Rejoice and Beware (08/24/24)

I don’t know as there’s a great deal to be made of it, but I find it striking that our passage opens with two imperatives:  Rejoice and Beware.  To see these in such close proximity to one another seems somehow startling, unexpected.  I observe as well that both are in the present tense, with its open-ended, ongoing aspect.  Rejoice always.  That will be made more explicit later (Php 4:4), but it is already here now.  And it comes with cause, or if you prefer, means.  Rejoice in the Lord.  This phrase keeps popping up in our letter:  In the Lord.  It’s a common enough phrase.  The concordance tells me there are some 114 occurrences in the NASB, beginning with Abraham’s believing in the Lord (Ge 15:6).  So, let’s understand something here, before we move on.  The point of that first passage is not that Abraham believed God exists.  It’s not akin to children believing in the tooth fairy, or some such.  No.  It’s an establishing of the source of belief, rather than its object.  Or perhaps I should say together with its object.

If I believe in the Lord in that more objective sense – yes, I believe He exists and is alone God – you have some knowledge, which is fine.  But as James points out, this alone does little to set you apart from demons.  They also believe this, though it is utmost irritation to them that it is so (Jas 2:19).  After all, this belief is nothing more than acceding to fact.  They know this darned well, if you’ll pardon the expression.  They can’t deny it, though they would love to do so.  And if they did, it would avail them nothing.  God is, and that isn’t going to change for demons or for you or me.  But there’s more to this ‘in the Lord’ business.  It is in the Lord, we might say by the Lord, that Abraham is able to believe, to take Him at His word.  Think about it just a bit.  To say, “Then he believed in the Lord,” with any other understanding would imply that prior to this, he was dismissing all that the Lord had said to that point as being merely voices in his head, or some figment of imagination.  No.  This is trust.  He believed, and, as is so richly echoed through the New Testament, it was accounted to him as righteousness.

We have other things attributed as being in the Lord.  Hannah prayed for joy, saying, “My heart exults in the Lord, and my horn is exalted in the Lord” (1Sa 2:1).  Again, the Lord is both the object of exultation, and the cause, the means of exultation.  Certainly, when she speaks of the horn of her strength, this is no longer pointed at the Lord.  It is supplied by Him.  He is my strength.  We have manifold examples of those who trust in the Lord – again, both object and source.  We have those who take refuge in the Lord.  Here, too, I would say, both object and source, for who will take refuge in Him except He moves such a one to do so?  He would be otherwise an object of fear, to be appeased or avoided, not one to be sought for refuge.  He is cause for joy and gladness, which draws us nearer Paul’s command.  “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones!” (Ps 32:1).  “Sing for joy to the Lord, you righteous ones!” (Ps 33:1).  “My soul boasts in the Lord” (Ps 35:9).  “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Ps 37:4).  “Rest in the Lord” (Ps 37:7).  Over and over it comes.  Trust, delight, hope, rejoice.  Take refuge in Him, for your strength is in Him.

Come to Paul’s writings, and it rings out again, as it does not elsewhere in the NT.  “I know and am convinced in the Lord” (Ro 14:14).  Believers are his beloved in the Lord (Ro 16:8, etc.)  In Him we can boast, our call is in Him, our positional standing as children of God is in Him, our confidence is in Him, as is, for that matter, Paul’s confidence in regard to us.  Our hope is in Him, our trust is in Him.  Our devotion to our spouse is in Him.  And yes, our rejoicing.  Notice that however much He may be the object of some of these things, He is ever the cause.  Our boasting may be of Him, but it suits only as it is done in Him, which is to say, per His instruction, direction, empowering.  We are children of God in Him, and that, to be sure, is solely by His doing.  Our hope is both directed towards Him as its object and as its cause, its power source.

So bear all that into our present command to rejoice in the Lord.  There again is that twofold aspect of the matter.  Let Him be the object of your rejoicing, the cause for which you rejoice.  I like Phillips here.  “Delight yourselves in the Lord!”  That’s the idea.  But in so doing, it turns around, and He being the object of your rejoicing, He is also the reason.  We might say that in Him, we rejoice in Him.  Or, take the presentation of the idea in the TEV.  “Be joyful in your union with the Lord.”  That sort of captures this source-and-object nature of the thing.  That all being said, if He is the source, the power to rejoice, why the command?  After all, is He not irresistible, unopposable in His power?  Well, yes, He most assuredly is.  Should He assert His power with the power of His decree, then most certainly, it would be as He decrees.  But here, it’s as though He has put a light switch in the circuit, in the exercise of your choice.  His power is indeed irresistible, yet it is a matter of will that we set ourselves to accede to His power rather than to obstruct it, however futile such an effort must prove.

Remember:  God is desiring those who worship in spirit and in truth.  That’s not a matter of breaking forth in ecstatic utterance and claiming, rightly or wrongly, that this was a result of the Holy Spirit speaking through you.  That may transpire, and it may not.  It’s really neither here nor there, so far as that description goes.  No.  It’s a matter of sincere, whole-hearted commitment to the act of worship.  You’re not just going through the motions.  You’re not just seeking to be seen as pious.  You’re not doing things to impress man, or to fit in, or to keep your parents from being upset with you.  You are worshiping because your heart leaps within you, because, as Abraham did, you have believed in the Lord, set your trust in Him, and by His grace, found Him to be utterly reliable.  And in that trust, in that delight, you are finding yourselves empowered to face the trials of the day without the crushing dread anticipation might bring.

And there, all of a sudden, I find I have stumbled upon the basis for this proximity of two most dissimilar commands.  Rejoice and beware!  To do the latter without recourse to the former is but a call to fearful dread.  If I am facing these evil-working promoters of falsehood, seeking to undermine my faith, and I have not had recourse to delighting myself in the holiness, the goodness, the powerful might of my God, then I am left defenseless.  I can find only cause for dismay.  But having recognized the myriad causes for delight in my Lord and in my affirmed standing with Him, my Lord, my God, my Father who loves me, I can then contemplate those concerns Paul raises with the confidence that He has my back, and He has my path forward.  He envelops me, my Strong Tower.  He undergirds me, my Rock.  I am secure, whatever may come, for my future is settled in Him, by Him, for Him.

Okay.  Brief look at this matter of being ware.  It’s assuredly not a call to be fearful.  It’s not a call to run away.  Indeed, I suspect if we were to look to the roots of that word beware, we might find it is a bit of a contraction.  Be aware.  And that drives us much nearer the fundamental sense of the Greek word underlying our wariness.  See and discern.  Direct your attention towards these workers of trouble, and recognize them for what they are.  They present themselves with all manner of puffed-up credentials, but in the sight of the Lord, your Delight, they are in fact what they deem you to be in their opinion.  We’ll hit on that idea more in the next section.  Examine their claims.  Examine their example.  And having examined, perceive and understand how far they are from Truth with these demands they would make of you.  They claim to seek your good, as if these acts they require of you would produce righteousness in you.  But it hasn’t worked for them, has it?  And besides, you already possess this righteousness in God’s sight.  It’s not about works, and you know it.  They, apparently, don’t.  So, look.  Don’t take them for enemies.  But neither take them as the wise experts they suppose themselves to be.  Delight in the Lord, not in overt display.  Delight in what He has done, not in demands of what you must do.  Indeed, when they come with insistent demands that you must this, you must not that, examine the facts, not the demands.  Perceive their intent, and perceive God’s instruction.  Then, delight yourself in the Lord, and let them think what they like.

You see, then, that these twin commands to rejoice and beware combine to instruct us very well.  Let the truth of God determine.  Let Scripture test every claim upon your conscience, and yes, if Scripture comports with that claim, receive it.  But if Scripture insists on a different understanding, dismiss that claim.  It has no binding power upon your conscience. 

That leaves the question of what to do with these false teachers, and that is potentially a very difficult matter to resolve.  I could certainly point to any number of Apostolic examples of utmost rejection of these workers of falsehood.  Take John’s instruction to not so much as greet such a one (2Jn 10), lest it seem you concur with their message.  The greeting, as with the command here to rejoice, implies blessing, implies God’s grace in action.  Yet, for all the ferocity with which the Apostles rejected these false teachers, we must recognize the call of Christ to treat them not as enemies, but as lost.  And being as they are lost, our prayerful pursuit ought to be for their rescue.  For we were once as they are, opposed to God, denying His truth, and without hope in the world.  It’s a fate not to be wished upon anyone.  Nor does such a wish comport with the instruction of our Lord, the command of Scripture.  There, we are called to love our enemies, and seek that God might indeed bless them with the light of life.  Let us remember this when trials come, as they surely will.

In regard to all this, I can’t help but bring to mind the example of our brother in Lesotho, whom I have thus far met only in brief meetings over the Internet, but whom I expect to meet face to face in the near future, Lord willing.  We spoke with him Thursday, and he spoke of tribulations faced that day.  Thieves had come and cut power to his home.  He did not mention whether they succeeded in stealing anything other than a bit of wire.  They also, however, cut power to his church, where he has an outreach in the fashion of a soup kitchen to help feed those in need.  And the thieves had stolen their food supplies, making this ministry unavailable, at least for a short term.   These would surely be enough to cause dismay.  But the Lord provided.  He encountered something different as the day progressed.  He was brought back in contact with one who had been instrumental in urging him toward the biblical training that had equipped him to be a minister in the first place, and therein he regained perspective, and found once more his delight in the Lord.

