Day 13 – Philippians 3:1-4

Mon 25th May – Read Philippians 3:1-4

V1: Paul says ” finally”, though only half way through the letter. ( This can be a bad habit for some preachers!) His exhortation to “rejoice in the Lord”, is actually taken up again in Philippians 4:4, and what follows here appears almost as an “interruption”. Some think news reached him at this point, causing him to add to his original plan to repeat things he had already told them.

V2-3: In what does seem an entirely new focus, he warns them against false teachers, described in the strongest terms because their influence is dangerous and insidious. May God give us discernment to know the truth – and what departs from it! The references to “mutilating the flesh”, and Christian believers as ” the (true) circumcision” show that he is concerned with a Jewish group who were telling Gentile Christians they had to become “like Jews” to be saved, seeking to bring them into bondage to the Law, to receive circumcision etc. Such Jewish pseudo-Christians, sometimes called Judaisers, sought to undermine Paul’s teaching about the liberty of the gospel, and salvation through Christ alone. Paul says that God’s true people are those – Gentile or Jew by birth – who worship God as He has provided the way, by the Holy Spirit (compare John ch4,v23-24), and trust only in Christ and His redeeming death, not anything in themselves.

V4: He adds that if ever anyone could have had confidence in pleasing God by their own keeping of the law, it would have been himself ( and indeed, he once thought this way.)