For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh; though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If any other man thinks that he has confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the assembly; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.
However, I consider those things that were gain to me as a loss for Christ. Yes most certainly, and I count all things to be a loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them nothing but refuse, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith,
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3. For we are the circumcision—that is, we are…
3. For we are the circumcision—that is, we are the true seed of Abraham, and heirs of the testament which was confirmed by the sign of circumcision. For the true circumcision is of the spirit and not of the letter, inward, and situated in the heart, not visible according to the flesh. (Romans 2:29.)
By spiritual worship he means that which is recommended to us in the gospel, and consists of confidence in God, and invocation of him, self-renunciation, and a pure conscience. We must supply an antithesis, for he censures, on the other hand, legal worship, which was exclusively pressed upon them by the false Apostles.
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“They command that God should be worshipped with outward observances, and because they observe the ceremonies of the law, they boast on false grounds that they are the people of God; but we are the truly circumcised, who worship God in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23.)
But here some one will ask, whether truth excludes the sacraments, for the same thing might be said as to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I answer, that this principle must always be kept in view, that figures were abolished by the advent of Christ, and that circumcision gave way to baptism. It follows, also, from this principle, that the pure and genuine worship of God is free from the legal ceremonies, and that believers have the true circumcision without any figure.
And we glory in Christ We must always keep in view the antithesis. “We have to do with the reality, while they rest in the symbols: we have to do with the substance, while they look to the shadows.” And this suits sufficiently well with the corresponding clause, which he adds by way of contrast— We have no confidence in the flesh For under the term flesh he includes everything of an external kind in which an individual is prepared to glory, as will appear from the context, or, to express it in fewer words, he gives the name of flesh to everything that is apart from Christ. He thus reproves, and in no slight manner, the perverse zealots the law, because, not satisfied with Christ, they have recourse to grounds of glorying apart from him. He has employed the terms glorying, and having confidence, to denote the same thing. For confidence lifts up a man, so that he ventures even to glory, and thus the two things are connected.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 7, 8, 9 He showeth that we ought to use true circumcision,…
He showeth that we ought to use true circumcision, to wit, the circumcision of the heart, that cutting off all wicked affections by the virtue of Christ, we may serve God in purity of life.
In outward things, which pertain nothing to the soul.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3 For we are the circumcision, which worship God…
3 For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
Ver. 3. For we are the circumcision] Such as have our luxuriancies lopped off, our unruly passions mortified, Col 2:11, casting them away as a wretched foreskin.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv3–9 In opposition to and confutation of the concision, he…
In opposition to and confutation of the concision, he speaks of himself, and all true believers in the fellowship of the gospel, partakers of the same grace and Spirit with him, Phi 1:5,7; Php 2:1; and saith, we.
Are the circumcision; using a metonymy, are the circumcision now acceptable, and not displeasing to God, i.e. we are what is really signified by it, and therefore as to the main intent of it are the circumcised (it being usual to put circumcision for circumcised, Act 11:2; Rom 3:30; 4:12; 15:8; Gal 2:7,8,9,12; Col 4:11; Tit 1:10): he doth not mean with respect to carnal circumcision, i.e. which is outward in the flesh, but which is inward in the Spirit, Rom 2:28,29, made without hands by the circumcision of Christ, with whom we are buried in baptism, Col 2:11,12; and being Christ’s are Abraham’s spiritual seed, and heirs of the promise, Gal 3:29.
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Which worship God in the spirit; i.e. who have cut off all carnal confidence of salvation in any external services, (which they of the concision contend for), and do worship God, not with carnal, but spiritual worship, such as now under the gospel he doth require, Joh 4:23,24; Ro 1:9; from a renewed heart; {Joh 3:8 1Pe 3:15} yielding peculiar adoration to the Lord our God, with a sincere mind, and by the assistance of his Spirit in the exercise of faith and love, Rom 8:5,6,26,27; Eph 3:16,17; 6:18; Heb 10:22; according to the same rule he hath prescribed, Phi 3:16, with Rom 12:1,2; Ga 6:16, in and through Christ, Heb 13:15.
And rejoice in Christ Jesus; in whom alone (not in Moses also, as false teachers would join them) glorying we trust for acceptance with God, 2Co 5:9; Gal 6:14; in communion with whom is ground of rejoicing through Christ, who is the substance or body of Mosaic shadows, Phi 3:9.
And have no confidence in the flesh; and not rest, or trust, or place our hope in any carnal or external privilege or performance, or any other besides Jesus Christ, to commend us to God, Gal 3:2,11-13.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 7, 9 That is, we Christians are alone the true and…
That is, we Christians are alone the true and spiritual circumcision, and accounted circumcised by God, because we have that which the outward circumcision signified, namely, the circumcision of the heart, and the mortification of all carnal lusts and desires; we have the substance of that ordinance, which is infinitely more pleasing to God than the ceremony and shadow: though you have the sign, we have the thing signified.
But how doth that appear?
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Three ways; we worship God in the Spirit, we rejoice in Christ Jesus, we have no confience in the flesh.
1. We worship God in the Spirit; that is, first, We give him the worship of our souls and spirits, and do not put him off with mere bodily worship, or with the old, antiquated Jewish worship.
Secondly, We worship God in the Spirit, that is, through the assistance of the Holy SPirit; he excites and quickens to the duty,. he assists and enables in the duty, and he encourages and emboldens the soul to expect audience and acceptance after the duty.
Again, 2. We rejoice in Christ Jesus: this was a second evidence of their being the true circumcision. Let them glory in their carnal ordinance of outward circumcision, we will rejoice in Christ Jesus, who hath freed us from the slavery of that ordinance.
3. We have no confidence in the flesh, nor in circumcision, or any fleshly privileges, or carnal prerogatives: we confide only in Christ, and in nothing but Christ.
Note, That by flesh here is meant particularly the circumcision of the flesh; but more generally by flesh may be understood all the externals of religion, which men place their trust and confidence in; all outward privileges and ordinances are flesh, in the apostle’s sense here: prayer is flesh, ordinances are flesh, the righteousness of the law is flesh; nay, grace itself, trusted to, and confided in, is flesh. The sincere and serious Christian rejoices in Christ Jesus, confides in him, but dares not place any confidence in the flesh. We are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv4, 9 The apostle here proposes himself for an example of…
The apostle here proposes himself for an example of trusting in Christ only, and not in his privileges as an Israelite.
I. He shows what he had to boast of as a Jew and a Pharisee. Let none think that the apostle despised these things (as men commonly do) because he had them not himself to glory in. No, if he would have gloried and trusted in the flesh, he had as much cause to do so as any man: If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof to trust in the flesh, I more, Phi 3:4. He had as much to boast of as any Jew of them all. 1. His birth-right privileges. He was not a proselyte, but a native Israelite: of the stock of Israel. And he was of the tribe of Benjamin, in which tribe the temple stood, and which adhered to Judah when all the other tribes revolted. Benjamin was the father's darling, and this was a favourite tribe. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, an Israelite on both sides, by father and mother, and from one generation to another; none of his ancestors had matched with Gentiles. 2. He could boast of his relations to the church and the covenant, for he was circumcised the eighth day; he had the token of God's covenant in his flesh, and was circumcised the very day which God had appointed. 3. For learning, he was a Pharisee, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, an eminent doctor of the law: and was a scholar learned in all the learning of the Jews, taught according to the perfect manner of the laws of the fathers, Act 22:3. He was a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee (Act 23:6), and after the most strict sect of his religion lived a Pharisee, Act 26:5. 4. He had a blameless conversation: Toughing the righteousness which is of the law, blameless: as far as the Pharisees' exposition of the law went, and as to the mere letter of the law and outward observance of it, he could acquit himself from the breach of it and could not be accused by any. 5. He had been an active man for his religion. As he made a strict profession of it, under the title and character of a Pharisee, so he persecuted those whom he looked upon as enemies to it. Concerning zeal, persecuting the church. 6. He showed that he was in good earnest, though he had a zeal without knowledge to direct and govern the exercise of it: I was zealous towards God, as you all are this day, and I persecuted this way unto the death, Act 22:3, Act 22:4. All this was enough to have made a proud Jew confident, and was stock sufficient to set up with for his justification. But,
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II. The apostle tells us here how little account he made of these, in comparison of his interest in Christ and his expectations from him: But what things were gain to me those have I counted loss for Christ (Phi 3:7); that is, those things which he had counted gain while he was a Pharisee, and which he had before reckoned up, these he counted loss for Christ. "I should have reckoned myself an unspeakable loser of, to adhere to them, I had lost my interest in Jesus Christ." He counted them loss; not only insufficient to enrich him, but what would certainly impoverish and ruin him, if he trusted to them, in opposition to Christ. Observe, The apostle did not persuade them to do any thing but what he had himself did, to quit any thing but what he had himself quitted, nor venture on any bottom but what he himself had ventured his immortal soul upon. - Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, Phi 3:8. Here the apostle explains himself. 1. He tells us what it was that he was ambitious of and reached after: it was the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord, a believing experimental acquaintance with Christ as Lord; not a merely notional and speculative, but a practical and efficacious knowledge of him. So knowledge is sometimes put for faith: By his knowledge, or the knowledge of him, shall my righteous servant justify many, Isa 53:11. And it is the excellency of knowledge. There is an abundant and transcendent excellency in the doctrine of Christ, or the Christian religion above all the knowledge of nature, and improvements of human wisdom; for it is suited to the case of fallen sinners, and furnishes them with all they need and all they can desire and hope for, with all saving wisdom and saving grace. 2. He shows how he had quitted his privileges as a Jew and a Pharisee: Yea doubtless; his expression rises with a holy triumph and elevation, alla men oun ge kai. There are five particles in the original: But indeed even also do I count all things but loss. He had spoken before of those things, his Jewish privileges: here he speaks of all things, all worldly enjoyments and mere outward privileges whatsoever, things of a like kind or any other kind which could stand in competition with Christ for the throne in his heart, or pretend to merit and desert. There he had said that he did count them but loss; but it might be asked, "Did he continue still in the same mind, did he not repent his renouncing them?" No, now he speaks in the present tense: Yea doubtless, I do count them but loss. But it may be said, "It is easy to say so; but what would he do when he came to the trial?" Why he tells us that he had himself practised according to this estimate of the case: For whom I have suffered the loss of all things. He had quitted all his honours and advantages, as a Jew and a Pharisee, and submitted to all the disgrace and suffering which attended the profession and preaching of the gospel. When he embarked in the bottom of the Christian religion, he ventured all in it, and suffered the loss of all for the privileges of a Christian. Nay, he not only counted them loss, but dung, skubala - offals thrown to dogs; they are not only less valuable than Christ, but in the highest degree contemptible, when they come in competition with him. Note, The New Testament never speaks of saving grace in any terms of diminution, but on the contrary represents it as the fruits of the divine Spirit and the image of God in the soul of man; as a divine nature, and the seed of God: and faith is called precious faith; and meekness is in the sight of God of great price, Pe1 3:4; Pe2 1:1, etc.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv3–9 For we are the circumcision,.... And not they; they…
For we are the circumcision,.... And not they; they have the name, and we the thing, or that which legal circumcision was a shadow of, namely, circumcision of the heart; which lies in being pricked to the heart under a true sense of sin; in having the hardness of the heart removed, and the iniquity of it laid to open view; in pain and contrition of heart about it, joined with shame for it, and loathing of it, the consequence of which is, a putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, Col 2:11, according to the former conversation; and also in a renouncing a man's own righteousness in point of justification before God, and acceptance with him. All which is the work of God, and not man, and is therefore called the circumcision made without hands, Col 2:11; it has God, and not man, for its author; and its praise is of God, and not of men; and its seat is in the heart and spirit, and not in the flesh; and such whose hearts are circumcised to love the Lord their God, and fear him, are the true circumcision:
which worship God in the spirit. The object of worship is "God", and him only; not a creature animate or inanimate, stocks or stones, beasts, birds, men, or angels; only God, Father, Son, and Spirit: that the Father is to be worshipped, is not disputed, see Joh 4:21; and the Son is to be worshipped with the same worship the Father is; since he is in the form of God, and equal to him, is the Creator of all the Lord of angels and men, and is to be, and is worshipped by both; prayer is made unto him, baptism is administered in his name, and trust and confidence are placed in him; and so is the Holy Ghost, he being equally God with the Father and the Son, and therefore the same homage is to be given to him as to them: and so some indeed read the words here, "which worship God the Spirit"; or the Spirit, who is God. "Worship" is either inward or outward; inward worship lies in the exercise of grace on God, as of faith, hope, love, fear, &c. outward worship is the performance of certain external actions required by God, and both are to be performed: and it is also either private or public; private worship is in the closet, or in the family, and consists of praying, singing of praises, &c. public worship lies in tire observance of the outward ordinances of preaching, praying, hearing singing, &c. in the church of God; even all such ordinances as God has appointed, which are recorded in the Scriptures, and are confirmed by the authority of Christ. The manner in which worship is to be performed, is "in the Spirit"; either in and with the Spirit of God, without whose grace and assistance no part of it can be performed well. And the Alexandrian copy reads, "which worship in the Spirit of God"; and so the Complutensian edition, and several copies. Or in and with our own hearts and spirits, which should be engaged in every part of religious worship with much attention, diligence, and fervency; or in a spiritual manner, in opposition to the carnal worship of the Jews, and the bodily exercise of formal professors; and which lies in drawing nigh to God with true hearts, sincere and fervent ones, with grace in them, and that in exercise:
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and rejoice in Christ Jesus; or "glory in" him, and make their boast of him; for a different word is here used from that in Phi 3:1. Such who have a true sense of themselves, and a spiritual sight of Christ, will not glory in themselves, in their wisdom, strength, riches, or righteousness, but in Christ, in his wisdom and strength, in his riches and righteousness, and in his person and grace only:
and have no confidence in the flesh; in any carnal descent, or birth privilege, as to be of the seed of Abraham, of the of Israel, or of such a tribe, or family, or born of such a parent; nor in circumcision, or any of the carnal ordinances of the ceremonial law; nor in any civil, moral, legal, and external righteousness, for so to do is but to make flesh an arm; or indeed to trust in anything out of Christ, or short of him; and all this makes up the character and description of a true believer in Christ.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv3–9 For we - Christians. Are the only true circumcision…
For we - Christians. Are the only true circumcision - The people now in covenant with God. Who worship God in spirit - Not barely in the letter, but with the spiritual worship of inward holiness. And glory in Christ Jesus - As the only cause of all our blessings. And have no confidence in the flesh - In any outward advantage or prerogative.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv3–9 Verse 3. We are the circumcision] WE, who have…
Verse 3. We are the circumcision] WE, who have embraced the faith of Christ crucified, are now entered into the new covenant, and according to that new covenant, worship God in the Spirit, exulting, καυχωμενοι, making our boast of Christ Jesus, as our only Saviour, having no confidence in the flesh-in any outward rite or ceremony prescribed by the Jewish institutions.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 6, 7, 8 Php 3:3. For we are the circumcision — The…
Php 3:3. For we are the circumcision — The true spiritual seed of Abraham; who have the things signified by that sign, and perform that which circumcision was designed to engage men to. We are the only people now in covenant with God, who worship God in the Spirit — Not barely in the letter, or by a mere external service, in attending outward ordinances, but with the spiritual worship of reverence and fear, humility and self-abasement, adoration and praise, confidence and hope, gratitude and love, subjection and obedience; of true repentance, living faith, and genuine holiness; feeling within ourselves, and manifesting to others, those dispositions and actions which are suited to the divine perfections, and to the relations in which he is pleased to stand to us; and all this through the influence of his Spirit, which can only implant these dispositions within us, and enable us to conduct ourselves accordingly. See this spiritual worship further explained in the note on Joh 4:23-24; and rejoice — Or, glory, rather, as καυχωμενοι signifies; in Christ Jesus — As the procuring cause of all our blessings, and the source of all our consolations; and have no confidence in the flesh — In any outward advantage or prerogative, or in any performance of our own, past, present, or to come, for acceptance with God, or justification before him.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv3–9 For we are the circumcision - We who are…
For we are the circumcision - We who are Christians. We have and hold the true doctrine of circumcision. We have that which was intended to be secured by this rite - for we are led to renounce the flesh, and to worship God in the spirit. The apostle in this verse teaches that the ordinance of circumcision was not designed to be a mere outward ceremony, but was intended to be emblematic of the renunciation of the flesh with its corrupt propensities, and to lead to the pure and spiritual worship of God. In this, he has undoubtedly stated its true design. They who now urged it as necessary to salvation, and who made salvation depend on its mere outward observance, had lost sight of this object of the rite. But this, the real design of circumcision, was attained by those who had been led to renounce the flesh, and who had devoted themselves to the worship of God; see the notes at Rom 2:28-29.
