Letters to the Churches

and if you have persuaded yourself that you are a guide to the blind, a light in the darkness,

an instructor for the spiritually unaware and a teacher of children, since in the Torah you have the embodiment of knowledge and truth;

then, you who teach others, don’t you teach yourself? Preaching, “Thou shalt not steal,” do you steal?

Saying, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? Detesting idols, do you commit idolatrous acts?

You who take such pride in Torah, do you, by disobeying the Torah, dishonor God? —

as it says in the Tanakh, “For it is because of you that God’s name is blasphemed by the Goyim.”

For circumcision is indeed of value if you do what Torah says. But if you are a transgressor of Torah, your circumcision has become uncircumcision!

Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the Torah, won’t his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?

Indeed, the man who is physically uncircumcised but obeys the Torah will stand as a judgment on you who have had a b’rit-milah and have Torah written out but violate it!

For the real Jew is not merely Jewish outwardly: true circumcision is not only external and physical.

On the contrary, the real Jew is one inwardly; and true circumcision is of the heart, spiritual not literal; so that his praise comes not from other people but from God.

Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of being circumcised?

Much in every way! In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the very words of God.

If some of them were unfaithful, so what? Does their faithlessness cancel God’s faithfulness?

Heaven forbid! God would be true even if everyone were a liar! — as the Tanakh says, “so that you, God, may be proved right in your words and win the verdict when you are put on trial.”

Now if our unrighteousness highlights God’s righteousness, what should we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict his anger on us? (I am speaking here the way people commonly do.)

Heaven forbid! Else, how could God judge the world?

“But,” you say, “if, through my lie, God’s truth is enhanced and brings him greater glory, why am I still judged merely for being a sinner?”

Indeed! Why not say (as some people slander us by claiming we do say), “Let us do evil, so that good may come of it”? Against them the judgment is a just one!

So are we Jews better off? Not entirely; for I have already made the charge that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, are controlled by sin.

As the Tanakh puts it, “There is no one righteous, not even one! No one understands,

no one seeks God,

all have turned away and at the same time become useless; there is no one who shows kindness, not a single one!

“Their throats are open graves, they use their tongues to deceive. Vipers’ venom is under their lips.

Their mouths are full of curses and bitterness.