Philippians 3:1–11

Original Meaning

A Seam in the Letter’s Argument (3:1)

Paul introduces this new section of his letter with an admonition to “rejoice in the Lord” (3:1). This command acts as a thread to bind the material in 3:2–4:1 to Paul’s discussion of Timothy and Epaphroditus in 2:19–30 and to the argument prior to that discussion in 1:27–2:18. The two previous sections had both concluded with an admonition to adopt an attitude of joy in the midst of difficulty, whether that meant remaining steadfast in the faith rather than capitulating to a quarrelsome spirit or acknowledging the unselfishness of Epaphroditus who nearly lost his life in the service of the gospel (2:18, 29). In 3:2–4:1 Paul describes doctrinal troubles that may face the Philippian community in the future. Amid these trials too, Paul hopes that the Philippians will maintain an attitude of joy.

Here for the first time, however, he follows his admonition to rejoice with the qualifier “in the Lord.” The phrase may describe the basis for the Philippians’ joy: Because they are united with Christ they rejoice. More probably, it echoes the language of the Psalms that admonishes the righteous to “rejoice in the Lord and be glad” (Ps. 32:11) and to “sing joyfully to the Lord” (33:1). In both of these instances, the psalmist urges the worshiping community to praise the Lord for what he has done for them. This is probably also the intention of Paul’s admonition.1

After this transitional comment, Paul states why he issues the warnings that follow. Although he is repeating information he has told the Philippians before, he wants to emphasize its importance as a “safeguard.” His purpose, then, is to keep the foundation of their faith free from the cracks and weaknesses he has seen develop in the commitment of other churches to the gospel.

Bridging Contexts

THIS PASSAGE IS so rich theologically that the greatest challenge in interpreting it is to remain within its theological mainstream and to avoid traveling too far down other interesting but tributary brooks. The primary point is clear: Righteousness before God on the final day comes solely from God, and any attempt to add requirements of human invention to what God has freely given amounts to a rejection of the gospel. In Paul’s eyes, a Judaizing form of the gospel is equivalent to his own rejection of the gospel, and the Judaizers themselves are as inimical to the church as Paul the persecutor. Those who interpret this passage within the modern context will want to lay particular stress on this equivalency. Anyone who adds requirements to the pure gospel of God’s grace, in Paul’s view, rejects the gospel in its entirety. Such a gospel, as the apostle says elsewhere, is “a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all” (Gal. 1:6–7; cf. 2 Cor. 11:4).

Three Cultural Stumbling Blocks. In order to communicate this primary point with the urgency and meaning that Paul intended to convey to the Philippians, we will have to remove three potential stumbling blocks. First, it would be easy to pass over the stridency of Paul’s language in 3:2, since the rhetoric is difficult to reproduce and since, detached from its literary and theological context, Paul’s words may sound offensive. The task is made that much more difficult by modern translations that try to remove some of the harshness of Paul’s language. One translation, for example, renders the verse, “Be on your guard against those dogs, those who do nothing but harm and who insist on mutilation—‘circumcision’ I will not call it” (REB). Such a translation misses the staccato rhythm of Paul’s rhetoric and therefore fails to communicate the urgency of the statement.

In this verse, however, the medium is an important part of the message—Paul’s rhetoric underlines the gravity of the issues at stake in his debate with the Judaizers, and it is important to give Paul’s opening salvo all the emphasis in the contemporary context that it had in its ancient context. To call a group “dogs,” “men who do evil,” and “mutilators” is to use extraordinarily harsh language. This kind of language is typical of the prophet whose message is so urgent that its form is designed to shake his hearers out of complacency. Thus John the Baptist’s warning to the Pharisees and Sadducees begins, “You brood of vipers!” (Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7), and Jesus’ sermon to the Pharisees includes the refrain, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” The prophetic form of Paul’s statement, then, contributes to its meaning and needs to be communicated in the contemporary context.

Second, Paul’s primary point in the passage cannot be understood unless we carefully define several difficult terms. The term circumcision will puzzle most people today. Since the operation is still often performed on infant boys, many know the physical details of the procedure itself. Few, however, understand why the rite had spiritual significance for the Jews and why it became a bone of contention in the early church. The best textbook on these matters is the Bible itself. Genesis 17 records the institution of the rite, and study of the passage reveals why the Judaizers put such stress on it. There God ratified his promise to Abraham to give him numerous descendants (see Gen. 12:2; 15:5), and God commanded that as a sign of this covenant Abraham should circumcise every male within his household. Whoever does not accept this sign, he says, “will be cut off from his people” (v. 14), and, he continues, the sign is to be “everlasting” (v. 19).

In the early days of the church, the Judaizers were unwilling to recognize that with the coming of the gospel, the literal observance of this rite had been made unnecessary. In a famous incident, a group of them marched off to Antioch to tell the Gentiles there: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1; cf. 11:1–3). Those who understood what Paul calls “the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:5, 14) responded to this challenge with clarity: God had given the Holy Spirit to uncircumcised Gentile believers and so had provided undeniable proof that they had been included among his people (Acts 11:15–18; 15:7–11; Gal. 2:11–5:6). Like the Jews, they stood under the law’s condemnation, and, like the Jews, the death of Christ on the cross effected redemption for as many of them as believed (Rom. 1:18–5:21; Gal. 2:11–5:6). Other signs of belonging to God’s people were unnecessary.