Which worship God in the spirit - See the notes at Joh 4:24; compare Gen 17:10-14.
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And rejoice in Christ Jesus - See Phi 3:1. That is, we have, through him, renounced the flesh; we have become the true worshippers of God, and have thus attained what was originally contemplated by circumcision, and by all the other rites of religion.
And have no confidence in the flesh - In our own corrupt nature; or in any ordinances that relate merely to the flesh. We do not depend on circumcision for salvation, or on any external rites and forms whatever - on any advantage of rank, or blood. The word “flesh” here seems to refer to every advantage which any may have of birth; to any external conformity to the law, and to everything which unaided human nature can do to effect salvation. Or none of these things can we put reliance for salvation; none of them will constitute a ground of hope.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 9 For we are the circumcision. We Christians now use…
For we are the circumcision. We Christians now use the only profitable and commendable spiritual circumcision; which , to the Colossians (ii. 11.) he calls the circumcision of Christ, and to the Romans (ii. 29.) circumcision of the heart in the spirit. --- Not having confidence in the flesh; i.e. in such carnal ceremonies. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3–9 "We are the (real) circumcision" (Rom 2:25-29; Col 2:11).
"We are the (real) circumcision" (Rom 2:25-29; Col 2:11).
worship God in the Spirit--The oldest manuscripts read, "worship by the Spirit of God"; our religious service is rendered by the Spirit (Joh 4:23-24). Legal worship was outward, and consisted in outward acts, restricted to certain times and places. Christian worship is spiritual, flowing from the inworkings of the Holy Spirit, not relating to certain isolated acts, but embracing the whole life (Rom 12:1). In the former, men trusted in something human, whether descent from the theocratic nation, or the righteousness of the law, or mortification of "the flesh" ("Having confidence," or "glorying in the flesh") [NEANDER] (Rom 1:9).
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rejoice in Christ Jesus--"make our boast in Christ Jesus," not in the law: the ground of their boasting.
have no confidence in the flesh--but in the Spirit.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv3–9 2. Paul’s contrast of the Judaizers and himself, Php_3:3-16.
2. Paul’s contrast of the Judaizers and himself, Php_3:3-16.
3. We—We Christians, whether formerly circumcised Jews or uncircumcised Gentiles.
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Are the circumcision—The genuine circumcision, possessing in Christ all that the ancient Abrahamic rite symbolized. Three characteristics of the real circumcision follow, which, by contrast, define the false circumcision, called here the concision.
Worship God in the Spirit—The best text reads θεου, meaning, by the Spirit of God, that is, their service is rendered under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
Rejoice in Christ Jesus—Better, glory in him, and not in the flesh, as did the perverters. Gal_6:13.
No confidence in the flesh—Better, though I am possessing confidence also in the flesh. The primary reference is to circumcision as a mere bodily rite, but the meaning broadens out to the earthly and external, as in Php_3:5-6. Neither separately nor together can they make one morally better.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3. we are the circumcision] See the previous note.…
3. we are the circumcision] See the previous note. For the thought, cp. especially Gal_3:7; Gal_3:29; Gal_6:16; Eph_2:19; Col_2:11.
which worship God in the spirit] R.V., who worship by the Spirit of God. This is based on the better-supported reading of the Greek, and should be adopted. The word “worship” is thus used without an expressed object, as Luk_2:37; Act_26:7; (in both which places, in A.V., the word “God” is in italics). The verb here (latreuein) originally imports any sort of service, domestic or otherwise; but usage gives it in the N.T. a fixed connexion with the service of worship, and occasionally (Heb_8:5; Heb_9:9; Heb_10:2; Heb_13:10) a special reference to the worship of priestly ritual. Very probably this last usage is in view here. The Judaist claimed to be the champion of the true ritual of worship, as well as of the true initiation into covenant. The Apostle replies that the spiritual Christian is as such the ideal worshipper, the priest of the true rite.
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“By the Spirit of God”:—cp. for the phrase in St Paul, Rom_8:9; Rom_8:14; 1Co_2:10-12; 1Co_2:14; 1Co_3:16; 1Co_6:11; 1Co_7:40; 1Co_12:3; 2Co_3:3. The effect of the whole work of the Blessed Spirit in the regenerate Christian was to bring him into right relations of worship with God who “is Spirit” (Joh_4:24); to make him a “worshipper in (the) Spirit and in truth.”
and rejoice in Christ Jesus] R.V., and glory &c. Better so, for the Greek is not identical with that in Php_1:18, Php_2:17-18; Php_2:28, Php_3:1, Php_4:4; Php_4:10. It means a joy emphatically triumphant; such as would find its parody in a proud and eager boastfulness (as e.g. Rom_2:23; Rom_3:27; 1Co_4:7; 2Co_5:12 &c.; Gal_6:13; Jas_4:16).
What national and ritual privilege was, in his own distorted estimate, to the Judaist, that the true Messiah, the Incarnate Son of God, Christ Jesus, was to the spiritual Christian—at once pedestal and crown, righteousness and life and glory.
For the thought cp. Rom_5:11; 1Co_1:31 (observe previous context); Gal_6:14.
have no confidence in the flesh] Quite lit., “not in the flesh are confident”; with the implication that we are confident, on another and a truer ground.
“The flesh”:—a most important word in the distinctive teaching of St Paul. A fair popular equivalent for it would be “self,” as far as that word expresses that attitude or condition of our moral being which is not subject to God’s law or reliant on His grace. The “flesh” is sometimes that state, or element, of man in which sin predominates; whatever in man is not ruled and possessed by the Holy Spirit; the unsanctified intellect, the unsanctified affections. The “flesh” is sometimes, again, as here, anything other than God taken by man as his trust and strength, e.g. religious observances regarded as occasion for self-confidence. In this latter case the word “flesh” is, as here, shifted, so to speak, by a natural transition of language, from the chooser to the thing chosen.
See further on this word Rom_8:4; Eph_2:3; and notes in this Series. See also Dickson, On St Paul’s Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit (the Bain Lecture, 1883).
This short verse gives us one of the deepest and most inclusive descriptions of the true Christian to be found in Scripture.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (3) We are the circumcision.—So in Col_2:11-12, evidently alluding…
(3) We are the circumcision.—So in Col_2:11-12, evidently alluding to baptism as the spiritual circumcision, he says, “In whom ye were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands.” Comp. Rom_2:20, “Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter;” and passages of a similar character in the Old Testament, such as Deu_10:16, “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your hearts;” Deu_30:6, “The Lord God will circumcise thine heart.” Hence the spirit of St. Stephen’s reproach, “Ye uncircumcised in heart and ears” (Act_7:51).
Which worship God in the spirit . . .—The true reading here is, who worship by the Spirit of God, the word “worship,” or service, being that which is almost technically applied to the worship of the Israelites as God’s chosen people (Act_26:7; Rom_9:4; Heb_9:1; Heb_9:6), and which, with the addition of the epithet “reasonable,” is claimed for the Christian devotion to God in Christ (see Rom_12:1). Such “worship by the Spirit of God” St. Paul describes in detail in Romans 8, especially in Rom_8:26-27.
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And rejoice (or rather, glory) in Christ Jesus.—Comp. Rom_15:17, “I have therefore whereof I may glory in the Lord Jesus Christ,” and the Old Testament quotation (from Jer_9:23-24) twice applied to our Lord, “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1Co_1:31; 2Co_10:17). In Gal_6:14 we have a still more distinctive expression, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” To glory in Christ is something more than even to believe and to trust in Him; it expresses a deep sense of privilege, both in present thankfulness and in future hope.
In the flesh.—The phrase is used here, as not unfrequently, for the present and visible world, to which we are linked by our flesh (see Joh_8:15, “to judge after the flesh;” 2Co_5:16, “to know Christ after the flesh,” &c.) We have an equivalent phrase in an earlier passage, which is throughout parallel to this (2Co_11:18), “Many glory after the flesh.” The particular form of expression is probably suggested by the constant reference to the circumcision, which is literally “in the flesh.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv3–9 For we are the circumcision. We: the apostle of…
For we are the circumcision. We: the apostle of the Gentiles identifies himself with the Gentiles; (1Co_9:21) himself circumcised, he recognizes the great truth that they only are the true circumcision whose hearts are mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts. Which worship God in the spirit; read, with the best manuscripts, which worship by the Spirit of God. The word latreia , worship, is used specially of the Jewish ceremonial service. (comp. Rom_9:4 Luk_2:37 Act_26:7) We Christians, St. Paul means, have not only the true circumcision, but the only true worship: the temple service prefigured the spiritual worship of the Christian Church. By the Spirit; by his assistance, inspiration: "We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us". (Rom_8:26) And rejoice in Christ Jesus; rather, glory (kaucwmenoi). "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord," through whom alone we can obtain salvation, not in any external privileges. And have no confidence in the flesh. Neither in circumcision nor in any other outward rites.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 7, 8, 9 Beware of dogs
Php_3:3
Beware of dogs
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The enemies of the Church
I.
Their character--dogs.
II. Their conduct--evil wore.
III. Their destructive creed--Concision. (Professor Eadie.)
The apostolic warning
I. The persons warned.
1. All the Philippians, and not merely the pastors. They must beware of false teachers. Christs sheep can discern between a wolf and a shepherd (Joh_10:4-5), and therefore they are bidden to try the spirits, and prove all things. But how, say the Papists, should common people know the Word to be the Word of God? For answer I would ask such how they know the popes canons to be the popes? They will say their teachers bring them in the popes name, and they believe their teachers. So we believe our teachers, who tell us this is and that is not the Word of God. But they object that this makes every man a judge. I answer, there is a manner of judging, viz., that by which we discern of anything, which every Christian must have, so that it cannot be a plea to him at the day of judgment to say, My teacher did mislead me. Everyone must discern between good and bad. For he that knows not his Masters will shall be beaten.
