My point was, I did address the context, quite clearly and obviously. Anyone who actually read my posts with a proper attitude of actually trying to understand what I wrote, instead of just to try and find fault, would see that.
And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem, to the apostles and elders, about this question. (Acts. 15:1-2)
Paul wanted to have him (Timothy) go on with him. And he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region, for they all knew that his father was Greek. (Acts 16:3)
Yes, and? Unless one is circumcised, they couldn't preach in the synagogues, but that circumcision had nothing to do with salvation. Here is some commentary on Acts 15 regarding Paul's understanding of circumcision and how it plays into Acts 16:
"Here, perhaps, is the proper place to set forth St. Paul’s view of circumcision and of all external Jewish ordinances, as we gather it from a broad review of his writings. St. Paul vigorously opposed all those who taught the necessity of Jewish rites so far as salvation is concerned. This is evident from this chapter and from the Epistle to the Galatians. But on the other hand St. Paul had not the slightest objection to men observing the law and submitting to circumcision, if they only realised that these things were mere national customs and observed them as national customs, and even as religious rites, but not as necessary religious rites. If men took a right view of circumcision, St. Paul had not the slightest objection to it. It was not to circumcision St. Paul objected, but to the extreme stress laid upon it, the intolerant views connected with it. Circumcision as a voluntary practice, an interesting historical relic of ancient ideas and customs, he never rejected, -nay, further, he even practised it, as we shall see in the case of Timothy; circumcision as a compulsory practice binding upon all men St. Paul utterly abhorred. We may, perhaps, draw an illustration from a modern Church in this respect. The Coptic and Abyssinian Churches retain the ancient Jewish practice of circumcision. These Churches date back to the earliest Christian times, and retain doubtless in this respect the practice of the primitive Christian Church. The Copts circumcise their children on the eighth day and before they are baptised; but they regard this rite as a mere national custom, and treat it as absolutely devoid of any religious meaning, significance, or necessity. St. Paul would have had no objection to circumcision in this aspect any more than he would have objected to a Turk for wearing a fez, or a Chinaman for wearing a pigtail, or a Hindoo for wearing a turban. National customs as such were things absolutely indifferent in his view. But if Turkish or Chinese Christians were to insist upon all men wearing their peculiar dress and observing their peculiar national customs as being things absolutely necessary to salvation, St. Paul, were he alive, would denounce and oppose them as vigorously as he did the Judaisers of his own day.
This is the explanation of St. Paul’s own conduct. Some have regarded him as at times inconsistent with his own principles with regard to the law of Moses. And yet if men will but look closer and think more deeply., they will see that St. Paul never violated the rules which he had imposed upon himself. He refused to circumcise Titus, for instance, because the Judaising party at Jerusalem were insisting upon the absolute necessity of circumcising the Gentiles if they were to be saved. Had St. Paul consented to the circumcision of Titus, he would have been yielding assent, or seeming to yield assent, to their contention. (see Gal 2:3) He circumcised Timothy at Lystra because of the Jews in that neighbourhood; not indeed because they thought it necessary to salvation that an uncircumcised man should be so treated, but
because they knew that his mother was a Jewess, and the principle of the Jewish law, and of the Roman law too, was that a man’s nationality and status followed that of his mother, not that of his father, so that the son of a Jewess must be incorporated with Israel. Timothy was circumcised in obedience to national law and custom, not upon any compromise of religious principle. St. Paul himself made a vow and cut off his hair and offered sacrifices in the Temple, as being the national customs of a Jew. These were things in themselves utterly meaningless and indifferent; but they pleased other people. They cost him a little time and trouble; but they helped on the great work he had in hand, and tended to make his opponents more willing to listen to him. St. Paul, therefore, with his great large mind, willing to please others for their good to edification, gratified them by doing what they thought became a Jew with a true national spirit beating within his breast." (Expositor's Bible Commentary)
Here is Adam Clarke's commentary on Acts 16:3:
"
For this simple reason, that the Jews would neither have heard him preach, nor would have any connection with him, had he been otherwise. Besides, St. Paul himself could have had no access to the Jews in any place, had they known that he associated with a person who was uncircumcised: they would have considered both to be unclean. The circumcision of Timothy was a merely prudential regulation; one rendered imperiously necessary by the circumstances in which they were then placed; and, as it was done merely in reference to this, Timothy was lain under no necessity to observe the Mosaic ritual, nor could it prejudice his spiritual state, because he did not do it in order to seek justification by the law, for this he had before, through the faith of Christ. In Gal 2:3-5, we read that Paul refuses to circumcise Titus, who was a Greek, and his parents Gentiles, notwithstanding the entreaties of some zealous Judaizing Christians, as their object was to bring him under the yoke of the law: here, the case was widely different, and the necessity of the measure indisputable."
It's pretty straightforward based on context.
