Passage: Philippians 3:1-7

The Big Idea

Paul says it’s “safe” to rejoice in the Lord, because there’s a dangerous alternative: legalism, trying to impress God with our own rule-keeping. He uses shocking words for the teachers who pushed it: “dogs,” “evil workers,” “the mutilation.” Legalism is an outward cutting that never touches the heart, and it actually turns away from the grace Jesus offers. True believers are “the circumcision” of the heart: we worship by the Spirit, boast in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. God’s way to change us is not knives but grace, His Spirit working from the inside out.

Rejoice in the Lord (3:1)

Paul says, Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. Writing the same things again isn’t tiresome to him, and for them it’s safe.

Commentator Ralph Martin suggested “rejoice in the Lord” may be the Christian equivalent of the Old Testament “Hallelujah!”

Praising and rejoicing in the Lord is our response to who He is and what He’s done.
God loves our praise, because He loves us! It’s always good to praise the Lord.
When we rejoice in the Lord, we’re rejoicing in something outside ourselves.
There isn’t much to rejoice about in us. In fact, spiritually speaking, nothing.
But in Christ is everything good and worthy of praise!
It takes humility to surrender to this. My flesh doesn’t want to admit I’m spiritually bankrupt.
But when we do, we can freely rejoice in the amazing, gracious love of Jesus, who makes us right and valuable through faith in Him alone.
When our eyes and hearts stay fixed on Him through praise, the flesh loses its grip.

Paul calls this safe. It’s safe to focus on God’s goodness and not our own, on Jesus’ works and not ours.

Because there’s a dangerous place to be. There are dangerous people who want to pull your focus off the Lord and onto yourself.

The Danger of Legalism (3:2-3)

Paul warns them to watch out for the dogs, the evil workers, the mutilators. Then he says that we are the true circumcision: we worship God by His Spirit, boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:2-3).

What is legalism?

Legalism is imitating a spiritual person from the outside.
It’s trying our best to keep the rules in our own ability.
It’s knowing the right thing to do, doing our best to follow each rule, and thinking God is impressed with our performance.
“Giving God your best effort” sounds good, but as a way of being right with God, it’s actually terrible.
Our efforts don’t measure up.
And it deeply offends God. He has already declared us guilty and disqualified our works. But in love He sent Jesus to do the works we couldn’t, and He offers His life to us freely by grace.
When we go back to self-focused performance, we’re saying, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the gospel.
“But I just want to show Him how much I want to do what’s right!” Then do what He said: believe the gospel! That’s your role. He’ll take care of your behavior through the gospel.
Don’t think you know a better way!

What is a truly spiritual person?

A truly spiritual person doesn’t need to obsess over rules, because they’re filled and led by the Holy Spirit.
They’re free to act from the heart, to be who they really are in Christ.
And the actions that flow from a Spirit-filled person always honor God and line up with His will (Galatians 5:22-23).
They don’t get there by self-effort or self-focused law-keeping, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, given as a gift called grace.
Grace is always a gift. Connect the dots: a life that pleases God is also a gift!

“Dogs”

Paul knows the people most prone to legalism are religious people, those who grew up in the synagogue or the church. So he uses graphic words to wake up anyone caught in performance.

Dogs weren’t pets back then.
They were packs of homeless scavengers, roaming the streets, feeding on garbage, fighting each other and snapping at passersby.
And “dog” was the very word some Jews used for Gentiles. Paul turns it around.
Legalistic people aren’t peaceful.
They live under constant condemnation and the pressure of self-made expectations, and they can’t stand people who simply rejoice in what Jesus has done and trust the sufficiency of grace.
Paul names that spirit for what it is.
Legalism leaves you too busy with yourself to rejoice in God.

Beware of these dogs.

“Evil workers”

Their whole focus is works.
And Paul calls their works evil, even though they were trying their best to be good!
What’s a person to do? “I try to be good, but God sees it as evil. Should I just quit and enjoy sin? But I don’t want to be separated from God forever. So what do I do?” The answer: believe the gospel of grace!

