The third chapter of Philippians is one of the outstanding chapters of the New Testament. Paul tried to show from the very first verse the protection and the safety that come from a continual emphasis on the basic truths of a walk with God, and what constitutes an experience with the Lord. He said, Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not irksome, but for you it is safe. Philippians 3:1. There is safety in hearing the same truths over and over. It is good to hear, again and again, what the Word of God really teaches about the blood of Jesus Christ and the true righteousness that comes from God and is not generated by our own good works. These truths may seem repetitious, but Paul said that his writing the same things over and over was not irksome for him, and it was very safe for us.
The religious instinct is rarely stomped out completely in the immature. After we start to walk with God, we can very easily revert to being religious. We cannot afford to be even a little religious, if our religiosity is produced by the fleshly nature. The fleshly nature can be very religious. Therefore, like Paul, we are concerned not with religion, but with righteousness. There is a big difference. Because it imposes rules and regulations that seem to have a piety about them, religion may have an appearance of righteousness; but that is not genuine righteousness. In the whole of Philippians 3 Paul was dealing with true righteousness. He had been a pharisee of the Pharisees; nevertheless, he relentlessly warred against the Pharisaism of which he once had been a part and from which God had delivered him.
In the second verse Paul wrote, Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the concision. When he said, “Beware of the dogs,” he was referring to those who were religious hypocrites in his sight and in the sight of the Lord Jesus Christ. The concision was the group that was known as the party of the circumcision. These were the Judaizers. They tried to make the laws of the Jews binding upon Christians. Among the Jewish ordinances were circumcision and many other dead works which they felt obligated to perform. All of them were done with a ritualistic air. Certainly you can now understand why Paul warned, “Beware of the concision.”
We shall see what Paul meant in his warning against dogs, as we read several Scriptures on the subject of dogs. What is God’s attitude toward dogs? Deuteronomy 23:18 says, Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot, or the wages of a dog, into the house of Jehovah thy God for any vow: for even both these are an abomination unto Jehovah thy God. The Bible does not place a great premium on dogs, whether thoroughbred or mongrel. In Bible days they were useful in cleaning up the streets, including the dead carcasses, much the same as vultures are useful in nature. II Kings 9:30–37 tells how Jezebel met her judgment when she was thrown down from her window and trampled. The men who were sent to bury her could hardly find a bone left because the dogs had already eaten the corpse. The whole picture of dogs in the Scriptures is entirely different from the concept of dogs in this present day.
One of the final revelations to end the Bible is Revelation 22:15, which begins, Outside are the dogs. The word “dog” was a term of contempt in the minds of the children of Israel, especially concerning the Philistines, as well as among the Philistines themselves. When Goliath saw young David coming out against him, he said, “Am I a dog, that you should come against me with a stave?” In those days the shepherds were not the only ones who carried staves; others carried them to fend off the dogs.
II Samuel 16 tells a story in which a man cursed David. The response of Abishai, one of the mighty men of David, is interesting. Then said Abishai the son of Zeruiah unto the king, Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head. Verse 9.
When God revealed the final judgment that would come against Egypt, He said that a great cry from the Egyptians would be heard in the land, but not even a dog would bark against any of the children of Israel (Exodus 11:6–7). All through the Scriptures we see that dogs are not too highly esteemed in the sight of God. Jesus said, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs… Matthew 7:6. Paul said to beware of dogs, as he referred to the concision.
Paul was an apostle to the uncircumcised—the Gentiles—and Peter was the apostle to the circumcised. Yet their two ministries were intermingled. Acts 10 records that Peter took the Word to the Gentiles first, although he was an apostle to the circumcision, the Jewish Christians. He began opening the door to the Gentiles. Paul did the opposite. He often went into the synagogues and the Temple on the Sabbath to dispute and try to bring the Jews into the faith (Acts 17:17–20). The Jews became furious and threw him out; but as the Gentiles received him, he started the Gentile churches. A great many Gentiles were brought to the Lord through the ministry of Paul. Paul originally started with the Jews and went to the Gentiles. Peter started his ministry with the Gentiles and then went to the Jews. It is interesting to see the way the Lord intermingled these two apostolic ministries.