Because the Judaizers were insisting that Gentiles could not be saved apart from accepting circumcision, Paul charges them in Philippians 3:3 with placing confidence in the flesh. This term is fraught with possibilities for misunderstanding. Some may not understand the term within this context at all. Flesh to them is a part of human anatomy, and the concept of placing confidence in the flesh is as baffling as the notion that someone would place confidence in “the hair.” Others may know that the term has been used figuratively in theological circles to refer to humanity in general or to the created order, but they may believe that Paul is calling God’s creation evil. Both groups need to see the connection between Paul’s understanding of the flesh and the Old Testament understanding. In the Old Testament the term is sometimes used to refer to the frailty of humanity in comparison with the strength of God (2 Chron. 32:8; Isa. 31:3; cf. Gen. 6:3). It is not a great step from this idea to the notion that humanity, because of its frailty, is prone to sin.

Paul takes this step in numerous passages where the flesh is closely allied with what is worldly and sinful rather than with what is spiritual and good (see, e.g., Rom. 7:5, 18, 25; 8:3–13; Gal. 3:3; 5:13–24). Yet Paul clearly did not believe that the flesh itself is sinful. Sin entered the human scene after the creation of Adam, not at the time of his creation (Rom. 5:12), and Jesus himself could come in “sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3) but not be tainted by sin (2 Cor. 5:21). In summary, “the flesh” for Paul is humanity in its fallen frailty, unable to help itself and in need of God’s redemption. Because it is God’s creation, however, it is not sinful in itself.14

God’s answer to human sin, Paul says in Philippians 3:9, is the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Christ. The adjective “righteous” is not commonly used today, and when it is used, it usually means “morally right, just, upright, virtuous, law-abiding.”15 This understanding of the word is derived from the use of the term in classical Greek literature to mean “observant of custom,” “fair,” “deserved.”16 In the law courts of ancient Greece and Rome and in the law courts of modern Western democracies, the righteous judge condemns the guilty and acquits the innocent in accord with their just desserts. The problem with transferring this understanding into Paul’s use of the term without further ado is that “the righteousness that comes from God” might then be understood as God’s willingness to suspend his own righteousness as a judge and, by a legal fiction, claim that we “deserved” to be considered righteous when we did not.

Unlike most English speakers, however, Paul’s understanding of the term was rooted in the Old Testament. There the term can certainly be used in legal contexts, but even in those contexts the notion of God’s covenant with his people Israel often lies beneath the surface. The purpose of the covenant was to confirm and guarantee his relationship with his people. A breech of the covenant, therefore, was not merely a deviation from custom or fair play but breaking faith with God—trampling on the relationship God wanted to have with his people. Similarly, the righteousness that God gives to those who have faith in Christ is not a legal shell game but God’s willingness to break his relationship with Jesus during the time he was on the cross (“made him who had no sin to be sin for us,” 2 Cor. 5:21a) and to establish a relationship with us (“so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” 5:21b).

There is surely a forensic element to all this—Jesus suffers the penalty we deserve—but the relational element between the judge and the accused is equally important.17 Laying stress on the relational element allows us to understand more clearly the multiple ramifications of the atonement and helps us to comprehend the character of God more fully. The atonement does not only mean that when God looks at us he sees Christ, and it does not only mean that an exchange has taken place between our guilt and Christ’s innocence. It means that God acknowledges us to be innocent and, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, runs to embrace us (Luke 15:11–32).

The passage does not stop with verse 9, however. In verses 10–11 Paul says that he has counted all things loss that he might know Christ (cf. v. 8). “Knowing Christ” is often understood as having a personal relationship with the risen, living Christ, of experiencing the presence of Christ in the day-to-day affairs of life. Paul certainly knew Christ in this way, and this passage is properly understood as an expression of the close relationship that Paul had with the crucified and risen Lord (cf. 1:21; Rom. 14:8; 2 Cor. 5:16; Gal. 2:19b–20).

Problems arise, however, when we limit the term know to this relational meaning. To know God in the biblical sense is also to be aware of his will and to be willing to obey him. Paul’s union with Christ’s death, therefore, involved a costly obedience to the commission God had given him to establish and shepherd predominantly Gentile churches (2 Cor. 4:7–12; cf. Rom. 15:17–19; 1 Cor. 9:16–17; Col. 1:24–29). Paul’s union with Christ’s resurrection, at least in the present, likewise meant God’s gracious rescue of Paul from desperate circumstances that the apostle encountered in his efforts to carry out this commission. It also meant God’s use of Paul’s ministry to produce spiritual life among those to whom he preached the gospel (2 Cor. 4:7–15). In bringing this passage out of Paul’s context and into our own, we should stress that knowing Christ means not only feeling his presence but especially living in faithfulness to God and his word day to day.18

Three Transcendent Principles. After coping with Paul’s rhetoric and terminology, we are ready to begin the work of application. Paul’s primary concern in the passage is to show that the attempt to make circumcision a requirement for entry into the people of God is equivalent to placing confidence in the flesh rather than in God and is therefore equivalent to rejecting the gospel entirely.

This primary concern implies three basic principles. The first is most important because it is directly related to Paul’s chief point, and the other two can be legitimately derived from the first. This principle is simply that any attempt to impose requirements beyond faith in Christ for salvation is a perversion of the gospel. This does not mean that faith in Christ should be left vague and undefined and that anyone who claims to believe in Christ is a Christian. “Faith” means more than intellectual assent or simply mouthing the words “I believe in Jesus.” As James reminds us, the demons have that kind of faith (James 2:19; cf. 1 John 3:18). Saving faith is a settled trust that leads to obedience (Rom. 1:5; 16:26). Similarly “Christ” is not a malleable term that can be molded to fit any of the various notions currently in circulation about who Jesus was. “Christ” is the Jesus described in the gospel that the apostles preached and handed down to future generations in the pages of the New Testament (cf. 2 Cor. 11:4; 1 John 1:1–3; 2:22; 4:2; 2 John 9). Once faith in Christ is defined in the way the New Testament defines it, however, any attempt to claim that those who have it must also conform to some other norm in order to be part of God’s people is a distortion of the gospel.

