Philippians - Chapter 3

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Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision. (v. 2)

• Dogs:
  • Christians who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, but probably as the Savior of Israel only. (exclusivism) Having a shameless, reckless, mischief-devising, raging, unclean, irreverent, and disrespectful attitude towards other believers.
• Evil workers:
  • Insisting that Christ’s kingdom could be entered only through the gate of Judaism. (elitism) They controlled saints by giving them a false view of their superiority in the eyes of God. (Rev. 3:17-18)
• Concision:
  • Only those circumcised would be fully accepted by God. (legalism)
  • Conformity to a specific practice or rallying around the principle imposed (the unwritten law) instead of the letter of it.
• The Antidote
  • The antidote for the three problems previously addressed is to turn one’s pursuing and mind from "isms" to God Himself.
  • For we are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. (v. 3)
  • Serving by the Spirit of God keeps us from being dogs, boasting in Christ Jesus alone keeps us from becoming evil workers, and having no confidence in the flesh keeps us from legalities, saving us from religious formalism.
  • Paul goes on to say, "Moreover I also count all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, on account of whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse that I may gain Christ. (v. 8)
  • Forgetting the things which are behind, both the good and the bad, the religious and non-religious is to apply the cross to our past situation.
  • Furthermore, Paul states, "Stretching forward to the things which are before, pursuing toward the goal for the prize to which God in Christ Jesus has called me upward." (vv. 13-14) We should no longer be concerned with what ever earthly prizes are before us, especially self-indulgence (vv. 17-19), but rather seek Christ as the Head, and the building up of His Body in reality. Our destiny is that one day we all will be conformed to the body of His glory. (vv. 20-21)