Circumstances will be what they will be.  And yes, we will respond to circumstances as they may lead us to respond.  There’s nothing amiss with being dismayed by the impact of thieves.  There’s nothing invalid about being frustrated with trials that may come up, whether the mundane challenges that come with employment, or more shocking events such as those my brother endured, or whether the more positive circumstances of an issue resolved, a loved one brought clear of their illness or difficulties, or whatever the case may be.  But circumstances don’t define us.  Circumstances don’t determine outcomes.  Our delight is not in comfy living, and a life of ease.  Our delight is in the Lord, and in the assurance that whatever this life may have on offer, He remains.  He is constant.  And His love for us is an everlasting love, a love that indeed, we shall enjoy for all time.  Even the grave, a most final circumstance, as many would view it, is no cause for dismay, no barrier to His love.  It is but a bit of sleep, a nap on the way home.  And we shall arrive safely, beloved, to be truly at rest in His presence forever.  For He has said so, and He has done it.  Rejoice!

Role Reversal (08/25/24-08/26/24)

So, then, of what are they called to beware?  Paul gives three descriptions, but be clear that it is one concern he addresses by all three.  Beware of the dogs!  This is something more than might be signified by a warning sign on somebody’s fence gate, although some of that could apply as well.  But for us in the modern West, it may be a bit difficult to conceive of just how low an opinion this culture had of dogs.  They might make use of them as guard animals, but these were not objects of affection by any stretch.  They were at best tolerated, more commonly viewed as vile, filthy beasts.  I had some experience of this in Malawi, where those we met were by and large as struck by a dismayed sort of wonder at how we in the West view our dogs as we might have been at how thoroughly disregarded they were there.  A man might have a few dogs to serve as guards over his household or his fields, but to invite them in, onto the couch, or what have you?  Unthinkable!

Some of this comes of having wild dogs roving in packs, as dogs will tend to do.  These were (and are) indeed animals of a different nature.  They are scavengers, eating whatever they can get, and that would often enough consist in dead carcasses, garbage thrown in the street, or other such unsavory fare.  Even with domesticated dogs, you get a sense of this rather undiscerning approach to food.  When we read of the old proverb, “A dog returns to its own vomit,” (2Pe 2:22), it likely speaks to something we have experienced.  It’s true.  A dog will do just that.  And even for those of us who love dogs, it remains something to turn the stomach.

Okay.  Thus far, we describe only a perspective that would have been pretty common to most cultures in the region.  The Egyptians might be an exception, with their having revered the jackals at one juncture, right alongside their cats.  But even then, there was a bit of a negative side to the reverence, I think.  Others, again primarily familiar with the vicious, rather wolf-like nature of wild dogs, saw these creatures as dangerous, filthy beasts.  And their howling in the night only added to the disfavor.  I think of the coyotes I heard howling out in the woods yesterday morning.  There’s something in that call that causes unrest.  It’s not just that we don’t hear it all that often (though more often by far than we used to), it’s a sound that is at best mournful.  But then, contemplating that such a howling likely means a meal has been brought down, it becomes something a bit more fearsome; a danger sign, a reminder never to get too close to such a creature.

The upshot is that for the Jews particularly (though not, I think, exclusively), the idea of dog became a highly derogatory term.  Used in reference to oneself, it was the epitome of worthlessness.  “Who am I to be a matter of concern to you?  I am but a dog.”  To be noted in passing, perhaps, but given no further thought, and certainly, no favor.  But applied to others?  Oh, my!  This is a term of utmost scorn.  It is a declaration that the one thus labeled is a most immoral and impure individual.  After all, dogs are no more scrupulous in their coupling than in their eating.  And this, too, is something most everyone, I suspect, has witnessed for themselves at some point.  Honestly, we look at some of the mixed breeds, and wonder how even the parent dogs managed it, given their disparities of size.  But stick to the imagery intended.  To call one a dog is to accuse them of such impurity as will admit no association.  And from there, it is but a short step to that particularly Jewish sensibility of viewing all Gentiles as dogs.  To a man, they were viewed of being of such filthy habit as would prevent any association with them.  Why, we find from Peter’s example, and others, that to even enter their house was deemed a defiling act.

For all that, look at the reaction to Jesus when He reached out to the likes of Gentiles and tax collectors.  Or reverse the connection a bit.  For Jewish society, a tax-collector may have been just slightly worse than a Gentile.  After all, this was a Jew according to the flesh, but one who had sold himself to the service of the utterly despised Romans to prey upon his own people!  Think how we react, even at this distance of 80 years and more, to those from the Jewish community who betrayed their kinsmen to the Germans.  We have difficulty coming up with anything more despicable.  And prostitutes likewise join the cadre of dogs, utterly immoral, profiting off of enticements to sin.  But the Gentiles!  Just to be non-Jewish was marker enough.  You are unclean, unfit to be touched, and even to be seen speaking with you is something that should probably be avoided.

Finally, turning to something from the McClintock and Strong article on the matter of dogs, there is a connection to rabbinical teaching here.  From that tradition, there is a direct association of the epithet of dog with the uncircumcised status of the Gentiles.  They are, then, doubly unclean.  And this observation draws us round again to the point that Paul’s collected epithets here are directed at one group.  To be sure, as one trained under Gamaliel in the finest principles of the Pharisees, he was assuredly aware of this connection.  Further, being wholly familiar with the Jewish sensibilities with which he himself was raised, he would be quite certain that those he is now describing would likewise be perfectly clear on that connection.

What was it that made the Gentiles so unacceptable, inadmissible to the presence of God, in their understanding?  Well!  They are unclean!  They are immoral!  They will require some serious work before they can be deemed fit even for the outer courts of the temple, and they will never be fit to enter the real courtyards of the temple.  But even for the outer courts, they must, of course, be fully washed of their sins.  Thus, the shocking insistence on baptism when John and then Jesus come on the scene.  Baptism was, at that point, something for the Gentiles alone, a first preparatory step towards becoming at least as acceptable as a proselyte.  Mind you, we still wouldn’t go eat at their house, or invite them to ours, but they might at least be tolerable then – rather like the dogs allowed to wander the property because they could be serviceable.  Tolerance, but no love.  Then, too, as was such a matter of debate to the early church, and Gentile that wanted to be part of Jewish society would absolutely have to be circumcised – especially if they thought to have a place in the religious life of the people.

And that’s exactly the battle being joined here by Paul.  It’s something of a reminder to the Gentile contingent of the Philippian church, which one might reasonably assume was far and away the majority.  This is what they think of you!  You are dogs, uncircumcised, evil-doers and idolators.  And what Paul is doing here is turning that right around.  They think this of you, but in fact it is they who fit the bill.  They are showing themselves impure and unacceptable.

Such a conclusion feels almost too harsh, doesn’t it?  After all, what are these folks doing in the company of the church, if they have no place at all for Jesus?  We don’t want to push them away, after all, if He is drawing them.  And Jesus was Jewish, so maybe they have a point?  Maybe this is just a refinement of Judaism after all, a reformation of the Pharisees.  If that’s the case, I suppose it would make sense that much of Mosaic practice would remain intact.  What, then, are we to make of Paul, our founder?  Was he the renegade, and these the true apostles?  You can see what Paul must be vehement in his rejection of their premise.  We might note, as well, that he had already been given letters from the Apostles in Jerusalem confirming his views.

And so, we move from dogs, which would merely be a turning of their own worst insult back upon their heads, to accusations of being evil workers, or workers of evil.  What they were insisting on was not merely a matter of conscience.  It was not an indifferent concern.  We have our battles in the church today, as we have had forever, it seems.  We can get those so caught up in their perspectives on such matters as predestination that they cannot tolerate any other opinion, and will decry those who disagree as proclaiming doctrines of devils.  Okay.  But then, it could be that you are the one in the wrong, and thus, the one doing the very thing you accuse these others of doing.  And honestly, opinions on predestination one way or the other are hardly going to put one beyond the reach of salvation.  But such reactions over what is at best a secondary matter might very well indicate that you have not as yet been put in reach of it, for all your prideful sense of being better informed.

Dogs!  Evil workers not merely because you undermine the words of a true Apostle, but because you are seeking to impose on those who believe such practices as have never succeeded in making a believer holy.  You would bring them under the inevitable condemnation of a law so burdensome as to have condemned every last man who ever thought to find holiness by them.  You are not promoting the work of God, but undermining it!  And as to yourselves, as these behaviors clearly demonstrate, your circumcision is no mark of purity.  It has all the value of the cuttings of the flesh done by the priests of Baal back when Elijah was still around (1Ki 18:28).  They don’t mark you out as holy.  They are but a mutilation of your flesh with no spiritual reality to back the marking.

So, we come to this term which some of the older translations present as concision.  That does not, as we might suppose, indicate that they were concise in their arguments.  It means a cutting apart.  Those translations that offer us the idea of mutilation come closer to the intent, though they lose somewhat of Paul’s wordplay here.  They are the cut off, we are the cut around.  They have undergone a disfiguring act with no spiritual value.  We have truly had the sin nature cut off, an act upon the heart, done by the Spirit, not by the letter (Ro 2:29).  Thus, if it’s a concern for being truly Jewish, we are the true Jews, for He is a Jew who is one inwardly.

There is something else to this term which Thayer brings out, and that is its association with schism and factionalism.  And that is certainly at play here.  What else are these troublers doing than seeking to drive a wedge between Jew and Gentile, once more, to split apart the body?  But the testimony of Scripture is that the dividing wall has been knocked down.  There is no longer a court of the Gentiles, a court of women, and some inner place of privilege for the male Jews alone.  We are one:  One body under one Head, saved by One means, and serving one God.  To act in any way as would disturb that unity is to be the dog, the evil worker, one of false profession.

I have suggested, in my preparatory notes, that this was really a bit of a mic drop on Paul’s part.  Though, he does not, at this point, simply walk off the stage and leave those accused to stew.  But you cannot miss the power of this rejection.  They think of you as uncircumcised, evil working dogs.  But they are the dogs!  They are the evil workers!  They are the uncircumcised, whatever mutilations of the flesh they may bear.  There is no spiritual validity to them.  But there is to you.

