“For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”
Philippians is mostly a positive letter to a church that sent Paul a monetary gift while he was imprisoned in Rome. The prevailing problem in Philippi, and other churches, was a group called “Judaizers,” who were teaching that in order to become a Christian one had to first be circumcised and become a Jew and live according to the law. That is why Paul wrote, “For we are the circumcision,” meaning that a Christian is right before God, not because of circumcision, but because of his faith in Christ. We are not saved by keeping rituals and laws. We are not saved by becoming religious, but by putting our faith in Christ. In the rest of the verse, Paul tells what this means. Instead of circumcision and law, we “worship God in the Spirit.” We were convicted of our sins by the Holy Spirit and convinced that Christ could be our Savior by the Holy Spirit. The Gentile Philippian Christians were made right with God, not by what man could do, but by what God could do. Circumcision served its purpose in indentifying men who belonged to God through their relation with Abraham, but since Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and ascension, faith in Him was the key. We don’t worship God from the standpoint of the law, and by what we do, but by the Spirit of God who has changed us from within. It is not through being religious and following ritual that we are saved but through the resurrected Christ. We worship God, not just as one who sits in heaven, but as one who lives in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It can be that the rituals of worship serve their purpose in giving guidance and substance to our worship, but it is the Holy Spirit who makes the worship meaningful and life-changing. Instead of rejoicing in our accomplishments, “we rejoice in Jesus Christ.” In all of his letters, Paul makes it plain that our salvation did not come from what we did, but from what Christ did on the cross. We rejoice in Christ because it was He who gave us new life and a new lease on life. It was Christ who changed our lives. We were not changed because we “turned over a new leaf.” Someone once said that the only thing that you get when you turn over a new leaf is the other side of the same leaf. We rejoice in Christ because by our faith in Him we will be given abundant life here, and will live with Him eternally in heaven. People who depend on their initiative and their own religiosity to draw close to God rejoice in what they have done. Rejoicing for Christians is not in our accomplishments, but in our relationship with Jesus Christ. Instead of putting “confidence in the flesh,” in what we can do, we put our confidence in Jesus. What Paul means by writing that “we do not have confidence in the flesh,” is that we do not put our confidence in our religious achievements, but in Christ as we are led by the Holy Spirit. A good example of this is given to us through the Pharisees in the New Testament. They actually thought that they were righteous based on what they did by keeping rules and regulations that over the years went much further than the Ten Commandments, and actually became laws of men. In essence they were “measuring themselves by themselves.” They were following rules that they made up. We are led by the Holy Spirit. This means that we are not putting confidence in the flesh, but our confidence is in God. We need to remember always that it is not by human compulsion that we are led to live the right kind of life; rather, we are led by the Spirit of God. It is not what we have done, but what Christ has done that makes us right before God. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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