It is important to see, moreover, that any proposed extra requirement need not be something that in itself is strange or questionable. Usually it is something that, like circumcision, is good in its proper place but when taken out of that place and elevated to a position equivalent to faith in Christ becomes the most insidious of idols. Philippians 3:1–11, then, should teach us to beware of religious movements that can mount plausible arguments for their position by making good but secondary principles equal in importance to faith in Christ for salvation. We should be no more timid than Paul himself about calling these movements what they are—rejections of the gospel.

Although this is the primary theological principle of the passage, it also implies a second principle. The passage stands as a warning to all who think that they can be at peace with God without submitting to the Christian gospel. The point of Paul’s detailed description of his privileges and achievements is that if anyone could be found at peace with God on the final day as a result of personal righteousness, Paul could. He was “faultless” with respect to the Mosaic law. What more could God ask? But God could and did ask for something other than obedience to the Mosaic law—he asked for submission to the gospel. This Paul was unwilling to give; thus, had God not apprehended him on the Damascus Road, he would have stood condemned on the final day.

The same is true for all who refuse submission to the gospel today. Other religious systems often contain noble ideals, and people who follow them or who claim to follow no religious system at all often lead exemplary lives. Frequently they believe that whether they follow the “right” pathway to God is ultimately unimportant because God will accept them anyway. What more could God ask than leading a moral life and holding sincere convictions? To all of this Philippians 3:1–11 says that God has asked for submission to the gospel, and anything other than this will end in disaster on the final day. This passage, then, can be used appropriately as an appeal within our own culture for non-Christians to abandon other religious and philosophical systems, no matter how noble they may appear, and to embrace the gospel.

Paul’s comments about not placing confidence in the flesh are not only a warning against those who twist the gospel out of shape or reject it entirely. A third theological principle—one applicable to Christians—also lies beneath this passage. It is possible for Christians to shift their focus from Christ and to become concerned with the qualities that the fallen world considers important as ends in themselves—with “the flesh,” as Paul calls it. Whenever this happens in the life of a believer or a congregation, the message of this passage needs to be heard. Paul’s own privileges and achievements as an unbeliever were without equal from the perspective of his peers (3:4b–6; cf. Gal. 1:13–14), but from the perspective of Paul as a believer, they were stumbling blocks in the way of truth (3:7–8; cf. 1 Tim. 1:12–16). Those who have embraced the gospel need to be reminded that the passage speaks to them as well. It stands as a reminder that the world’s definition of success is not God’s and that worldly successes, if not handled carefully, can attain an inappropriate level of importance in the thinking and conduct even of believers.

Three Interpretive Pitfalls. The interpretation of this passage should not only focus on these three points but should also avoid certain common pitfalls. In making the point that the gospel demands that the believer place confidence in Christ rather than in fleshly privileges and attainments, we must proceed cautiously. Paul did not consider his privileges and attainments to be evil in themselves, nor did he believe that the flesh is evil in itself. The evil lay in Paul’s trust in the flesh instead of the gospel, with his willingness to make fleshly privileges and attainments the foundation of his confidence that he would stand acquitted before God on the final day. To speak of Paul’s “utter disgust for the Law,” as one popular expositor of this passage puts it, then, is to take Paul’s language to an extreme he never intended.19 There is no need to think that in this passage Paul rejects as “rubbish” his parents’ faithfulness to the command to have their son circumcised, his Jewish heritage, or the Mosaic law. This would be inconsistent with Paul’s approach to his Jewish heritage elsewhere (Rom 7:12; 9:1–5) and would go beyond his teaching in this passage. These privileges and attainments were not evil, but confidence in them was.

Another, and closely related, pitfall is to take this passage as a blast against Judaism generally. Interpreters who take this position sometimes use this passage as evidence that the Jews, and especially the Pharisees, of Paul’s day were legalists and that Paul refutes their legalistic religion with an uncompromising statement about God’s grace. This error is an ancient one, going at least as far back as Calvin, who in commenting on this passage identified the Roman Catholics of his time with the Pharisees and claimed that both belonged to degenerate religions that believed in salvation by human merit.20 In more recent times it is not uncommon to read expositions of this passage that claim it describes the standard “Jewish position” that salvation is obtained by “personal human efforts.”21

The gospels show clearly that some Jews were legalists in the time of Jesus and Paul, and among them were many Pharisees.22 But there was nothing necessarily legalistic about Judaism generally or Pharisaism in particular in the first century. Luke certainly does not portray Zechariah and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna, Joseph, Mary, and the boy Jesus this way (Luke 1:6, 59; 2:22–52). After all, first-century Judaism was built on the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is not a legalistic book. God’s grace precedes the command to obey in the Old Testament just as it does in Paul (Ex. 20:2; Lev. 11:45; Phil. 2:12–13; Eph. 2:8–10). Philippians 3:4–6 shows clearly that before hearing the gospel, Paul, like the self-righteous Pharisee in Jesus’ parable (Luke 18:11), placed confidence in his fleshly privileges and attainments. But Paul’s statements about himself are not a sweeping indictment of the Jewish religion as “legalistic.”23