2. Not only young and ordinary Christians are to beware, but also the best settled. The Philippians were a Church established in the truth.
II. The warning given--Beware, which signifies to discern, and then to avoid. Those who are aware of evil will beware of it. The Church is even subject to danger; and God suffers it to be so.
1. To try those who are true and who false.
2. To try the good so as to make them better.
III. The persons warned against.
1. Wicked men and dogs.
(1) Without the Church all are dogs.
(2) The dogs within the Church first fawn upon their intended victims (Rom_16:18), and when they cannot prevail by flattery they snarl and bark against them, by slanders and open scoffs, when they cannot bite. When they can they persecute with fire and sword.
2. Evil workers.
(1) Seducing men from Christ.
(2) Wicked livers.
3. The concision. They make divisions in the Church.
IV. How to take the warning.
1. Get fundamental truths into the heart and love them (2Th_2:10). None are seduced but such as are cold in love.
2. Practice that we know, and God will give us a fuller measure of knowledge, whereby we shall know seducers. (Joh_7:17).
3. Pray to God for wisdom to discern of schisms and ill-disposed persons.
4. Let us look that we keep in us a holy fear and reverence of God (Psa_25:12). (R. Sibbes, D. D.)
Dogs
Paul calls the false teachers such in respect of--
I. Their snarling and barking, because as dogs they barked at him and snarled at his doctrine, and that, as dogs again, not upon reason but custom. Abishai called Shimei a dog in respect of his causeless barking against David (2Sa_16:9).
II. Their greediness, making, as he afterwards said, their belly their god (Isa_56:11).
III. Their absurdness, because as the dog returneth to his vomit, so they made the converted Jews return to their old Judaism. (H. Airay, D. D.)
Dogs
St. Paul retorts upon the Judaizers the term of reproach by which they stigmatized the Gentiles as impure. In the Mosaic law the word is used to denounce the foul profligacies of heathen worship (Deu_23:19). Among the Jews of the Christian era, it was a common designation of the Gentiles involving the idea of ceremonial impurity. St. John applies the term to those whose moral impurity excludes them from the new Jerusalem, the spiritual Israel (Rev_22:15). As a term of reproach, the word on the lips of a Jew signified chiefly impurity; of a Greek, impudence. The herds of dogs which prowl about Eastern cities, without a home or owner, feeding on the refuse of the streets, quarrelling among themselves, and attacking the passer by, explain both applications of the image. Thus St. Pauls language is strikingly signifiSong of Solomon They speak of themselves as Gods children; they boast of eating at Gods table; they reproach us as dogs, as foul and unclean, as outcasts from the covenant because, forsooth, we eat meat bought at the shambles, and do not observe the washing of cups and platters. I reverse the image. We are the children of God, for we banquet on the spiritual feast which God has spread before us: they are the dogs, for they greedily devour the garbage of carnal ordinances, the very refuse of Gods table (verse 8). (Bishop Lightfoot.)
Evil workers--Paul calls them so in respect--
I. Of the works they urged; because by preaching the necessity of works unto salvation, and joining them with Christ as workers together with Him of our salvation, they made those works which in themselves were not evil, evil works.
II. Of the evil mind wherein they urged those works, in hatred of him, and to cross that which he had taught touching the sole sufficiency of Christs righteousness unto salvation.
III. Of their unfaithful working in the lords vineyard, because together with good seed they did sow tares, joining with Christ the works of the law in the work of our salvation. (H. Airay, D. D.)
Beware of the concision--These Philippians had admitted certain new men that preached traditional and additional doctrines, the law with the gospel, Moses with Christ, circumcision with baptism. To these new converts these new doctors inculcated often that charm, Ye are the circumcision whom God hath sealed to Himself; will you break this seal? Now St. Paul meets with these men in their own haunt, and even in the sound of the word they so often pressed. They press upon you circumcision, but beware of concision, of tearing the Church of God; for we are the circumcision. If, therefore, they set up another, and continue a figure after the substance Christ Jesus is manifested, a legal circumcision in the flesh after the spiritual circumcision of the heart, their end is not circumcision but concision.
I. Beware. This caveat shows us--
1. Gods loathness to lose us. That we are here now is sufficient argument for this. Who of us has not done something since yesterday that has made him unworthy to be here today? If God were weary of me, and would fain be rid of me, He could find enough in me now and here to let me perish. Is not the spirit of slumber in me, the spirit of detraction in another, of impenitence and facility to admit temptations in others, enough to justify Him? But He would not have the death of any, but would have all men be saved, and so says, beware.
2. Consider the way by which He leads us to Him. He declares His will towards us in a law. He bids and forbids. There had passed a contract between us and Him--Believe, do, and thou shalt live. We say, Thy will be done, which supposes that that will is made known. And that will has been manifested in the law within, the Mosaic law, and the gospel, and not only does God thus speak to us, but He calls upon us; gives us a law and bids us beware of breaking it.
3. Nothing exalts Gods goodness more than this, that He multiplies the means of mercy, so that no man can say, Once I might have been saved, once God opened to me a door, but I neglected that, and God never came more.
(1) God hath spoken once in His Scriptures, and we have heard Him twice (Psa_62:11) at home in our own reading, and again and again in His ordinances.
(2) There is a language in the heavens (Psa_19:2). This is the true harmony of the spheres which every man may hear. Though he understand no tongue but his own, he may hear God in the seasons, in the vicissitudes of Church and State, etc. This is Gods English to thee, and His French, Latin, Greek, to others.
(3) But then God translates Himself in particular works. Nationally: He speaks in particular judgments or deliverances to one nation. Domestically: He speaks that language to a particular family; and so personally. God will make a fever speak to me that there is no health in me; my adversity that there is no safe dependence but in Him; even my sin shall be a sermon to me.
(4) God hath spoken to us in the death and resurrection of His Son.
II. Beware of the concision. There is a certain elegant and holy delicacy and juvenility in St. Pauls choosing the words of musical cadence--circumcision, concision; but then this presents matter of gravity. Language must wait upon matter, and words upon things. Concision is the severing of that which should be entire--in the state, the aliening of the head from the body; in the Church to constitute a monarchy, an universal head; in the family, to divide man and wife. But more particularly consider--
1. The concision of the body; disunion in doctrinal things.
(1) This that should be kept entire is Jesus.
(2) Every spirit which dissolveth Jesus (1Jn_4:3), that makes religion serve turns, that admits so much gospel as may advance present businesses, every such spirit is not of God.
(3) Not to profess the whole gospel, not to believe all the articles of faith, this is a breaking of what should be entire.
(4) The advancement of a private interpretation to an article of faith mars the peace and rends the unity of the Church. Let us therefore (Psa_137:6) prefer Jerusalem before our chief joy, love of peace by or forbearance on all sides, rather than cictory by wrangling and uncharitableness.
2. The concision of the garment; disunion in ceremonial things. To a circumcision of the garment, to a paring away such ceremonies as were superstitious and superfluous, we came at the beginning of the Reformation. But those churches that came to a concision of the garment, an absolute taking away of all ceremonies, neither provided so safely for the Church itself nor for her devotion. Ceremonies are nothing, but where there are none order and obedience, and, presently, religion, will vanish.
3. And therefore beware of tearing the body or the garment, lest the third be induced, the tearing of thine own spirit from that rest it should receive in God; for when thou has lost thy hold of those handles which God reaches out to thee in the ministry of His Church, and hast no means to apply the promises of God to thy soul, when anything falls upon thee to overcome thy moral constancy; thou wilt soon sink into desperation, which is the fearfullest concision of all. When God hath made me a partaker of the Divine nature, so that now in Christ Jesus He and I are one, this were a dissolving of Jesus of the worst kind imaginable to tear myself from Jesus, or by any suspicion of His mercy, or any horror of my own sins, to come to think myself to be none of His.
1. This is treason against the Father; a cutting off of the power of God.
2. Treason against the Son; a cutting off of the wisdom of God.
3. Treason against the Holy Ghost; the cutting off of comfort. (John Donne, D. D.)
Php_3:3
For we are the circumcision--In all ages and under all dispensations there have been two antagonistic principles at work, two classes among the professed people of God; the carnal and the spiritual; those who relied on externals and those who relied on what is internal, an Israel according to the flesh, and an Israel according to the spirit.
The great question between the two has ever been and is, Who are the circumcision? the true people of God?
I. What is meant by we are the circumcision? Circumcision in the Old Testament was--
1. The symbol of regeneration.
2. The sign and seal of a covenant. It distinguished the people of God from other men, and assured them of their interest in the blessings of the covenant. The question therefore is tantamount to this: Who are the people of God in such a sense as to be His spiritual children and heirs of His kingdom? The Judaizers said they were--Paul said Christians were.
II. The characteristics of those who are the true people of God or the true circumclsion.
1. They worship God in the Spirit, i.e., under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
(1) This includes
(a) that the inward principle of worship is no mere principle of nature, whether fear, natural reverence, or sentiment, but that love and devotion of which the Holy Spirit is the author.
(b) That the mode of worship is that which the Holy Spirit has enjoined. It is not a will worship, not the assiduous performance of things uncommanded of God, whether in matters of worship or life.
(2) It therefore stands opposed to
(a) insincere, hypocritical service;
(b) mere external and ceremonial service;
(c) all such service as the unrenewed and unspiritual do or can render. Such was Jewish and Judaizing worship; and all formalism, whether Papal or Protestant.
2. They rejoice or glory in Christ Jesus. This includes the recognition of Him
(1) as the ground of our confidence
(2) as the source of honour;
(3) as the object of delight.
How opposite is this spirit to that of the Judaizers, who gloried in the law, the theocracy, and their descent from Abraham.
3. They do not confide in the flesh. Flesh includes
(a) what is external, whether Abrahams descent or circumcision; external obedience to the law, or religious ceremonies; baptism or membership in the true Church. This is Pauls interpretation as given in the immediate context.
(b) What is opposed to spirit, i.e., nature.
(2) To have no confidence in it, therefore, means to have no confidence in ourselves, our own righteousness or strength. This also is included in Pauls amplification. Those who do not trust in the flesh are those who renounce their own righteousness and embrace that of God: which is by the faith of Christ. Conclusion: It is by these criteria that we are to judge ourselves, and to determine the true form of religion, and of the Church. (C. Hodge, D. D.)
The true circumcision
I. Spiritual worship. There must be present worship. The rite of circumcision was administered once for all, and as an external badge this was sufficient. But true religion is a matter of daily life. A circumcised Jew who lived in sin was no true Jew; a baptized Christian may behave like a man of the world, in which case his baptism counts for nothing. The heart and soul of religion is personal devotion, daily worship.
2. This worship must be an inspiration of the Spirit of God. All worship requires some support. The formal worship of the Jew rested on ceremonies. When these were absent the worship perished. The Christian rests upon the influences of the Spirit, and where this is there is Divine life.
II. Christian enthusiasm. The expression glory in Christ Jesus, points to this.
1. The secret of the deepest religious life is personal devotion to Christ. Jesus at once demands adoration by His Spiritual greatness, and wins affection by His human sympathy.
2. This devotion is inspired by joyous enthusiasm. The Jew gloried in Abraham, but a greater than Abraham is here.
III. Freedom from superstition. For us, like Paul (see sequel),to cast off all confidence in privileged birth in a Christian home, membership in a historic Church, observance of venerable rites, and to trust wholly in spiritual religion, is a confirming sign of Divine sonship better than any rite such as circumcision. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
The true circumcision
I. The sacraments of Old and New Testaments are in substance the same. The Philippians who were baptized with water and the Holy Ghost are said to be circumcised. And so the apostle attributes our baptism and Lords supper after a sort to the Church of the Jews (1Co_10:1-2). As the covenant was always the same in substance, so the seals of it were the same too.
II. The reality of that which seducers pretend to, will more readily be found in those that conscientiously oppose them. These men ran down the apostle and others, giving out themselves only for the circumcised ones. But the apostle proves he had the better claim. Thus the works of holiness are to be found more with those that press justification by faith, than with others who would be looked on as great patrons of good works. Be not, then, deceived with fair speeches; examine matters to the bottom. Often those who have the highest pretences to right on their side go farthest from it.
III. The sign in religion without the thing signified is little worth.
1. All it can do is to give a name before men which they lose before God (Rom_2:28-29). Christian may be an honourable title before men, and an empty title before God.
2. The sign is a mere external thing on which nothing of weight for salvation can hang, and therefore when the Lord comes to judgment, He throws down all together (Jer_9:25-26). For He looks not to the outward appearance but to the heart.
3. It is an inefficacious thing; as a body without a spirit. He who has got the sign only, has only the meanest half of the sacrament. Sacraments are seals of the covenant; but where there is no covenant there can be no seal; and what avails a seal at a blank.
