a. Real “circumcision” is in Christ (3:3)

Those are the true covenant people who worship by the Spirit of God and who glory in Christ Jesus. This is a spiritual circumcision of the heart, constituting the “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16). Some versions and commentators translate Spirit (pneumati) to mean the worship of God by the human spirit (rsv; Wesley; Beare). It does not matter since we cannot worship in our own spirits without the help of the Holy Spirit. As Hawthorne (p. 127) puts it, “the Spirit of God is the divine initiator at work in the depths of human nature.” Of this worship Wesley comments, “Not barely in the letter, but with the spiritual worship of inward holiness.”