Having successfully navigated around this rocky shoal, it is important not to break apart on another one across the channel. Pauline studies have recently experienced a revolution of Copernican proportions, and at the center of the revolution is the question of whether Luther, Calvin, and other Reformers correctly understood Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith apart from works of the law. Was Paul interested in freeing the individual from the shackles of trying to work his or her way into acceptance with God by good deeds? If so, did Paul believe that Judaism advocated just such a position? If not, what does Paul’s contrast between faith and works mean? Many voices today claim that Paul’s contrast between the law and faith is merely a contrast between two religions: Judaism, whose most important religious symbol was the law of Moses, and Christianity, whose most important religious symbol was faith in Christ.24 Others believe that the contrast represents Paul’s opposition to the Jewish notion that one could become a member of God’s people only by observing the customs of national Israel that are enshrined in the Mosaic law.25

We should approach this “new perspective” on Paul with caution. The new perspective’s insistence that second-temple Judaism was not a legalistic religion devoid of an understanding of God’s grace is a useful insight and a needed corrective to much sloppy and uncharitable scholarship. Its focus on the need to understand Paul in his own historical context before attempting to apply his insights to our own is also a helpful reminder of a basic hermeneutical principle. Nevertheless, the new perspective has been too hasty to consign the Reformers’ understanding of Paul to the curiosity shop of outdated interpretations. Judaism generally may not have lacked an understanding of God’s grace, but some Jews (and, according to Rom. 11:11–24, some Gentiles) put confidence in ethnic privilege and human attainment. By doing this they implied that people were not so bad that they could not contribute something to their own justification.26

Against this notion Paul insists that one’s own righteousness is tainted with evil and is therefore not capable of God’s acceptance on the final day. Salvation must come “from God,” and it has come from God through the work of Christ Jesus. For an exposition of this idea, we cannot do better than turn to Luther. His comment on Galatians 2:16 from his 1535 lectures on Galatians articulates the theological truth behind Philippians 3:1–11 precisely:

For Paul … “flesh” means the highest righteousness, wisdom, worship, religion, understanding, and will of which the world is capable. Therefore the monk is not justified by his order, nor the priest by the Mass and the canonical hours, nor the philosopher by wisdom, nor the theologian by theology, nor the Turk by the Koran, nor the Jew by Moses. In other words, no matter how wise and righteous men may be according to reason and the divine Law, yet with all their works, merits, Masses, righteousnesses, and acts of worship they are not justified.27

Luther’s point is that, as good as many of the institutions and ideals he lists may be, substituting them for the gospel means trusting the flesh for salvation, and that can only end in disaster on the final day. That is also Paul’s basic point in Philippians 3:1–11.

This passage is perhaps the most difficult in Philippians to convey safely out of Paul’s cultural context and into our own. The terminology he uses to make his central point is strange to modern ears and apt to be misunderstood. The theological principles he expresses are compressed into a few sentences that we must carefully unpack to avoid the historical mistakes of the past and the interpretive excesses of the present. The passage is, however, worth all the effort we put into it, for it is the gospel in a nutshell: Humanity is incurably sinful, God requires sinlessness, and God in his grace has remedied this situation through the work of Jesus Christ.

Contemporary Significance

MANY CONTEMPORARY WESTERN European and North American Christians find it difficult to draw theological boundaries.28 There are many reasons for this but two reasons seem to be especially important. (1) Many Christians have been deeply scarred emotionally by people within the church who claimed to be on a crusade for truth but who instead were on a crusade for themselves and, under the guise of guarding the gospel from distortion, swayed the opinion of other people to capture positions of power and to banish all who did not agree with them. Like Diotrephes of old, they loved to be first and used the charge of heresy against Christian brothers and sisters to attain their goal (2 John 9–10). (2) The Christian claim that the Bible and the church are the repositories of truth about human nature, God, the human plight, and salvation is decidedly unpopular today. Many social theorists, political scientists, and theologians believe that the claims of Christians to know the truth about these matters produced untold suffering in the past and pose a threat to the peace and stability of a free society in the present. They would agree with the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau that “it is impossible to live in peace with those whom we believe to be damned.”29 At the popular level this translates into the notion that Christians who claim to know the truth are somehow comparable to extreme Islamic groups, so that both can be labeled “fundamentalists.” Few today are willing to accept this label since it has been stretched to connote ignorance, rigidity, paranoia, and violence.

The result of all this is that Christians today are often unwilling to identify heresy as heresy. Christian denominations rarely discipline ministers on theological grounds, pastors sometimes feed their congregations a diet of self-help sermons that avoid potentially divisive doctrinal issues, and many church members would be hard-pressed to explain the meaning of the Apostles’ Creed. Taking much of a stand on theological matters is simply too risky; it is subject to abuse by power-hungry people and is identified with intolerance and ignorance in the wider culture.

Who can deny that there is an element of truth to this position? The image from the period of the Inquisition of Dominican and Franciscan monks patrolling the Italian countryside in search of heresy and, with the help of the secular state, delivering the obstinate to prison, torture, and death is bone-chilling. The picture from more recent times of white youth ministers in rural America being released from their jobs for inviting African-American children to church is equally nauseating.

