Chapter 3

   In conclusion, my brethren, be joyful in the Lord. For me to give you the same warnings as before is not irksome to me, while so far as you are concerned it is a safe precaution.  

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   Beware of 'the dogs,' the bad workmen, the self-mutilators.  

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   For we are the true circumcision--we who render to God a spiritual worship and make our boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in outward ceremonies:  

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   although I myself might have some excuse for confidence in outward ceremonies. If any one else claims a right to trust in them, far more may I:  

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   circumcised, as I was, on the eighth day, a member of the race of Israel and of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew sprung from Hebrews; as to the Law a Pharisee;  

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   as to zeal, a persecutor of the Church; as to the righteousness which comes through Law, blameless.  

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   Yet all that was gain to me--for Christ's sake I have reckoned it loss.  

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   Nay, I even reckon all things as pure loss because of the priceless privilege of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And for His sake I have suffered the loss of everything, and reckon it all as mere refuse, in order that I may win Christ and be found in union with Him,  

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   not having a righteousness of my own, derived from the Law, but that which arises from faith in Christ--the righteousness which comes from God through faith.  

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   I long to know Christ and the power which is in His resurrection, and to share in His sufferings and die even as He died;  

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   in the hope that I may attain to the resurrection from among the dead.  

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   I do not say that I have already won the race or have already reached perfection. But I am pressing on, striving to lay hold of the prize for which also Christ has laid hold of me.  

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   Brethren, I do not imagine that I have yet laid hold of it. But this one thing I do--forgetting everything which is past and stretching forward to what lies in front of me,  

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   with my eyes fixed on the goal I push on to secure the prize of God's heavenward call in Christ Jesus.  

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   Therefore let all of us who are mature believers cherish these thoughts; and if in any respect you think differently, that also God will make clear to you.  

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   But whatever be the point that we have already reached, let us persevere in the same course.  

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   Brethren, vie with one another in imitating me, and carefully observe those who follow the example which we have set you.  

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   For there are many whom I have often described to you, and I now even with tears describe them, as being enemies to the Cross of Christ.  

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   Their end is destruction, their bellies are their God, their glory is in their shame, and their minds are devoted to earthly things.  

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   We, however, are free citizens of Heaven, and we are waiting with longing expectation for the coming from Heaven of a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,  

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   who, in the exercise of the power which He has even to subject all things to Himself, will transform this body of our humiliation until it resembles His own glorious body.  

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