1 Corinthians 7:17-24 Just As I Am

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his sermon series titled First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.

Good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here and I'm glad we can all be together here in this place today. I say this frequently, but I am routinely amazed by the way that God brings us together as a family of faith.

It is a glorious thing. We all come from a variety of different backgrounds and different places, and that's kind of going to tie in with the message this morning. But we come from a variety of places.

We have varied callings. We have a wide array of gifts and talents represented in this room. But yet all of that is driven and the gathering is driven by the fact that we have one Lord. We have one faith.

We have one baptism into the life of Jesus Christ our Lord. There is one spirit and we have one goal of glorifying Him above all else. And that's a glorious thing when you think about the purpose of the church and the gathering of God's people that you can look around and you can say, I'm not alone in this world.

The world has a variety of different values that are not consistent with lifting up Christ our Lord, right? Like how many of you know that? Like when you're out there in the world, they don't have that in common, but here we've got a lot in common.

And so a church is a glorious thing when we take the time to think about what God is doing in our midst, bringing us together for His glory and honor. And we are a variety of people brought together to exercise and grow our faith.

We are brought together to practice God's love toward one another in community. And we are brought together to serve God and one another, what we call growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

They're kind of the heartbeat of Recast Church. Our passage this morning is going to lean into the uniqueness of each and every one of us in this gathering. A church is a kind of a paradox of sorts. We could speak all day about the things that we hold in common, but we also know that we're not all the same, right?

We have a lot in common, but we are not all the same. What we have in common matters a ton. Obviously, Jesus Christ is what we have in common. But scripture also takes time to emphasize that we are not, that rather we are all different.

We often miss the side of God's teaching because it doesn't seem helpful to emphasize it, but we are not all called to be clones of one another. We are not all called to look alike and say the same things and do all the same things.

Our culture will drive toward conformity. Everybody looking the same, everybody acting the same. Our hearts even drive towards conformity to some degree. In the darkest applications, what do I mean by conformity?

Well, in the darkness of a fallen human heart, it takes the, takes the form of segregation, like even Sunday morning segregation, where we only worship with those who look like us. We only worship with those who school like us.

We only worship with those of the same socioeconomic class as us, and on and on you could go. And so, this passage in 1 Corinthians is declaring that we need not be little clones of one another. While we are all called to conform to the command of Christ through an obedience from hearts that are given to Him, many things in our lives do not need to be changed to conform to man-made rules or man-made expectations within the body of Christ.

This passage will answer the question, a question I think maybe the Corinthians were asking, do I need to change everything in my life when I come to faith in Christ? What can stay the same? Am I allowed to be myself?

How much change is necessary? How much conformity is required? That's where we're going this morning. We are those who obey Christ and what He has revealed, but in all else, we are those who express freedom.

So, let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices or your apps to 1 Corinthians 7, starting in verse 17. We're going to read that paragraph through verse 24. So, 1 Corinthians 7, 17 through 24, recasts probably one of the most beneficial things that we do in the gathering of God's people every Sunday is to read His Word.

We get an opportunity to hear from Him through what He wants to say to us this morning. 1 Corinthians 7, starting in verse 17. Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him.

This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.

Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it, but if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord.

Likewise, he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. You were bought with a price. Do not become bondservants of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the gathering together of your people. A bunch of backgrounds, a bunch of histories, a bunch of brokenness, good weeks, bad weeks, and everything in between. Fear about the direction the business is going, fear about layoffs, excitement about raises and promotions, and just a whole bunch of things going on in everybody's life right now.

You call us together, and it's a glorious together. It's a together for faith. It's a together for community. It's a together for service. It's a together for your glory, and I pray that you would indeed be glorified as we take in this word and understand the freedom that we're given and the freedom we are in turn to give to others, that we would be a place of grace, a place of kindness, a place giving each other the freedom to honor you as our Lord, even as individuals who are seeking to walk in the way that you have for us.

Father, I do pray that you'd be dealing with sin in our midst. You'd be dealing with sin in our hearts, but that you would also give us delight and joy in the sacrifice that's been made for those very sins, that Jesus Christ took that penalty for us on the cross, and I pray that that would give us joy and gladness as we have an opportunity to sing in the gathering of your people, that our voices mingle together in praise and worship to you, our great God, the only one who is worthy of our praise, the only one who is worthy of a life and a very lifestyle of worship.