Drawing theological boundaries, then, can indeed be risky since the task can easily be derailed by false motives or unethical methods. Refusing to draw boundaries, however, is even more risky. Had the church taken this course in centuries past, nothing would be left of the gospel. In the second and third centuries, for example, the orthodox church was nearly overwhelmed by the teaching of Marcion. Marcionite church buildings dotted the landscape of both city and country throughout the Middle East, Egypt, and Italy during the second century. Much of the teaching in these churches was unobjectionable, for the Marcionites preached vigorous sermons from Paul’s letters and expressed intense devotion to Jesus. The format of their services seems to have closely followed the order of worship in orthodox churches.30 Moreover, the Marcionites were a highly disciplined group who rejected indulgence in the flesh and endured martyrdom as valiantly as any orthodox Christian.31

Leaders of the church in Rome, where Marcion first began to advocate his position, might have been tempted at first to stay quiet about his ideas. After all, Marcion was content to work within the established church structures and, according to one tradition about him, even offered the church at Rome a considerable sum of money. Nevertheless, leaders of the Roman church excommunicated him in A.D. 144 and mounted a vigorous campaign over the next century and a half to refute his teachings.

We may be grateful that they did. The essence of Marcion’s religion was the existence of two gods—the god of the Old Testament who created the “evil” world and the god who appeared in the form of Jesus Christ to rescue those who believed in him from their cruel creator. To support this idea, Marcion accepted as authoritative Scripture only heavily edited editions of Luke’s Gospel and ten of the thirteen Pauline letters. Had the church not stood against the Marcionite threat, the gospel would have been distorted into an unrecognizable shape and “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3) would have ended in shipwreck.

This is simply one example among many. Athanasius stood against an Arian emperor for the eternal equality of God the Son and God the Father. Luther stood against prelates of the church for justification by faith alone apart from works of the law. The Confessing Church in the Germany of the Third Reich stood against the so-called German Christians for its right to be independent of the control of a wicked Führer. More recently, some mainline Protestants have taken a courageous stand against the attempt by radical feminists within their denominations to redefine the image of God in unbiblical ways.32 All of these events illustrate how important it is for the church in every age to draw theological boundaries. Paul’s willingness to follow the same path in Philippians 3:1–11 provides biblical warrant for this solemn duty of the church.

But how can the church fulfill this duty and at the same time prevent the abuses of boundary-drawing that have sometimes plagued the church and hindered its witness? At least two principles should guide legitimate accusations of deviation from the truth of the gospel. First, the supposed false teaching should be a clear deviation from a principle that rests at the heart of the gospel or is clearly taught throughout Scripture. Paul did not pronounce an anathema on the Judaizers over some fine point of eschatology, a particular mode of baptism, or whether to use musical instruments in worship. Their false teaching went to the heart of how one entered the people of God—whether or not one would be saved or condemned on the final day. Similarly, Paul did not excommunicate an unrepentant member of the Corinthian church for some small deviation from the ethical standards demanded by the gospel but for sexual immorality so heinous that even pagans considered it distasteful (1 Cor. 5:1–5). Christians must choose their battles carefully, relying at every turn for guidance on biblical accounts of similar struggles.

Second, those who draw theological boundaries, particularly if they are in power, must constantly examine their own motives. They must ask themselves, “Will I profit by this boundary emotionally or in some other way, and if so, am I drawing the boundary to my own advantage?” Since we are prone to deceive ourselves in answering questions like this, it is also important at every step to seek the advice of mature and trustworthy Christians on the issues at stake and the proper way to handle them. Thus Confessing Christians in Germany in 1934 had the confidence that comes from knowing that the costly steps they took against the “German Christians” were based on a consensus of Christian leaders in Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches.33 They did not act alone. Sometimes, of course, it is necessary to stand alone, like Paul at Antioch and Luther at Worms. Even in these situations, however, it is possible and necessary to seek consensus with the teaching of the church in ages past. If no significant figure in church history has battled the issue that vexes us or spoken on its importance, it would be prudent to proceed cautiously.

Having protected ourselves from using the charge of heresy for selfish ends, however, it is important for every believer, and particularly for ministers and other teachers in the church, to know where the theological boundaries of the faith lie and to hold to them without compromise. For this purpose, a familiarity with various ecumenical summaries of the faith is useful. Every believer should be acquainted with the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and be able to explain their contents.34 Familiarity with the common elements in other, more specific confessions, such as the Augsburg Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Westminster Standards, is also helpful. These great historic statements of the church’s faith certainly do not agree on everything, and sometimes, because of their own historical and cultural contexts, make statements that no longer address the modern church; but what they have in common can safely be regarded as central to Christian belief, and threats from within the church to this common substance should be resisted.

The doctrine to which Paul holds fast in Philippians 3:1–11 is that salvation comes at God’s initiative and through faith in Jesus, and this teaching is no less under attack today than it was in the time of Paul and Luther. Inroads into this doctrine are often made in two ways, one direct and the other more subtle. First, some groups who identify themselves as Christian and who, like the Marcionites of old, differ little from the Christian church in outward appearance and form of worship nevertheless hold beliefs that effectively deny that faith in Christ alone is sufficient for salvation. As with the Judaizers, the additional element is often something good in itself, and proof texts from Scripture can easily be cited in support of the group’s position. But at the end of the day, after all the arguments have concluded, the group cannot reconcile its claims with Paul’s steadfast refusal to admit within the circle of gospel truth anything that denies the complete sufficiency of faith in Christ for salvation.

