphere, =in the flesh, circumcision.= [Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =No, but the Jew in the hidden= sphere; =and circumcision of heart, in Spirit, not letter;= circumcision in the sense of a work on the soul, wrought by God's Spirit, not in that of a legal claim supposed to rest upon a routine of prescribed observances. =His praise,= the praise of such a Jew, the Jew in this hidden sense, thus circumcised in heart, =does not come from men, but does come from God.= Men may, and very likely will, give him anything but praise; they will not like him the better for his deep divergence from their standard, and from their spirit. But the Lord knows him, and loves him, and prepares for him His own welcome; "Well done, good and faithful."