Philippians: Confidence in the Spirit
Philippians 3:1-6 - Paul warns believers of the dogs, evil workers and the false circumcision of legalism.
“Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.
Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.”
Philippians 3:1-6 NASB1995
Paul is not wrapping up the epistle yet, even though he uses the words “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord”. He is transitioning to a section of the letter that highlights his background as a way of telling the saints at Phillipi to avoid legalisms. Telling them to rejoice in Lord is not meaningless repetition and it helps safeguard them from the three things that Paul then delineates to be wary of: Dogs, evil workers and the false circumcision.
I looked at a lot of commentary on this and will first share what Enduring Word says about these things that reflect legalisms; keep in mind Enduring Word uses the New King James Version of the Bible:
Beware of dogs: This was a harsh reference to the troublemaking legalists who attempted to deceive the Philippians. “Dogs” is exactly the term of contempt Jews would use against Gentiles. Paul said a lot by using this word against these Jewish-influenced legalists.
[Jac J.] Muller quoting Lightfoot: “The herds of dogs which prowl about Eastern cities, without a home and without an owner, feeding on the refuse and filth of the streets, quarreling among themselves, and attacking the passer-by, explain the applications of the image.”
“We are bidden, therefore, to beware of men of a quarrelsome and contentious spirit, who under the guise of religion hide impure and unclean things; and who are not only defiled, but defiling in their influence.” (F. B. Meyer)
Beware of evil workers: This describes both what these legalists do (working evil), but was also a word against their emphasis on righteousness with God by works. Paul would admit that they have a concern for works, but they were evil workers.
Evil workers: “These people are the ‘Cranks’ of our Churches; they introduce fads and hobbies; they exaggerate the importance of trifles; they catch up every new theory and vagary, and follow it to the detriment of truth and love.” (F. B. Meyer)
Beware of the mutilation: Here is another harsh reference to the insistence of these Jewish legalists on requiring circumcision for Gentiles who wanted to become Christians. This was all done with the idea that someone must become a Jew first before they could become a Christian.
“They did not deny that Jesus was the Messiah, or that His Gospel was the power of God unto salvation, but they insisted that the Gentile converts could only come to the fullness of Gospel privilege through the Law of Moses.” (F.B. Meyer)
However, Paul did not see their insistence on circumcision as something beautiful or noble; he regarded it as an ugly example of mutilation. [Alexander] Maclaren imagines Paul saying it like this: “I will not call them the circumcision, they have not been circumcised, they have only been gashed and mutilated, it has been a mere fleshly maiming.”
[Ralph P.] Martin on the mutilation: “By a pun, he mockingly calls it a mere cutting, katatome, i.e. mutilation of the body on a par with pagan practices forbidden in Leviticus 21:5.”
The true circumcision is found in those who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, as Paul notes after his warning statements. This commentary by Ray Pritchard, found on Precept Austin is superb:
Evidently there were professing Jewish Christians who taught that you had to keep the Law of Moses in order to be saved. They claimed that circumcision was necessary in order to be accepted by God. To the Apostle Paul this was nothing less than heresy. It’s one thing for a man to decide he wants to keep the Law of Moses for himself, it’s something else to demand that everyone else do as he does. It’s even worse to say that if you don’t do as I do, you can’t be saved [my emphasis]. To say that you must keep the law in order to be saved is to deny the gospel of grace. These men were mutilating the souls of the people they claimed to be helping. Notice Paul’s answer in Phil 3:3. When he says “we … are the circumcision,” he means that true believers have been circumcised in their hearts through faith in Jesus Christ. We don’t need a physical operation because we’ve had a spiritual heart transplant. As a result, we worship in the Spirit, we give glory to Jesus Christ, and we put no confidence in the flesh.
Let me be clear about this. Religion without Christ is dangerous. Millions of people today are trusting in their religion to get them to heaven. They believe because they were baptized as an infant (or as a child or as a teenager or as an adult) that they are going to heaven. Or they think that because they were raised as a Baptist (or Methodist or Lutheran or Church of Christ) they must be born again. It’s not so. Religion without Christ will send you to hell. You can say your prayers five times a day, you can be baptized, you can listen to Billy Graham, you can take the Lord’s Supper, you can light the Advent candle, you can even drop a million bucks in the offering plate, and if you don’t know Jesus, it’s won’t do you a bit of good. Many religious people have “Christ-plus” faith. They are trusting in Christ plus baptism or Christ plus church membership or Christ plus going to Mass or Christ plus good works or Christ plus giving money. They love to sing that old gospel song: “Jesus paid almost all of it” because they think they’ve got to add their part to what Jesus did.