I would not miss, as well, the correspondence of Paul’s rejection here with one of the more Messianic Psalms.  In Psalm 22, we read, “Dogs have surrounded me.  A band of evildoers has encompassed me.  They pierced my hands and feet” (Ps 22:16).  This has clear connection to the crucifixion of Christ, clear fulfillment in that act.  If, in fact, Paul had this passage in mind, and not merely as a more or less unconscious association as he wrote, then this is an even stronger conviction of those who troubled the Gentile church.  You are the ones who crucified the Lord!  You are the ones who killed every prophet sent to bring you to repentance.  You are the ones who have rejected God at every turn since first He made you a nation.  And you would, were it possible, prevent these who are entering the kingdom of God in your stead from doing so.  Indeed, you are evil workers, piercing yet again the body of Christ by your efforts.

All of this is powerful stuff, and something to really catch our attention.  But that being said, if we leave it at being a history lesson, and evidence of the great conflict of Paul’s day, then we will not have let Scripture do as it should, which is to address us in our present time and place.  To be sure, we are not free of those who would teach falsehoods, or would insist on some required or prohibited action as being a further prerequisite for salvation.  Many are the demands of those who would account themselves more righteous than you or me.  Now, be careful!  Pay attention and beware!  We can fall into the very same failing.  We can make our particular practices out to be the keys to true righteousness.  Oh!  But I do this!  Oh!  I would never do that.  And these claims may be true enough.  But the question is not the claim, rather the motivating spirit behind the claim.  It is well and good, for example, to observe that some outcome has transpired for which we have prayed.  But when pride creeps in, it becomes a claim that this came about solely because we prayed.  The prayers of others are comparatively of no consequence.  We are the righteous ones to whom God listens.  The rest of y’all?  Not so much.  Beware!  Observe your behaviors and your motivations.  Don’t be fooled by yourself.

You may tell me that this is not an acceptable application of our passage.  But who most needs to beware of the false circumcision than those very ones who are the false circumcision?  If my bold confidence in my salvation is misplaced, would it not be in my best interest to come to the realization that this is so, in order that I might seek for it?  If there is something I am doing that I think is holy, but in fact, it is too corrupt for words, would it not be best that I recognize this fact, and amend my ways?  And – may it never be! – if I have been making demands on others in the expectation that I am urging them towards sanctification when in fact I am throwing up roadblocks in their way, oh, may my God be so gracious as to reprimand my wicked ways and guide me back to the paths of true righteousness!

Let it be accepted, then, that there is indeed such application to this passage as to steer us clear of unwarranted demands of, “You must.”  This is not to suggest we push so far in the other direction as to reject all claims upon our conduct.  We don’t wish to join the antinomians in making our faith an anything goes sort of practice.  Scripture, the New Testament included, contains plenty of imperatives.  We’ve had two of them here in this passage.  Rejoice!  It’s an imperative, a commanded mindset.  Beware!  It’s an imperative, a commanded perspective.  Use your head and use it rightly.  Let Scripture be your guide, and grant no man the right to bind your conscience beyond its guidance.  Neither, let yourself become such a one as would bind burdens upon others because they happen to be your practice or your tradition.

Your conscience is naturally binding upon your own actions.  And let it be assumed, in this case, that your conscience is in fact guided by the Holy Spirit abiding in you, that you are in fact among the redeemed.  It may be that for you, in your present stage of sanctification, this or that may be a matter to avoid, or a matter to pursue more vigorously.  That does indeed become a binding of the conscience.  Indeed, the conscience is already being bounded by these concerns.  But it’s personal.  It’s not a matter of general application.  You see this twofold perspective in Paul’s teaching.  He spends much time on in in 1Corinthians, primarily from the perspective of not demanding your right to your liberties to the degree that you cause another to sin against their own conscience.  We see it in Romans, with its discussions of dietary practices, and observations of the feast days.  If you are Jewish, and see fit to continue observing those days because your conscience informs you that you should, do so.  But don’t suppose you can demand that your Gentile brethren likewise take up the practice, nor even your fellow Jews in the Church.  It comes down to this:  Whatever is not from faith is sin (Ro 14:23), and that applies both to actions taken and those from which one has abstained.

This does, clearly, allow of matters which are not explicitly commanded or proscribed in Scripture.  But it does not allow us to insist on such a course except for ourselves in our own pursuit of sanctification.  And, I might add this.  In such cases, don’t be surprised if, at some future juncture, you find that the personal command has lost its force.  Such proscriptions or prescriptions may be temporary, needful for a particular stage of your development, but at some point they are no longer required.

Let us take to heart the pointed address to the Galatians, that, “If you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by one another” (Gal 5:15).  This is what comes of excessive legalism.  We cease to take our measure against the standards of God, and move to comparative religion, comparative, performance-based righteousness.  We become like the Pharisees.  Oh, thank God I’m not like that man over there!  These others may have no understanding, but praise God, I know the deep things!  Spiritual pride, dear ones, takes many forms.  It is a clever user of disguises, and those disguises are at their most effective when turned upon our own self-awareness.

There is a fine line here, a boundary to be observed, in spite of all my contention against setting unwarranted boundaries.  This one, I believe we must say, is warranted.  We are not, as that Galatians verse insists, to get into back-biting, or demanding this or that act of compliance with man-made regulations.  But that is not to say we abandon all good judgment.  We are not to supply excessive litmus tests to those who claim to love Jesus, but at the same time, it remains the case that a tree is known by its fruit.  What is that statement, but a call to use your judgment?  What are we to make of this command here, to beware, to observe perceptively and take the measure of these Judaizing Christians, except that it is a call to use wise judgment?  There are plentiful warnings in Scripture to back up Paul’s concern here.  He writes much the same to the church in Corinth, and this, in his more positive epistle to that church, after they had amended much of their own practice.  Other preachers would come, and among these would be those preaching “another Jesus whom we have not preached, a different spirit than that which you received, a different gospel than you accepted from us” (2Co 11:4).  And hear the rebuke.  “You bear this beautifully.”  You’ve suspended judgment, and you just accept whatever message happens along, so long as the messenger purports to be a Christian.  He’s my brother!  I dare not judge.  But where does Paul go with this?  “Such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, Satan’s minions disguised as apostles.  Even Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, so why should it surprise if his servants do the same?” (2Co 11:13-15).  That’s judgment rendered.  That’s the messenger assessed by his message, not by his claims alone.

And let us take care as to our own teaching and practice!  When John comes to that place in his visions where the New Jerusalem has come down, the new creation has been established, and Christ has taken His rightful place on the throne, he takes a moment to look outside the walls of this place.  We who are washed in the blood of Christ, have the right to enter the gates of His city and to partake of the tree of life.  But turn around and look back for a moment.  For outside those gates, outside the city walls, are the dogs and sorcerers, the immoral, the murderers, the idolators, and with them, everyone who loves and practices lying (Rev 22:14-15).  Beware!  Examine and assess!  And having examined, having judged rightly, consider what you must do.  But I’m telling you plainly that this is more a case for personal examination and personal repentance.  Have I, in my assurance of salvation, permitted myself such practices as these?

Oh, you will say, I have surely never murdered!  But then, look back to Jesus’ teaching on the subject.  Have you despised another person as a fool, a spiritual know-nothing?  I have kept myself from immorality!  Honestly, I would find that claim dubious in any man or woman.  We are surrounded by too many enticements, too many opportunities for eyes to wander and minds to follow after.  You and I may not have taken action on those thoughts, but neither did we reject them with the severity they deserve.  Beware!  Habits are being built, and they are not the habits of the righteous.  You don’t practice magic, more than likely, but to what degree have you allowed your perceptions of Christ to become magical thinking?  If God is your spiritual ATM, you might very well be in danger of having become a bit of a sorcerer.  If you’re bound and determined to know the future, to have access to God’s schedule and know what’s coming and when?  Yeh, that’s kind of why folks used to consult with seers even when God had clearly prohibited such things.  Why do you think it different because you’re doing it personally?  And lying?  Oh, my goodness!  I suppose there may be those who truly prevail against any propensity to lie, but often our practices of politeness, of social niceties, comes down to just that.  We would never tell them how we honestly felt about their dinner, their conversation, and so on.  That would be rude.  And yes, it probably would be.  I’ve known a few who largely lack such filters, and it’s guaranteed to become a cause of unnecessary offense.  There’s a place for such social lubricants.  But, “I don’t lie!”?  That is almost assuredly a lie in itself, and it may very well be that the biggest lie you’re telling is the one you tell yourself.  Beware!  Examine and assess.  And then, adjust your course accordingly.

Test others, but by all means, test yourself first and foremost.  That business about the beam in your own eye is not a call to just stop all judgment, all assessment.  No!  the instruction given is to get the beam out of your own eye so that you can help your brother with his issue.  It’s a call to fix both problems, not to have them cancel one another out.  Beware of the dogs!  And the first dog to beware of is your own fallen nature, your own propensity for self-delusion, and unwarranted positive self-assessment.  But close behind it is an equal and opposite propensity for unwarranted negative self-assessment.  You are indeed a child of God.  Just don’t become a presumptuous child.

Lord, help us.  Help me.  I know too well that I am not immune to these same things, and not immune to blinding myself to my own errors and arrogance.  Grant eyes to see clearly, wisdom to assess rightly, and strength of character to take action accordingly.  I can’t do this without You.  My eyes are too cloudy, my sense of self too distorted.  Holy Spirit, guide.  Speak to my conscience, and grant that I might receive Your guidance, Your correction, in active participation and change.  I am Yours, to be sure.  I want to act more like it, and I know myself too well to suppose I am good enough as I am.  I am not.  You alone are good, and as good as I may tend to think I am, it’s falsehood.  Any good in me is Your doing.  But let me not beat myself up over failures I cannot revise.  Let me instead know a resolve in my own spirit to go forward on a different course that will not lead to a repeat performance, reinforcing character flaws that You would see excised instead.  Guide me, lead me, force me if You must. But let me be as You desire me to be.

