No Confidence in the Flesh

The warm "rejoice in the Lord" of verse 1 cracks open into one of the harshest sentences in the New Testament: "Look out for the dogs" (3:2). Paul is not snapping at pets. He is warning the Philippians about teachers who said Jesus plus circumcision, Jesus plus law-keeping. To them he turns the church's own insult back around: you call Gentiles "dogs"; you are the dogs. Then, to prove the point, he does something startling. He hauls out the religious resume he once trusted more than life, lays it on the table, and spends the rest of the chapter showing why he threw it away.

1. The warning: three "look outs"

Three times the same verb: "Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh" (3:2). These are the Judaizers, teachers who followed Paul insisting that Gentile believers must be circumcised and keep the law to be saved (see the glossary on the gospel). Paul calls them dogs (the filthy street scavenger, not the house pet), evildoers (these self-proclaimed do-gooders were actually doing evil), and mutilators, a savage play on the word "circumcision." After Christ, demanding circumcision for salvation is not devotion; it is self-mutilation.

The devotional point lands hard. Rogers, who preached two sermons on this passage ("The Things That Really Count"), loved to press it: "Some of the meanest people in the world are in the world of religion" (Rogers, "The Things That Really Count," on 3:1-9). It was a religious crowd that crucified Jesus. Religion without the new birth is not a harmless halfway house; it is a threat. Adding to Christ is subtracting from Christ.

2. The true mark: worship, glory, no confidence

Against the mutilators Paul sets the true people of God in one compressed verse: "we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh" (3:3). Three marks. Worship by the Spirit, not by outward ritual. Glory in Christ Jesus, boasting only in him. And no confidence in the flesh, where "flesh" means anything in me I could point to as credit. Murray's summary is exact: "'No confidence in the flesh' means no confidence in self" (Murray, "Back to Basics," on 3:2-8).

Read that as a diagnostic for your own heart this week. Where is my confidence that I am right with God? If the honest answer begins with anything I have done, my morality, my church involvement, my upbringing, my doctrine, then I am still, in practice, a mutilator of the gospel. Savior-confidence must replace self-confidence.

3. The resume Paul could beat anyone with

Then Paul plays the Judaizers' game and wins it. "If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more" (3:4). He lists it, seven thick advantages. Two he could not choose: circumcised on the eighth day (the proper ritual, not a late convert) and of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews (pure pedigree, the aristocracy). Three he chose and earned: as to the law, a Pharisee (the strictest sect), as to zeal, persecuting the church (he believed it enough to kill for it), and as to righteousness under the law, blameless (no one could point a finger). Rogers traces each one, the pride of ritual, relationship, respectability, race, religion, reputation.

Here is the devotional shock. This is the man who now says "no confidence in the flesh" (3:3). The most impressive religious resume in the room became, in Christ, something he would not lean on for a second. If Paul's pedigree could not save him, neither can yours. Rogers again: "The worst form of badness may be human goodness when that human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth."

Paul has shown what he will not trust. In the next verses he shows what he now does instead: he takes that entire resume and enters it on the ledger as loss. The most famous accounting in the New Testament is where chapter 3 turns from warning to worship.