Philippians — Chapter 3

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from prison, most likely in Rome around AD 60–62 (some scholars argue for an earlier imprisonment in Ephesus). Philippi was the first church he planted in Europe, about ten years earlier (Acts 16): Lydia the cloth dealer, a freed slave girl, and a jailer and his household. The city was a Roman colony, settled by army veterans after the famous battle fought there in 42 BC, and its people were proud to be Roman citizens far from Rome. Chapter 2 held up Christ, who "humbled himself" to the cross. Chapter 3 turns sharply to a warning about teachers who would add circumcision to the gospel, and Paul answers them with his own story.

Righteousness Through Faith in Christ (vv1–11)

• "Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord" (v1). "Finally" (to loipon) can simply mean "as for the rest" or "so then." Paul still has two chapters to go. "Rejoice in the Lord" is the letter's heartbeat, written by a man in chains (1:18; 2:17–18; 4:4). Joy here is not a mood but a place to stand: in the Lord.
• "The same things… safe for you" (v1). Paul is happy to repeat himself. What "the same things" are is unclear: the call to rejoice, the call to follow Christ's humility, or the warning that follows. Repetition is not dull when it protects.
• The sudden change of tone (v2). The jump from joy to "Look out" is so abrupt that some scholars think two letters were stitched together here. Most commentators see one letter: Paul turns to a danger he had warned them about before, and the warning is the safety he just mentioned.
• "Look out for the dogs" (v2). Three times: blepete, "watch out." Jews sometimes called Gentiles "dogs," meaning unclean outsiders (compare Mark 7:27–28). Paul flips the insult. The real unclean ones are those who say Gentile believers must be circumcised to belong. Dogs in that world were not pets but scavengers roaming the streets.
• "Evildoers" (v2). Literally "bad workers." It is pointed: men proud of their works of the law are doing a bad work.
• "Those who mutilate the flesh" (v2). A biting pun. The Greek for circumcision is peritomē, "cutting around." Paul calls them the katatomē, "cutting up" or "mutilation." The lexicon notes the same verb is used in the Greek Old Testament of the pagan self-cutting the law forbade (Lev 21:5; compare 1 Kings 18:28). Circumcision forced on Gentiles as a condition of salvation is, to Paul, no better than a pagan ritual gash.
• "For we are the circumcision" (v3). The startling claim: the church, Jew and Gentile together, is the true circumcision. The Old Testament already spoke of a circumcised heart (Deut 10:16; 30:6; Jer 4:4), and Paul says the same in Rom 2:28–29 and Col 2:11. He then gives three marks of God's people: worship by the Spirit of God (not by ritual), glory in Christ Jesus (boasting in him, not in ourselves), and put no confidence in the flesh. "Flesh" here means more than the body. It is everything human beings can achieve, inherit or perform to make themselves acceptable.
• "If anyone else thinks… I have more" (v4). Paul is not boasting for its own sake. He is saying, "If credentials could save, I would have qualified first."
• Paul's résumé, what he inherited (v5). Seven items in all, the first four given at birth. "Circumcised on the eighth day", exactly as the law required (Gen 17:12; Lev 12:3), so he was no adult convert. "Of the people of Israel", born into the covenant people. "Of the tribe of Benjamin", the tribe of Rachel's son and of Israel's first king, Saul, whose name Paul bore, and the tribe that stayed loyal to Judah when the kingdom split. "A Hebrew of Hebrews", probably meaning Hebrew-speaking parents who kept the old ways, even though he grew up in Greek-speaking Tarsus (Acts 22:2–3; 2 Cor 11:22).
• Paul's résumé, what he chose (vv5–6). "As to the law, a Pharisee": the strictest party (Acts 26:5), trained under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). "As to zeal, a persecutor of the church": zeal for God was a prized virtue, modeled on Phinehas (Num 25), and Paul's zeal drove him to arrest believers (Acts 8:3; Gal 1:13–14). The line is almost bitter: his proudest religious credential was attacking Christ's people. "As to righteousness under the law, blameless": by the outward standard people could see and measure, no one could fault him. This is not a claim to sinlessness. Romans 7 shows he later saw the coveting underneath.
