If therefore one were not, with God’s great grace helping him, to understand the words and actions of the prophets, it would be of no benefit to him to seem to relate their sayings or their actions, when he has no reason to give for them. And will not those words and actions seem right contemptible to most people if they are told by those who do not understand them?
For suppose that any one desires to inquire of you — since Enoch and Noah, together with their children and any others of the same kind, pleased God without either being circumcised or keeping the sabbath — what was the reason that after so many generations God thought it well that by other leaders and a fresh legislation, those who lived from Abraham till Moses should be justified by circumcision, and those who were after Moses both by circumcision and by the other commandments, namely, Sabbath sacrifices and ashes and offerings? What reasonable answer can you give, unless, as I have already said, you prove that it was because God, as foreknowing everything, knew that your people would deserve to be cast out from Jerusalem, and none of them be allowed to enter there?
For by no other possible way are you recognized, as I have already said, save by the circumcision in your flesh. For not even to Abraham was witness borne by God that he was righteous because of his circumcision, but because of his faith. For before he was circumcised it was thus said of him: and Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.Genesis 15:6 Galatians 3:6
We also therefore, believing- God through Christ in a state of uncircumcision of our flesh, and yet having a circumcision which is of advantage to us who possess it, namely, circumcision of the heart, hope that we appear righteous and well-pleasing to Genesis 15:6 Galatians 3:6 God, since we have already received testimony from Him by the words of the prophets. But your being commanded to keep the sabbath and to make offerings, and being granted by the Lord a place in which the name of God was to be invoked, was for fear lest, as has been said, you should worship idols and forget God, and so become irreligious and godless, as you appear always to have been.
And that for these reasons God appointed His commands concerning sabbaths and offerings, has already been shown by me in what I have said. But because of those who have come to-day I think it well to repeat it almost all again. For except this be the reason (to avoid idolatry) the accusation will be brought against God that He neither has foreknowledge, nor teaches all men to know and practise the same righteous ordinances, for plainly there were many generations of men before Moses. Hence that will be no valid saying which says that God is true and righteous and all His ways are judgments, and there is no iniquity in Him.
But since the word is true, so God ever wishes you not to be as you are now, without understanding and lovers of yourselves, that you may be saved with Christ, who pleased God and has been borne testimony to, as I said before, when I brought forward my proof from the holy words of the prophets.