Symbols (80/27/24-08/28/24)

The great conflict of this passage is between symbols and realities.  It is all well and good to undertake some symbolic act as an expression of worship.  We do as much in the church today, with the taking of Communion and the act of Baptism.  For all that, we could include many of our approaches to seeing the lost converted, such as asking them to pray the sinner’s prayer or what have you.  These are symbolic acts.  The acts in and of themselves have no power to save or to convert.  Indeed, the symbol has no power whatsoever except it reflects an inward, spiritual reality.

For the early church in particular, this was something of a critical concern.  After all, Judaism was drenched in symbolism.  The whole of their religious practice was a pursuit of such symbolic acts.  The sacrifices offered at the temple could only be symbolic.  The feasts that marked the progress of the year were each of them symbolic acts, done perhaps in remembrance of God’s past actions, but also looking forward to future promises.  Even their possession of the land of Israel was a symbolic matter, pointing to a future time, a future city of God.  But for the most part, this was lost on the practitioners of Judaism, and the acts themselves so entrenched that they had become for many the sum and substance of true religion.  Clearly, this was at issue for the Pharisees, and a fundamental stumbling block for their coming to faith.  Jesus was disregarding any number of symbolic acts that had come to have the weight of law.  These were not matters of Mosaic Law as laid down by God.  They were other acts, other symbolisms that had been added, but over time, had come to have equal weight in the eyes of their practitioners.

But here, with circumcision, we are back at something that was part of Mosaic Law.  So, too, the cycle of feasts.  These had been set forth as matters to be practiced unto perpetuity.  Circumcision, after all, was the fundamental evidence of being part of the covenant community, and so seriously did God take it, that He declared that one who was not circumcised to be cut off from said community.  Even foreigners among your household were to be brought into compliance.  Serious stuff!  But it was symbolic.  Circumcision in and of itself had no power to determine piety, nor even to produce piety.  If the heart was not in it, the act was nothing.  So, too, the feasts.  One could perform the rites of a Passover meal every year without fail, and yet feel no affinity to God.  It’s like those who come to church on Easter and Christmas, but primarily out of a sense of tradition, keeping up appearances.  It means nothing.  It affects nothing.

So, here’s an interesting thing.  Many of the surrounding cultures also practiced circumcision.  Israel was not alone in this.  There is some suggestion that the breadth of application may have been unique to that people.  But Egyptians and others also knew the practice, and even gave it a religious connotation not that dissimilar to what the Jewish practice intended to convey.  They may not have put the covenant concern on it, but as a marking out for holiness, yes.  The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery notes that amongst the nations around Israel, only the Philistines did not have any such practice, and proceeds to attribute to this fact the association the Jews came to make between being uncircumcised and being wicked.  They were, after all, a constant foe to Israel.

Paul is taking aim at this practice, as it had come to be pursued:  A symbolic act devoid of symbolism, an empty cutting of the flesh, now having no real difference from the cutting of the flesh practiced by those idolatrous Baal worshipers of old.  And these, one might note, were in fact forbidden by Mosaic Law, not solely because they were acts of idolatry.  Much of the proscriptive nature of that Law was a matter of having no resemblance to those pagan nations, no appearance of relationship with the practices of idolatry.  What was the deal with shaving, or cutting one’s hair?  These were things done by the practitioners of other religions to denote their devotion to their gods.  Many of the dietary restrictions imposed by Mosaic Law were likewise matters of separating godly practice from anything that pertained in their idolatrous practices.  One might argue that the primary reason for the many prohibitions in regard to immorality also had this aim in mind.  There’s more to each of these things, but fundamentally, the practice of these things was too closely associated with surrounding religions, and even if one had no intent of participating in their worship, the implication was there.  Others might make assumptions.

These same tensions play out in the New Testament.  The issue of head-coverings, taken up in 1Corinthians would be an example.  The concern was appearing like the prophetesses of various temples of the Greeks.  Did the Christian believer really wish to be associated with the devotees of Aphrodite or Diana?  The same concerns applied in their finding liberty to go and join the feasts down at the local temple.  After all, they reasoned, we realize there’s nothing behind these idols, no validity to these acts of worship.  It’s just a meal and a party.  No harm done.  That may be true, says Paul, but that may not be how its perceived by your fellow believers, and they, having as yet scruples about associating with these former practices, might be led by your example to violate their own conscience, which is to say, to disregard the promptings of the Spirit within them.

But it leads to an interesting dilemma.  After all, the intent of the Gospel was not to reject the Jews utterly.  This, too, is something Paul makes plain over and over again.  It’s sort of there even in this passage.  How could it be that He is rejecting all Israel?  I am a Jew through and threw, and yet here I am.  The Apostles, to a man, were Jewish, and they were clearly not rejected.  At the time, there was yet a church in Jerusalem, and it was a primary church, perhaps the primary church.  And by nature, it would be almost exclusively Jewish in composition.  So, that’s not the point.  The symbols aren’t being rejected per se.  They are being fulfilled, and we who have the fulfillment are no longer bound by the symbolic.  That was the clear message, even from Jerusalem’s church.

We have the account of it in Acts.  Actually, we have the determination of that first church council delivered three times in that book.  The first is delivered in Acts 15:28-29.  By the Holy Spirit’s direction, we impose no burden on you Gentiles beyond these essentials:  Abstain from eating what has been sacrificed to idols, from things of blood and things strangled; and abstain from fornication.  That’s it.  Cut off the idolatrous practices, have no association with them.  Now, the primary concern at the time of writing was this very demand of circumcision that was being made by certain Jews come amongst the Gentile churches.  But observe as well that nothing is said of keeping to the cycle of Jewish feasts, nor of other points of Jewish dietary law.  It’s not about keeping these.  It’s about breaking off any connection with those.  And in this, I think we could rightly say the Jerusalem Council, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, had got to the core of what the whole of Mosaic practice had been about in the first place.

Hastings observes that in this decision, only the most visible, most offensive actions were proscribed, and this, it is suggested, was to avoid giving any greater offense to those of Jewish background than was necessary.  The point of such practices was never to be an offense, but rather to be an example.  We are called to be the separated ones, even as the Pharisees construed themselves to be the separated ones.  We are called to be different in practice and in character.  We are not called to be obnoxious about it.  I keep revisiting that matter of Paul’s evident behavior in Ephesus.  It is just so striking to me that those who were Asiarchs, officers of the temple of Artemis, sent friends to keep Paul from endangering himself (Ac 19:31).  And note their defense of Paul.  They have not robbed the temple of Artemis.  They have not blasphemed our goddess (Ac 19:37).  They have simply proclaimed and lived their own faith among us.

Now, I may read more into that than I ought.  I don’t know.  But what I see is that these Asiarchs counted Paul not as competition, but as a friend, or at least as friendly.  He wasn’t going about denouncing idolators for their idolatry.  That’s not to say it didn’t pain him.  His response to the rampant idolatry in Athens makes that clear enough.  But even there, he did not revile and reprimand.  He met them where they were, and began from that point to present to them the truth of Christ.  This, I think, is the model of preaching the truth in love.

I bring all that up as it has application for us and for our understanding of the point of what was happening in the Jerusalem Council.  They were not giving weight to these idolatrous practices.  They were seeking not to give offense where none need be given.  They were not setting commanded boundaries that must continue for perpetuity.  They were addressing the state of things on the ground.  Much of the early work of church planting was done in and around the synagogues in whatever cities were visited.  There was constant contact between the early Christian community and the older Jewish community.  As such, any practice that would incite rejection without so much as a hearing was a practice that would run counter to the mission of the church; to go and make disciples.  You can’t make a disciple by pushing him away from God.  Neither can you make a disciple by presenting God as other than He Is.  But if there must be offense, let it be because God is Who He Is, not because we have insisted on our liberties even knowing these liberties are not requirements.

Okay.  Now, by the time we come to this epistle and the time of its writing, the matter had long since been settled by the Jerusalem Council.  Letters had been sent affirming that this was the case.  No doubt, Paul kept a copy of it on his person to address exactly the sort of demands being countered here.  It seems pretty likely that those in Philippi had seen the letter, heard the decision it declared.  As he says, he’s repeating instruction here.  This isn’t news to them.

But the vehemence with which he counters the continued demands of these Judaizers reflects, I think, the lawlessness and rebelliousness inherent in their actions.  They, too, must by now have learned of the Council’s decision.  If, in fact, they had any connection at all to the Church, then they owed to that Council the acceptance of their decision.  If these Judaizers were not in any way associating themselves with Christianity, it’s not at all clear to me how they had such an outsized influence on the church.  We see, of course, that they worked outside the church, to stir up the local Jewish community against these Christians.  That’s a different matter.  I would not think that such actions would lead to the Christian community having doubts about what they had believed, or what practices they had been taught.  Perhaps, though.  After all, one can’t just set aside that the Jews had a few thousand years of practice with this God before you came along.