“The mutilation”

Paul isn’t finished. He brings down the hammer.

He uses a pun. Instead of peritome, circumcision, he says katatome, “a cutting,” mere mutilation of the body, like pagan practices God forbade (Leviticus 21:5).
Remember the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, cutting themselves to get their god’s attention (1 Kings 18:28).
Legalism is brutal. Its tools are chains, knives and blinders. Its results are bondage, blood and blindness.
Jesus summed up the law as loving God and loving your neighbor, and He said the standard is perfection (Matthew 5:48).
Legalism pushes harder and harder, because our efforts never match God’s standard. Eventually people despair: “If I could just cut off this part of me, maybe I’d finally succeed. I can’t beat my flesh. I give up.”

How does this apply to the people Paul was warning about?

They believed Jesus was the Messiah.
But they insisted Gentile believers needed to be circumcised to really receive everything God offered. Faith in Jesus plus works.
That’s the big issue.
Circumcision illustrates the danger perfectly. It was a painful, bloody, external act done with a knife.
It was meant to be an outward sign of belonging to God.
But it did nothing for the heart. It didn’t change the heart!
From God’s view, our outward efforts to earn His favor aren’t beautiful. They’re brutal and useless.
“But I tried so hard!” We tried in human strength that’s been infected by sin.
And by trying to earn it, we turn our backs on the grace Jesus offers. We choose to rejoice in ourselves, not in Him.

Titus Stands Firm (Galatians 2)

Paul gives a real example. Fourteen years after his conversion, he went to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus to lay out the gospel he preached among the Gentiles. Titus, a Greek, was not forced to be circumcised, even though false brothers had slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ and bring believers into bondage. Paul says we didn’t give in to them for even an hour, so the truth of the gospel would remain (Galatians 2:1-5).

Paul was willing to defend the gospel of grace against legalism. He went to war over it.
Titus was a Gentile, saved by Jesus, uncircumcised.
The legalists wanted him to prove his faith with an outward act.
We’ve all felt that pressure: “This is how you join the club. This is what real believers do. Put your money where your mouth is. Do something we can see!”

Then Paul tears that teaching apart: Stand firm in the freedom Christ has given you, and don’t be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. If you get circumcised to be right with God, Christ will profit you nothing. You’d be obligated to keep the whole law. You who try to be justified by law have been cut off from Christ; you’ve fallen from grace. But through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. In Christ, circumcision or uncircumcision counts for nothing; what matters is faith working through love (Galatians 5:1-6).

James Montgomery Boice pointed out that “fallen from grace” here doesn’t mean a Christian who sins loses salvation. If anything, a repentant sinner falls into grace. In context, to fall from grace is to fall into legalism: choosing law instead of grace as the way you relate to God.

This is a huge deal. Don’t choose legalism over grace! It’s a terrible choice.
Legalism is completely irrelevant to a relationship with God.
So legalism is taking a knife to parts of you that don’t need cutting. It accomplishes nothing. It’s mutilation.

What did Paul think of these teachers? He said he wished those troubling the Galatians would go all the way and cut themselves off (Galatians 5:12). In other words, if cutting makes you righteous, why stop there? Why not go as far as the pagan priests did?

“That’s crazy, Paul! Why would anyone cut off part of their body for no reason?”
Exactly! You’ve just proven legalism false. It’s mutilation.

Free, but Not to Sin

Paul continues: you were called to freedom, but don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Through love, serve one another. The whole law is fulfilled in this: love your neighbor as yourself. If you bite and devour each other, watch out, or you’ll be consumed. Walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:13-16).

So legalism is bad. Our rule-keeping doesn’t make us any more righteous in God’s sight.
Then should we just keep on sinning? No!
We’ve been given the Holy Spirit as a free gift of grace.
He is love. Love for God and love for others flow from Him.
As we walk in Him through humility and faith, sin won’t dominate us. Its power is broken, and we’re truly free from the inside out.
We get circumcised in the heart!
He is all we need. He gives us everything freely. That’s how grace works: we humbly trust His Word, and He changes us, saves us completely and sets us free from the inside out.