Paul said to beware of dogs, for we are the true circumcision. Dogs bark and they bite. Among religious people, too, there is a great deal of barking and frequent biting. Religious people fight revelation, because religion actually is based upon an egotism stemming from a religious instinct that is born within them. Everyone has that instinct, including the heathen. Cannibals have gods, and before they eat a person, they go through quite a bit of prayer about it. Religious people can be just as deadly.
The Bible is not filled with stories of people becoming religious. It speaks about Christ bringing the way of salvation and coming to reveal all that the Father is. The religious people were behind closed doors from the beginning, plotting to kill Him (John 5:18). Religion has always rejected any revelation that God brings. The Old Testament prophets were not religious men; they were men of revelation whom the religious people persecuted.
Whenever there is a revelation from God, there is a change of attitude. Paul was a persecutor of revelation before God met him. He knew what the course of religion was. He once had been very religious himself; consequently he arrested all the Christians he could find. He consented to the stoning of Stephen and watched over the garments of those who were throwing the rocks (Acts 7:58; 8:1). Therefore, his guilt was just as great. He then obtained official papers to search out the saints in Damascus and throw them into prison. Who knows how many were martyred under Paul? When he looked back upon the days of his religion, he called himself a blasphemer (I Timothy 1:13). He actually blasphemed the holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ in persecuting the Christians—and what a persecutor he was!
It is interesting then to note that Philippians 3, which describes the folly of religion, was not written by some Gentile who was giving all the blame to the Jews; it came from a man who was a Pharisee and a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
Today’s persecution does not come from the Jewish people, though it still comes from religious people. In the days when the New Testament was written, the Jewish people were religious. Today Judaism has become more of a tradition than a religion. It has remained for the Christian world to become religious. They have turned away from the great experiences of revelation, and now they are persecuting revelation as much as the Jews in the days of their religiousness persecuted the first Christians. Religious people devote themselves fanatically to persecuting the people who have a real walk with God and who move in revelation. They persecute the family of God instead of fighting against the corruption that exists everywhere. They are worried about revelation, and so they fight it. Although they will continue to fight it, you do not fight back. Walk on in revelation, and remember what Paul said: “Beware of the dogs.”
Most of the people at Philippi were Greeks. Macedonia was the upper province, and Achaia was the lower province of the Grecian peninsula. Earlier, Paul had received a vision of a man entreating him to come over to Macedonia to help them (Acts 16:9–10). So he and his companions sailed across the Aegean Sea to Philippi, and there Paul first began to preach to the Philippians. The Epistle to the Philippian Christians was written to a church largely composed of Greeks, but Paul told them that they were the true spiritual circumcision. In his letter to the Romans, Paul said, “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly” (Romans 2:28). The religious Jews, those who were circumcised only in the flesh, entered into the category of dogs when they persecuted those who were walking in revelation and in righteousness. Keep in mind that religion is completely different from revelation and righteousness.
For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God (it is not religious; it is a spiritual worship), and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3:3. No matter what austerity you see people walking in as far as their flesh is concerned, it is not an evidence of righteousness. A real believer puts no confidence in the flesh or in what he has been able to attain in the flesh.
If any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. Verses 4b–6. Paul was saying, “I was a very religious man.”
These next verses are very important. Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ. Verses 7–8. Paul had abandoned his former life. Anything that the flesh could produce, even though it would be highly esteemed, Paul considered as refuse or dung.
After Jesus had healed a man on the Sabbath and the Pharisees sought to kill Him, He said, “How can you believe, when you seek the honor that comes from man, and not the honor that comes from God only” (John 5:44). As in Jesus’ day, the religious world today is building up men and giving them high esteem. Paul declared, “Those things that man counts great, I count to be dogs and what they walk in.”