But Paul’s argument here also seems to me to assume a certain familiarity with the ancient texts of the Old Testament, even with Torah.  Does this imply that some of those Judaizers were likely to be in the audience when this letter was read out in Philippi?  Does it suggest that the Church had its copies of the Scriptures and could and did delve into them for edification?  Or is it simply that Paul’s training in Jerusalem would lead him naturally to draw from such references?  Perhaps it’s a bit of all these things.  Whatever the reason, though, we have this:  Paul is declaring the demanded acts of circumcision to be equivalent with the slashings of the pagan.  We have that shown vividly in the record of Elijah countering the priests of Baal when Israel had been enticed away to their idols.  Challenging them to a duel of sorts, he called upon God to send fire and consume his sacrifice.  They, for their part, took to crying out loudly, and cutting themselves with sword and lance (1Ki 18:28).  We know the story.  They were roundly mocked by Elijah, and indeed, in spite of his having heavily doused his firewood with water, fire did come down from heaven to consume the sacrifice.  Meanwhile, those priests of Baal, for all their noise and self-harm, achieved nothing.  Point made.

What is somewhat surprising in that account is that Elijah does not, at least by my recollection, recall the people of Israel to their own Scriptures.  But Paul does effectively allude to them here.  It’s right there in the Law.  “Don’t make yourself bald.  Don’t shave the edges of your beards.  Don’t make cuts in your flesh” (Lev 21:5).  That’s pretty straightforward.  And what was this demand of circumcision, but a making of cuts in the flesh?  Apart from the spiritual realities, that’s all it was, even as the cuts those priests of Baal were making were of no spiritual value.  Indeed, given the violation of Mosaic Law, we could argue pretty strongly that those acts were indeed of negative spiritual value, constituting a sin rather than piety.

Okay.  We have our symbolism, both in the act of obedience, and in the demand of compliance.  The big problem here is that the Judaizers, by their insistence, demonstrated that their faith was not in God, but in this act of theirs.  And for them, one must presume the act had been undergone in accordance with Mosaic Law, at the age of eight whole days.  So, what obedience was there, really, in this act?  It’s not like they made the decision.  It’s not like they had any real say in the matter at all.  Whatever spiritual significance might have applied, it must come later, when they had come of age to be responsible for the requirements of that law.  But that was at what, 14 years of age?  At any rate, well down the line from when this act of supposed obedience was undertaken.

And Paul is not really saying anything new with this shocking denouncement of their demands.  Jeremiah, for one, had said much the same of his people.  “To whom can I give this warning, Lord?  Who will be able to hear it?  For their ears are closed, and they cannot listen.  Indeed, the word of the LORD has become a reproach to them.  They have no delight in it” (Jer 6:10).  It is not obvious in the NASB translation, but what he says is in fact that their ears are uncircumcised.  Now, obviously, there was never any such call placed upon the community, to cut off some portion of their ears.  That is, then, not a literal requirement, but a spiritual expectation.  It’s getting at the intended symbolism of the symbol.

He comes again to this imagery a short while later.  And it’s interesting to see just how thoroughly this permeates Paul’s theology.  “Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me” (Jer 9:24).  Sound familiar?  “I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things.  But days are coming when I will punish both the circumcised and the uncircumcised:  Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, and all those desert dwellers who clip the hair on their heads.  For all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised of heart” (Jer 9:25-26).  The physical act had accomplished nothing.  It wasn’t the organ that needed surgery.  It was the heart.  It has always been the heart.

Stephen comes back to this same imagery as he faces the mob come to stone him for proclaiming Jesus.  “You are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ear, always resisting the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did” (Ac 7:51).  That’s like a direct echo of Jeremiah’s message.  One would think that some of those hearing it would recognize that fact, and maybe take heed.  But as he said:  ears uncircumcised cannot hear truth.  And observe as well that Paul was one of those present that day to hear this judgment of his own actions.  You, Paul, are doing just as your fathers did.  And clearly, it did not register on that day.  Yet, it seems to have lodged, a seed that would only bloom and become fruitful later.

Let’s come back to the symbolic nature of this act.  If it was symbolic, what did it symbolize?  It would be hard to miss the fact that this act of circumcision involved the reproductive organ of the male.  When one takes into account the matter of original sin, passing down through the generations from Adam, the symbolism may be seen.  Fausset makes it plain.  This is a cutting off of corruption, a severing of the line of defilement.  There is much that could be said on this point, but I’m going to keep it relatively brief, Lord willing.  Much is made of generational curses, but this, to my thinking, is the fundamental generational curse.  By the fact of generation, we were born inheritors of the sin of Adam.  This is our heritage, our birthright.  This is also, quite clearly, the reason Jesus, born of the Spirit and not of man, could be accounted sinless as no other could.  He didn’t start life with the deficit that all others do.  The seed of corruption was truly cut off in His case.  Yet, we must note, He underwent circumcision all the same, and that, on the eighth day, as Mosaic Law required.  Obedience was complete, even when unnecessary.   The same was clearly true of His baptism.  He had nothing to repent of, yet He would undergo this baptism of repentance.

For the rest, there was the issue of circumcision.  It was something far more significant than a marker of one’s claim to membership in the covenant community.  While it was a sign of the covenant, that was not its sole function.  The function of the sign went much deeper, or at least, was intended to go much deeper.  There’s no point cutting off the foreskin if sin remains.  There’s no cutting off of sin’s defilement if the character of the circumcised has more in common with the Philistines than with God.  What value was circumcision to those who went after the Baals, or those who took up the practices of Moloch?  The symbol was bereft of meaning, and they were, by their deeds, as cut off from the covenant community of God as were those pagan nations around them.

Thus, we find the prophets denouncing the Israelites as uncircumcised in lips, in ears, in heart.  This is what mattered, not some physical scar.  If indeed they had cut off all fleshliness and impurity, then frankly, the office of the prophet would not have been needed.  But, as tends to be the case with rites and rituals, the act itself had become the thing of significance to its practitioners, and the meaning had been lost.  Again, it’s like those who make their semi-annual appearance at church, to be seen on its high holy days, but then get back to living the life of a heathen the rest of the year; practical atheists as some pastor or other famously proclaimed.  And sadly, that’s true for many of us whose attendance is far more regular.  It can be true even though we spend our mornings in prayer and study, even though we diligently seek to spend time reading Scripture with our spouses, with our study groups, and what not.  When religion becomes performative, it becomes vanity and wind.

This is what had become of much of the ceremonial aspect of Mosaic Law.  Everybody went through the motions, but the heart was rarely in it.  It had become just what is done, done for no other reason than that it was expected of one.  It’s what good people do, don’t you see?  But the point of circumcision lay in its symbolism, and what it symbolized was a taking away of sin, a cutting off of those propensities to sin.  And if sin has been cut away, what remains?  What remains is purity.  What remains is one who has been cut off from the stuff of worldliness to be truly devoted to God, Who IS Purity.  It had long since become evident that as a marker of covenant membership, the value of the act was very much limited.  Ezekiel had commented on it.  If you are marked as righteous, but your actions continue to be those of a sinner, surely you will be accounted a sinner.  And, if you have been marked out as a sinner, but truly repent and pursue a life of godliness, then just as certainly, you will be accounted godly.

This, I think, is where we run into issues with infant baptism, as well.  It, too, must be an entirely symbolic act, and like circumcision, done quite without the volition of the child.  What say could he have in the matter?  And even if he did, what faculties of reason exist by which to render any sort of meaningful opinion?  Then, too, we could apply this test to most any practice we have as a matter of our pursuit of godliness.  The value of apparent obedience is limited.  It’s the heart condition that matters.  In this regard, I find it most telling that our salvation is a matter of rebirth.  Here, too, is an act that, in its fleshly representation, can have absolutely no volitional component in the one being born.  Nobody chooses to be born.  I can recall reading some cultish, spiritualist nonsense as a teen that insisted that actually we do, but it was and is patent nonsense.  Biology insists upon it.  God does as well.  It is He who opens or closes the womb, He who determined the time and place of your birth.  And, it is worth noting, it is He who has on His schedule the precise means and moment of your demise.  Your will simply doesn’t enter into it.  And the same must be said of rebirth.  This new life into which you have been born is something you entered into quite apart from any act of your own volition.  It is yours by grace, that none may boast.  That’s the formula of Scripture.  You have been reborn of the Spirit.  You didn’t tell Him what to do.  You didn’t give Him the okay to make you alive.  You were made alive, and having been made so, you looked about, and said, “Okay!”

So, then, where is the Christian equivalent?  We find it in baptism, naturally.  If circumcision was a cutting off of the inherited corruption of sin, baptism is just plain dying to sin, as Paul points out in Romans 6.  You have died to sin!  You can’t be still walking in it?  What sort of temptation do fleshly delights present to a dead man?  None.  He’s dead.  Beyond sensations of pleasure or pain.  And this is what baptism boldly proclaims.  I have died to this world, and now live to Christ.  There is something here, as well, of that odd claim of Jesus when His mother and brothers came looking for Him.  They’re outside.  My family are those who hear and do what God is teaching (Lk 8:21).

Hear it well.   My people are not those who diligently make sure they’re seen at church each week, but go through their week untouched by anything godly.  My people are not those who can recite My word chapter and verse, even proclaim accurately enough on the meaning, but then refuse to live by it.  No!  My people are those who both hear and do, whose ears are circumcised, whose hearts are circumcised.  My people hear My voice and follow Me.  This is the outcome of that circumcision which is of the Spirit, which is where Paul is driving this discussion.  They call themselves the circumcision, but we are the circumcision, not by some fleshly act of ours, but by the action of the Holy Spirit, by whom we now worship God in truth, glorying in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Indeed, when it comes to the flesh, we readily confess that there is no good in us.  My best deeds remain as filthy rags.  If there is new life, it is Christ.  If there is godliness in me, it is Christ.  I am His doing, start to finish.  The progress I make, I make because He supplies the progress.  As Paul already said in this letter, it is God who is at work in me both to will and to work (Php 2:13), and that is my impetus to keep striving in this labor of sanctification.