Don’t trust in your religion! It can’t save you.
Don’t trust in your parents’ religion! It can’t save you.
Don’t trust in your baptism! It can’t save you.
Don’t trust in your church attendance! It can’t save you.
Religion is good and so is baptism and church membership and many of the other outward trappings of Christianity. But if your heart has never been circumcised by faith in Christ, you are not saved and you are not going to heaven. That’s the warning Paul wants you to understand. (Philippians 3:1-11: From Rubbish to Jesus)
I saw another commentary that said that trying to work your way to heaven through rituals or liturgies or even mandating the right version of the Bible (doing something that is “Christ++++) is like trying to do a long jump across the Grand Canyon. We have studied this grace versus works dichotomy before, in my devotionals on Galatians, when Paul was on the warpath about the Judaizers and their insistence on circumcision of Gentile Christians. Remember this chart? I shared it a few devotionals ago in this study on Philippians and it came from Truthforsaints.com (note the copyright symbol):
So looking at the multi-colored squares (except for the black squares, which are considered by this and most other sources to be non-Christian) in this chart, could I ask my readers to please point out the “right” block in the tan, yellow, green, purple, blue or red mess that we should enter into at the exclusion of the rest to ensure our salvation? I’m curious about the answers.
We have an acquaintance who attends a church that is in one of the yellow blocks (not the same yellow block that we left a few years ago). She persists in sharing on social media (frequently) the reasons why her type of church is the only one that is “right” (it is Protestant, not of Calvin, has an essential “catechism”, is confessional, liturgical, full of old hymns only, has a closed Eucharist ceremony and promotes infant baptism). If you go to a church that violates any one of those principles, then she is looking down on you from her high horse of legalism, frowning at your choices and tut-tutting about your salvation. I scroll past most of her comments these days and refuse to take the bait in fervent doctrine-driven trivia (she also complains frequently about people not engaging with her posts). I believe that church is a very important part of the life of a believer, but we can get caught up in the process rather than the pure reason for going to church. Yes, we are to do good works and go on mission, but these things come after our repentance and salvation in Christ. The thief on the cross had no time for trivia.
These two commentary excerpts from a study of Philippians by Pastor Rod Mattoon, quoted on Precept Austin, are quite good:
Churches need to beware of adding baptism, the Lord's Supper, church membership, tongues, and now, the King James translation, to salvation. Believe it or not, there are some preachers saying that you cannot be saved unless it is with the KJV. There are some missionaries that believe they cannot win people to Christ on the mission field unless they read the KJV in English first to people who do not understand English and then read the Bible to them in their language. Making the KJV translation a necessary requirement for salvation is a false and heretical doctrine. There is no scriptural basis for that teaching at all and if you will think about it, it is absolutely idiotic and makes no sense at all. It is another gospel and a destructive, damaging doctrine that is creating havoc on the mission field as well as in the United States. It is a lie and those promoting this teaching are either deceptive or ignorant and are going to be held accountable for the confusion they are creating in the body of Christ. Have I made myself clear about this heresy? Beloved, we had the Gospel long before the 1611 KJV. God's favorite language is not English and His favorite translation is not the KJV. He is not a respecter of persons. He loves His Word in all languages and translations throughout the world and throughout history.
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We must be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping, we are becoming. When we go to church, the worship is not for us, it is for Christ. The purpose of the church service is not to get something out of it, but to put something in to it: our worship, praise, and adoration for Jesus Christ. People who do not get anything out of the church service usually don't put anything into it. It's not the Pastor's fault, it's their fault. We exist to give Christ the glory due to Him.
Jerry Bridges, in his book, The Joy of Fearing God, describes the healthy tension between loving and fearing God: In the physical realm there are two opposing forces called "centrifugal" and "centripetal." Centrifugal force tends to pull away from a center of rotation, while centripetal force pulls toward the center. A stone whirled about on the end of a string exerts centrifugal force on the string, while the string exerts centripetal force on the stone. Take away one and the other immediately disappears. These two opposing forces can help us understand something of the fear of God.
