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1 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write to you again about this is no trouble for me and is a protection for you. 2 Watch out for “dogs,” watch out for evil workers, watch out for those who mutilate the flesh. 3 For we are the circumcision, the ones who serve by the Spirit of God, boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put confidence in the flesh— 4 although I once also had confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; regarding the law, a Pharisee; 6 regarding zeal, persecuting the church; regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. 7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ —the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
To Circumcise, or not to circumcise, that is the question.
To Circumcise, or not to circumcise, that is the question.
Potential sermon title.
Yep, we’re talking about circumcision today.
Aren’t you excited?
I know you were all ready for the sermon directly out of the declaration of independence.
But nope.
You’re gonna get sermon from Philippians that could be titled
“Paul’s Declaration of Codependence.”
Codependnce on Christ.
Let’s go.
Rejoice for pastoral care:
Paul has been writing this very fatherly letter to the people in Philippi. He’s had very little to correct them about. He’s primarily been strengthening them through the repeated proclamation of the excellencies of Christ.
Christ was the foundation he laid for them, and he’s now sending strong reinforcing beams of Christ into the spiritual building called the church that was being built in Philippi.
The only thing we’ve seen Paul correct them on is the apparent tendency this church seemed to have to argue and rival each other.
But being a good pastor doesn’t consist of only being there to correct error AFTER it’s happened.
Actually what is equally important is the protection from danger before it happens.
Parents sometimes want their children to experience something painful in order to learn that it is true.
A classic example could be a hot stove.
Virtually everyone has to touch something really hot at least once to understand the danger and the need to quickly draw back from the heat.
But there’s plenty of things that we really don’t our kids to experience even once.
We vigilantly warn children not to step into a road.
We don’t say “they’ll learn”.
What good is learning if you’ve died?
This is what Paul is doing here.
He has a warning for them that he’s apparently given them before.
“To write these things is no trouble for me”
“And it’s a protection for you.”
It’s not a problem to warn people about something that can kill them.
And if you’re in a position of being protected by someone, when you really trust them, you rejoice when they protect you.
If you were about to eat a delicious piece of peach cobbler and then someone was like,
“hey man, that has fentanyl in it”
You’d be like,
“Thank you!”
You wouldn’t be like
“Mind your business.”
That is unless it was a really good looking piece.
WARNING:
So what is he warning them about?
2 Watch out for “dogs,” watch out for evil workers, watch out for those who mutilate the flesh.
Scripture teaches us clearly that we are to recognize and warn about false teachers.
15 “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. 16 You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. 18 A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. 19 Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.
When Paul is warning here, he is dishing out imperatives. Commands.
A verb that means “lookout!”
Blepete.
Blepete Blepete Blepete
Who’s the wolf in this case?
Jews.
Jews who are confused about how God’s covenant family works.
1 Some men came down from Judea and began to teach the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom prescribed by Moses, you cannot be saved!”
These men were sometimes called the circumcision party.
Those who held that the only way for someone to be a full Christian is to be circumcised.
Paul contrasts this and says
“WE are the circumcision.”
They are false workers, we are the ones who serve by the Spirit of God.
They put confidence in the flesh. (by holding that by the mutilation of your flesh you are saved.)
We are the ones who put NO confidence in the flesh.
Why does this matter?
For one, adult circumcision is no joke.
We find a story in the Old Testament where two men wipe out an entire town of fighting men simply because they had been circumcised and couldn’t even move.
In the early church, their were Gentiles being led astray who thought that they needed to be circumcised or more in order to be accepted into God’s family and receive salvation.
Paul full court presses against this idea through much of his writing in the NT.
Which gives us this glorious meme.
The real issue here wasn’t a surgical procedure.
The real issue here is what kind of circumcision was truly valuable?
More than one circumcision?
So now of course we ask ourselves the question,
“Is there more than one kind of circumcision?”
The answer is yes.
Abraham was the first man to be circumcised.
His circumcision came after he had already received the gift of faith.
The circumcision in his flesh was simply a sign of that promise God had made to him and his descendants.
Now as Israel’s history unfolds we see that not only is circumcision and outward sign of inclusion in the covenant family, but it should be a picture of the heart condition that God desires.
