Let us remember that assertions like these, which to Christians now may seem obviously futile, by no means necessarily seemed so then. Then, much more than now, pagan enquirers after JESUS would be sure to be conscious that the true salvation offered was, in one sense, emphatically a Jewish salvation. It was the message which told of the life and death, the person and work, of One who was, "after the flesh," a Jew. It was the announcement that the long hope of Israel was fulfilled in Him. Its terminology was full of words and ideas altogether Jewish. And its messengers—above all, for the Philippians, St Paul—were Jews, of unmistakable nationality, training, and (doubtless) appearance. On a first view, on a hasty and shallow view certainly, it may have seemed a quite natural incident in such a message when some of its propagandists asserted that to reach this Hebrew Deliverer and King the enquirer must form a connexion in religion which should be definitely Hebrew.
It is conceivable that even yet, in the history of the Church, this phase of error may in some form assert itself again. We look in the future, it may be in the near future, for the keeping to the old Israel of promises which have never been revoked. We believe that Rom. xi. shall yet find its fulfilment, and that the "receiving of them again shall be life from the dead" to the world. In that great period of blessing, the work of missions may (shall we not say, probably will?) be very largely taken up by Hebrew Christians. And if any of these, like some of their predecessors of the first age, should have only a distorted view of the Gospel of Christ, their intense national character may tell not a little on the form of their message. But this is by the way. All that is really before us here is the fact that—not the open hostility of unconverted Jews but—the sidelong counter-action of Judaistic Christians was threatening Philippi, and must be met by the Apostle.
Nor was this, if we explain rightly the close of ch. iii., the only such danger in the air. The antinomian traitor was also within the gates. There were those who could assert that the Gospel, the Pauline Gospel, the wonderful message of Justification by Faith only, and of a life lived in the Spirit as its sequel, was the very truth they held and rejoiced in; but they taught it so as to reason from it that practical holiness did not matter; the justified, the accepted, the man of the Spirit, lived in a transcendental religious region; he was not to be bound in conduct by common rules. Was he not in grace? And was not grace the antithesis of works? Was not grace, before everything else, the condonation of sin? And the more it did that work, was it not the more glorious? "Shall we not continue in sin then, that grace may abound?" What does it signify, though the perishable and burthensome body defiles itself? The emancipated spirit of the "spiritual" man lives on another plane; the sensual and the mystical elements may approach, may run parallel, but can never meet. The body may sin; the spirit must be pure—if only the man is in grace.
Such assuredly were some of the conditions of error and evil to be considered when on that far-off day, in his Roman chamber, St Paul turned his soul again to Philippi, and asked his scribe to write. There is a solemn comfort in the thought. In our days of trial, when again and again it is as it "the foundations were destroyed," it is something to remember the awful mental and moral trials of the apostolic age. It was indeed an "age of faith"; but, as the other side of that very fact, it was an age of clouds and darkness, from the point not of "faith" but of "sight." It had a glorious answer to the tremendous questions that beset it. But that answer was not human reasoning, or material successes; it was the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is for us to-day.
But now St Paul is at work; let us listen, and we shall hear how promptly he brings that answer to bear in his letter to Philippi.[1]
Ver. 1. For the rest (to loipon), my brethren, to turn now to another topic, as I draw towards an end, let me give you this comprehensive watchword +Be glad in the Lord+.[2] +To write the same things to you+, to reiterate that one thought, that CHRIST is our glory and our joy, "+to me not irksome, it is safe for you+."[3] Safe, because there are spiritual dangers around you from which this will be the best preservative; false teachings which can only be fully met with the gladness of the truth of Christ. +Beware of+,
Ver. 2. keep your eyes open upon (blepete), +the "dogs,"+ the men who would excommunicate all who hold not with their half-Christian Pharisaism and its legal burthens, but who are themselves thus self-excluded from the covenant blessing. +Beware of the evil workmen+, the teachers whose watchword is "works, works, works," a weary round of observances and would-be merits, but who are sorry work-men indeed, spoiling the whole structure of "Heaven's easy, artless, unencumber'd plan." +Beware of the concision+, the apostles of a mere physical wounding, which, as enjoined according to their principles, is nothing better than a mutilation (katatomê), a parody of what circumcision was meant to be, as the sacrament of a preparatory dispensation now terminated in its
Ver. 3. fulfilment. +For+ not they but +we are the circumcision+, the true Israel of the true covenant, sealed and purified by our God; +we who by God's Spirit worship+,[4] doing priestly service in a spiritual temple[5] in a life, love, and power, which is ours by the presence in us of the Holy Ghost, the promise of the Father; +and who exult+, not in tribal, national, ceremonial prerogatives, but +in Christ Jesus+, our refuge and our crown, our righteousness and glory, with an exultation infinitely warmer than the legalist's can be, and meanwhile pure, for its source is altogether not ourselves; +and who+, in Him, +not in the flesh+,[6] not in self and its workings, +are confident+ (for confident we are, but it is a "confidence in self-despair," the confidence of those who have been driven by self-discovery to Christ alone).[7] I speak with a general reference, of all true disciples; but let me instance myself as a case peculiarly in point. I speak thus,
Ver. 4. +though having+ (echôn), I, myself (egô), from their view-point, +confidence even in flesh+. +Whoever else thinks of confiding in flesh+, of building a legal standing-place on his privilege and merit, +I+ may do so +more+ than he; for I have reached the ne plus ultra in that
Ver. 5. direction. +As for circumcision+,[8] I was an +eight-day+ child; no proselyte, operated upon in later life, but a son of the Covenant; descended +from Israel's race+, one of the progeny of him who was a prince with God (Gen. xxxii. 28); +of Benjamin's tribe+, the tribe which gave the first God-chosen king to the nation, and which remained "faithful among the faithless" to the house of David at a later day; +Hebrew+ offspring +of Hebrew ancestors+,[9] child of a home in which, immemorially, the old manners and the old speech were cherished; in respect of the law,[10] a Pharisee—the votary of religious precision, elaborate devotion, exclusive privilege, and energetic prose-