📜WEB · Romans 4:10
What does Romans 4:10 mean?
"How then was it counted? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision."
— Romans 4:10 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
“Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man whom the Lord will by no means charge with sin.”
Is this blessing then pronounced on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised also? For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness.
How then was it counted? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while he was in uncircumcision, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they might be in uncircumcision, that righteousness might also be accounted to them.
He is the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had in uncircumcision.
For the promise to Abraham and to his offspring that he should be heir of the world wasn’t through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
Explanation
Romans 4:10 comes in the middle of Paul's argument about how Abraham was justified before God. Paul has just quoted Genesis 15:6, which says that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Here in verse 10, Paul asks a pointed question: at what point in Abraham's life did this crediting of righteousness happen? Was it after Abraham was circumcised, or before? The answer, drawn directly from the biblical timeline, is that it happened before — while Abraham was still uncircumcised. Genesis 15 records God declaring Abraham righteous because of his faith, but Abraham was not circumcised until Genesis 17, many years later. So the sequence is essential to Paul's point.
To understand why this detail matters so much, you need the context of Paul's letter to the Romans. Paul, a Jewish apostle writing to a mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome, is addressing a serious controversy in the early church: whether Gentile converts needed to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law in order to be right with God. Many Jewish Christians assumed that circumcision, as the sign of the covenant, was necessary for full acceptance by God. Paul uses Abraham — the father of the Jewish people and the model of faith — to dismantle that assumption. He shows that even Abraham himself was justified by faith alone, prior to the rite that later became the sign of his covenant relationship with God.
Theologically, this verse is central to Paul's doctrine of justification by faith apart
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