For example, the principal leader of the nineteenth-century “restoration” movement in America, Alexander Campbell, taught that “to the believing penitent” baptism by immersion was “the means of receiving a formal, distinct and specific absolution, or release from guilt.” As a result, “none but those who have first believed the testimony of God and have repented of their sins, and that have been intelligently immersed into his death have the full and explicit testimony of God, assuring them of pardon.”35 Some congregations of the Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches, which are related to Campbell’s movement, have continued to insist that baptism by immersion is necessary for salvation. They frequently point to such texts as Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 3:21; and 1 John 3:5, which connect baptism with salvation or regeneration in support of this teaching.

Baptism is, of course, a good and necessary Christian sacrament, but its value lies in its ability to demonstrate visibly to believers what actually happens when Christ’s blood and the Holy Spirit cleanse them from sins. Why, then, does Scripture so explicitly connect baptism with salvation in such passages as 1 Peter 3:21? The Heidelberg Catechism puts it well:

God has good reason for these words. He wants to teach us that the blood and Spirit of Christ wash away our sins just as water washes away dirt from our bodies. But more important, he wants to assure us, by this divine pledge and sign, that the washing away of our sins spiritually is as real as physical washing with water.36

Baptism, as sacramentally helpful as it is, cannot participate in the work of salvation. Faith alone justifies. Philippians 3:1–11 stands like a sentinel over this great doctrine, and no religious notion that cannot safely pass beneath its gaze should be admitted into the church.

It would be a serious mistake, however, to think that this particular deviation from the gospel only appears within groups whose official policies and doctrines espouse it. The belief that God will save people in the end on the basis of works is common to many people who identify themselves as Baptists and Presbyterians, Methodists and Episcopalians. These people may understand that Jesus is important and that his death had something to do with sin, but they continue to believe that heaven is a reward for the upright. These people frequently seem untroubled by this notion.

Anyone who believes that salvation comes through the good works people do, however, should be deeply depressed, for the biblical perspective on this understanding of salvation is that if it is true, then no one can be saved. “Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you,” pleads the psalmist (Ps. 143:2), and Paul argues that “no one will be declared righteous in [God’s] sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Rom. 3:20). Those who believe that salvation comes by works, then, should join the lament of Ezra in one of the apocryphal books bearing his name. Ezra also believed that salvation came by works, but unlike so many moderns, he understood the grave implications of this conviction:

Everyone alive is burdened and defiled with wickedness, sinful through and through. Would it not have been better for us if there had been no judgment awaiting us after death? (2 Esdras 7:65–69 REB).

Those who claim that salvation comes through Christ and through some other mechanical rite or series of good works, however, often fail to appreciate how desperately sinful humanity is and that humanity is absolutely dependent on God for salvation. Philippians 3:1–11 provides us with an opportunity to explain the biblical perspective on the nature of the human plight. Despite Paul’s impeccable credentials and faithful observance of the law, his righteousness was still insufficient to merit acquittal on the final day. If Paul, who excelled many others in his zeal for the law, could not claim salvation on the basis of his human privileges and achievements, surely advocates of salvation by works cannot do so either.

A second, and more subtle, way in which inroads are often made into the doctrine of justification by faith alone is that believers do not allow the principle to inform their practice. If it is true that Jesus came not to call the “righteous” but sinners to repentance, that God reckons the ungodly to be righteous apart from works, and that all of this is from God rather than from any privilege or attainment we can cite on our behalf, then believers should not limit their fellowship with one another on the basis of any external characteristic. The Judaizers did not want to associate with believing Gentiles (Gal. 2:12; cf. Acts 11:2–3), although both claimed to be Christians, because the Gentiles were not circumcised. The anger rising to the surface both in Philippians 3:1–11 and throughout Galatians is present not only because the doctrine of justification by faith apart from works of the law was threatened by the Judaizers’ teaching but because an important ethical principle derived from that doctrine was at issue also: Christians cannot limit their fellowship with one another for external reasons. Those who have been embraced by God must embrace one another.

Sadly and ironically, the Protestant church, although founded as a protest against violations of the doctrine of justification by faith alone in the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century, remains largely divided by race and social class. Tom Sine writes that “11 A.M. Sunday Morning is still the most segregated hour in American Life.”37 Most American Protestants can verify his statement by looking around them next Sunday. The homogeneity of Christian worship and fellowship not only extends to distinctions based on race, but to socioeconomic and age brackets as well. Some of this can be attributed to simple racism and classism, to a selfish unwillingness, often fueled by ignorance and fear, to share our lives with those who are different from us. Most of it, however, seems to come from contentment with the status quo or from a fear that change in our homogeneous units will adversely affect the growth of our churches.38 Whatever the cause, Christians should actively pursue ways to overcome the external barriers that divide them. Unless we do, we can hardly announce with integrity to those who do not believe that Jesus Christ “is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

Philippians 3:1–11 not only challenges Christians to live what they believe, but it also urges unbelievers to examine their own convictions. According to surveys, 88 percent of Americans say that they have never doubted the existence of God, 81 percent believe in a day of judgment in which they will “be called before God … to answer for … sins,” 71 percent believe in life after death, but only 69 percent say that they belong to a church.39 Most of us understand these statistics firsthand. We know people who believe in God, an afterlife, and even a day of judgment, but are not Christians. If engaged in conversation, they clearly think that although they do not believe the gospel and embrace the church, somehow God will accept them and, whatever the next life holds, it will not be bad.