12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you except to fear the Lord your God by walking in all His ways, to love Him, and to worship the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul? 13 Keep the Lord’s commands and statutes I am giving you today, for your own good. 14 The heavens, indeed the highest heavens, belong to the Lord your God, as does the earth and everything in it. 15 Yet the Lord was devoted to your fathers and loved them. He chose their descendants after them—He chose you out of all the peoples, as it is today. 16 Therefore, circumcise your hearts and don’t be stiff-necked any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and taking no bribe. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. 19 You also must love the foreigner, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. 20 You are to fear Yahweh your God and worship Him. Remain faithful to Him and take oaths in His name. 21 He is your praise and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome works your eyes have seen. 22 Your fathers went down to Egypt, 70 people in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of the sky.
So here, even at a very early stage in the story of the community of faith, OUR community of faith, we see a huge community, hundreds of thousands of people,
Who are circumcised, but God says, Circumcise your heart!
3 For this is what the Lord says to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: Break up the unplowed ground; do not sow among the thorns. 4 Circumcise yourselves to the Lord; remove the foreskin of your hearts, men of Judah and residents of Jerusalem. Otherwise, My wrath will break out like fire and burn with no one to extinguish it because of your evil deeds.
Circumcision alone can never save a man.
Circumcision was always pointing to the need for the individual’s heart to be changed.
Jesus famously said
40 He answered, “I tell you, if they were to keep silent, the stones would cry out!”
But that is precisely the astonishing truth that circumcision points to.
That God, in his mercy, takes the toughest, deadest element in history, the human heart, and changes it into a vibrant, living thing.
But this requirement of circumcision was so ingrained in the history and psyche of the Hebrew people, when the Spirit began to descend on Gentiles, and they were clearly began to receive the gift of faith and be regenerated, there were many who could not imagine that you could be a Christian without being circumcised.
This is actually what a sizeable chunk of the New Testament is all about.
This was not a small problem.
God was doing a new thing by in-grafting Gentiles into the tree of the covenant.
And along the way, it was becoming evident from God that now BAPTISM was to be the sign of this covenant and picture of what is going on in the interior.
The apostles, throughout all their writings, fought tooth and nail through their preaching, and often at the expense of their own physical safety to proclaim the truth that
It is through our faith in Christ ALONE that we are saved.
But there were still sizeable contingents of Jews and Jewish Christians who wanted to add to this formula with circumcision.
Paul says this is deadly.
And so Paul engages in their little flex off for a minute to prove his point.
“I was the best”
This part of Paul’s message sounds like the lyrics of a Kanye West song. “I was awesome.”
If there were an Olympic Games of being Jewish,
Paul gives himself the Gold in all disciplines here.
4 although I once also had confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; regarding the law, a Pharisee; 6 regarding zeal, persecuting the church; regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless.
Knowing Christ is far superior.
But Paul says, none of that matter when you compare them with Christ.
7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ.
Paul isn’t saying that those things weren’t valuable at all, but he’s saying that none of it matters if they get in the way of Knowing Christ.
8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ
The word Paul here uses “filth” is always used to describe human excrement.
Sometimes in a crass way.
Paul is saying,
“Man all that was literal sewage.”
Because it was MY righteousness.
And holding onto them would mean that he could not gain Christ.
Question is,
Do you give yourself the gold medal?
Have you been duped into thinking that your good deeds will make you acceptable to God?
Listen.
Righteousness comes from God on the basis of faith.
And now Paul gives us this truth.
9 and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ —the righteousness from God based on faith.
Paul says he needs to be found in him.
What does it mean to be found in Christ?
Well when you look at Paul what do you see?
When you examine his life, which man do you see?
Do you see Adam? The old man who Paul was born into sin because of?
Or do you see Christ? The new man who Paul died and will rise with?
We of course see Christ.
And Paul is saying,
All that stuff that made me awesome?
It didn’t mean anything because I was dead in Adam.
But now, through faith, I am alive in Christ.
This is the great unfairness of history which is also the great beauty of the gospel.
21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
We don’t like this because it chafes against our Western conceptions of authority.
Adam did that! Not me!
I didn’t vote for him in the primaries!
How can he do something that affects me?
God’s economy is not a democracy.
God’s economy is mercy and grace.