So, Father, I pray that you would receive these songs as worship to you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, yeah, you can go ahead and find your seats and reopen your Bibles or your devices to 1 Corinthians chapter 7 verses 17 through 24.

If at any time during the message, like I say every every Sunday, if you need to get more coffee, juice, or donuts, or need to use the restrooms, you're not going to distract me, so take advantage of that.

But the remainder of our time is going to be in 1 Corinthians 7, 17 through 24. God in his great grace calls real people in a real world with real struggles and real gifts to walk with him by faith in his son Jesus Christ.

That's real people who have real circumstances, real things going on in their lives, and this passage deals with what it looks like to walk with him in a community full of a variety of different people.

Now, how many of you already knew that we live in a community of a variety of different people? Did you already know that? We have a lot of differences in the way that we look at the world around us. Our passage this morning is going to answer an important question that we would, we would probably spend a little bit more time thinking about if we, if we just thought a little more introspectively, a little bit deeper about our lives together in Christ, and particularly our lives, the way we live in Christ.

We all have a walk with God and we might be tempted to think it's very similar to the person sitting right next to us. They struggle with the same things, they think the same way we think, they do the same things that we do day in and day out, and they're right there, and everything is just similar and the same.

And so our outline will speak into this expectation with permission to be ourselves. That's part of what this, this point is here this morning, is the permission to be ourselves while pursuing Christ together.

The freedom for you to be yourself, but also the freedom to let others be themselves as well. I put ourselves in air quotes there because whatever is of sin will be excluded in our text in the clear command in verse 19 to keep the commandments of God.

There is an area that's out of bounds for ourselves. How many of you know that if you are just true to yourself you're going to get yourself into trouble pretty quick? Did you already know that? So I'm, this is not a message about being true to yourself, but it, I mean in every area or every facet of our lives, but there's an area in which we are designed differently and that's okay.

We are not free to remain in sin, but we are free to lean into the uniqueness that God places in each and every one of us. Different hobbies, different roles, different jobs, different focuses, different emphases in our lives.

So our outline this morning is going to look like this. Everyone has their own road to walk, verse 17. Everyone has their own road to walk. The second part of the text is external conformity isn't the point, verses 18 through 20.

The third point is external circumstances are not the point. So external conformity isn't the point, external circumstances are not the point. And then the fourth is what is the point? Embrace God's ownership of you, verses 23 and 24.

So Paul begins this section identifying very clearly that everyone in this room, every single one of us, everyone he calls to himself has their own road to walk. Not every single one of us has been granted the same perspective, the same experiences, the same giftings.

He says, only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all of the churches. We don't have the same perspective, the same experiences, the same giftings.

And in this sense, we're looking down the throat of a snowflake message. It's a little bit about snowflakery. You are a snowflake. You are unique, one of a kind. But before we let all that uniqueness go to our head, don't forget that snowflakes are beautiful for a short time and then they melt or worse, they are turned yellow by the neighbor's dog.

So I mean, I don't know how special snowflakes really are when you really think about it. But I mean, we each one of us, a unique creation of God. That's absolutely true. But all joking aside, in context, Paul is likely answering concerns for what is the most blessed state of a follower of Jesus Christ.

I remember that the Corinthians were writing to, had written a letter to Paul. We don't have access to that letter. So we don't know what they wrote, but that's not that significant. It's not that big of a deal knowing what he, what they wrote to him because we do have what he wrote back and that's what's proactive.

That's the stuff that we need to take on as scripture. So we can nuance in our head about what was the question they asked. And although it's kind of interesting to speculate by the answers that he gives, the fundamental thing is that the answers that he gives are through the spirit, scripture to us.

Corinth has written to Paul and likely asked Paul, could you just tell us questions like this that we see answered in the text? Is marriage or singleness better? The text has addressed that. Should slaves run away and work toward their freedom?

Should all new Greek Christians be circumcised? These are the kinds of thoughts that they had. What it really amounts to is, Paul just tell us what to do. Just tell us what to do. Tell us what, what does a spiritual person do?