Complete in Him (Colossians 2:9-17)

In Christ all the fullness of God dwells bodily, and you are complete in Him.

Complete means complete! Nothing else needed.
If anyone says you’re missing something, you can say, “I’m OK. I have Jesus, and He’s all I need.”
“But you should stop this or start that!” “I’ll let Jesus tell me through His Spirit and His Word. He’s a better heart surgeon than you. You can only cut the outside. He gets to the heart.”

In Him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, through the circumcision of Christ. You were buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through faith in the working of God. When you were dead in your sins, God made you alive with Christ, having forgiven you all your trespasses, canceling the record of debt that stood against us and nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the powers and triumphed over them. So don’t let anyone judge you about food or drink, festivals, new moons or Sabbaths. These were shadows; the substance is Christ.

Jesus’ work is internal!
He gives His Spirit to live in our hearts, to anyone who asks in humility and faith.
When His Spirit moves in, He brings life and righteousness to our actions, just as God raised Jesus to life.
He canceled the record of debt! His cross took it out of the way.
When you believe in the cross, the law can no longer condemn you. The enemy can’t bring those charges up at your trial ever again. Jesus disarmed him. You are forgiven!
The best way to help someone stop sinning is to show them they’ve been forgiven of all sin, and that God will never hold it against them. That’s how the gospel of grace works.
When you believe, you’re forgiven of all your sins. Your salvation doesn’t hang on your performance.
This is the freedom we hold on to!

Why Circumcision, Then?

Circumcision pointed ahead to the work Jesus would do in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That inner work is the real thing. The outward sign only pointed to it.

Even in the Old Testament, God told Judah to circumcise their hearts (Jeremiah 4:4). The heart was always the point.

How did Paul deal with legalistic teachers? He told Titus they must be silenced, because they were upsetting whole households, teaching what they shouldn’t for dishonest gain (Titus 1:10-11). He confronted them with the truth of the gospel.

The Real Circumcision (3:3)

Look at the contrast between the dangerous teachers and true believers:

We are the circumcision! Not made with hands, but an inner work of God.
We worship God in the Spirit. We’re filled with His Spirit, a free gift of grace. Our whole relationship with God is built around Him.
We rejoice in Christ Jesus. The only works we boast about are His works! He’s the center, the source, everything. We’re complete in Him.
We have no confidence in the flesh.

That’s the heart of legalism: we trust ourselves.

Renounce all dependence on the flesh: “I can’t stop sinning on my own. Spirit, I need You. I ask for You, and I depend on You by faith.”
A true believer doesn’t trust their own abilities. They can freely confess their total inability and say with a smile, “I am nothing, and Christ is everything!”
That’s the believer’s freedom: free to be weak, free to admit failure.
And in that humble admission of need, Jesus rushes in with life-giving grace, His power to live righteously. His Spirit fills empty, weak vessels.
Why would we want to look like strong law-keepers when God’s Word says we’re not? A life that truly honors God is freely given to the heart that confesses its inability and depends on the Spirit.

Our flesh wants to define who we are by what we do. That makes sense to the flesh.

Paul teaches us to define who we are by what Jesus did. And that will change what we do.

It’s like a tree. When you believe the gospel, Jesus’ life begins flowing through you like sap, and over time it produces the right fruit. The wrong way to get fruit is to cut, beat or yell at your branches until something appears.

Just abide in Jesus. Let His life flow through you by believing everything given to you by grace.

Grace Takeaway

God has made you righteous in Christ, and you’ll see the fruit of that in your life. You never have to earn any of it. Legalism takes a knife to the outside and leaves the heart untouched. Grace goes straight to the heart. Hold fast to the freedom He’s given you. If you need a fresh filling of the Spirit or a fresh assurance of what Jesus has done, call on Him today. Confess your weakness and need, and He’ll give His Spirit to anyone who asks, believing His Word.

← How to Think About Discipleship | All Philippians notes | How to Think About Knowing God, Part 1 →

How to Think About Legalism