We all, whether we like it or not,
have to say “If he did it, I did it with him.”
So if Adam rebelled against God in the garden,
I might as well have been right there with him.
But if I am hidden in Christ,
If Christ is mine and I am his through faith,
then if he did it,
I did it with him.
He obeyed the law?
I did it with him.
He died to sin on a cross?
I did it with him.
He rose from the dead defeating death once for all?
I did it with him.
He stands before the Father in perfect righteousness and at peace with God?
I am there with him.
When God sees Paul, he doesn’t see the law following, Christian murdering monster.
He sees Christ.
When God sees us,
He doesn’t see the lying, adulterous, violent, evil people that we were in Adam.
He sees Christ.
THIS is why Paul says:
10 My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.
He’s not unsure of his salvation.
He’s saying I’ve already died with Christ.
The old Adam fell off his horse on the road to Damascus and never got up.
The New Adam is striding forward by the power of the Spirit.
What does this teach us about God?
God is a covenant keeping God.
He is a God who knows us.
He is a God who sees us in our condition of death and
rescues us
takes our heart of stone
gives us a heart of flesh.
Adopts us into his family.
He is a merciful God.
He is a gracious God.
What does this teach us about ourselves?
We cannot, under any circumstances, bring God a righteousness that we have fashioned in order to be made right.
It is GOD who gives US the gift of faith.
The circumcision of the heart.
The baptism of the Spirit.
Baptism into Christ.
So the question remains, what is the current danger presented to us, in this day and age that would tempt us to add something to faith.
I see two major dangers.
What are the ways that we subtly, or overtly make the same mistake that the circumcision party was making in the 1st century?
The only way to be a full christian is to ____
The first major danger is the subtle one.
The one that offers less than Christ
Syncretism - The merging of different religions.
There is ONE way to be saved.
In Christ Jesus.
12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people, and we must be saved by it.”
You can’t blend other things in.
You can’t get by being a good person,
going to church,
and building a form of spirituality that works for you.
A little Christianity here,
a little enneagram there,
you know what,
I listened to a podcast about Buddhism and some of the concepts really clicked with me...
Drink that potion...
Or maybe it’s building a spirituality that actually is not spiritual at all.
A “religion” so to speak that relies completely on man’s power to advance itself through history by developing society further and further.
A form of humanism.
Now don’t hear me wrong.
This is not a anti culture message.
A “Christianity against the world” message.
On the contrary, this is a “Christianity FOR the world” message.
But it has to be authentic Christianity.
If we are offering anyone anything other than Christ,
If we are feeding on anything less than Christ,
We will die spiritually as surely as we will die physically.
We must “Lookout!” Blepete
That we are not offering others and ourselves less than Christ.
There’s another danger. The way we offer more than Christ.
Political Conformity
We live in a political climate where the person who is “other” than you, is demonized.
It is no different in the church.
People on both sides of our political dichotomy believe that Christians on the other side must not even be Christians.
This isn’t a new phenomenon.
Christians have been fighting and killing each other for a long time.
In all sorts of political and national contexts.
But this should not be.
Paul is calling for unity throughout this letter.
How can there be unity when we hold a specific party line over the heads of our Christian brothers and sisters.
We are essentially saying
“You must have faith + a certain cultural additive.”
How is that any different than those who wanted Gentiles to be circumcised?
Christians, if they are living in faithfulness to God’s word, will find themselves utterly not at home in any political party.
God’s requirements for his people and his world have never been faithfully carried out to perfection by a nation.
But we are citizens of a different nation.
By our baptism into Christ we are by definition set apart.
“The debate about whether Christians can morally vote for one political party or the other is a worthy discussion. But it is a morally stunted discussion. Equally important is the discussion about the moral obligation to speak against the evils of the party for which you do vote.”
Christians on both sides of the aisle need to be exposing the idolatry of their political party and political visions.
But we should be able to arrive here at church,
look each other in the eye,
and say
“Peace be with you.”
Because of our common faith in Jesus Christ of Nazareth the Son of God.
The only name under heaven by which men and women can be saved.
We must not serve less than Christ.
We must not serve more than Christ.
Or else we become the dogs that lead people astray.
Let’s be conformed to Christ’s death...
So that we may be transformed into Christ’s life.