What does a Christ follower do? Now I want to be honest that this level of conformity is a temptation in every church and in every Christian's heart or most Christian's heart. The temptation to just say, just tell me what to do.

Have any of you ever just been in a conundrum like that where you're just like, I don't know what the next pathway is. I don't know what's most God honoring. I wish somebody could just step in and say, here's your next step.

Raise your hand if you've been there. I have. It's like, oh man, it would be really nice if God would write me a letter, if he'd call me on the phone or send me a text, just tell me what he wants of me.

I think all of us have been in phases of life like that. And it's tempting in a church to just kind of say, give me a one size fits all answer. Pastor Don, could you just get up and tell us, give us a list of songs and music, artists we can and can't listen to.

Could you give us a approved movie list? Can you give us all, I mean, not many people really want that, but I mean, there's a part of us that's just kind of like, okay, just, just if you can clarify. And how many of you know churches go down that road where there's literally like do's and don'ts and a bunch of rules and a bunch of things like that.

And so we know that that's a real temptation at churches, but further there's a significant temptation for every single spiritual leader and pastor to take on the authority to tell others what to do in order to conform to what the leader thinks is best.

I'm going to suggest to you that I have opinions and they matter very little. Where I understand God's word, that matters a lot. Do you understand what I'm saying? And so you can come to my office and you can ask me, and I like to hear stories.

I like to hear what's going on in your life. I like to talk with you and you can come and meet with me and ask me my opinions about what you should do for schooling for your kids next year or, you know, what do I think about this TV show?

Is this inappropriate or is that inappropriate? I've got opinions about it all. You can ask my wife. I got opinions about everything. There's very few things that I don't have, I'm not settled on, okay?

But you're gonna, you're gonna be hard-pressed to get the answer out of me because I'm gonna say, you ask me, what should I do for my kids schooling next year? I'm gonna ask you, what's best for them?

And you're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna go around and around in circles and you're gonna be like, but just give me the answer. And I'm gonna be like, but you are gonna have to work through that. Do you get what I'm saying on that?

I'm not quick to tell you in your circumstance what God, thus saith Don or thus saith the Lord, do this. This is your next step. But I can tell you what scripture has to say, where it bears out principles and ideas and thoughts leading you into these areas.

People ask me to tell them, and that's happened over the 14 years as a pastor here, just come to my office and say, what, what do I do next? And while the truth is that God doesn't have a one-size-fits-all plan for every single life, and I don't have a flow chart of if this, then that, he has principles for these gray areas of life where the scripture doesn't land on this is sin or this is not sin.

It's in those areas of the gray in between where it's kind of like neutral life. There's a Greek word for it, a diaphor, the things that are neither here nor there. And it's used in scripture in multiple places, but it's those gray area issues that we desire more concreteness.

And some of us, the way we're put together, we want a more concrete answer. And God is, I can tell you that God never desires you to sin. Amen? The next step for you is never sin. But aside from that, you get to make a lot of decisions.

You get to make a ton of decisions, right? You know it. Sometimes that's comfortable. Sometimes it's not. Lots of choices that face us every day. This passage is primarily about those gray area issues of our very everyday circumstances.

Verse 17 starts us off with a view of God's sovereignty over our walk and our circumstances. He's guiding. He's directing. He's put us where we are. He's given us our parents. He's given us our height.

He's given us our gender. He's given us a lot of things about us that he has declared for us, right? Paul is commanding the church here in this verse to chill out about others in the gray area issues of life though.

He has already commanded them to be very involved in each other's lives. When sin is at issue, be involved. There is such a thing as a biblical rebuke where scripture says this, you're doing this, you should stop doing this because God's word is clear about it.

But here he's talking about the external circumstances and issues of external conformity. Everybody has a different walk. Everybody has a different journey in life. Let each person lead the life that God has assigned to them.

God called us all to faith in himself out of a whole host of circumstances. I mean, you can just think back to your own conversion experience. When did you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior? Some of you were college students when you first heard the call of Christ and you responded.