This passage challenges all such comfortable ambiguities. Paul plainly says that even those who have thought about God and his requirements but who, nevertheless, have rejected the gospel will be found on the final day with nothing to present to God but their own righteousness. Any righteousness that is not the righteousness God himself provides, however, will be unable to withstand the time of judgment. It is eternally important, in other words, that people outside the church understand that salvation does not come simply from having some religious convictions. It must come through believing the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is contained in the Scriptures and as it has been preached in the faithful church throughout the ages.

On the other side of this coin, this passage challenges people within the church to make sure that their understanding of the gospel is correct according to the standard of the Bible. Questions of eternal importance are at issue when the church bears witness to the world. Theological education, then, should be a serious enterprise and the calling to be a minister of the gospel a high and serious challenge. Too often, the opposite is the case. Stanley Hauerwas has commented on this by observing the difference between divinity schools and medical schools and between the level of tolerance the public has for physicians and the level of tolerance they have for ministers. Divinity schools sometimes bend their requirements, he observes, to accommodate the desires of individual students. If a medical student, on the other hand, refused to take gross anatomy, the medical school would tell that student to “simply ship out.” Similarly, the public understands when doctors make them wait for hours or are unpleasant, but the minister is expected to be on time and polite whatever the circumstances. Hauerwas muses about the reasons for this state of affairs:

I think they derive from the fact that no one believes an incompetently trained priest might threaten their salvation, since no one really believes that anything is at stake in salvation; but people do think that an incompetently trained doctor might hurt them.40

Philippians 3:1–11 shows us what is at stake in salvation. Without faith in Christ we cannot be acquitted on the final day. Getting this right is important, both for the spiritual health of the church and for the eternal well-being of those to whom the church proclaims it.

Paul’s claim in 3:3 that believers place no confidence in the flesh but instead worship in the Spirit and have hearts that are spiritually circumcised provides a final primary point of connection between this passage and the modern church. Both churches and individual believers can easily fall into a “fleshly” frame of mind although they are formally committed to the gospel as Paul expresses it in this passage. The leadership of churches can allow a building program, a church growth strategy, or some other aspect of the church’s life which, by its very nature, must be implemented and accomplished in much the same way that the world would accomplish the task, to slip from the direction of the Spirit and become an end in itself. When this happens, although we may be willing to go to the stake for the doctrine of justification by faith alone, we are behaving in a way that is incompatible with that belief. To become distracted from the church’s primary task of Spirit-

empowered obedience to God and to allow the world or a particular program to set the church’s agenda instead is to cease placing confidence in Christ and to begin placing confidence in the flesh.

The leadership of churches can also adopt programs and strategies that, although intended is to aid the propagation of the gospel, are fundamentally flawed with the world’s perspective. Thus Christians should be wary of applying the marketing strategies of the business world to the church. Those who use these strategies often have the laudable goal of communicating the gospel as clearly as possible to the greatest number of people and are frequently motivated by the bad experiences that some people have had in some small, uncomfortable, and boring church of the past. But the price of marketing the gospel with programs developed in a fallen and unbelieving world is too high for the church to adopt them wholesale.

An example from the world of church marketing will suffice to illustrate the problem. One church marketing strategist begins his handbook on marketing the church by referring to a standard marketing textbook. The textbook describes four basic marketing principles: “product,” “place,” “promotion,” and “price.” The product is described as something that meets the needs of the consumer. The place is the location at which the product is delivered to the consumer. Promotion involves telling potential consumers about the product and offering them a compelling reason for having it. The price of the product is determined by carefully balancing the amount that will bring the producer a return on his or her investment with the amount the consumer is willing to pay.41

The author of this handbook carefully explains that he does not intend the church, in following this strategy, to change its “product” or view “price” in terms of money. But the question continues to nag, Can the “business” of the church be shaped into the mold developed by a consumer-oriented society for selling its goods and services? The goal of secular marketing strategies is to enable businesses to design products people will buy and then to persuade people to buy them. If people do not already see a need for the product and if they cannot be persuaded to see such a need, good marketing principles dictate that the product-line be radically changed or its price reduced, or that it be dropped altogether in favor of something more marketable. The success of the strategy, in other words, is measured in terms of the response of people.

Preaching Christ and him crucified, however, is a marketing strategist’s nightmare. Those who followed Christ early in his ministry responded to the message of the cross with the statement, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” and when Jesus insisted on its centrality, John tells us that “many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:53–66). Even one of Jesus’ closest disciples, Peter, rebuked Jesus when he “began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law” (Mark 8:31–32; cf. Matt. 16:21–22). Nor did the idea of a crucified Lord gain in popularity after the resurrection. Paul claims that “the message of the cross” preached by the early Christians was considered by many to be “foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:18), “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1:23).

Why the strong reaction? Two reasons emerge from the New Testament. (1) As we have already seen in our discussion of Philippians 2:5–11, the cross was an offense in the ancient Greco-Roman world. It was a cruel death reserved for the worst criminals of the lowest social classes and a symbol of social ostracism and powerlessness. (2) Not content with the stumbling block of Christ crucified, both Jesus and his followers insisted on speaking of the crucifixion of Jesus’ followers with him. “If anyone would come after me,” said Jesus, “he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23; cf. Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34). Paul followed this path when he gave up his fleshly privileges and attainments in order to know “the fellowship of sharing in [Christ’s] sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10).

The New Testament testifies that this utterly unattractive message succeeded at all only because the Spirit of God worked in the hearts of people to accept it (1 Cor. 1:26–31; 2 Cor 2:14–3:6). The strategies that we use to communicate the gospel effectively to others, therefore, must not soften or change this message in order to fill plush church buildings with more people or to meet the financial requirements of an ever-growing budget (Gal. 2:19).42 That would mean taking our confidence away from Christ and putting it in the flesh. It would mean turning away from the purity of the gospel to human devices and imagining, like the Judaizers and the pre-Christian Paul, that we know how to conduct God’s business better than God himself.

