The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Brenda Rivera of Orlando, Florida from the tape, GC 1301-S, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 21."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1982. All Rights Reserved.

Question

If the Jews thought that circumcision saved and made themselves perfect before God, what do the women [do]?  How do they base their salvation, by keeping the whole law?

You see it’s a very interesting thing. Jewish tradition grew up in the Mishna and the Gemara and all the rest of that stuff, almost ignoring women. I mean the Pharisees daily prayer was that, "I thank God that I’m not a Gentile or a woman." They just really never gave much thought to that, that a woman was sort of in the covenant by virtue of birth to a Jewish man and woman. You know what I’m saying? The fact that she was the prodigy of the Jewish male: she was born and conceived by a Jewish male and female and so forth. So she came into the covenant that way and of course didn’t have the privilege of having that mark. 

That’s what makes circumcision for salvation so silly. And that’s the right question to ask because women can’t get saved then that way, but they accommodate that by saying they get saved by keeping the law. But they really never specify much about women, in fact the Talmud, all the Talmud does most of the time is depreciate women and the Old Testament doesn’t do that, but the Talmud does. 

Now it’s interesting to me that Dr. Gnott (sp?), who was here in the morning, saw that I was going to speak at night on the faith of Abraham and he’s Jewish, a very eminent man. I mean the guy is the advisor to Golda Maier and Bagin and all these people, and he said to me at lunch, he said, “Now what are you going to say? What are you going to say? You’re going to talk about circumcision?” He said, “I want you to tell me what circumcision does mean.” He says, “The Talmud is so confusing about it.” he said, “What does circumcision mean?” So I pre-preached my sermon, giving him the basic idea and you know when I was all done with it he said, “You know, that makes sense. See that makes sense, I can see that." So even in Judaism there was confusion about the significance of those things. 

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
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