Romans 4:9-13. Part of Paul's argument against Christians needing to be circumcised. He says God's blessings are bestowed on the righteous, on those whose sins have been forgiven, and not necessarily on the circumcised. He looks back to Abraham and asks which came first, Abraham's faith and righteousness, his call from God and acceptance of it, or his circumcision? It was his faith that came first, circumcision was "a sign or seal of the righteousness which he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised." The purpose, Paul says, was to make Abraham the father of all who have faith without being circumcised and all those who are circumcised and also have the faith of Abraham before he was circumcised.

In other words, circumcision does not confer any special place in God's kingdom, it had its purpose as a sign of being one of the chosen people. God needed a chosen people when he started leading us all out of the fallenness of this world (see my blog post from two days ago). But God is also the Father of all, He just took time, and the Jews, to reveal that to all of us. As the "chosen people," the Jews needed to be discernible from others so that the world would be able to see that they were different, because that way the world could see the way God treated those who werre faithful to Him. Essentially, the Jews were a "control group," and circumcision is one way they were clearly set apart from the rest of the world. Thus, the world, following its many other gods and idols, could look to the Jews, following the one true God, and compare outcomes. This comes up several times in the Bible, for example in the Book of Judith when Holofernes is warned not to attack the Jewish people because their God will protect them as long as they are being faithful (Judith 5:5-21).

But when Jesus came, history had had enough time to record the differences between the Jews and the rest of the world. Now it was time to spread the Good News of the one true God to everyone, because God, in fact, wants to rescue everyone. So as the Gospel spreads, anyone who answers that call, like Abraham, does not need to be circumcised. If they already were circumcised, that is fine. But the circumcision itself does not give anyone faith or righteousness. So anyone circumcised who does not accept the Gospel is in no better place than an uncircumcised person who does not. And anyone, circumcized or not, who does accept it is saved!