Here, I think, we should note another aspect of this symbolic act, whether we consider circumcision or baptism.  If it is a cutting off of our sinful past, our sinful inheritance, it is also a cutting off of lineage.  This is not a matter by which we can simply write off our parents or our kin as no longer of any concern to us.  But they no longer define us.  Clan no longer has claim on us.  In Christ, we are all one.  Where, then, would there be a place for clan?  And as to our lineage, as a clear result of this rebirth in the Spirit, we now have one as our Father.  Jesus made this clear.  Call no one your father, for you have one Father in heaven (Mt 23:9).  Does this, then, set aside the commandment to honor your mother and father?  Clearly not.  At best, we can suggest it fulfills that commandment.  But the bigger point is that your lineage has changed.  It’s not about genealogies.  It’s not about what genes you inherited from which parent.  That inheritance has been cut off, cut away.  Now, your inheritance is in heaven.  You are now a son of the Father.

So, then, what do we do with all this?  We set ourselves to the effort of sanctification, again, knowing that what progress we make, we make by the Father’s willing and working in us that it may be so.  We set ourselves to attend to that which the Spirit is prompting us to do.  We look to the example of our Lord, and seek as best we may to emulate His ways.  And we pray.  We pray with the desperation of those who know that in ourselves we have nothing to give to this effort, nothing of value or effectiveness.  We pray that our spiritual reality, our character, our self, may indeed grow in maturity, grow in resemblance to Him Who is our Father.  And as to those who come with insistent demands that we must do this, must avoid that, well!  Show me the Scriptural requirement!  And not just some test verse wrenched out of context.  Show me where the arc of redemptive history makes such a demand.  Beyond that, I shall live in the liberty of a conscience informed by the Spirit.  And may He be our sure guide in all such judgments, that we may indeed commit ourselves, heart, soul, spirit, and body, to walk in the Way that leads to home.

Lord grant that we may do so with diligence, with accuracy, and free of all acrimony, that You may have the glory and the honor in all that we say and do.  May it be that we learn to so regulate our lives as to bring no legitimate shame to Your good and perfect name.

Realities (08/29/24-08/30/24)

What happens as we move into verse 3 is that the symbols are set aside and the realities taken up.  They have the symbolic mark of circumcision, but we have the reality.  We don’t need the sign.  As we have seen, the sign devoid of a real symbolism is nothing.  I’ll rephrase that slightly.  Symbols are nothing without the reality.  Realities, on the other hand, persist just fine without the sign.  And this is the fundamental argument to be made against these Judaizing influences.  You are insisting on these symbolic acts, whether we are talking circumcision, dietary restrictions, or the ceremonial rites practiced in the synagogue and temple.  But the symbols are nothing without the reality.  All of these acts are a waste of time if the soul of the man is not itself circumcised, purified, redeemed.  And if the soul is in fact circumcised, purified, and redeemed, then the symbols add nothing to that.  The status is as it is.

Now, let me back off of that just a bit.  We being creatures of flesh, with an innate response to the input of the senses, have a natural inclination towards symbolic acts.  And they can be of value where they serve to reinforce the development of our spiritual health.  Most of those things we speak of as means of grace might reasonably be construed as symbolic actions.  Reading the Bible, for example, does not in itself make you holy.  Attendance at church does not render you redeemed.  Taking communion does not in any way automatically include you in the number of the elect, and baptism will not save you.  All of these are symbolic acts.  These times of study that occupy my mornings are, after their fashion, symbolic acts.  If they do not support the work which God is doing in me, if they are not pursuing an adherence to His ways as prompted by the Holy Spirit abiding in me, then they are a complete waste of time, and I would be far better served to get more sleep.

Symbols are, once more with feeling, nothing without the reality.  But with the reality?  Then, they can be powerful reinforcements to bolster our steadfastness and to increase our maturation.  To study the Bible solely so as to be able to utter profundities to impress our fellows is of no value.  To research it as one might an original text of Shakespeare or Ovid; teasing out the technicalities, savoring the linguistic artistry, and so on; but giving no thought to its authoritative call upon our being will get us nowhere.  There will be no reward given in heaven for pages written or for fine points discerned.  The reward which shall be ours in heaven shall be on the basis of who we have come to be, the reality of our being.  The reward which shall be ours in heaven shall be in accord with the inner man, the me known only to myself in large part.  It’s never truly that way.  God certainly knows me, and that, far better than I know myself.  But there is much we keep to ourselves, and at least for me, it seems that often the most real part of me is that which exists only in my unexpressed thoughts.  The me in my head is often a rather different creature than the me that interacts with family, with coworkers, with my fellow believers.

Is that wrong?  Does that render me a hypocrite?  I don’t think so.  I’m not trying to put myself forward as one thing while in reality another.  But there is much in the world of thought that simply goes unexpressed, at least unexpressed in any deliberate fashion.  It informs the inner man.  It is the inner man, I suppose.  But there is a lot in the mental life that is seeking to fashion character, and so, to the degree that character shows, it makes itself known.  Yet there is, I think, a much greater richness in that inner dialog than ever winds up exposed outwardly.  Or maybe I’m just fooling myself.

Lord, You know.  If I am flattering myself in this, or deluding myself, expose me to me that I may indeed be in reality as I seek and desire to be in thought.  Let my reality be as my symbolic opinion.

Okay, I need to get back on course.  These Judaizers came insisting on signs.  Indeed, they came with the perspective that the signs were the reality.  They thought that being able to point to their lineage, chase out their generations back to Abraham, was sufficient.  They were rather like those baptized into the Catholic church as infants who figure that this makes them a Christian and no more need be done.  We can get on with life, drink ourselves to death, and still suppose we’re heaven-bound when we die.  It doesn’t work that way.  They thought circumcision, this ancient marker of the covenant, remained needful to the new covenant.  But Paul’s argument is simple:  Your present reality demonstrates the vacuous nature of your physical actions.  If it’s not circumcision of the heart, it’s nothing more than the superstitions of those nations Israel was tasked with eradicating from the land.  If there isn’t a real purification of the soul, then pointing to these physical markers, or to your careful attention to all the rules and regulations that define Jewish life mean nothing and less than nothing.  They have left you with a false confidence that has no basis whatsoever in reality.  And, going back to Jesus’ early pronouncements on what His coming meant, you can’t put these old covenant practices into the newness of the covenant of Christ.  It will ruin both (Lk 5:37-38).  The new must be kept new.  And to me, the most challenging part of that lesson was this: “No one, after drinking the old wishes for the new, for he says, ‘The old is good’” (Lk 5:39).

That was the issue for the Pharisees when Jesus began to reform religious practice and restore a true perception of the intent of the Law.  They had it good.  They were in the prestigious position of being accounted the religious experts.  And they looked the part.  They made sure of it.  But it hadn’t led to purity.  It had led to pride, and pride corrupts everything it touches.  If the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil (1Ti 6:10), pride lies at the root of every evil, every falling short of the mark of God’s glory.  For pride, from the outset, seeks to take possession of that which belongs to God alone, whether it be glory, defining right and wrong, or any other thing.  Pride wants very much to be in charge and to garner the accolades.  But it is for God to be in charge, and man to obey.  It is to Him that all glory and honor are due, not man.

So, what was to be done with these Judaizers?  I have some question yet as to whether those who troubled the Church in this fashion were from outside the Church or within.  I don’t think, after all, that it was only Rome that thought of these Christians as just one more sect of the Jewish religion.  I suspect much of the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem and its satellites in the synagogues around the empire thought much the same.  And if it was just another Jewish sect, then it must, in their opinion, bow to the rulings of the high priest, and acknowledge the instruction of the scribes.  But Jesus had long since decried their hypocrisy, and demonstrated with painful clarity that their practice was all symbol and no reality.  The reactions they had to Him healing those afflicted by disease and demon makes the case.  A man is given restoration of life, and they are angry!  Why?  Because they didn’t like that it happened on a Sabbath.  Oh!  The rank hypocrisy of it all!  You worship the God of Life, and are offended that life is upheld?  You wouldn’t be so put off by it if it concerned one of your animals, and well do you know it.  If this man had been your property in some fashion, then you would no doubt have been fine with seeing him restored to usefulness.  If he were your slave or your servant, then you would smile at seeing him made profitable once more.  But no.  You have no vested interest in the outcome, and so, seeing your prestige threatened by one with real authority, you react to protect your pride.

Watch out!  Don’t suppose you can look at the example and just tsk your mental tongue at those poor, benighted Pharisees.  We are not immune.  We have our own spiritual pride to deal with, and these records are not presented to us in order that we might feel better about ourselves by comparison.  No!  They are here so that we might learn from them, examine our own condition with greater clarity, and repent of any trace of like behavior in our own case.  Beware the dogs, even if it turns out that we are ourselves the dogs.  Get the beam out of your own eye!  Change the course your own while yet there remains the opportunity to do so.

And in the meantime, again, what to do with these Judaizers?  Let me assume that they are in fact believers, just bogged down with too keen a taste for the old wine of Judaism.  They believe in Christ well enough, but they are so steeped in the practices they have known from youth that those practices are hard to see as anything other than requirements.  After all, they were not the idolaters, right?  Well…  to the degree that signs had become empty of reality, yes in fact, they were the idolaters.  And that, again is Paul’s burning counter-argument here.  You think yourselves the true believers, the clearly labeled covenant community.  But no!  Those are just name tags.  Here, we have the reality:  Hearts truly circumcised, the old body of sin truly cut off.  Here are these Gentiles, as steeped in their traditions and superstitions as you are in your rituals and practices, and they have set it all aside, cast it all behind them, to lay hold of Jesus Christ and His righteousness, rather to hold onto that which has laid hold of them.  And you?  Too enamored of the old wine still.  Indeed, so enamored of it that not only do you insist on continuing in the old ways yourself, but you think to require everybody else to do likewise.