4. Men in Christs livery may abide in the devils service and meet with his doom (Luk_13:26-27).
5. To apply all this.
(1) Baptism with water without the Holy Spirit is little worth. Many never reflect seriously on their baptism. Hence they live as though they had never sworn allegiance to the King of heaven, and were entirely their own, and will never renew it. Let me ask as touching this baptism:
(a) Baptized ye were with water, but were ye ever baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire--the thing signified? Alas, in consequence of the want of this, the universal coldness in the things of God.
(b) Hast thou realized that only the blood and Spirit of Christ can cleanse thee? In baptism is a profession of this. If not what avails thy baptism.
(c) Wast thou ever made partaker of the washing of regeneration? (Tit_3:5-6). Unto what then were ye baptized? (Act_19:2).
(d) Where ye ever cut off from the old stock of Adam and ingrafted into Christ? (1Co_12:13). Baptized into the name of Christ, and yet not in Christ, but without Him makes sad work.
(e) Are lusts reigning: or are they dying, and your souls living a new life? (Rom_6:5-6). Has the water been but as that thrown upon a corpse?
(2) The Lords supper without the thing signified is little worth. To be partakers of the bread of the Lord without the bread which is the Lord will go but small length (Joh_6:57).
IV. Believers in Christ are the true circumcision. They have in spirit which the Jews, by this ordinance, only had in the letter. Circumcision was--
1. A token of Gods covenant (Gen_17:7-11). This honour have all Gods saints to have God Himself to be ours.
2. A distinction between Jews and others, as Gods people (Gen_17:4). So believers are Gods people, His garden, while others are but His out field.
3. A cutting off of part of the flesh, signifying the believers privilege and duty (Col_2:11). Their hearts are circumcised to love the Lord; their ears to hear Him; their lips to speak for Him. (T. Boston, D. D.)
The marks of a true Christian
There are many things that have a name to live and are dead: faith without works; the form of godliness without the power; sacraments without holy desires; Christians without union with Christ. In exposing this the apostles intention was not to disparage the Old Testament sacraments, but to show that in common with the New their value consisted in their spiritual use and significance, in their connection with the moral affections, in their leading to Him who is the end of all sacraments. Consider--
I. The nature of a believers worship.
1. The word worship may be taken in the larger sense which includes all religious service. From which we learn that the believers life is to be one continued act of worship; his body is a living temple; his heart an altar for daily sacrifice; his calling that of a priest unto God; his whole conversation one hymn of praise. To worship God in the spirit, then, is to worship Him in the life. The fire of sacrifice is to come down on the domestic hearth, and holiness unto the Lord is to be written on the bells of the horses.
2. Still the reference to the Old Testament ritual would suggest that worship points to certain religious actions. To worship God in the spirit, then, is to worship Him--
(1) In simplicity as distinguished from hypocrisy. It is a fearful thing when a miser prays to be delivered from covetousness, a vindictive man from malice, hatred, etc.
(2) With reverence, as distinguished from all permitted indifference, deadness, reluctance, clockwork piety. Our heart and tongue should go together. Moses left his sandals at the foot of the mount, too many take their sandals and leave their hearts behind.
(3) In earnestness, as if we felt that important interests were suspended. The two worships are distinguished in that in one case an end is looked for, in the other the only care is to get the work done.
II. The object of the believers joy. We rejoice in Christ Jesus.
1. For the glory of His character.
2. For the dignity of His offices.
3. The blessedness of His work.
4. The completeness of His salvation.
5. The freedom of His service.
6. The reasonableness of His commands.
7. The unutterable recompences of His rewards.
III. The ground of a believers trust.
1. By the flesh St. Paul means anything that we are or have. The flesh in its best estate is a corrupt thing, and can therefore be no proper ground for confidence.
2. The apostle would take away our confidence from everything that is not Christ. He not only excludes all outward distinctions, national privileges, moral excellencies and attainments, but he strikes at that refined and subtle fallacy of Romanism which would lead us to have confidence in some indwelling grace, which would give efficacy to tears and perfection to human sanctity. St. Paul knew that it was not grace in the saints, but grace in Christ, that was to save him, and in that he could feel unbounded confidence. (D. Moore, M. A.)
The inheritors of the promises
I. The ground of the apostles claim.
1. To worship God in the spirit is--
(1) To worship God as a spirit.
(2) With our own spirit.
(3) By the help of the Holy Spirit.
To worship God in the flesh would be to worship God as though He were flesh, with the powers of the body alone, and by the influences and aids which work on the body (Joh_4:23; Mal_1:11).
2. To rejoice in Christ Jesus is not only to believe in Him and receive Him, but gladly and gratefully to accept all His work and gifts and services, being cleansed by His blood, made righteous by His obedience, and being reconciled by His mediation (1Pe_1:8). And if we connect this with the former, then it means to worship, pleading Christs sacrifice, trusting in His advocacy, and making Him in all respects our way to God.
3. Having no confidence, etc. What he means by flesh is evident from the words following--the administration of ordinances, birth of high noble blood, earnest external obedience. The flesh is the outward and material, not the inward and spiritual. Now, if we connect this third qualification with the first, to have no confidence in the flesh is to use the material without abusing it, making it secondary and subservient, to employ as much of the outward form in worship as is essential to spirit and life, but never as a substitute.
II. The lofty position Paul claims. The practice of circumcision existed, it may be, before it was imposed on Abraham, but it was ordained by God mainly with a spiritual object (Gen_17:10, etc.), as the sign and seal of the Divine covenant; it testified to Gods faithfulness. What advantages then, hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? (Rom_9:4-5). Like privileges are possessed by such as worship God in the spirit, etc.
1. They are the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
2. They behold the bright ness of the Fathers glory (Joh_1:14; Joh_1:18).
3. They are the inheritors of great and precious promises. Even the promises made to Abraham are theirs (Rom_4:11-13; Rom_4:16; Gal_3:7-9). But the believer is interested in a better covenant, established in better promises.
(1) A country was promised to Abraham--a good land; but Canaan shared in the universal curse. But the land promised to the Christian is a better country.
(2) It was promised to Abraham that his seed should become a great nation--those who rejoice in Christ are a holy nation, a peculiar people.
(3) God promised to Abraham to be his God, etc., and so (2Co_6:15)--
4. They are favoured with special Divine revelations (Heb_8:10-11; 2Co_3:18).
5. They are a royal priesthood.
6. They are connected with an ancient and sacred lineage. The Jew claimed Abraham as his father, and all the illustrious patriarchs and prophets as ancestors; but they whom Paul describes may claim as ancestors all who have like precious faith in every age.
7. While of the Israelites as concerning the flesh Christ came; of those, whom Paul describes, Christ comes as a gospel and a revelation to the world (2Co_2:14-15; 2Co_3:2-3).
Conclusion:
1. Let us claim to be the circumcision in the presence of the Jew. To him, if he rejoice not in Christ Jesus we say, Your circumcision is counted uncircumcision: We are Abrahams seed, and he is an alien. We envy not his connection by blood; we have a tie less corruptible. 2, We claim this position as Christians of simple customs, in spite of some who would withhold it because we follow not with them. We notice the stress which such lay upon consecrated edifices, sacramental efficacy, an authorized ministry, uniformity. We affirm that spiritual worship consecrates any structure, constitutes the worshipper a priest, and renders the simplest forms full of power and life.
3. We claim this in the face of the world; and if men demand of us a style and order of worship which would undermine spirituality, divert our complacency from Christ, and foster confidence in the flesh, let us not only not conform to their requirements, but let us deny that conformity would secure any increase of acceptableness or power.
(1) Of power! What is mightier than spiritual worship? What show of strength exceeds that manifest by rejoicing in Jesus? And is no confidence in the flesh loss of power (Jer_17:5-8).
(2) And is there no beauty in simplicity? The utmost and highest is to be found in an assembly which worships God, etc.
4. Let us in godly fellow ship with all true churches maintain this position. (S. Martin.)
Spiritual heirship
1. A scholar trained at the feet of Gamaliel kneels before the Father in spirit; a Pharisee of the strictest sect has his shrunk heart expanded into joy in Christ Jesus; a proud professor feels no confidence in the flesh. We are the circumcision, he says, after this thorough readjusting of His religious relations. He thought so, as a Jew, when there was none to dispute the claim. As a Christian, with all Jewry despising that claim, he is sure of it.
2. Now to be able to say, We are the circumcision, to be clearly conscious of standing in the right line of spiritual descent is no mean distinction, no unproductive element in our expectations, that we should alienate it without cause.
I. Thoughtful students can hardly doubt that God has meant his Church to maintain an historic unity. No bend in its growth has ever been so abrupt as to choke the sap or sever the commerce of any branch with the root. Each moral revolution no less than each theological variation proves that the essence of faith is not perishable. Something of primitive power goes into the least offshoot. The three dispensations lay their ordaining hands on its head, with patriarchal blessings, Levitical unction, and gospel baptism. Let any holy family pitch its tent where it will, it shall not be out of that Divine order; reaching backward and forward--Calvary, Sinai, Mamre.
II. But blended with this law of its history, the church has to recognize another, constantly counterbalancing the gravitation towards indolence which might accrue from the former alone, and checking its complacency. For as it advances, some unexpected crisis is always breaking up the old distribution of forces; the original Providence readjusts the lines. Dismissing former tests of legitimacy, it brings fresh affiliations into the family, showing those often to be of the circumcision that had before been reckoned of the alienage; and disowning sons who forfeit favour by sinning against the Holy Ghost. Men claim to be Christians by birth; offer as a spiritual qualification, not a confession of faith, but a pedigree. Something like this has always been a presumption of religious majorities. And, as if to rebuff it, the propensity to proscription is no sooner settled, than a reformation is sent to disturb it. Some Paul of Samosata, some Constantine, or some Popish lineage is always secularizing the Church, and then some impracticable Wycliffe, dissenting Baxter, or erratic Huss, sloughs the form to act out the substance. Hypocrites vitiate the succession, and heretics ennoble the new blood. When the Jews refuse the apostle of their salvation, lo! he turns to the Gentiles. As if purposely to break up confidence in mere ecclesiasticism and clear the gospel of bondage, the visible Church is scarcely at any epoch suffered to enfold the Church spiritual with a clear circumference. And the instant any majority begins to be at ease in Zion, some terrible prophet comes crying out of the wilderness, Repent! shows what circumcision is, and turns the world of the Rabbis upside down. But always, observe, the old faith goes into the living body. (Bishop Huntington.)
Worship God in the Spirit--
Spiritual worship
I. What it is to worship God in the spirit.
1. Christ has respect to the whole of our service and obedience to God. The parts of it are two: holiness, or our duty to God; righteousness, or our duty to man (Luk_1:74-75). The Christian life is, as it were, one continued act of worship, where all our actions, natural, civil, and religious, meet in God (Act_26:7; Rev_7:15).
2. It has respect to those duties which are properly parts of worship. The Christian
(1) worships God with his heart, soul, and spirit, and not with his body only (Rom_1:9; Joh_4:24). This implies
(a) internal worship, called for by the first commandment. The true Christians soul is a temple of God.
(b) Outward joined to inward (1Co_6:20).
(c) Spirituality--faith; love; goodwill; sincerity.
(2) By assistance from and influence of the Holy Spirit (Eph_6:18; Jud_1:20).
(a) The Spirit gives habitual grace to make men capable of spiritual worship (Joh_3:6).
(b) He gives actual grace, influences to stir up grace (Rom_7:26).
II. This worship is a distinguishing mark of the true Christian.
1. All true Christians have it, for--
(1) All of them are spiritual (Joh_3:6). Everything that brings forth, brings forth its like.
(2) All of them have the Spirit of God dwelling in them (Rom_8:9).
(3) That worship which is merely outward is but the carcase of duties, unacceptable to God; and they who never perform more are hypocrites (Mat_15:7-8).
(4) External worship is properly but the means of worship. Prayer, hearing, etc., tend to the promotion of love, trust, etc., and the enjoyment of God can never be found but in worshipping Him in the Spirit.
2. That none but true Christians have this privilege is plain from this, that all others are in the flesh (Jud_1:19). (T. Boston, D. D.)
God should be worshipped
I. With a knowledge of his true character. Otherwise it is mere Athenian worship. This is the great fault of the heathen. Hence the great importance of religious knowledge. This may be obtained from nature, and our own persons. And yet with all the perfections of deity before their eyes men do not like to retain God in their knowledge. But as man is a fallen creature, the knowledge which reason can furnish is not sufficient. Christ does not reveal His mercy, and show how sinners can be pardoned and restored. So God has revealed Himself in His Word, and now man is utterly without excuse if he do not know God and worship Him.
II. With reverence. This sentiment is natural when we come before any superior, how much more when we come before God. This is no slavish or superstitious dread, but that by virtue of which Gods children are distinguished from the wicked who have no fear of God before their eyes. God is a jealous God, and abominates levity. Reverence is the most prominent feature of angelic worship. How shocking then is familiarity in the worship of man.
III. Humility. Nothing is more odious to God than pride, and nothing more acceptable than the contrite spirit. He dwells with such. It is most proper in regard to mans moral and Gods exalted state, and upon it Christ pronounced his beatitudes.