Some were down and out at rock bottom. Some were atheists who were opposing God and he rescued you out of that. Some were raised and born in Christian homes and were in church the first week after you came home from the hospital, right?

So we all come from different places, different contexts, saved at different times of life, saved in different ministries and all of that. And each one will have a unique road ahead of them that is at least in part made up of those circumstances that defined our lives when we first heard the voice of Jesus Christ calling to us and we responded by faith and said, yes Lord, I'm yours.

Paul issued this rule. He says, this is my rule. This is the way I roll. This is the way that all the churches should respond with this kind of freedom to be yourselves and it amounts to this. What is he getting at?

Let doctors be doctors. Let UPS drivers be UPS drivers. Let teachers be teachers. Let the upper class be the upper class. Let the tattooed be the tattooed. Be okay with God saving people out of a whole host of social places and don't expect everyone to change to your preferences.

Let me say that again. Don't expect everyone to change to your preferences. This is a starting place of a radical call to grace as a church. How are we supposed to live in community with one another? A radical grace that gives each other, that allows God to work in each other's lives.

And I would just encourage you to look around you. We are not all the same. Now we're eerily similar because West Michigan's a vibe, right? But not all the same. And a good starting point for for Church 101 is this instruction.

Take this on. If you're taking notes, write it down. Be okay with different. Be okay with different. Now what I didn't ask you to write is be okay with sin. Don't write that down. That's not right. Not be okay with sin, but be okay with different.

How many of you know that the most different people on the planet are Christians? You could change the word different to weird and it would still work. We're awkward to the world around us, are we not?

If we're really following Christ, the world is like, what? You guys are weird. Be okay with different. Be okay with different Christians. But also don't be quick to make the differences of others. And here's where sin creeps into this entire equation, where we will make the differences of others to be sin, right?

I think we can play mental games off of this passage without even thinking about it. You see, if I can make my personal preferences righteous and your personal preferences sin, then I don't need to even heed this passage.

Now this isn't even talking to me because you're sinning and I'm righteous. So I can demand conformity to my preferences because I've now made it into an issue of sin. Do you get what I'm talking about there?

Do you know the game I'm talking about? Have you seen it played in churches? Have you seen it played among Christians? But God is calling us all to a radical life of grace toward one another in these gray area issues.

What's he calling us to? What's he calling the Corinthians to? More grace, more grace, more kindness, more letting each other lead the life that the Lord has assigned to them. Save your concerns for those areas that are absolutely clear sin against God.

The application, some of you might actually take this first point and go do something about it this week. I would recommend this. Find someone that isn't like you and get coffee and get to know them. Get together with them.

Have them over and learn each other's stories. I'm at a stage of ministry right now where I'm hearing a lot of stories and I love it. I'm getting an opportunity to sit down with many of you and get to know you and hear how God has worked in your life and that's one of the perks.

That's a privilege of this role as a pastor is I get a chance to hear. I get a chance to see and know and some are going through hard times and you come into my office for spiritual direction. I love those kinds of meetings where I'm getting an opportunity to invest in here and listen and get to know you guys better.

But listen to the ways, I'd encourage that among you as well. Listen to the ways that God has worked in someone that is not like you and then rejoice with them. Rejoice with them over what God is doing in their lives.

Everyone Has Their Own Road to Walk

The second point here is that external conformity is not the point. Verses 18 through 20. Our fallen human hearts are not faithful. They are not unchangeable. They are not holy. They are not consistent like our God is consistent.

This means that we are in our very natures changeable, routinely fickle, and inconsistent. But our God, church, our God is never inconsistent. His integrity is faithful and complete and righteous and holy through and through in all that he ever has done, ever will do, ever says, ever communicates.

Faithful, faithful, faithful. God is never inconsistent. And what this means for each of us is that we, unlike God, know what it means to do one thing while thinking or feeling another way. We know hypocrisy because our hearts are by nature of the fall hypocritical.

We can do all kinds of things that are inconsistent with our hearts. We could externally do things to put on airs, for example. We can buy a car we can't afford or dress in clothing we can't afford in order to just look a certain way on the outside.

We can act apart. We can spend years wearing masks, pretending that everything is going on okay in here where it is really broken and corrupt in here, whitewashing the tomb where there is decay and brokenness inside.