The centrifugal force represents the attributes of God such as His holiness and sovereignty that cause us to bow in awe and self-abasement before him. They hold us reverently distant from the One who, by the simple power of His Word, created the universe out of nothing. The centripetal force represents the love of God. It surrounds us with grace and mercy and draws us with cords of love into the Father's warm embrace. To exercise a proper fear and reverence of God we must understand and respond to both these forces.....Gordon Dahl once observed, "Our problem is that we worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship." Many think they are worshiping the Lord when in reality they are fooling themselves. Like kids that play "house" or play "school," they are playing "church." Beloved, God wants our obedience. Obedience to God is the essence of worshiping Him. Without obedience to the Lord, there is no worship of Him. How can we show our love and adoration for the Lord if we are unwilling to do what He asks us to do? (Commentary on Philippians)
I love that comparison to centrifugal and centripetal forces. One is helping us to keep humble and distant before the Holy God, Creator of the Universe and the other one is pulling us into His love and grace and mercy. As physics students should know, however, the real force on an object is centripetal while centrifugal “force” is really only a feeling and not a real force that is tied to the inertia of an object (tendency to stay at rest). Those Newtonian laws come up again! Oh, and obedience is the key in worship!
Image generated by ChatGPT (OpenAI) using the DALL·E model.
Paul then describes how his circumcision and confidence in the things of the flesh might have been “enough”. At the top of the devotional, Steve worked with the AI program to create a young, proud Paul doing what he did best before he went on that fatal (to his ego and beliefs) roadtrip to Damascus. The image directly above shows the Sanhedrin members in deliberation. Here are the verses from the passage again so you don’t have to scroll up:
If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.”
Paul followed every Mosaic legalism to the letter (and then some, by offering himself up as a zealous persecutor of the followers of Christ). Enduring Word has good commentary on these verses:
Circumcised the eighth day… : Paul first listed four things that were his possessions by birth, all reasons why he might have confidence in the flesh.
Paul was circumcised the eighth day in accordance with Leviticus 12:3.
Paul was of the stock of Israel, a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and therefore an heir to God’s covenant with them.
Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin, a distinguished tribe. Benjamin was distinguished by the fact that it gave Israel her first king, Saul (1 Samuel 9:1-2). It was the tribe that aligned itself with faithful Judah when Israel divided into two nations at the time of Rehoboam (1 Kings 12:21). It was also the tribe that had the city of Jerusalem within its boundaries (Judges 1:21).
Paul was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. This contrasted him with the Jews who embraced Greek culture as it spread through the Mediterranean. In that time, many Jews became ashamed of their Jewishness and tried to live and act as much like Greeks as they could, sometimes even to the point of having their circumcision cosmetically restored or hidden so they could enjoy the Roman public baths without being noticed as Jews. In contrast, Paul was raised by his parents as a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
Concerning the law: Paul then listed three things that were his by personal choice and conviction, all reasons why he might have confidence in the flesh.
Paul was concerning the law, a Pharisee. This tells us that among an elite people (the Jews), Paul was of an elite sect (the Pharisees), who were noted for their scrupulous devotion to the law of God. “There were not very many Pharisees, never more than six thousand, but they were the spiritual athletes of Judaism. Their very name means The Separated Ones. They had separated themselves off from all common life and from all common tasks in order to make it the one aim of their lives to keep every smallest detail of the Law.” (William Barclay) The concern that Pharisees had for keeping the law is reflected in passages like Matthew 23:23.
Concerning zeal, persecuting the church. Paul was not merely an intellectual opponent of perceived heresies against Judaism; he was also an active fighter against them – even in his blindness to God. Paul’s observation that the Jews of his day have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge (Romans 10:2) was true of his own life before God confronted him on the road to Damascus.
Concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. This shows that Paul achieved the standard of righteousness which was accepted among the men of his day – though this standard fell short of God’s holy standard. Because of how the law was interpreted and taught, there were those of that day who were deceived into thinking that they really were blameless, like the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-23).
In summary, if anyone could lay claim to pleasing God by law-keeping and the works of the flesh, it was Paul. He was far more qualified than his legalizing opponents were to make such a claim.
Paul’s resume was meticulous; if anyone could lay a claim to pleasing God through works and law, it would be Saul before he saw the light. As we shall see in the next devotional, Paul considers these gains from his previous life and his obedience to legalism to be a desired loss for the sake of Christ. This next devotional examines Philippians 3:7-11.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Please help me to focus on obedience in worship, balancing fear and awe for Your Holiness with gratitude for Your grace and love. Please help me to avoid legalisms in my advice from Your Word. Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Commentary from Enduring Word by David Guzik is used with written permission. Extracts have been modified for formatting improvements only.
Precept Austin was accessed on 07/19/2025 to review the commentary for Philippians 3:1-6.