Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?
Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, х ta (G3588) dikaioomata (G1345) (see the note at Romans 5:16)] - 'the righteous precepts of the law.'
Shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? The general principle here expressed is clear enough, that as circumcision will not protect the unrighteous from the consequences of their bad life, so the want of it will not invalidate the claims of true righteousness. But whether the apostle is here putting a real or only a hypothetical case, is a question of some difficulty, on which critics are not agreed. Those who take the apostle to mean such a keeping of the law as justifies before God-a complete and perfect obedience to the requirements of the moral law-pronounce the case here supposed a purely hypothetical one. (So Alford, Hodge, etc.) But as that impossibility was just as true of Jews as of Gentiles, it seems wide of the mark. To us it appears that it is reality in personal religion which the apostle has here in view; and that what he affirms is, that as circumcision-considered as the mere external badge of the true Religion-will not compensate for the want of subjection in heart and life to the law of God, so neither will the absence of circumcision invalidate the standing before God of the man whose heart and life are in conformity with the spirit of His law.
But this suggests another question. Is such conformity in heart and life to the law of God-or such personal religion as He will recognize-possible without the pale of revealed religion? Now, though the apostle probably had no one class of mankind in view while penning this verse, it is scarcely natural to suppose that he was putting a case which he knew could never be realized. What sort of case, then, would sufficiently meet his statement? That he was thinking of pagan men who 'act up to the light of nature,' as people speak-and as Grotius, Olshausen, and others suppose here-we cannot think; for this is plainly inconsistent with the apostle's own teaching. But just as in the days of Melchizedek and Job men were found beyond the pale of the Abrahamic covenant, yet not without a measure of revealed light, so might there occur innumerable cases of pagans-especially after the Babylonian captivity-benefiting so far by the dispersed Jews as to attain, though but in rude outline, to right views of God and of His service, even though not open proselytes to the Jewish Religion. Such class-without referring to that of Cornelius (Acts 10:1-48), who, outside the external pale of God's covenant, had come to the knowledge of the truths contained in it, manifested the race of the covenant without the seal of it, and exemplified the character and walk of Abraham's children, though not called by the name of Abraham-such cases seem sufficient to warrant and explain all that the apostle here says, without resorting to the supposition of a purely hypothetical case.