IV. Faith. Without this it is impossible to please God, and all worship must become an empty form. Its principal exercise has respect to Christ as the Mediator.
V. Concentration. Spiritual worship is interrupted by nothing so much as the wandering of our thoughts, and is one of the accusations brought against Gods ancient people.
VI. Fervency. The crying defect of our worship is want of heart.
VII. Scriptural, with such rites as God has appointed, and those only. As to external circumstances, time, place, attitude, these should be regulated by the apostles rule, Let all things be done decently and in order; but as it relates to the worship itself, nothing should be introduced but what is authorized by the Scriptures, such as prayer, singing, reading, administering the sacraments. In vain do they worship Me, etc. Who hath required this at your hands.
VIII. Frequency. Men are not required to spend their whole time at it. But God should be worshipped morning and evening; and the Lords day should be entirely devoted to the Lords service. We cannot go to an excess here unless we make this duty exclude others which are equally incumbent. Pray without ceasing. (A. Alexander, D. D.)
Rejoice in Christ Jesus--
Rejoicing in Christ Jesus
I. Its nature.
1. It is an act of love. The acts of love are desire and delight, and they both agree in this Chat they are conversant about good, and are founded in esteem. But they differ because desire is the motion and exercise of love, and delight the quiet and repose of it. All, however, meet in Christ.
2. It is an act of love begotten in us by the sense of the love of Christ (1Jn_4:19). The object of love is goodness.
(1) The goodness that is in Christ, moral and beneficial (Psa_119:140; Psa_100:5; Psa_119:68).
(2) The goodness that floweth from Him (Tit_3:4).
(3) The goodness we expect from Him in this world and the next (Luk_7:47; Mat_5:12).
3. This love of Christ--
(1) Is revealed in the gospel (Act_13:48).
(2) Is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost (Rom_5:5).
(3) Is received by faith (1Pe_1:18; Rom_15:13), which faith is
(a) assent, a certain belief of the truth of the gospel concerning Christ as the only sufficient Saviour (Joh_4:42; Joh_6:69).
(b) Consent, a readiness to obey the gospel.
(c) Affiance, a reposing of our hearts on Gods promise of pardon and eternal life (Heb_3:6).
(4) Is improved by meditation (Psa_104:34).
(5) Is enjoyed more than all other things whatsoever (Psa_35:9; Psa_63:5; Psa_73:25).
II. The spiritual profit of it.
1. It is such a joy as doth enlarge the heart in duty and strengthens us in the way of God (Neh_8:10; Psa_119:14; Psa_40:8). The hardest services are sweetened by the love of Christ.
2. It is a cordial to fortify us against and to sweeten--
(1) Common afflictions (Hab_3:17-18; Rom_12:12; Heb_12:2).
(2) Persecutions (Act_5:41; Heb_10:34; Mat_5:12; 1Pe_4:13; Jam_1:2).
3. It draws off the heart from the delights of the flesh.
III. The helps by which it is raised in us.
1. A sense of sin and misery. The grievousness of the disease makes recovery the more delightful.
2. An entire confidence in Christ (1Pe_2:7; Php_3:8).
3. A constant use of the means.
(1) The Word;
(2) prayer (Joh_16:24).
(3) The sacraments.
4. Sincerity of obedience (1Co_5:8). (T. Manton, D. D.)
Rejoicing in Christ is
I. A holy complacency in him. We cannot be well pleased with anything unless we see a suitableness in it to us. There is a three-fold suitableness of Christ.
1. A suitable ness to the Divine perfections concerned in the salvation of sinners that is sweetly discerned by the believer and acquiesced in (1Co_1:23-24).
2. A suitableness of Christ to the ease of the soul which the believer sees and is pleased with. If you lodge a starving man in a palace, clothe him with costly attire, and fill his pockets with gold, what good can these do him? They are not meat, and so are not suitable to his case. But Christ is to ours every way (1Co_1:30-31), and no one else is.
(1) As He is God-man; the Mediator answering at once the honour of God and the sinners necessities.
(2) In His offices. As Prophet, the Interpreter of the Fathers mind; as Priest, the Atonement and Intercessor; as King, the Conqueror and Ruler.
3. A suitableness to the mind, or we could not rejoice in Him. He is suited to every unbelievers case, but alas! not to their minds. Give a natural man his idols, the drunkard his cups, the miser his gold, these are suitable to their mind, but as unsuitable to their case as a sword for a madman or poison for the sick. But the believer is made partaker of the Divine nature, and Christ is, therefore, suitable not only to his case but to his mind (1Pe_2:4; Psa_73:25). There is none beside Him, none like Him, none after Him--the altogether lovely. Believers are pleased at heart--
(1) That He should build the temple of the Lord, and have the glory of it (Zec_6:12-13) as is appointed of God. But this suits not the minds of natural men (1Pe_2:7-8).
(2) With His laws (Isa_33:22). Christs yoke is welcome to them because His law is suitable to them, and they to it (Psa_119:128), for it is written on their hearts.
(3) With the fulness of the spirit of sanctification which He communicates (1Co_1:30-31). There is nothing the true believer rejoices in more than the Christ-given spirit of holiness imparted, enjoyed, and acted out.
II. A rolling of the soul over on him for all.
1. Their weight of guilt--through faith in His blood (Rom_3:25). Christ is the city of refuge from the law.
2. Their weight of duties.
(1) For performance. Christ lays His yoke upon the believer, and he receives it and lays himself and it again on Christ the fountain of strength. Hence it becomes an easy yoke, which before was insupportable. For duties are a dead weight while laid on by the hand of the law (Joh_15:5), but from Christ the believer receives a kind of derived omnipotency (Php_4:13; Php_2:13). He makes the will for the work, and the work for us when He has wrought the will for it.
(2) For acceptance (Heb_11:4). Duties rightly done are the returns of influences from heaven which are communicated from Christ, and so go back through Him.
III. A rest of the heart in Christ as a fit match for the soul. For as in marriage there is first a view of such a person as a fit match, whereupon follows choice and acceptance; and in case the person chosen answer the expectation, there ariseth a rest which is solid joy, so it is when the soul is pleased with Christ. There is found in Him--
1. Rest for the conscience: otherwise there is none except where it be lulled to sleep. Now Christ finds His elect seeking rest and finding none in the law; He gives it them through His blood (Heb_9:14; 1Jn_1:7).
2. Rest for the heart.
(1) Our hearts are full of desires of happiness which crave for satisfaction. Hence universal human restlessness.
(2) The natural man goeth through the dry places of the creature seeking rest and finding none (Jer_2:3; Ecc_10:15; Isa_55:2). Christ finds His elect thus wandering, and discovers Himself as the fountain of satisfaction, and the desires of the soul centreing and meeting in Christ abide in Him and are satisfied (Psa_73:25; Php_4:18; 2Sa_23:5).
IV. A confession of Christ unto salvation. This is plainly intimated in the original glorying in Christ. As the image of God impressed on mans soul at creation shone through his body, as a candle through a lantern, so that complacency, confidence, and rest of the heart in Christ will shine forth in the life.
1. With respect to the believers ordinary conversation.
(1) This inward rejoicing wears off the air of pride (1Pe_5:5).
(2) Grace will circumcise the self-commending lips.
(3) Gracious souls will readily discover in their serious converse a tendency towards the grace of Christ.
(4) Rejoicing in Christ will make men tender in their judgment of others (Gal_6:1).
(5) Such as rejoice in Christ will have familiar converse with the Word, and relish of it (Isa_59:21).
(6) They will have a respect to the place where Christs honour dwells, and to ordinances (Psa_63:1-2).
2. With respect to suffering.
(1) The saints will keep on Christs side though it be lowest.
(2) They will be resigned and contented.
(3) They will glory in any cross Christ puts upon them. (T. Boston, D. D.)
Glorying in Christ
I. Negatively. The true circumcision gloried not--
1. In themselves.
2. In anything about themselves--circumcision or Abrahamic descent.
3. In Christ and something else--in Him and Moses.
II. Positively. They gloried in Christ.
1. In His great condescension.
2. In His birth and its wonders.
3. In His life and its blessings.
4. In His death and its benefits.
5. In His resurrection and ascension, and their pledges.
6. In His return, and its stupendous and permanent results. (Professor Eadie.)
Have no confidence in the flesh--This is an inference from the last, and means that the Christian who rejoices in Christ hath no confidence in anything that is not Christ or in Christ.
I. In point of justification.
1. The saints have no confidence in external things.
(1) Mans externals--things which God never made duty, but are made so by man (Mat_15:9). All unscriptural institutions, opinions, and practices, under whatever pretensions of holiness, carry off men from Christ and are subservient to self (Mat_15:4-6; Corinthians 18-21).
(2) Nor even in Gods externals. E.g.
(a) In their external condition in the world which we receive by Gods providence. The carnal poor think that thereby they will be relieved of eternal poverty, and the carnal rich in this world, that they will be before others in the world to come (Hos_12:8; Rom_14:17). You may be miserable here and through eternity (Job_15:23-24); or fare sumptuously here and be in torment by and by (Luk_16:1-31).
(b) In their external privileges (verses 5, 7; 2Co_5:16; Luk_13:26-27).
(c) In their external attainments (verses 6-7). Great confidence have some in their negative holiness (Luk_18:11; Mat_5:20).
(d) In their external duties (verse 8). There are two classes opposite to the Christian in this--the ignorant, who do little or nothing, and yet say they serve God as well as they can; and those who have the full form of godliness and rest in that. But as they are mere external duties they are abominable to God (Isa_1:11, etc.; Mar_10:20-21).
(e) In their external sufferings. The glorified put nothing down to their tribulation, but all to Christs blood. Therefore are they before the throne.
2. The saints have no confidence for the favour of God in internals. There is no exception but one (Col_1:27). They have no confidence in internal--
(1) dispositions (Pro_28:26). Many have a confidence in what they call their good hearts; but if Gods testimony is to be believed, it is a false confidence (Jer_17:9).
(2) Exercises on their own spirits.
(3) Attainments (Gal_6:14; Php_3:8).
(4) Graces.
II. In point of sanctification. As they have taken Him alone for justification, so for this (1Co_1:30). The saints have no confidence for this.
1. In their stock of natural and acquired abilities (2Co_3:5), knowledge, utterance, good temper, etc.
2. In the means, such as the Word, sacraments, prayer, etc. Knowing that it is the Spirit that quickeneth (Joh_6:63).
3. In their purposes and resolutions for holiness (2Ti_1:12).
4. In their vows and engagements to holiness (Isa_45:23-24).
5. In their own endeavours after holiness (Psa_127:1).
6. In the good frame and disposition of their hearts, i.e., in actual grace, a most desirable thing, but no staff to lean upon (1Ch_29:17-18).
7. In habitual grace. Paul had a good stock of it, but he did not venture to live on it (Gal_2:20). Grace within the saints is a well whose springs are often dry; but the grace without them in Christ is an ever-flowing fountain (Joh_6:57). (T. Boston, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv8–9 Chapter 11
Chapter 11
THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST.
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Php_3:8-18 (R.V.)
MR. ALEXANDER KNOX, in a letter to a friend, makes the following remark: "Religion contains two sets of truths, which I may venture to denominate ultimate and mediatory: the former refer to God as an original and end; the latter to the Word made flesh, the suffering, dying, rising, ruling Saviour; the way, the truth, the life. Now I conceive these two views have almost ever been varying, in the minds even of the sincerely pious, with respect to comparative consequence; and while some have so regarded the ultimate as in some degree to neglect the mediatory, others have so fixed their views on the mediatory as greatly and hurtfully to lose sight of the ultimate." This writer refers to Tillotson on one side, and Zinzendorf on the other, as instances of these extremes; and indicates that perhaps his own leaning might be a little too much in the former direction.
It can hardly be doubted that there is something in this suggestion. In the guidance and training of the soul some aim mainly at right dispositions towards God and His will, without much dwelling on what Knox calls mediatory truths; because they assume that the latter exist only with a view to the former; and if the end has been brought into view and is coming to be attained, there is no special need of dwelling on the means. Others aim mainly at receiving the right impressions about Christ dying and rising, and at complying with the way of salvation as it is set forth to us in Christ; because they are persuaded that here the secret lies of all deliverance and progress, and that the end cannot otherwise be reached. And Mr. Knox suggests, with truth most likely, that such persons have often so occupied themselves with what may be called the means of salvation that they lose sight in a great degree of the end to which all tends-life in God, life in fellowship with His loving goodness and His holy will.