And yet I would suggest to you that this is very, very dangerous in a community of faith. Verses 18 through 20 are all about the role of external conformity in the community of faith, looking around and just mimicking each other, looking at the person next to you and just doing what they do.

Just act the part, play the role. That's what unfortunately many, I think, in churches were doing before COVID, right? And a lot of people don't go to church anymore. That's what happened to a lot of people who have deconstructed in their faith.

They were looking to others. They were not looking to Christ. Their eyes weren't fixed on Him and love for Him, but rather how to kind of fit in here. And that hasn't gone well. Let me be clear and concise.

External conformity to a pattern of a way of life that you're trying to mimic has no role in the life of a genuine follower of Christ. Just conforming, just acting, just doing things. A man or a woman of faith who desires to walk in integrity will obey Christ out of a love for Him and never merely out of a desire to look apart or fit the mold of external social pressures.

A Christian is never, ever, ever to be a person who is playing a part. Rather, a Christian is to be a person loving his or her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Affection for Christ is the follower of Christ motivation.

Love for Him is our motivation. Not to look like the person next to you, only do it a little bit better. How many of you know what that looks like? How many of you felt that in your own heart? At least I'm better than all y 'all.

Right? You can think that way and you can start to feel that way. But no, where is affection for Christ in that? Where's the motivation of love for Him in that? It's not there. No, external conformity has no role in the life of a genuine follower of Jesus.

Paul starts talking about a very external sign, awkward external sign given in the Old Testament. And you might even go like, okay, we could have just kept it at theory. Why do we have to get down into the details?

A sign given in the Old Testament to the Jews is a sign of the covenant. The covenant was circumcision. Circumcision was a religious ritual applied to all males on the eighth day after they were born, according to the law of Moses, according to the very commands of God.

And every single man who came to faith in Christ in the early church fell into one of the two categories. One of two categories was true of every male that came to faith in Christ under Paul's ministry.

Either they were circumcised or they weren't. Only two options. This line cut down the line, divided down the line of ethnicity. A little circumcision humor there. I don't know. Oh goodness. Okay, at least we got that out of the way now.

The line divides down ethnicity. Jews were circumcised. Gentiles and pagans were not. And as awkward as it might seem, we kind of go like, in our, I'm going to say something that's like radical until you think about it, but we live in a fairly modest culture.

You're going, modest? Are you kidding me? Have you seen any of the Greek statues? Have you been to the Louvre? They were not a modest culture. We are a much more modest culture than they were. And so, to be clear, this mattered because it mattered in their culture.

It was visible and there. Athletic events and Roman public baths were conducted naked. And this made it possible and obvious for all who were born Jewish to be seen as Jewish. It became an issue in the early church only because it was known to men who were the Jews among them, obviously, because their parents had performed this ritual on them.

At eight days, they had no choice in the matter. And now they are marked for life as a Jew in public, in all of these public men's gatherings. And they were treating each other accordingly. The Gentiles looking down on the Jews.

The Jews looking down on the Gentiles. Looking down on? Oh my goodness. Sorry everybody. Oh my goodness. That was not anywhere in my notes. I didn't even say that the first service. You guys are getting the bonus material here.

Oh wow. Some during this era were embarrassed of their Jewish background. They were embarrassed of it. They were like, they were like, I don't want to be seen. I don't want to go to the Roman baths. I don't want to participate in the athletic events.

And they would even go so far as there is documentation of a medical procedure that is still actually used today. I talked with a surgeon that was here and he said, yeah, that's actually still on the table today.

It is a reverse procedure that can make a circumcised man look uncircumcised. And they were actually doing that. So when it says in the passage that they would, why would you remove the marks of circumcision?

You're kind of going, how do you do that? Don't think too hard about it, but it's there. And some were wondering and the reverse of that is, I mean, some were saying like, how can I look uncircumcised?

Others were saying, must I get circumcised? Because I'm not sure I'm in with the church if that's required. So, whoa, is that, is that a requirement to follow Christ? And as weird as this conversation may feel, it was a significant issue in the early church.