• "Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss" (v7). Accounting language. "Gain" is plural, a list of assets. "Loss" is singular: the whole column moves over and becomes one entry in the debit side. The tense ("counted") looks back to the Damascus road.
• "Indeed, I count everything as loss" (v8). Now the present tense. Thirty years on, in prison, he still makes the same reckoning, and he widens it from his Jewish privileges to "everything."
• "The surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (v8). Note the personal "my Lord," rare in Paul, who usually writes "our Lord." Knowing here is not information about Jesus but a relationship, as in "this is eternal life, that they know you" (John 17:3).
• "Count them as rubbish" (v8). The word skybalon appears only here in the New Testament. The lexicon gives "refuse," especially "dung," and classical writers use it of excrement, manure and scraps thrown out. "Rubbish" is accurate but polite. Paul chose a word with a stink to it, aimed squarely at the opponents' pride in their law-keeping.
• "Gain Christ and be found in him" (vv8–9). "Found" points to the day of judgment: when God looks, may he find me in Christ, not standing in my own record.
• Two kinds of righteousness (v9). This verse is a summary of Paul's whole gospel. One righteousness is "of my own that comes from the law," earned and therefore owned. The other is "from God," received "through faith" and resting "on faith." It is the same contrast as Rom 3:21–22, 10:3 and Gal 2:16, and the same exchange as 2 Cor 5:21: "in him we might become the righteousness of God."
• "Faith in Christ" (v9). The ESV footnote offers "through the faithfulness of Christ." The Greek phrase (pistis Christou) can be read either way, and scholars debate it. Either way the verse ends "depends on faith," so the believer's trust is in view, and either way the righteousness comes from God, not from Paul.
• "That I may know him" (v10). The goal of being justified is not a clean record alone but Christ himself. Paul names two sides of knowing him. "The power of his resurrection" is the same power that raised Jesus, at work now in believers (Rom 6:4; Eph 1:19–20). "Share his sufferings" is literally "the fellowship (koinōnia) of his sufferings." Paul writes this in chains (1:29).
• "Becoming like him in his death" (v10). The Greek (symmorphizomenos) shares a root with morphē, "form," in 2:6–7, where Christ took "the form of a servant." The pattern of the hymn in chapter 2 (down to death, then raised) becomes the pattern of Paul's own life.
• "That by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (v11). This does not mean Paul doubted his salvation. He has just said his righteousness is God's gift. It is the language of humble, eager expectancy: whatever road it takes, even martyrdom, he wants to reach that day. The word for resurrection here (exanastasis) is used nowhere else in the New Testament. Some preachers make much of its extra prefix as an "out-resurrection," but the lexicon simply gives "a rising again," and it is best not to press it.
• Commentators: All three read v11 as earnest hope, not uncertainty. JFB: it implies not "uncertainty of the issue, but the earnestness of the struggle of faith." Guzik notes that Paul counted his credentials as loss twice, at conversion and again decades later, and that "gains" is plural while "loss" is singular. Henry says Paul's privileges "would have ruined him" had he trusted in them, and that next to Christ they are "in the highest degree contemptible." He reads the "dogs" as men of malice "barking at them and biting them," while JFB stresses their filth and snarling. On skybalon, Guzik and JFB both mention scraps fit only for dogs, a picture that fits the "dogs" of v2. The lexicon supports "refuse" or "dung," and the dog link is an inference, though an apt one.

