Strong Warnings
‘Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh…’ Philippians 3:2,3
Many of the churches Paul pioneered were later visited by false teachers. Why was Paul so against them, as was the case here in Philippi?
Their message came down to this: Christ alone is not enough. Putting your trust in Him is a good part of the foundation but to please God, you have to add more.
Paul calls these messengers:
(1) dogs – in Paul’s day, dogs were not domesticated pets like today. They were wild scavengers fossicking for scraps wherever and whenever possible
(2) men who do evil – ‘bad works’ people who deceptively think they’re doing good
(3) mutilators of the flesh – putting them in the same camp as pagans who mutilate their bodies to identify themselves with and to please their false gods. The obvious reference is to their insistence on circumcision.
True believers, Paul writes, are:
(1) the circumcision – taking the title for God’s old covenant people and the very title the false teachers would have claimed
(2) those who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus – these false teachers gloried in the circumcision of a physical body rather than in Christ and the life-altering Holy Spirit. They elevated changed flesh over a changed heart
(3) those who … put no confidence in the flesh –the false teachers elevated pride in being part of physical Israel above membership in spiritual Israel, the renewed people of God. The ‘flesh’ of physical descent was more important to them than identifying with Christ’s new creation people.
‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ’ (1 Corinthians 3:11). We build on this all-powerful foundation but can never add to it. The foundation stands alone – Christ and only Christ.
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