What application these views may have to divergences of our own day it would take too long to consider. Mr. Knoxs remark has been referred to here in order to throw light on the mental attitude of Paul. Paul will hardly be accused of losing sight of the ultimate truths; but certainly he delights to view them through the mediatory truths; and he strives to reach the ultimate victory, through the most realising application to his heart and life of what those mediatory truths embody and disclose. Through the mediatory truths the ultimate ones reveal themselves to him with a wealth and an intensity otherwise unattainable. And the eternal life comes into experience for him as he takes into his soul the full effect of the provision which God has made, in Christ, to bestow eternal life upon him. That order of things which is mediatory is not regarded by Paul only as a fitting introduction, on Gods part, to His ultimate procedure; it is also in the same degree fitted to become for the individual man the medium of vision, of assurance, of participation. In other words, Paul finds God and makes way into goodness through Christ; and not through Christ merely as an embodied ideal, but through union to Christ Divine and human, Christ living, dying, rising, redeeming, justifying, sanctifying, glorifying. He never pauses in any of these, so as to fail in looking onward to God, the living God, But neither does he pass on to that goal so as to disregard the way unto the Father. If he could have foreseen the method of those who are striving in our day to bring men to the blessedness which Christianity holds out by dwelling exclusively on Christian ethics, he might have sympathised with their ethical intensity; but he would surely have wondered that they failed to find in Christianity more pregnant springs of motive and of power. Perhaps he would even be moved to say, "O foolish Galatians (or Corinthians), who hath bewitched you?" Not less, it must also be said, might he wonder at many a gospel preacher, who rehearses the "way of salvation" until the machinery clanks and groans, unable apparently to divine-unable, at least, to bring out-that glory of God in it, that wonderful presence and influence of infinite holiness, goodness, and pity, which make the gospel the power of God.
We, meanwhile, shall do well to imitate the charity of Mr. Knox, who cordially owned the Christian piety of those who might go too far either way. Few of us, indeed, can dispense with the charity that is tender to partial and imperfect views. But if we are to understand Paul, we must find our way into some sympathy with him here; not only as he is seen on this line to have attained so far in saintship, but as he is seen to be sure that this way lay much more-that on this line his road lay to the glory that should be revealed. He could contemplate the practice and growth of piety in many lights; yet it came home to him most evidently as growth in the knowledge and in the appropriation of Jesus Christ.
He has cast away for the sake of Christ the treasures so much valued by the Jews, and many a treasure more. But what he would chiefly impress on the minds of those to whom he writes is not so much the amount of what he has cast away, but rather the worth of that which he has found, and more and more is finding. The mass of things set down for loss is a mere steppingstone to this central theme. But though he tells us what he thought and felt about it, most of us learn but slowly how much it meant for him. When we sit down beside the Apostle to learn his lesson, we become conscious that he is seeing what we cannot descry; he is sensitive to Christ through spiritual senses which in us are torpid and undeveloped. Christ holds him all through. It is faith, and love, and gratitude; it is self-devotion, and obedience, and wonder, and worship; and, through all, the conviction glows that Christ is his, that "in Christ" all things have changed for him. In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin. He hath made me accepted in the Beloved. I live; yet not I, but Christ. In Christ, old things have passed away, all things are made new. Christ is made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" The intense heat of this conception of Christ, it must once more be said, gives its distinctive character to the religious life of Paul. May we not say that the lamentable distinction of a great deal of current Christianity is the coldness of mens thoughts about their Saviour? The views of many may be characterised as "correct, but cold." Only what can be more incorrect, what can more effectually deny and controvert the main things to be asserted, than coldness towards our Saviour, and cold thoughts of His benefits? This we "should hold to be unpardonable. We never should forgive it to ourselves.
"For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus." Christ had come into the life of Paul as a wonderful knowledge. Becoming thus known to him, He had transformed the world in which Paul lived, and had made him conscious of a new order of existence, so that old things passed away and all became new. The phrase employed combines two ideas. In the first place, Paul felt Christ appealing to him as to a thinking, knowing nature. Various influences were reaching him from Christ which bore on heart, will, conscience: but they all came primarily as a revelation; they came as light. "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus." In the next place, this discovery came with a certain assuredness. It was felt to be not a dream, not a fair imagination only, not a speculation, but a knowledge. Here Paul felt himself face to face with the real-indeed, with fundamental reality. In this character, as luminous knowledge, the revelation of Christ challenged his decision, it demanded his appreciation and adherence. For since Christ claims so fundamental a place in the moral world, since He claims so intimate and fruitful a relation to thee whole state and prospects of the believing man, acquaintance with Him (at least, if it be acquaintance in Pauls style) cannot pause at the stage of contemplation: it passes into appropriation and surrender. Christ is known as dealing with us, and must be dealt with by us. So this knowledge becomes, at the same time, experience.
Hence, while in ver. 8 (Php_3:8), the Apostle speaks of himself as encountering all earthly loss that he may know Christ, in ver. 9 (Php_3:9), it is that he may gain Christ and may be found in Him. Christ so came into the field of his knowledge as to become-the treasure of his life, replacing those things which heretofore had been gain, and which now figured as loss. When Paul turned from all else to know Christ, he turned, at the same time, to have Christ, "gaining Him," and to be Christs, "found in Him."
Christ, in fact, comes to us with commandments, "words," {Joh_14:23} which are to be kept and done. He comes to us, also, with promises, the fulfilment of which, in our own case, is a most practical business. Some of these promises concern the world to come; but others apply to the present; and these, which lie next us, either are neglected, or are embraced and put to proof, every day of our lives. Besides all this, Christ comes to us to fix and fill our minds, and to endear Himself to us, in virtue simply of what He is. So viewed, He is to be owned as our best Friend, and indeed henceforth, with reverence be it said, by far our nearest Relation. This is to be, or else it is not to be. Each day asks the question, Which? Pauls Christianity was the answer to that question. How his answer rings in all our ears! Our Christianity also is making its reply.
Both as to knowledge and as to experience the type was fixed from the first: there could be no doubt about either. But both were to deepen and widen as life went on. Christ was apprehended at first as a wonderful Whole of good; but so that indefinite fields of progress were continually to open up. In the very first days a knowledge dawned, for the sake of which all else was counted loss; yet a world of truths remained to know, as well as of good to experience, for the sake of which also all else should continue to be counted but loss. This, in fact, is only one way of saying that Christ and His salvation were realities, divinely full and worthy. Being real, the full acquaintance with all they mean for men can only arise in a historical way. Paul therefore emphasises this, that real Christianity, the right kind of Christianity, just because it has found a treasure, is set on going on to find that same treasure still further and still more. {comp. Php_1:9} If the treasure is real and the man is in earnest, that will be so. Such had been the course of his own Christian life from the first. Now, though many years have disciplined him, though changing experiences have given him new points of view, still, no less than at the first, his rejoicing in the present goes hand in hand with reaching onward to the future. The one, in fact, is the reason of the other. Both are rational, or neither. He has counted all to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge which has broken upon his soul: and still he presses on, that he may know; for the same strong attraction continues and grows.
Before passing to details, something more should perhaps be said of this magnificent generality, "the knowledge of Christ."
Christ is first of all known historically; so He is presented to us in the Gospels. His story is part of the history of our race. He passes through youth to manhood. We see Him living, acting, enduring; and we hear Him teaching-wonderful words proceed from His mouth. We contemplate Him in His humiliation, under the limits to which He submitted that He might share our state and bear our burdens. In the pathways of that Jewish life He discloses a perfect goodness and a perfect dignity. We see especially that He cherishes a purpose of good will to men which He bears to them from the Father. It overflows in all His words and works, and in the prosecution of it He moves on to lay down His life for us. This is the beginning of the knowledge of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Much may as yet be undefined; many questions may crowd on us that receive as yet no precise answer; nay, much may seem to us as yet to be strangely entangled in the particulars of an individual and of a provincial existence. But this presentation of Christ can never be dispensed with or superseded; and, for its essential purpose, it never can be surpassed. For this is the Life. "The Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and show unto you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us."
This vision, which the Gospels set before us, was also before the mind of Paul. And words of our Lord, delivered in His earthly ministry, and preserved by those who heard Him, were treasured by the Apostle of the Gentiles, and reproduced to guide the Churches as need required. Yet there is a sense in which we may say that it is not exactly the Christ of the Gospels who comes before us in the Pauline writings. The Christ of Paul is the Lord who met him by the way. It is Christ dead, risen, and ascended; it is Christ with the reason and the result of His finished work made plain, and with the relation unveiled which He sustains to men who live by Him; it is Christ with the significance of His wonderful history for believers shining out from Him-Christ vestitus Evangelio. Now He has gone up above all worlds. No longer is He hedged about by necessities of mortal life; no longer tied by earthly bonds to some places and some men and one nation. He is glorified; all fulness dwells in Him; all Gods purposes are seen to centre in Him. And then, by His death and resurrection, the tie between Him and His people is unveiled to faith, as it could not be before. They are one with Him-in Him redeemed, endowed, triumphant, glorified. Every Christian privilege and attainment, every grace, every virtue and good gift, takes on a celestial character, as it is seen to be an element in our fellowship with Christ. The state of Christians is seen reflected in their Head. And, in turn, Christ is seen, as it were, through the medium of the relation which He sustains to them, and of the wealth of good arising to them by it. It is Christ as He is to His people, Christ as He is set in the centre of the world of good that radiates to them all, whom Paul wonders at and worships. And he finds all this to be rooted in our Lords death upon the cross, which was the crisis of the whole redemption. All that follows took character and efficacy from that death.
A special insight into all this was included in the wisdom given to Paul. And yet this view of things does not turn out to be something diverse or alien from what the Gospels set before us. Rather it is the gospel story revealing its native significance arid virtue along many lines which were not so distinct before.
But now all this, in turn, leads us to the third aspect of the case. What Christ is and what He does may be described; but there is a knowledge of it which is imparted practically, in the progressive history of the believer. According to the Christian teaching, we enter, as Christians, on a new relation; and in that relation a certain blessed well-being is appointed to us. This well-being is itself an unfolding or disclosure of Christ. Now this well-being comes home to us and is verified in the course of a progressive human experience. Life must become our school to teach us what it all means. Life sets us at the point of view now for one lesson, now for another. Life moves and changes, and brings its experiences; its problems, its conflicts, its anxieties, its fears, its temptations; its need of pity, pardon, strengthening; its experience of weakness, defeat, and disgrace; its opportunities of service, self-denial, fidelity, victory. For all those occasions Christ has a meaning and a virtue, which, in those occasions, is to become personal to ourselves. This makes knowledge indeed. This becomes the vivid commentary upon the historical and the doctrinal instruction. Life, taken in Christs way, along with prayer and thought, manifests Christs meaning, and makes it real to us, as nothing else can. It furnishes the stepping-stones for passing onward, in the knowledge of Christ.
This also was Pauls condition, though he was an inspired man. He too was fain to improve his knowledge in this school. And when we take all three aspects together, we shall see how truly, for Paul and for us, the knowledge of Christ is, on the one hand, so excellent from the first, that it justifies the great decision to which it calls us; and, on the other hand, how it creates a longing for further insight and fresh attainment. The latter we see in the Apostle as plainly as the former. From the first, he knew in whom he believed, and was persuaded that for His sake all else was to be resigned. Yet to the end he felt the unsatisfied desire to know more, to gain more; and his heart, if we may apply here the Psalmists words, was breaking for this longing which it had.
It was remarked above that the "excellency of the knowledge of Christ" in ver. 8 (Php_3:8), corresponds in the Apostles thought to the "gaining" of Christ and being "found in Him" of ver. 9 (Php_3:9); and this may be the best place to say a word on these two phrases. To gain Christ, points to a receiving Christ as ones own; and the Apostle uses the phrase so as to imply that this finding of Christ, as One who is gained or won, was still going on; it was progressive. Clearly also the alternative is implied, that what is not gained is lost. The question in the Apostles life, about which he was so decided, was about no less than losing or gaining Christ. The phrase "be found" points to the verification of Pauls relation to Christ in his history and in its results. That relation is contemplated as something that proves true. It turns out to be so. We shall best understand the phrase as referring, not to some one future date at which he should be so found, but rather to present and future alike. As men, or angels, or God, or Christ might view him, or as he might take account of his own state, this is what he would have found in regard to himself. Every way he would be found in Christ. The form of expression, however, is specially appropriate here, because it fits so well into the doctrine of righteousness through Christ, which the Apostle is about to emphasise. A similar remark applies to the expression "in Christ" so frequently occurring in the Pauline writings. This is usually explained by saying that the Apostle sets before us Christ as the sphere of his spiritual being-in whom he lived and moved-never out of relation to Him, and not so related to any other. Such explanations are true and good: only we may say that the pregnant strength of the expression seems to be weakened even by the best explanations. The relation in view is too wonderful ever to be adequately described. The union between Christ and His Church, between Christ and the believing man, is a mystery; and like all objects of faith, it is dimly apprehended by us for the present. But the certainty of it, and its wonderfulness, we should never allow ourselves to overlook. Christ is able to bring men into fellowship with Himself, to assume responsibility for them, to represent their interests and to care for their good; and men may receive Christ into their lives; with a completeness on both sides which no explanations can adequately represent. The identification with Christ which the phrase suggests naturally fits what follows.
Now the Apostle goes more into detail. He tells us what were for him the main articles of this good state of being "found in Christ." He indicates, with a certain eager gratitude, the main lines along which the benefits of that state had come into experience, and along which he was pressing on to know the fulness of Christ. First, in Christ he has and shall have not his own righteousness, which is that of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. Then, secondly, he has in hand a practical knowledge of Christ, culminating in the complete deliverance of the resurrection. It includes two aspects or elements: Christ known in the power of His resurrection, and Christ known in the fellowship of His sufferings.