Why did Paul have such a violent attitude and count those who were religious as dogs? He recognized that there is no deception as great as the deception of religion. When people have the desire to be good and righteous, the greatest deception that can be perpetrated against them is convincing them that through the efforts of their flesh they can attain it. Believing this, they become self-deceived. Satan comes as an angel of light, and his ministers are transformed to appear as ministers of righteousness (II Corinthians 11:14–15). Their great intention is to produce one lie, convincing people that they are righteous when actually they are guilty before God. That has become the greatest deception that can be given to a man.
In Philippians 3:8b–9, Paul said, I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. Here Paul was saying, “The one thing I seek is that my righteousness not be generated from within the fleshly life that I live, until I seem to be religiously righteous.” The righteousness of Christ is not produced from within. We must have the righteousness that comes externally to us internally. Righteousness is imparted from without; it is not generated from within.
As we read Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we realize that if we could generate righteousness, Christ died in vain. His death was absolutely and totally unnecessary, if we could become righteous with what we are able to produce. Unless we see that we have sinned and are guilty before God, we cannot see that righteousness must come from God Himself. It must be a righteousness that is imparted to us. All of us have learned this before, and that is why Philippians 3 starts out, “To write these same things is not irksome to me, but for you it is safe.” At the least encouragement, the human heart reverts to fleshly religion and becomes very religious.
No deception is as great as that which comes from a pastor who begins to lay an obligation upon the Lord’s people to become religious. What started as a walk with God can turn toward religion very easily. A pastor should deliberately take steps in refusing to be a preacher in a religious sense, in refusing to use the same terminology and the same stilted Pharisaic approach. He must refuse to equate reverence with deadness. He must refuse to equate the righteousness of God with religion. He should not preach it or allow it to come forth in any way. The only way a person can change is through the righteousness of God that comes to him.
Let us continue writing new songs, lest the old songs take on a traditional, religious aspect. Our focus should center on being spiritual worshipers of God, the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh or in what it can produce. Watch the pendulum swing back and forth in the heart of the fleshly man. One day it is lustful; the next day it is very, very religious. He sins today and becomes very religious tomorrow. Back and forth he goes. God help us to know what real righteousness is.
Face the problems in your life, the problems of the old flesh. You can either tackle them with a religious discipline, or you can attack them by believing for a spiritual transformation. To use willpower and make it a religious discipline is to put yourself in jeopardy, because the root of the problem is still there. In some denominations, as the young people respond to an altar call, many of them lay their cigarettes on the altar. They are giving them all to Jesus, and they feel very religious about it. But the first day they become discouraged, they go back to cigarettes, because the root of the problem has never been taken out. It was a religious effort, a discipline of the flesh. Religion can well be defined as a discipline of the flesh to produce a synthetic righteousness.
Righteousness is an attribute of God. It is not an attribute of yourself. Righteousness is not natural to your nature. You have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). You were born and shaped in iniquity (Psalm 51:5). You were born with a sin nature. What makes you think that you can produce an attribute that only God Himself has? God has to impart His righteousness to you. The Word says that He clothes you with a robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). God says, “Here is My righteousness—you put it on. I will take away from you the heart of stone, that which is unnatural and wrong, and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). “I will write My Word upon your heart” (Jeremiah 31:33). He says, “You will do good because I will write it on your heart to do good. It will not be a religious effort. I will impart righteousness to you.” Pursue after this living righteousness from God.
Paul wrote to the Galatians, “You have begun in the Spirit. Do You think that you can make yourselves perfect in the flesh” (Galatians 3:3)? They had become very religious, even though they started out really walking with God. A few Jews came to them from Jerusalem, teaching, “So—you want to be Christians. We know how Christians should be. We have had the Law and the Prophets. Now, this is what you must do.” Then they circumcised the men and placed the church under certain rules and regulations of the Law. Paul wrote to them, “Where is the blessedness? Where is the joy that you spoke of” (Galatians 4:15)? It had slipped away from them.
The only real release we have from the old nature is the righteousness that comes from God. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Having begun in the Spirit, do you think now to be made perfect in the flesh? Do you think that you can go back to some religious effort to finish up what only God’s miracle grace could have started in your life?” We have to begin in the Spirit, and we have to finish in the Spirit.