Straining Toward the Goal (vv12–21)

• "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect" (v12). Having said so much about resurrection, Paul guards against a misunderstanding. Some in the early church claimed a spiritual "arrival" in this life (compare 1 Cor 4:8; 2 Tim 2:18). Paul, the great apostle, says plainly: not yet.
• "I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own" (v12). A wordplay on katalambanō, "lay hold of, seize." Paul strains to seize what Christ already seized him for. The order matters: grace first, effort second. He runs because he was caught, not in order to be caught.
• "One thing I do" (v13). Paul's life has one focus. Compare David's "one thing have I asked" (Ps 27:4) and Jesus' word to Martha (Luke 10:42).
• "Forgetting what lies behind" (v13). Not erasing memory (Paul has just recalled his past in detail) but refusing to let it hold him. That includes his religious achievements and his guilt as a persecutor (1 Tim 1:13–15). Neither past success nor past failure gets to set the pace.
• "Straining forward to what lies ahead" (v13). The verb (epekteinomai) means to stretch out toward, used only here. Picture a runner leaning toward the tape. A runner who looks back over his shoulder loses ground.
• "I press on toward the goal for the prize" (v14). The "goal" (skopos) is a mark to fix the eye on. The "prize" (brabeion) is the victor's award at the games, the word Paul uses in 1 Cor 9:24. Philippi lay on the Via Egnatia, and Greek games were well known across Macedonia.
• "The upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (v14). Some see an image from the games, where the winner was called up to the stand to receive his prize. Others take it as God's call that comes from above and draws us up to him. Both fit. The prize is not a separate reward from Christ, but Christ himself fully known (v10).
• "Let those of us who are mature think this way" (v15). A gentle irony. "Mature" (teleioi) is from the same root as "perfect" in v12. Those who are truly teleioi know they are not yet teleioi. Real maturity is knowing you have not arrived.
• "God will reveal that also to you" (v15). Paul is confident about the gospel, but patient with believers who see some things differently. He trusts God to correct them in time.
• "Only let us hold true to what we have attained" (v16). Meanwhile, live up to the light you already have. Don't go backward while waiting for more.
• "Join in imitating me" (v17). One Greek word (symmimētai), "fellow-imitators," found nowhere else. It is not pride. Paul says elsewhere, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Cor 11:1). New believers in a pagan city had no Christian tradition around them. They needed lives to watch. He points them also to others "who walk" this way, likely Timothy and Epaphroditus (2:19–30).
• "Even with tears" (v18). Paul, who just called the false teachers "dogs," now weeps over another group. Strong words and tears belong together in a faithful shepherd (Acts 20:31).
• "Enemies of the cross of Christ" (v18). Who are they? Paul does not say, and readers differ. Some think they are the same circumcision party as v2, who emptied the cross by adding the law (Gal 5:11; 6:12). Many think they are a different group: professing believers who treated grace as permission to indulge themselves (Rom 6:1; Jude 4). The description in v19 fits the second better. Either way, they walk as enemies. It is their way of life that betrays them.
• Four marks (v19). "Their end is destruction": final ruin, the same word as in 1:28. "Their god is their belly": appetite rules them, whether food, sex or comfort (Rom 16:18). "They glory in their shame": they boast in what should embarrass them. A minority reading takes "belly" as food laws and "shame" as a crude reference to circumcision, which would tie v19 back to v2, but most commentators read it as moral indulgence. "Minds set on earthly things": this world is all they can see.
• "But our citizenship is in heaven" (v20). The word is politeuma, "citizenship" or "commonwealth." The Philippians knew exactly what this meant. Their city was a little Rome in Macedonia, governed by Roman law, its citizens enrolled in Rome though most had never seen it (Acts 16:12, 21). Paul says believers are a colony of heaven. They live here, but their capital, their laws and their King are elsewhere. He used a related verb in 1:27: "let your manner of life (politeuesthe) be worthy of the gospel."
• "From it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ" (v20). "Savior" and "Lord" were titles given to the emperor, and Philippi was proud of its imperial ties. Paul gives them to Jesus. The real Savior is not coming from Rome but from heaven.
• "Will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body" (v21). "Lowly body" is literally "the body of our humiliation." The word echoes 2:8, where Christ "humbled himself." "Like" is symmorphon, "of the same form," the word Paul uses for being "conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom 8:29). The chapter that began with Paul's loss ends with the believer's gain: a resurrection body like Christ's (1 Cor 15:42–53; 1 John 3:2).
• "The power that enables him even to subject all things to himself" (v21). This echoes Psalm 8:6, "you have put all things under his feet," which Paul applies to Christ in 1 Cor 15:27. The same power that will bring every enemy under his rule will raise and remake our bodies. And it completes the hymn of chapter 2: every knee will bow (2:10).
• Commentators: JFB on v13: "Looking back is sure to end in going back." He calls the prize "the crown of righteousness" and takes v11's language as the strain of faith, not doubt. Guzik pictures the old Spanish coin stamped "nothing further," re-struck "more beyond" after the New World was found, as an image of the Christian who knows there is always more of Christ. He also notes that "Savior" and "Lord" were imperial titles, and that refusing to call Caesar "Lord" later cost Christians their lives. His picture of Christ "tackling" Paul in v12 is vivid, but the lexicon gives katalambanō simply as "seize, lay hold of," so the image is a preacher's picture, not the word's meaning. Henry on the tears: "Paul was upon proper occasions a weeping preacher, as Jeremiah was a weeping prophet." On v20: "This world is not our home." And on v15–16 he urges believers to keep walking together in what they agree on while they wait for light on the rest.

Pointing to Christ

Paul lays his whole religious life on the scale and finds Christ outweighs it all, not because his heritage was evil, but because it could never make him right with God. What he could never earn, God gives: a righteousness "from God that depends on faith." And the gift is not only a verdict but a person. The road Paul runs is the one Christ ran first in chapter 2, down into suffering and death, then up to glory, and Christ's promise at the end of it is to make our bodies "like his glorious body."

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik covers the warning against Judaizers, Paul's credentials, the surpassing value of knowing Christ, pressing toward the goal, and heavenly citizenship.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Philippians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Gain Counted as Loss (v.7) — Paul takes his impressive religious resume and counts it all as loss compared to Christ. What accomplishments or credentials are you tempted to trust in instead of resting fully in Christ?
• Knowing Christ Above All (v.10) — Paul's driving ambition, even after decades of ministry, is to know Christ more deeply, including sharing in his sufferings. Is knowing Christ your deepest pursuit, or has something else quietly taken first place?
• Forgetting What's Behind (v.13) — Paul refuses to let past failures or past successes anchor him in place. What from your past, good or bad, is still holding back your forward progress?
• Pressing Toward the Prize (v.14) — Paul describes his life as a single-minded pursuit of the goal set before him. What would change if you pursued your walk with Christ with that same focused intensity?
• Citizens of Heaven (v.20) — Paul reminds believers that their true citizenship belongs to heaven, not to this present world. Do your daily priorities and decisions reflect that heavenly citizenship, or does this world still feel like home?