PHILIPPIANS 3 (NIV)
- Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to wite the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.
- 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 -
- though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:
- circumcised on the eights day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;
- as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousnes, faultless.
- But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
- What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ
- and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
- I want to know Christ and the powr of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
- and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
- Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
- Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have take hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
- I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
- All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.
- Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
- Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.
- For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
- Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things.
- But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
- who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