Whether you have just started to walk with God, or whether you have walked with God for a long time, any further advance in righteousness still comes by an impartation from God of His divine nature. II Peter 1:4 says, Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. You will escape corruption as God actually gives you His very nature.
What did Paul really want? In Philippians 3:10 he said, That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death. He was simply saying, For to me to live is Christ… Philippians 1:21. He did not say, “For to me to live is an imitation of Christ.” To attempt to imitate Christ is blasphemy, in a sense. You have no obligation to imitate those who are good. Do not imitate Christ. Insist that He live in you and that His nature come forth in you. There has to be an impartation of His divine nature to make you a new creation in Christ Jesus.
The only attributes that count are those you appropriate from the Lord. Righteousness is not something that you can produce and then say, “See, Lord? I am becoming very religious these days. See what I did? Aren’t You proud of me, Lord?” He will look down and say, “All your righteousness is as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). That is God’s viewpoint. What will help you to come into His presence without filthy rags? How can you be rid of your filthy rags? The answer is found in Zechariah 3:3–5. The Lord commanded that the filthy garments be taken from Joshua, the high priest. Those around him placed upon him a beautiful robe, and then he was able to minister before the presence of the Lord.
You can come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). You need not be ashamed to come because of all you have done wrong in your lifetime. It is gone because Christ died for you. He became sin for you, that you might become the righteousness of God. That Scripture means what it says. He who knew no sin was made sin for you, that you might be made the righteousness of God in Him (II Corinthians 5:21). It is a complete transference, the miracle exchange that God makes with men. He says, “I shall take away your heart of sin and give you My heart. I will give you My love and My righteousness. You are going to stand before Me.”
When the Lord looks upon you, and you say in your heart, “I love You,” God says, “I know you do, because I gave you the love with which to love Me.” When God looks at you, He sees Himself mirrored in you. He cannot condemn His own righteousness or His own love. He cannot condemn His own nature. He has made us accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6). You are accepted by God when He sees Himself coming forth in you by the miracle of a new creation. That is what the work of the cross accomplishes. You take the first step when you say, “I take Jesus as my Savior and my Lord.”
Paul said that his desire was to have the righteousness of Christ and to know Him and the power of His resurrection. If by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:11–14.
Paul was saying, in effect, “I have wiped my shoes off, and now I can come into the house of God and see what God really has for me. I am determined that I will not carry into the presence of God the filthiness of religious flesh. I want to stand before God, cleansed and clothed in His righteousness.” Had Paul obtained it at the writing of this Epistle? He said, “I want to go the whole way and appropriate even His resurrection life and the same perfection that is in Him. I am not content to see the job half done. I want to see it completed.”
Frustration leads us to become religious in the middle of the battle. It makes us revert to being religious when the battle is only half-won. God is doing a great work in our lives, and we want to see it finished. We chafe under the anxiety of it and become so frustrated that it is easy for us to revert to a religious attitude: “Well, God has done this much, but I will do the rest of it! I will finish this battle!” We cannot attain the victory that way. Paul had not attained and received the whole provision of Christ, but he wanted it. He wanted to know the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. He determined to be conformed to His death and attain to the resurrection of the dead, so that there would be nothing in Christ that he could not attain. He did not have it yet, but he was pressing on to get it!
There is a vast difference between religious efforts and appropriating from God in the Spirit. Paul had a zeal that was of the Law, and yet all things that had been of gain to him he counted as a loss for Christ. He was pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. He was living on tiptoe, not striving to be religious, but striving to appropriate. It was not what he was producing that mattered; it was what he was laying hold upon. He was saying, “Brethren, I have not laid hold yet, but I press on so that I can lay hold upon that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.”
Picture God reaching down, taking hold of a man, and saying, “I am going to shake the religion out of you and put My righteousness in you.” Picture also the man reaching up and taking hold of God, shaking Him and demanding, “Give me Your righteousness!” Lay hold upon that for which God also laid hold upon you. When God took hold of you, He intended that you would become conformed to the image of His Son. In other words, in your very nature it will be difficult to tell the difference between Jesus Christ and yourself. He intends to bring many sons to glory.