We can't, I don't think I can overplay how significant this was because circumcision was a very, very, very, very, very central command in the Old Testament law. In the commandments of God, it was commanded.

As a matter of fact, even preceding the giving of the law to Moses, it was given to Abraham. And Abraham was told that he and all of his descendants were to be circumcised as a sign of entering the covenant with God.

That was a way of showing that they were God's man. Okay? And so, what Paul says in verse 19 is very shocking to most scholars, all the way down to like reading people this week who were like, there's no way Paul wrote this.

He was trained as a Jew. He was trained as a Pharisee. Something so radical that he says in verse 19 that people are doubting whether he actually said it. Look at it. For neither circumcision counts for nothing or for anything, nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commands of God.

Neither circumcision counts for anything. Could a guy trained in Jewish seminary say something like this? For one trained in Judaism like Paul to write down verse 19 just shows how radical his departure, the departure between Judaism and Christianity was for this apostle of Christ.

For Paul, he says, we're not going that way. We're not going the Jewish way. To say that circumcision or uncircumcision is nothing and that it doesn't even matter, this shows he had no desire to offer concessions to the Jews or make faith in Christ more Jewish.

The weirdest thing that's going on right now is I'm actually, by the way, encountering some things, talking with some other pastors, and there is a movement right now that you need to get the Jewish understanding of a passage.

Have you, has anybody encountered that? It's all over Google right now. It's, it's a dangerous thing because what is really absolutely happening is that some people are trying to muddy and muddle Christian theology with Jewish theology and say, yeah, you've got that whole Jesus thing, but you also need law.

You also need rules. You also need this. You also need that. And, and that's where Paul is radically, he's radically departing from Judaism. Christianity is not Judaism 2 .0. Okay? It's not Jewishness with Jesus.

It's Jesus. Amen? Jesus Christ alone. That's what you're following, church. If somebody comes along and says, but Jesus and, run. It's a clear sign that, you know, it's good that you've got Jesus, but you need just a little bit more from me.

And of course, I'm the one to teach you, says every blog and every podcast. Right? No. This was a radical departure. He's not recommending, Paul here is not recommending any external conformity for the sake of appeasing others.

Instead, he does hold up a standard at the end of verse 19 that can be confusing. As a matter of fact, I think it was intentionally kind of like a little bit of like whiplash for what he says in verse 19.

Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Now, if you come from a Jewish background, that is nonsensical. It makes zero sense. Don't worry about circumcision.

Just keep the laws and the commandments of God. How can somebody do that, Paul, would be the logical question from a Jew. But to be clear, Paul's no idiot. He's not writing a sentence that makes no sense.

He's not writing a sentence that has no structure and no teeth to it. He knew that circumcision was given to the Jews in the commandments of God. And so, I believe that his statement here radically drives home his point against mere external conformity.

He's opposed to any law or any rule that just merely marks the outside of you as belonging to God without your heart belonging to God. Amen? Anything that others can see on the outside that identifies you as a follower of Christ, be that wearing a necklace with a cross on it, or wearing a nice bold Christian tattoo with the Lord's gym on it, or something like that.

Like, whatever it might be that would mark you as a Christian is insignificant in comparison to Christ owning your heart. Amen? That's where it's at. Him owning your heart. The law of Christ is a law of grace, and love, and mercy, working out in the power of his Spirit within us.

We do, hear me church, we do keep the commands of Christ. We do. Those who love him, he said, those who love me will keep my commandments, or obey his commandments, and other translations have. And that that will only be motivated out of an obedience from the heart.

A gift of a new heart, says Paul. He says that in Romans 6, 17, one of my favorite passages about my interaction with the rules. How do I relate to God now that I'm a believer? And he says this, but thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient, from where?

From the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. Where does obedience come from in the life of a Christian? From the heart. In case there's any doubt about the way, this way of understanding this call to keep the commandments of God is more heart and less external.

Paul uses the same structure in other places of his writing to speak about the same issue of circumcision. He mentions it a couple of different times, and the parallels of the way that he talks about this in other passages are extremely informative to what he means here.

In Galatians 5, 6 he writes, remembering we're talking about verse 19, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. In Galatians 5, 6 he writes, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.