Original Meaning

Circumcision, False and True (3:2–4a)

The first step in Paul’s warning is to compare the Judaizers with authentic believers. The force of his language is lost in most English translations, both because Paul’s rhetoric is almost impossible to duplicate in intelligible English and because the stridency with which he speaks is startling. We can almost capture both the rhetoric and the urgency of the original with the translation, “Beware the curs! Beware the criminals! Beware the cutters!”

Paul calls his opponents “dogs” because, like dogs who intrude where they are not wanted (cf. Ps. 59:14–15), his opponents have insinuated themselves into Paul’s churches (cf. Gal. 2:5).2 They are “men who do evil” because, unlike missionaries of the authentic gospel, they labor in an evil cause (cf. 2 Cor 11:13). They are “mutilators of the flesh” because their confidence lies in circumcision, a physical operation performed on the flesh, rather than in God’s gracious work through Jesus Christ (cf. Gal 5:12).3

On the other hand, Paul says, believers comprise the true “circumcision.” His use of the pronoun “we” shows that he includes himself and the Philippians in this group. Paul, of course, was a circumcised Jew (cf. v. 5), and the Philippian church was probably composed entirely of physically uncircumcised Gentiles. The common ground between them is their commitment to the gospel. As believers, Paul says, they comprise the true people of God, the true circumcision.

How could Paul plausibly make this claim? The Old Testament recognizes that the human heart rather than physical features are God’s real concern (1 Sam. 16:7), and it sometimes applies this principle specifically to circumcision. Physical circumcision was a visible mark that identified those who bore it as members of Israel, God’s chosen people (Gen. 17). At times, however, the Israelites placed such confidence in possession of the physical mark itself that they felt their election was secure even if their hearts strayed after other gods. In these instances, the writers of the Old Testament reminded them that the physical rite should be symbolic of a deeper commitment. They called this commitment “circumcision of the heart,” and they looked forward to a time when God would figuratively perform this operation on the hearts of his people so that they might be committed to him (Jer. 4:4; cf. 6:10; 9:25; Deut. 10:16; 30:6). Paul’s point in verse 3 is that this time has arrived and that because circumcision of the heart is the critical qualification for entrance into God’s people in this new era, physical circumcision is irrelevant (cf. Rom. 2:25–29; 1 Cor. 7:19; Gal. 5:6; 6:15; Eph. 2:11; Col. 2:11).4

This newly constituted people of God, Paul says, exhibit three characteristics: They “worship by the Spirit,” “glory in Christ,” and “put no confidence in the flesh.” The early Jerusalem church, which was entirely Jewish, was forced to recognize that God had included uncircumcised Gentile believers within his people by placing his Spirit among them (Acts 10:44–48; 11:15–17; 15:7–9). Similarly, when the Gentile believers in Galatia fell under the influence of Judaizers who claimed that they could not be part of God’s people until they accepted circumcision, Paul reminded the Galatians that the presence of the Spirit among them was irrefutable proof that they were already members of God’s people and needed no additional qualification (Gal. 3:1–5). So here, Paul identifies true circumcision with the work of the Spirit within the worshiping community of both circumcised and uncircumcised believers.

The next two characteristics of the true circumcision are related to one another. We who are truly circumcised, Paul says, “glory in Christ Jesus” and “put no confidence in the flesh.” Paul’s word for “glory” (kauchaomai) can mean “to boast,” and, together with two other closely related words (kauchema and kauchesis), is often used in his letters to indicate the ground of one’s confidence. In 2 Corinthians, for example, Paul says that the false apostles who have invaded the Corinthian church and are opposing Paul “commend themselves,” but that in contrast he refuses to “boast” in this way (2 Cor. 10:12–13). Similarly, in Romans, Paul concludes his argument that Jews cannot claim exemption from judgment on the final day on the basis of possessing or performing of the law with the statement that “boasting” has been excluded (Rom. 3:27). According to his argument in Romans 1:18–3:26, boasting has been excluded because the Jew, like the Gentile, is sinful and can only escape God’s wrath by believing in the atoning death of Christ. In Philippians 3:3, then, Paul’s point is that the ground of the Christian’s confidence is Christ rather than any human social privilege.

Paul follows this with the statement that believers do not put confidence (pepoithotes) in the flesh. Two aspects of this statement are interesting. (1) It shows that Paul regards confidence in the flesh and confidence in Christ as mutually exclusive. From his perspective, it is impossible to place one spiritual foot on the foundation of the flesh and one spiritual foot on the foundation of Christ. Both feet must be firmly planted on either one foundation or the other. (2) Paul’s term “flesh” has profound significance. Paul probably considered the term especially appropriate to the problem of the Judaizers since they advocated a literal operation on the flesh and since in both the Old Testament and the philosophical literature from Paul’s time the term flesh often signified human weakness, frailty, and tendency to sin. Simply put, Paul’s point is that whereas Christians have placed their confidence in Christ, the feet of the Judaizers rest on a fallen human foundation that will inevitably collapse.

All of this reminds Paul of his own fleshly résumé, and so he concludes this paragraph in verse 4a with a phrase that makes the transition to the next paragraph. If human privilege and attainment could form a stable foundation on which to stand in the final day, he says, then his own pre-Christian foundation was firm indeed.