Tuesday 5 July 2016

Why Paul Circumcised Timothy

Your conclusion doesn't follow from what I said.

Paul knew he was free, that he was not under the Law.

But he sometimes chose to comply with the Jews' customs, in order to remove avoidable hindrances to Jews accepting his ministry.

The Jews knew Timothy's mother was Jewish. They also knew his father was Greek, and therefore they would have assumed Timothy hadn't been circumcised.

If Paul then accepted an uncircumcised Jew as part of his ministry team, that would have offended the Jews.

So Paul circumcised Timothy, to remove that barrier in their consciences.

But for Gentiles to become circumcised out of a sense that it was actually a requirement for salvation; actually a requirement to please God; that was a totally different matter.

Getting circumcised in that case was basically accepting that observance to Moses' Law in total, was a requirement for salvation. But it wasn't.

That's what Paul meant. 

Otherwise you set Paul at odds with himself, one way or the other.

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