The first thing then which rises distinctly into view in connection with being found in Christ is the possession of the new righteousness. We have seen already that value for righteousness such as is of law, and hope Of achieving it, had been associated with Pauls old days of Jewish zeal. He then stood on the law, and gloried in the law. But that had passed away when he learned to count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. Ever after, the contrast between the two ways of seeking "righteousness" continued to be fundamental in Pauls Christian thinking.
The law here in view was the whole revealed will of God touching mans behaviour, coming as a will of authority, requiring obedience. The discussion in the earlier chapters of the Epistle to the Romans makes this plain. And Pauls way of keeping the law, in those old days, though it was necessarily too external, had not been so merely external as is sometimes supposed. His obedience had been zealous and resolute, with as much heart and meaning as he could put into it. But law-keeping for righteousness had been the principle of it. The Jew was placed under a law; obedience to that law should be his pathway to a destiny of incomparable privilege and gladness. That was the theory. So believing, Paul had given himself with zeal to the work, "living in all good conscience before God." A great change had now befallen him; but that could not imply on his part a renunciation of Gods law. The law, better understood indeed, and far more inwardly apprehended, still retained for Paul its great outlines, and was reverenced as Divine. It was holy and just and good. It was felt still to shed its steadfast light on human duty, awakening and illuminating the conscience; and therefore it revealed most authentically the moral situation, with its elements of failure, and danger, and need. The law stood fast. But the scheme of life which stood in keeping the law for righteousness had passed away for Paul, vanishing in the light of a new and better day.
Here, however, we must ask what the Apostle means when he speaks of the righteousness which is by the faith of Jesus Christ, the righteousness which is of God unto or upon faith. Great disputes have arisen over this question. We must endeavour to find the Apostles main meaning, without involving ourselves too much in the mazes of technical debate.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv3–9 3. We are the circumcision. See notes on Rom.…
3. We are the circumcision. See notes on Rom. 2:29 and 4:12. The true circumcision is not in the flesh, but of the heart in the Spirit.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv4, 9 Php_3:4. Though I might also have confidence in the…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Php_3:4. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh.—They will never be able to say he “speaks evil of that which he knows not.” “If there is any profit in that direction,” he might say, “I will set my foot as far as who goes farthest.” An argumentum ad hominem.
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Php_3:5. Circumcised the eighth day.—Beginning with this he works his way, through this and the following verses, to the climax of the straitest sect. The items of this verse have to do with the birth and education of the apostle.
Php_3:6. Concerning zeal.—“An expression of intense irony, condemning while he seems to exalt his former self” (Lightfoot). Righteousness which is in the law.—Legal righteousness. Exact attention to all its manifold commands and prohibitions.
Php_3:7. What things were gain.—The various points in which I had considered myself fortunate, giving me an advantage over others. Those I counted loss for Christ.—The tense of the verb “counted” denotes an action the result of which continues. It leaves no place for after-regrets, like those of the woman who stopped to look back on Sodom. St. Paul counts his Judaism, with its emoluments, well lost. “Having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Mat_13:46).
Php_3:8. Yea, doubtless, and I count, etc.—A more explicit statement of the abiding satisfaction with the chosen lot. “I still do count.” All things.—Whatever they may be—not simply those named above. For the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.—“The eminent quality of a possession attained is the ground for estimating other possessions according to their relation to that one” (Meyer). For whom I have suffered the loss of all things.—The words “gain” and “loss” are the same in these verses as in our Lord’s memorable saying, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mar_8:36). And do count them but dung.—So R.V. text, “refuse,” margin. If we accept the meaning “that which is thrown to the dogs,” we have an apt interpretation, but we need to guard against attributing to the apostle subtleties of expression born in a lexicographer’s brain.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Php_3:4-8
External Religionism incomparable with the True Knowledge of Christ.
I. The highest example of external religionism affords no ground for confident boasting (Php_3:4-6).—External religionism had its most complete embodiment in Paul. He was its most zealous devotee, its ablest champion. These verses describe the best eulogy that can be given of the observer of external rites. By birth, lineage, training, ability, consistency of character, and sincerity of aim, Paul was an ideal Jew, a model all his countrymen might aspire to copy. If there was ground for boasting, no one had a greater right than he. He needed no Christ, no Saviour; he was well able to look after himself. But one day the discovery came that all this glorying was vain; instead of gaining salvation he was farther from it than ever, and in danger of losing everything. Religious progress is often more apparent than real. When Captain Parry and his party were in search of the North Pole, after travelling several days with sledges over a vast field of ice, on taking a careful observation of the pole-star, the painful discovery was made that, while they were apparently advancing towards the pole, the ice-field on which they were travelling was drifting to the south, and bringing them nearer to the verge, not of the pole, but of destruction.
II. The supposed gains of external religionism are for Christ’s sake esteemed as loss.—“But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Php_3:7). Not losses, compared with the plural of gains; but all the supposed gains are treated as one great loss, and this after the most careful scrutiny and calculation. “I counted loss.” The swelling sum of fancied virtues, painfully gathered and fondly and proudly contemplated, vanishes into nothing at one stroke of the discriminating pen. All that was prized as valuable, and as the all of personal possession, is regarded as dross, because of Christ. They did not help him to win Christ, but to lose Him; the more he gained in self-righteousness the more he lost of Christ. It was not only profitless, but productive of positive loss.
III. The surpassing excellency of the knowledge of Christ renders external religionism utterly worthless.—“I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; … and do count them but dung [refuse], that I may win Christ” (Php_3:8). The gains were: circumcision performed without any deviation from legal time or method; membership in the house of Israel, and connection with one of its most honoured tribes; descent from a long line of pure-blood ancestry; adherence to a sect whose prominent distinction was the observance of the old statutes; earnest and uncompromising hostility to a community accused of undermining the authority of the Mosaic code, and a merit based on blameless obedience to the law. These once gloried and confided in were counted as a loss, for the sake of a superior gain in the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. He was no loser by the loss he had willingly made, for the object of knowledge was the divine Saviour. Is it not super-eminent knowledge to know Him as the Christ; to know Him as Jesus, not because He wears our nature, but because we feel His human heart throbbing in unison with ours under trial and sorrow; to know Him as Lord, not simply because He wears a crown and wields a sceptre, but because we bow to His loving rule and gather the spoils of the victory which He has won and secured? The apostle made a just calculation, for neither ritualism, nor Israelitism, nor Pharisaism, nor zealotism, nor legalism could bring him those blessings with which the knowledge of Christ was connected; nay, until they were held as loss this gain of gains could not be acquired (Eadie). As with the two scales of a balance, writes Rieger, when one rises the other falls, and what I add to one diminishes the relative weight of the other; so as one adds to himself he takes away from the pre-eminence which the knowledge of Christ should have. What he concedes to Christ makes him willing to abase himself, to resign all confidence in His own works. Therefore the sharp expressions, “to count as loss, as dung,” become in experience not too severe; for to reject the grace of Christ, to regard the great plan of God in sending His Son as fruitless, were indeed far more terrible.
Lessons.—
1. The highest kind and supreme end of all knowledge is the knowledge of Christ.
2. True religion is the spiritual knowledge of Christ.
3. Religion without Christ is an empty form.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Php_3:4-7. Formalism tested and found wanting
I. The best that formalism can do for man, in religious lineage, reputation, zeal, and strictest outward observances, has been experimentally exemplified (Php_3:5-6).
II. The most distinguished champion of formalism has confessed its utter inadequacy to satisfy the soul (Php_3:4).
III. The highest advantages of formalism are worthless compared with Christ (Php_3:7).
Php_3:8. The Excellent Knowledge of Christ—
I. Is extensive.—Apprehends Him in all those notions and respects wherein the gospel principally discovers Him.
II. Appropriating—Christ Jesus my Lord.
III. Effectual.—Has a powerful efficacy both upon heart and life, both upon judgment, affection, and practice.
IV. Fiducial.—It brings the soul to rest upon Christ and His righteousness alone for pardon, acceptance, salvation.
V. Useful.—He that has it studies to improve Christ, to make use of Him for those blessed and glorious purposes for which he knows Christ is given.
VI. Christ Himself is most excellent.—
1. There is nothing in Him but what is excellent.
2. All excellencies in the creatures are eminently to be found in Christ.
3. All these excellencies are in Him in a more excellent manner; perfectly, without any shadow of imperfection; infinitely, without any bounds or limits; eternally and unchangeably, they ebb not, they wane not, they are always there in the full, they alter not, they decay not.
4. Not only all that are in the creatures, but innumerable more excellencies than are in all the creatures together, are in Christ alone.
VI. Those that have attained the excellent knowledge of Christ will not think much to lose all things to gain Christ.—
1. All outward enjoyments and earthly possessions.
2. Personal righteousness as a means of justification.—David Clarkson.
The Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ.
I. To know Christ in the divinity of His person is excellent knowledge.
II. To know Christ in the glory of His redemption is excellent knowledge.
III. The comparative worthlessness of all else.—
1. Wealth.
2. Worldly honour.
3. Human learning.
4. Mere morality.
The Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ.
I. Its pre-eminent excellence is to be found in its certainty.—Proved by—
1. Prophecy.
2. Miracles.
3. Experience.
II. In its majesty and grandeur.
III. In its suitableness and adaptation.
IV. In its comprehensiveness.
V. The knowledge of Christ is sanctifying.—R. Watson.
Christ the Only Gain.
I. To count Him gain.
II. To covet and seek Him as gain.
III. To appropriate Him as gain.
IV. To enjoy Him as gain.—R. S. Candlish.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v8 8. “—As to the law a Pharisee;” “As to…
ARGUMENT 9
LEGALISM
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8. “—As to the law a Pharisee;” “As to the righteousness which is in the law being blameless.” The Pharisees were the orthodox wing of the Jewish Church, the Sadducees the heterodox, and the poor Essenes living in the deserts and slums, the holiness people. Though Paul stood on the acme of orthodoxy, with an irreproachable Christian character, looked upon as an Israelite in whom there was no guile, a double graduate with a diploma from the Greek college of Tarsus, and another from the rabbinical university of Jerusalem, as a preacher in the popular Church without a peer, yet he was an alien from God and stranger to grace, traveling the broad road to hell. O the millions who are this day in the same awful dilemma, fully assured that they are bona-fide Christians serving God, while they are unconverted sinners, worshipping Satan! What is the trouble? Like Paul, they are legalists. They fill pulpits and pews, and, I awfully fear, constitute the rank and file of the popular Churches at the present day. Their name is legion. You meet them in every land. Though they are very religious, they have no salvation. Like Paul, they are perfectly honest; yet they walk in Satan’s midnight, and will soon drop into hell, unless God, in mercy, shall shed light on them, as in case of Saul, while he journeyed to Damascus. The Holy Ghost is the only revelator of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every soul walks in darkness till he reveals Him to him, as in case of Saul. What is this awful legalism? Satan’s greased plank, on which he shoots millions through the Churches into hell. It is simply a religion of good works, such as Saul and myself had from our infancy (for my life, like his, was irreproachable from the cradle, being as good a Church member before conversion as afterwards). The great masses of Church members at the present day are dumb in the pews, from the simple fact that they have no experiences to tell; they are depending on “Church loyalty,” legal obedience, and good works to save them. It is awful to contemplate the responsibility of pastors who help the devil to palm off his wholesale delusions on their members, encouraging them to believe that they are Christians, because they are true and faithful to what they call “the Church;” meanwhile they are as ignorant of the New Testament Ecclesia, the Church of God (consisting only of the souls called out of the world and separated unto God), as the Hottentots of Africa. All of this legalistic religion, which fills the world today, is nothing but self- righteousness, “filthy rags,” in the sight of God, and a millstone around the necks of the poor, deluded devotees, dragging them down to hell.
9. “And may be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is, through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is from God, upon faith.” Nothing but the righteousness of Christ will ever fortify a soul against the severities of the Divine judgments. Can I have the righteousness of Christ? Our wonderful Christ has three righteousnesses. He has a righteousness peculiar to his Divinity and essential to it, which he will ever retain, and never impart to you or me. He also has a righteousness peculiar to his humanity and essential to it. This he will never confer on you or me. Besides, he has a third righteousness, arising from perfect obedience to the Divine law, actively throughout his probationary life, and passively when he suffered the full penalty of the violated law as our substitute. This third righteousness, which is neither essential to his humanity nor Divinity, nor in any way necessary to his perfect mediatorial Messiahship, he procured for you and me and all of Adam’s ruined race. This perfect righteousness God is delighted freely to impute to every sinner who, in hearty repentance and radical abandonment of all sin, in the profound realization of his utter fitness only for hellfire, by simple faith alone casts himself, in a moment of despair, on the mercy of God in Christ. These sinning-religion people have never learned the first principles; but poor, deluded legalists, like Saul before he was converted, “having a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge,” having no personal acquaintance with God, they walk in spiritual night, die as they live, honored with complimentary funerals over their dead bodies, while their souls are in hell.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv4, 8 Php 3:4-8 {R.V.}.