Seek to come into the righteousness of Christ which He has in mind. He did not choose you to be religious; He chose you in order to fill you with His nature, His glory, and His wonder. You must choose to be chosen for that. That is the goal of your relationship with Him. God is choosing those whom He would make righteous in His own nature. Choose to be chosen to be made righteous in His own nature. God chooses those who choose to be chosen. The desire to see God glorified must become mingled between your heart and His heart. God is choosing to reveal Himself in the Body of Christ, and they must choose to be those in whom He shall be revealed. Do not confuse religion with revelation. God is saying, “I will be revealed in you.” Answer Him, “I am glad! I want You to be revealed in me!”
In Philippians 3:15–21 Paul wrote: Let us therefore, as many as are perfect (this is not referring to human perfection, for the Greek word means “mature”: those who are really grown up and know the ways of the Lord), be thus minded (pursue after the righteousness of God with all of your heart): and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have attained, by that same rule let us walk. (The word “rule” is not found in the original text.) Brethren, be ye imitators together of me, and mark them that so walk even as ye have us for an ensample. For many walk (as believers in Christ, professing to be Christians), of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.
The cross of Christ came as the instrument of death. God laid upon Him the iniquity of us all, that through Him the righteousness of God could be laid upon us all. A man may say that he is a Christian; but if he does not see the purpose of the cross, he becomes an enemy of it and fights it. He becomes religious instead of becoming righteous. Concerning such individuals, Paul went on to say, whose end is perdition, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame. Having the belly as their god gives the idea that they, were gluttons. But in the Scriptures the belly is spoken of as the seat of the soul’s emotions, and also the seat of religion, which is very close to fear. The more religious a movement is, the more its people are governed by fear. Paul also gave this description of the enemies of the cross: who mind earthly things. Their minds follow the earthly level of things.
Those who are mature strive for that upward calling of God in Christ Jesus. They strive to lay hold upon that which God intended when He laid hold upon them. They reach in to partake of God, to become wholly His. Paul concluded, For our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.
In these verses Paul gave the secret of appropriating righteousness. Religious people are enemies of the cross, and they do not have the righteousness of God. What shall we do with our condemned Adamic flesh that cannot please God? How can we change the carnal nature with which we were born? We reach up and acknowledge that our citizenship is in heaven. We look up to the Lord, knowing that when He comes He will change our vile body. In the meantime, He is able to subdue everything unto Himself. If anything rises up in our flesh to battle against the Spirit, we just keep worshiping God. As we come with an open face before the Lord, worshiping Him, our citizenship is being sealed in heaven.
We are citizens of the Kingdom. He is the Lord, and He will change us completely, right down to the last atom of our physical body. He is able right now to subdue anything in us unto Himself. Being transformed is so much better than the self-discipline of the religious. We can be subdued and changed because God changes us. When we walk with God, God happens to us.
What is standing in the way of your closer walk with God? Do you have any problems in the flesh which you would like to have the Lord subdue unto Himself and bring to an end? You cannot overcome them by making a vow to do better. God does not want you to do better; He wants you to appropriate His goodness, His righteousness. You overcome by the word of your testimony and by the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 12:11). You do not overcome by self-discipline.
Appropriate from the Lord His provision of righteousness right now! Submit your problems to Him. He will subdue your flesh and bring forth His own nature and life in you. This is the day that you can throw off the old flesh. Do not be religious; become righteous. Move in His revelation and in His righteousness. Walk with God! Simply lay hold upon Him with all of your heart! You do not want a righteousness that is your own, but a righteousness which is through faith. Believe to become righteous with the righteousness which is from God by faith.
When God makes you righteous, He changes your entire situation. Every limitation or bondage that you had by living on the lower plane is lost when you move into a higher plane and begin to live on a level of spiritual attainment in God that you did not have before. You will learn how really valuable it is to worship God as you rise up from the depths of pressure into the higher realm where you are free.