You can see how this presents a dilemma to the young believers of the Macedonian church.  Some of them had known a taste of Judaism before hearing of Christ.  And no doubt, as such, they had come to have a certain regard and respect for the Jews, with their history and their upbringing, and their experience of this God they were just getting to know.  But, then, wasn’t Paul also a Jew, just as much steeped in those very same things?  Why, yes he was, as he points out in the remainder of this passage.  Indeed, so far as Jewish pride goes, he had more reason than most to be possessed of such pride.  All well and good.  So, then, Paul, should we toss the bums out?  Should we chase them off and make it clear they have no place in the church of the saints assembled?  No!

How could this be?  The mother church, in that period, remained in Jerusalem.  The Apostles, the founding fathers of the Church, so far as flesh and blood were concerned, were Jewish to a man.  That hadn’t changed because they came to Christ.  If we look back at the earliest practice of the Apostles subsequent to Jesus’ ascension, where were they?  They were in the temple, teaching in the courts, just as He had done.  They were still very much a part of temple life, and there was, it would seem, nothing wrong with that.  These were not incompatible practices.  How could they be?  Jesus Himself had participated in all of these things.  He was circumcised the eighth day.  He was in regular attendance at the feasts.  He was obedient to every last requirement of the Law.  The traditions, perhaps not, but as to the Law?  Absolutely.

This, as some articles observe, was the substance of that decision rendered by the Jerusalem Council.  They did not insist that the Gentiles participate in the rites of the Temple, but neither did they insist that the Jews cease from doing so.  If partaking of the Seder aids your spiritual growth, there is no issue in pursuing it.  Just don’t suppose it is some binding demand of Christian faith.  It is not.  If you want to continue observing the Feast of Booths as you were taught as a child, go for it.  And do so with a clear and present sense of the goodness of God Who provides.  But don’t suppose you can make it binding upon your brother – and really, it doesn’t matter if we are talking about a Jewish brother or a Gentile brother.  These have become matters of conscience, secondary concerns of no salvific import.  If they have value, it is because your conscience continues to give them value.  If they are not done from such conviction, then they are but superstition or entertainment.

So, we have this observation from Fausset’s article on circumcision.  “Christianity did not interfere with Jewish usages, as social ordinances (no longer religiously significant) in the case of Jews, while the Jewish polity and temple stood.”  From that author’s perspective, the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, and the dissolving of the Jewish polity as it existed in that age, put paid to any possibility of maintaining such social ordinances.  I don’t know as one can make the case quite so strongly as that.  I do think that the overthrow of the temple, being at least partial fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy, and as such, a fulfilling of those woes pronounced upon the scribes and Pharisees for their falsity and their rejection of the Messiah they should have been first to recognize, renders the old order done and retired.  I do not expect to see some restoration of that old order.  Again, why would one return to symbols, when the reality is here?  The feasts are fulfilled, why continue the symbolic act looking forward to that fulfillment?  The sacrifice symbolized by the practices on the day of atonement and all the other sacrifices in that system have been completed in the perfect sacrifice of our Lord and Savior – eternal blood accomplishing in full what those outpourings of the blood of animals could never achieve in reality.  It had been purely symbolic, but the need for symbols has passed.  So, why would one expect to see them restored?  Is the reality going to depart, that we must wait for it again?  I think not.

So, then, if these Judaizers were coming from a place of real, if somewhat distorted faith in Christ, how was the Church to react?  In love.  In hope.  In grace.  There is no place to chase them off as some pagan horde threatening the kingdom.  No.  There’s a call to patience, to compassion.  There’s a call to pray that these fellow believers might indeed come to a greater maturity of faith, might be enabled by the Spirit to see that the symbols are fine, so far as they go, but they don’t go far enough in themselves.  There’s a call to seek that they, too, might truly be such as worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth, and if they are already in such a condition, that they might grow to realize that the symbol’s only value was in reflecting that inward state.  And may they, acceding to the Spirit indwelling, come to have joy in the expansion of the kingdom apart from symbols, giving glory to God for what He is doing, and for the patience and compassion He has shown to Jew and Gentile alike along the way.  In short, pray that it might be – for them and us alike – that we are such as are the true circumcision, rendered holy by means of the Spirit, our lives lived in union with Christ Jesus, as we worship the Father with hearts aflame.  Pray that we all might learn to put no trust in externalities, and that having learned, we would not become forgetful of that fundamental truth.

I’ve borrowed heavily from the GNT in the formulation of that thought.  But let me offer the NLT here.  “For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised.”  And let me just emphasize once more that this holds whatever form the outward practice may take.  Obviously, that outward form cannot take up the trappings of idolatry.  We can’t wander off to the local Hindu or Moslem establishment, take part in their practices and suppose that somehow remains worshiping the God Who Is.  “For what fellowship has light with darkness?  Or what harmony can there be between Christ and Belial?  What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever, or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2Co 6:14-16).  And as he proceeds to point out, we are the temple of God.  We’re not talking about some edifice in Jerusalem, and we’re not talking about some edifice in Rome.  We’re talking a true temple, built of living stones, as Peter describes it.

In the true temple, worship happens as an act of the will, not as a matter done under compulsion.  When I was a child, my parents could and did require that I be in church with them of a Sunday, and that I be on my best behavior, such as it was.  They could compel my compliance, insist I sing with the hymns, recite the various formulaic pronouncements, such as the Gloria Patri and the Lord’s Prayer.  But they could not compel worship.  True worship cannot be compelled.  True worship is from the heart, and thus entirely voluntary, a free-will offering of the truest form.  This is what Jesus was getting at with the woman at the well.  “An hour is coming, and is here, now, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:23).  There comes a question, though.  Are we talking of the spirit of the worshiper, or the Holy Spirit?  Or is it just possible we’re considering both/and?

This is a reasonable question.  The same term can, after all, apply to either, and it’s not entirely clear which is intended here.  Honestly, Greek sentence structure can be perplexing at times.  Here in verse 3, we have a clear subject and verb in ‘we are,’ but then a whole nominative phrase describing what we are, ‘the circumcision.’  This is followed by another nominative clause, literally translating as something like, ‘the worshipers,’ wrapped around a dative, ‘in spirit,’ and a genitive, ‘God.’  So, forgive a bit of syntax here.  As to that dative, there’s the question of just what sort of dative it is.  Is it an indirect object?  Perhaps, but that doesn’t seem to fit.  Is it locative, indicating when or where we worship?  Well, I suppose that depends how you perceive the overall intent.  Or, is it instrumental, indicating how we worship?  It seems to me that how we take this genitive depends on how we suppose to hear the spirit.  If it is a matter of our spirit, then a locative sense might suit, and we would be talking about worshiping in spirit and in truth, in keeping with that verse from John.  If it is instrumental, we might expect something more like ‘by the Spirit.’  Okay, we have one other marker here, and that is that the spirit is indicated in the singular, whereas ‘we’ is of course plural.  That would tend to lean me back towards seeing this as the Spirit.  What is a bit more certain here is that God is the object of this worship.  All of this drives me towards a perception of this clause as “we worship God by the Spirit.”

This is not to say that our own spirit is uninvolved.  But it does keep me mindful that our spirit, apart from the Holy Spirit, remains rather fleshly.  By our rebirth, this has changed, it is true, and we are a new creation.  Our spirit is now able to be in concord with the Spirit.  Put it this way.  Prior to our redemption, our spirit was incapable of truly worshiping God.  We could at best manage the sort of craven, self-interested appeasement that defines idolatry.  We couldn’t approach God from a place of love, only of fear and dread, lest He be angry with us.  That’s done with.  God has made known His love for us, and given us circumcised hearts able to recognize and respond to His great love.  While before we could only worship, if we did at all, as an attempt to ward off an angry deity, now we worship from the heart, from deep-seated desire to enjoy the fellowship we now share with God the Father.  In this, our spirit naturally finds fellowship with the Holy Spirit indwelling these temples of flesh.  He, after all, has enjoyed this fellowship eternally, and so spirit resonates with Spirit as we come to God in earnest, heartfelt desire to know Him, to hear Him, to talk with Him, to be with Him.  Our spirit is, after all, our ‘vertical connection to the divine,’ as Zhodiates describes it.  It’s at once a useful description and one most beautiful.

Hear it!  We are those who worship God by the Spirit, our spirits joining voice with His, our hearts throbbing with the same cadence, the same desire, the same experience of union with the Father.  Now, it may not be the same in degree.  How could it be?  The Holy Spirit is God, of one essence with the Father, and that, we shall never be, not even in our heavenly perfection.  But to flow with the Father, if you will; to walk with Him, share His thoughts, reflect His character, bask in His love… oh, yes!  These are things most desirable.  And in our capacity to do so, you will note, Paul tempers any propensity towards self-promotion.  Even in this, you see, we glory in Christ Jesus, and tacitly, in Him alone.  This is the implication of putting no confidence in the flesh.  God is Spirit, and must be worshiped in spirit.  It’s not about outward forms.  It’s not about looking holier than the next guy.  It’s not about singing more loudly, or with better harmonies, or more perfect pitch.  It’s about the heart behind the harmonies, the mind behind the melodies, the realities underlying the symbolic act of singing our praises to God.

This is where we leave off:  True faith is reflected in true worship, and true worship addresses the whole of the Trinity.  If we wish to abide by the bare word of the Scriptures, I think we must hold that true worship is always directed to the Father, always fueled by the Spirit, and always expressed, or maybe we should say filtered, through the Son.  It is in Christ Jesus that we are granted this privilege, which is to say, it is on His authority that we can come before our Father; it is by His atoning work that we can call God our Father.  It is by the Spirit that our hearts have been remade in flesh, circumcised of worldliness, and rendered capable of truly loving and worshiping the Father.  And it is indeed God the Father, Whom even the Son proclaims is greater than Himself, though He is Himself God – fully God as fully as Father is fully God and Spirit is fully God, who receives all our worship.  Even when we worship Jesus, it is the Father who gets the glory.