Philippians
THE LOSS OF ALL
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Php 3:4-8 {R.V.}.
We have already noted that in the previous verses the Apostle is beginning to prepare for closing his letter, but is carried away into the long digression of which our text forms the beginning. The last words of the former verse open a thought of which his mind is always full. It is as when an excavator strikes his pickaxe unwittingly into a hidden reservoir and the blow is followed by a rush of water, which carries away workmen and tools. Paul has struck into the very deepest thoughts which he has of the Gospel and out they pour. That one antithesis, ‘the loss of all, the gain of Christ,’ carried in it to him the whole truth of the Christian message. We may well ask ourselves what are the subjects which lie so near our hearts, and so fill our thoughts, that a chance word sets us off on them, and we cannot help talking of them when once we begin.
The text exemplifies another characteristic of Paul’s, his constant habit of quoting his own experience as illustrating the truth. His theology is the generalisation of his own experience, and yet that continual autobiographical reference is not egotism, for the light in which he delights to present himself is as the recipient of the great grace of God in pardoning sinners. It is a result of the complete saturation of himself with the Gospel. It was to him no mere body of principles or thoughts, it was the very food and life of his life. And so this characteristic reveals not only his natural fervour of character, but the profound and penetrating hold which the Gospel had on his whole being.
In our text he presents his own experience as the type to which ours must on the whole be conformed. He had gone through an earthquake which had shattered the very foundations of his life. He had come to despise all that he had counted most precious, and to clasp as the only true treasures all that he had despised. With him the revolution had turned his whole life upside down. Though the change cannot be so subversive and violent with us, the forsaking of self-confidence must be as real, and the clinging to Jesus must be as close, if our Christianity is to be fervid and dominant in our lives.
I. The treasures that were discovered to be worthless.
We have already had occasion in the previous sermon to refer to Paul’s catalogue of ‘things that were gain’ to him, but we must consider it a little more closely here. We may repeat that it is important for understanding Paul’s point of view to note that by ‘flesh’ he means the whole self considered as independent of God. The antithesis to it is ‘spirit,’ that is humanity regenerated and vitalised by Divine influence. ‘Flesh,’ then, is humanity not so vitalised. That is to say, it is ‘self,’ including both body and emotions, affections, thoughts, and will.
As to the points enumerated, they are those which made the ideal to a Jew, including purity of race, punctilious orthodoxy, flaming zeal, pugnacious antagonism, and blameless morality. With reference to race, the Jewish pride was in ‘circumcision on the eighth day,’ which was the exclusive privilege of one of pure blood. Proselytes might be circumcised in later life, but one of the ‘stock of Israel’ only on the ‘eighth day.’ Saul of Tarsus had in earlier days been proud of his tribal genealogy, which had apparently been carefully preserved in the Gentile home, and had shared ancestral pride in belonging to the once royal tribe, and perhaps in thinking that the blood of the king after whom he was named flowed in his veins. He was a ‘Hebrew of the Hebrews,’ which does not mean, as it is usually taken to do, intensely, superlatively Hebrew, but simply is equivalent to ‘myself a Hebrew, and come from pure Hebrew ancestors on both sides.’ Possibly also the phrase may have reference to purity of language and customs as well as blood. These four items make the first group. Paul still remembers the time when, in the blindness which he shared with his race, he believed that these wholly irrelevant points had to do with a man’s acceptance before God. He had once agreed with the Judaisers that ‘circumcision’ admitted Gentiles into the Jewish community, and so gave them a right to participate in the blessings of the Covenant.
Then follow the items of his more properly religious character, which seem in their three clauses to make a climax. ‘As touching the law a Pharisee,’ he was of the ‘straitest sect,’ the champions and representatives of the law. ‘As touching zeal persecuting the Church,’ it was not only in Judaism that the mark of zeal for a cause has been harassing its opponents. We can almost hear a tone of sad irony as Paul recalls that past, remembering how eagerly he had taken charge of the clothes trusted to his care by the witnesses who stoned Stephen, and how he had ‘breathed threatening and slaughter’ against the disciples. ‘As touching the righteousness which is in the law found blameless,’ he is evidently speaking of the obedience of outward actions and of blamelessness in the judgment of men.
So we get a living picture of Paul and of his confidence before he was a Christian. All these grounds for pride and self-satisfaction were like triple armour round the heart of the young Pharisee, who rode out of Jerusalem on the road to Damascus. How little he thought that they would all have been pierced and have dropped from him before he got there! The grounds of his confidence are antiquated in form, but in substance are modern. At bottom the things in which Paul’s ‘flesh’ trusted are exactly the same as those in which many of us trust. Even his pride of race continues to influence some of us. We have got the length of separating between our nationality and our acceptance with God, but we have still a kind of feeling that ‘God’s Englishmen,’ as Milton called them, have a place of their own, which is, if not a ground of confidence before God, at any rate a ground for carrying ourselves with very considerable complacency before men. It is not unheard of that people should rely, if not on ‘circumcision on the eighth day,’ on an outward rite which seems to connect them with a visible Church. Strict orthodoxy takes the place among us which Pharisaism held in Paul’s mind before he was a Christian, and it is easier to prove our zeal by pugnacity against heretics, than by fervour of devotion. The modern analogue of Paul’s, ‘touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless,’ is ‘I have done my best, I have lived a decent life. My religion is to do good to other people.’ All such talk, which used to be a vague sentiment or excuse, is now put forward in definite theoretical substitution for the Christian Truth, and finds numerous teachers and acceptors. But how short a way all such grounds of confidence go to satisfy a soul that has once seen the vision that blazed in on Paul’s mind on the road to Damascus!
II. The discovery of their worthlessness.
‘These have I counted loss for Christ.’ There is a possibility of exaggeration in interpreting Paul’s words. The things that were ‘gain’ to him were in themselves better than their opposites. It is better to to be ‘blameless’ than to have a life all stained with foulness and reeking with sins. But these ‘gains’ were ‘losses,’ disadvantages, in so far as they led him to build upon them, and trust in them as solid wealth. The earthquake that shattered his life had two shocks: the first turned upside down his estimate of the value of his gains, the second robbed him of them. He first saw them to be worthless, and then, so far as others’ judgment went, he was stripped of them. Actively he ‘counted them loss,’ passively he ‘suffered the loss of all things.’ His estimate came, and was followed by the practical outcome of his brethren’s excommunication.
What changed his estimate? In our text he answers the question in two forms: first he gives the simple, all-sufficient monosyllabic reason for his whole life--’for Christ,’ and then he enlarges that motive into ‘the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.’ The former carries us back straight to the vision which revolutionised Paul’s life, and made him abjure all which he had trusted, and adore what he had abhorred. The latter dwells a little more upon the subjective process which followed on the vision, but the two are substantially the same, and we need only note the solemn fulness of the name of ‘Jesus Christ,’ and the intense motion of submission and of personal appropriation contained in the designation, ‘my Lord.’ It was not when he found his way blinded into Damascus that he had learned that knowledge, or could apprehend its ‘excellency.’ The words are enriched and enlarged by later experiences. The sacrifice of his earlier ‘gains’ had been made before the ‘excellency of the knowledge’ had been discerned. It was no mere intellectual perception which could be imparted in words, or by eyesight, but here as always Paul by ‘knowledge’ means experience which comes from possession and acquaintance, and which therefore gleams ever before us as we move, and is capable of endless increase, in the measure in which we are true to the estimate of ‘gains’ and ‘losses’ to which our initial vision of Him has led us. At first we may not know that that knowledge excels all others, but as we grow in acquaintance with Jesus, and in experience of Him, we shall be sure that it transcends all others, because He does and we possess Him.
The revolutionising motive may be conceived of in two ways. We have to abandon the lower ‘gains’ in order to gain Christ, or to abandon these because we have gained Him. Both are true. The discernment of Christ as the one ground of confidence is ever followed by the casting away of all others. Self-distrust is a part of faith. When we feel our feet upon the rock, the crumbling sands on which we stood are left to be broken up by the sea. They who have seen the Apollo Belvedere will set little store by plaster of Paris casts. In all our lives there come times when the glimpse of some loftier ideal shows up our ordinary as hollow and poor and low. And when once Christ is seen, as Scripture shows Him, our former self appears poor and crumbles away.
We are not to suppose that the act of renunciation must be completed before a second act of possession is begun. That is the error of many ascetic books. The two go together, and abandonment in order to win merges into abandonment because we have won. The strongest power to make renunciation possible is ‘the expulsive power of a new affection.’ When the heart is filled with love to Christ there is no sense of ‘loss,’ but only of ‘exceeding gain,’ in casting away all things for Him.
III. The continuous repetition of the discovery.
Paul compares his present self with his former Christian self, and with a vehement ‘Yea, verily,’ affirms his former judgment, and reiterates it in still more emphatic terms. It is often easy to depreciate the treasures which we possess. They sometimes grow in value as they slip from our hands. It is not usual for a man who has ‘suffered the loss of all things’ to follow their disappearance by counting them ‘but dung.’ The constant repetition through the whole Christian course of the depreciatory estimate of grounds of confidence is plainly necessary. There are subtle temptations to the opposite course. It is hard to keep perfectly clear of all building on our own blamelessness or on our connection with the Christian Church, and we have need ever to renew the estimate which was once so epoch-making, and which ‘cast down all our imaginations and high things.’ If we do not carefully watch ourselves, the whispering tempter that was silenced will recover his breath again, and be once more ready to drop into our ears his poisonous suggestions. We have to take pains and ‘give earnest heed’ to the initial, revolutionary estimate, and to see that it is worked out habitually in our daily lives. It is a good exchange when we count ‘all but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv6, 9 (See Scofield "Rom 10:3").
righteousness
(See Scofield "Rom 10:3").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv4, 7 Paul’s right to boast:
Paul’s right to boast:
v. 4. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more:
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v. 5. circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the Law, a Pharisee;
v. 6. concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteousness which is in the Law, blameless.
Somewhat after the manner in which he had spoken 2Co 11:21-30, Paul here offers evidence why he might boast with reason, if he should choose to argue from the standpoint of the Judaizing teachers: Although I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have reliance on flesh, I more. The apostle would have reason to bring forward certain external advantages if he so chose, if there were any real benefit in so doing. He can meet the false teachers also in this field, on their own ground. If they were laboring under the perverted impression that everything depended upon these external things, then Paul has a much greater right to boast.
This he now proceeds to show: Eight days old as regards my circumcision: of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; according to the Law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; concerning the righteousness in the Law, blameless. The apostle was not merely a Jewish proselyte, he had been born in Judaism and had been brought up under its rites from the outset. The Judaizing teachers whom Paul had in mind at this time may have been mere proselytes of the gate and unable to point back to such a record. Paul was by birth an Israelite, of the original stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. His pedigree was unquestioned; whereas many Jews could no longer trace their descent exactly, Paul had proofs for his lineal descent from Benjamin. He was a true Hebrew according to the flesh, he could hold up his head with the best of them. And as for the Law, so far as the external zeal for the Law was concerned, he was a Pharisee, a member of the strictest sect among the Jews. There could be no doubt that Paul had been perfectly sincere, absolutely conscientious as a keeper of the Law, that he had a clean record before the Jews, though he had acted in moral blindness. Yea, more, in zeal he had been far above the average Jew; so zealous had he been before his conversion that he had been a persecutor of the Church, having attempted to eradicate the "new sect. " As for the righteousness, finally, which rests upon the Law, which gets its validity by the Law, he was blameless; he proved himself so earnest that no accusation on that score could be brought and sustained against him. So far as the external fulfillment of the Law was concerned, no one could have been more earnest or more successful. So he could easily challenge any one of the Judaizing opponents on any of the points upon which they usually harped, and overcome them.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv4, 6, 8 Even so
Even so
"Although if I wanted to." Paul is introducing a hypothetical situation that could not possibly exist. (See: Hypothetical Situations)
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I myself could have confidence in the flesh. If anyone thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I could have even more
This is a hypothetical situation that Paul does not believe is possible. Paul says if it were possible that God would save people based on what they did, then God would certainly have saved him. AT: "No one can do enough things to please God, but if anyone could do enough things to please God, I could do more good things and please God more than anyone" (See: Hypothetical Situations)
I myself
Paul uses "myself" for emphasis. AT: "certainly I" (See: Reflexive Pronouns)
I was circumcised
This can be stated in active form. AT: "A priest circumcised me" (See: Active or Passive)
the eighth day
"seven days after I was born"
a Hebrew of Hebrews
Possible meanings are 1) "a Hebrew son with Hebrew parents" or 2) "the purest Hebrew."
with regard to the law, a Pharisee
"as a Pharisee, I was completely devoted to the law"
translationWords
confidence
flesh
circumcise
Israel
tribe
Benjamin
Hebrew
law
Pharisee
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 3:3 Circumcision was understood as identifying the true people…
3:3 Circumcision was understood as identifying the true people of God (see Gen 17:10-14), but those who put their trust in Christ are the ones who are truly circumcised in heart (see Rom 2:28-29; cp. Jer 4:4; Eph 2:11; Col 2:11-13).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.