I’ll just note in passing something the NET mentions in footnote to this verse.  They point out that nowhere in Scripture do we find any instruction to direct worship to the Spirit.  It is by the Spirit, not to.  Now, given what was just said in regard to all three Persons of the Trinity being equally, wholly God, God entirely, I don’t think we can count this as a proscription against including the Holy Spirit as an object of our worship.  But it says something, I think, to the inner workings of that Triune fellowship.  Christ came proclaiming the Father, and the Spirit comes proclaiming Christ.  In neither case are they drawing attention to themselves, except so as to redirect that attention to its proper recipient.  All is to His glory, and His glory redounds to Son and Spirit alike a they serve to deliver glory unto Him.  In lesser degree, but with like glad result, His glory redounds to us as we truly come before Him in worship.

And let me just conclude by saying once more that this worship we are describing is not a thing bound round about by the expectations of our fellow believers.  We do well to look to Scripture to define for us what is and isn’t appropriate in worshiping God.  After all, it is His glory, and His prerogative to declare what is truly worshipful and what is not.  But whether it takes the form of hymns or choruses?  Whether it comes in four-part harmony, or Gregorian chant, or simple, even perhaps slightly off-key personal songs really doesn’t make so much of a difference as we have made it to do.  Flashy production, exquisite managing of parts and levels, and so on, may make it more pleasing to us, more appealing to our fellow believers, or those we hope to attract to be part of our body.  But what declares them beautiful to God transcends all these.  What declares them beautiful to God is the only thing that really matters.  If He is pleased to be worshiped with hand motions, and bowing and such by this one because it is truly an expression of heartfelt devotion, and not a matter of showy piety, who are we to be offended?  If the song seems a bit monotonous at times, or the melody to plain, that may be an issue for us, but if God is pleased by the heart that joins in singing it, if the music is coming as an expression of love for Him, and not mere display of personal skills, who are we to call it wrong?  Let us, then, be less concerned with form and appearance, and far more concerned with personal involvement, with truly worshiping the true God from hearts that truly love Him and desire to please Him Who is so pleasing to us.

Let our hearts thrum with the heartbeat of the Spirit, our eyes be filled with perception of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and our thoughts be drawn upward into the throne room of our Father that He may indeed receive all the glory, all the honor that is due His wondrous name.

Triune God, Triune Man (08/30/24)

I have already dwelt somewhat in the involvement of the Trinity in our worship, as in our salvation, and in our spiritually circumcised state of being.  God, the Trinity, acts of one accord to one purpose in all things, and yet each Person retains His personal role or part in each of these unified actions.  In like fashion, when we come to this matter of worship, it is something that ought rightly to occupy the whole of our being.

I bring this up because we find throughout the Scriptures a threefold, or three-part description of our being:  Spirit, soul, and flesh.  We can slip into having too wooden a view of the distinctions between these three if we are not careful.  Sometimes those distinctions are intended to be in focus.  With Paul’s tendency for contrasting spirit and flesh, as he does here, clearly there is a sharp contrast being presented.  They cut their flesh, but we have been truly separated from that heritage of sin by the spiritual circumcision of our hearts not by the hands of man, but by the Holy Spirit, by God Himself.  Their worship is fleshly.  It’s all about looking the part, playing the part.  Thus, the charges of hypocrisy.  “You’re just an actor.”  Over against this, Paul presents the true believers as worshiping in the spirit, by the Spirit.  Flesh doesn’t enter into it, though of course the flesh, the body, must remain actively involved.

Some insist on making a similar sharp distinction between spirit and soul, seeing what pertains to the soul as being more closely connected to the flesh than the spirit.  I rather prefer that distinction Zhodiates offers, between the horizontal perspective of soul, and the vertical connection of spirit.  But both are needful.  Both are called for.  In the body of Christ, we are to have fellowship one with another.  We are to have compassion for one another.  And that involves a horizontal perspective, a recognition of like spirit in our brothers and sisters.  As sons of God, we have necessity for the vertical connection to our Father, to our Christ, and to the indwelling Holy Spirit.  These are our proper object of worship.  These are also our supply, our provision.  Apart from the vertical, we cannot hope to maintain the horizontal.  But apart from the horizontal, we are not heeding the direction received from the vertical.  It’s both/and.  We worship God and love Him with all our heart, mind, body, soul, and strength.  AND we love our neighbors as ourselves.  That’s the call.  It was always the call, and it always will be.

So, yes, we may see flesh most often indicative of human infirmity and corruption.  Or, we may see it, as here, in a more technical usage referring to the ceremonial aspects of Mosaic Law.  Let’s understand something.  The Mosaic Law was not somehow evil or bad.  It was God’s ordinance.  How could it be evil or bad?  No, but human nature, or sin, hard to separate the two, made of that good Law something corrupt, self-serving, a mere virtue-signaling with no more value than the shrieking of modern-day harpies with their litany of complaints.  They don’t care, really.  They just want to look better than you, feel better than you.  So, too, the Christian in name only.  They go through the motions.  They take care to be seen, and to make known all the practices they maintain.  But it comes down to a loud shout of, “Look at me!” when our calling is to be a people who proclaim, “Behold your Redeemer!”

Keep in mind what Paul is dealing with in this section.  It is a matter of countering the Judaizers.  Their complaints were all to do with appearances, all to do with what they perceived to be prescribed or proscribed actions.  But the heart wasn’t in it, only the desire for prestige and perhaps position.  We want to feel important.  Well, get over it.  We’re not.  What’s important is God.  We greatly benefit by His goodness, to be sure, and we are right to rejoice in all that He has done and is doing in us.  He as made us new!  By His choice and His doing we have been reborn, brought into this state of being capable of true worship, and not only capable, but inclined to do so.  We are by no means perfect, but we are most assuredly not what we used to be.  The old has been left behind, cut off by this spiritual circumcision of our hearts, and we are – finally! – free to truly worship God from the depths of our being, resonating with His Spirit, His Word, His Truth.

And remember the assurance we have been given:  He who began the work will finish it.  That’s settled.  We join Him in that work, because we are His sons and love to be working alongside Him.  I had a lovely example of that with the team who came to provide us with new flooring in the cellar.  It was truly a family affair, and the family, as it happens, was part of the family of God.  It was a joy to have them here working, and to see the clear love and fellowship between all three of them, husband and wife working harmoniously together, father and son laboring side by side.  This is what we’re talking about with this process of sanctification.  We don’t work at it alone, nor does the Father.  We work together, side by side, enjoying fellowship one with the other as we go about the work.

Okay, back to the text, and hopefully, able to finish it up.  What remains of this part is Paul’s noting his credentials – such as they are – in regard to what these Judaizers accounted important.  I actually liked the way the CJB presents this part as something of a bullet-point presentation.  You can imagine, almost, Paul pressing the clicker to bring up the next slide in his Powerpoint presentation.  Thank God that’s not the reality, but the image is of some use.  Okay, these Judaizers have their checklist for perfection.  Let’s walk down the list.

•    Circumcised?  Check!  In full compliance both as to act and as to timing.
•    Jewish?  Check!  We can go to the genealogical records.  You’ll find me in the Benjamin section.
•    Pure Jewish?  Check!  Born to Jewish mother and Jewish father.  No mixture here.
•    Understanding of Mosaic Law?  Oh, very much so, thank you.  Studied under Gamaliel, trained as a Pharisee, and I do mean trained.  Trust me.  I can discuss the fine points with you, and indeed, use the full weight of Scripture to demonstrate just where you’ve gone wrong.
•    Zealous for the ancient faith?  Check!  Just ask the folks in the church back in Jerusalem.  They know how severely I opposed the church before Christ laid hold of me.
•    Obedient to the Law?  Brother, I was a Pharisee!  You can’t find a stricter adherent.

In short:  Y’all got nothing on me.  If you really want to play the credentials game, rest assured, I can out-credential you on every count.

Now, all of this is no doubt more for the comfort and assurance of his fellow believers there in Philippi than for any idea of convincing the Judaizers to lay off.  But the point is made.  And the point is painful.  All of those checkmarks I have?  All of that careful pursuit of every rite and ritual, every act prescribed by Mosaic Law?  It left me trying to off the very Messiah that Law intended me to seek.  I thought I was holy, holy, holy, but in fact I was anything but!  It took this Jesus, already dead and resurrected, knocking me down and blinding me to get my attention, to realize how useless and misdirected all of that effort had been.  It took three years alone in the desert, being instructed by this same Jesus, to truly shake off the shackles of old thinking to receive in full what God had for me.  Just think of it.  As he confesses towards the end of Acts, “I was so sure that I should maintain hostilities against the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Ac 26:9).  Oh, yes.  He was sure.  But God was surer.  And God was sure he wanted this man to be the primary catalyst for faith throughout the empire, not by making himself out to be anything, but by making Christ out to be everything.

And that remains our calling.  That remains the real function of the real Church.  We either make Christ everything, or we indeed make ourselves nothing and less than nothing.  Let us set ourselves, then, to be about the business of the Church, and direct all our praise towards God our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Let us proclaim to a world clearly in desperate need of it that salvation remains on the table, that none has yet become so far gone that God cannot save.  Let us resolve to proclaim only Christ, and Him crucified, to direct those lost souls around us to the One who can save.  Let us be faithful to the call God has placed on our lives, to be the temple of the living God, devoted to Him and directed by Him.