20 But our citizenship is in heaven. They really mean, this is worth my while, a well-known phrase in Latin too. Let us cry unto our Lord, for he has but to will it and thousands of sinners will be saved; let us lift up our hearts to him who has but to speak the word and whole nations shall be born unto him. The Jews c have a notion, that, "the holy blessed God will beautify the bodies of the righteous in future time, like the beauty of the first Adam:'', but their beauty and glory will be greater than that, it will be like the glory of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, whose image they shall then bear: and whereas this requires almighty power, of which Christ is possessed, it will be done, according to the working, the energy of his power and might; or as the Syriac version renders it, "according to his great power"; which was put forth in raising himself from the dead, and whereby he was declared to be the Son of God: and, whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself; not only sin, Satan, and the world, but death and the grave; and so consequently able to raise the dead bodies of his saints, and to change the qualities of them, and make them like unto his own: and now who would but follow such persons, who are citizens of heaven, have their conversation there, look for Christ the Saviour from thence, Philippians 3:20, who when he comes will raise the dead in Christ first, put such a glory on their bodies as is on his own, 1 Thessalonians 4:16, and take them to himself, that where he is they may be also? They say, that in training for the Olympics, you have got to go till it hurts, and you have to work yourself through the pain. "lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. As Paul saw it, the Christian is the athlete of Christ. It is always the power of Satan that is in view here. But our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, for he will refashion the body which we have in this state of our humiliation and make it like his own glorious body, by the working of that power of his whereby he is able to subject all things to himself. Far from it. What might you and I have thought of such? They glory in their shame. Not to our way of thinking, not to our church, not to the honor of our powers of persuasion, but "unto himself." But now he adds, "That I may know him" (speaking of entrance by faith into communion with Christ)" that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection." Now breathe the prayer, now believe that the Savior can work the transformation even in you, in you at this very moment. According to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself: This is possible only because the God we serve is omnipotent. Let this confirm our faith of the resurrection, that we not only have the scriptures, which assure us it shall be, but we know the power of God, which can effect it, Matthew 22:29. a really inaccurate mode. And she thought, "Oh my, I didn't dream anything could cost that much." Remembering that, we try to paraphrase this passage and to set down, not so much what Paul says, as what was in his mind. And the problem is that they are constantly going back and going over those bad experiences. We do that in two ways. For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness." Oh, what a shame. (1.) Our website uses cookies to store user preferences. The body of the glory is a body fitted for glory, a body which participates in glory. By calling himself an Israelite, Paul stressed the absolute purity of his descent. Oh, is it not awful to think, that the best proof of the love of Christ and of His glory is the very ground which the base heart of man turns into a reason for denying both His love and His glory? It shows us grace practically in different measures and forms. Whatever the motives, whatever the manner, the Lord would surely deal with these in His own day; but, at any rate, Christ was now preached, and God would use this both for His own glory and for the salvation of souls. Has it not been the rock on which many a gallant bark has made shipwreck? In Philippians 3:1-21 it is not the display of intrinsic affection in Christ, or the gracious dispositions of Christ in the saints. Their sympathies, drawn out by the afflictions of the apostle in his work, were the workings of the Holy Spirit in their souls at least the instincts of a life that was of Christ, and that judged in view of Him, and not according to appearances. But Paul the apostle said, "Look, I don't consider that I have attained; I don't look at myself as being perfect, the work of the Lord is not yet complete in me.". All these things Paul might have claimed to set down on the credit side of the balance; but when he met Christ, he wrote them off as nothing more than bad debts. There is no looking at Him as Saviour on the cross merely; but when He comes for us, there will be in the filial sense (as ever in our epistle) "salvation." But it is of importance to take notice, also, that the right and power of raising the dead, nay more, of doing everything according to his own pleasure, is assigned to the person of Christ an encomium by which his Divine majesty is illustriously set forth. He was so loyal a Jew that he had never lost the Hebrew speech; he was not only a religious Jew, he was a member of their strictest and the most self-disciplined sect; he had had in his heart a burning zeal for what he had thought was the cause of God; and he had a record in Judaism in which no man could mark a fault. If this be borne in mind a large part of the difficulty that some have found completely disappears. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself." Such is the force of the exhortation. Here, my entire life I have never done anything wrong, have been going by the rules, up till now. Yet the truth as to this abides, not only at the starting-point, but all the way through. He had learned practically what Christ is, and what He does, and what He can enable even the least to do, (as he says himself, "less than the least of all saints,") and so much the more, because the least in his own eyes. B. Lightfoot speaks of "the dogs which prowl about eastern cities, without a home and without an owner, feeding on the refuse and filth of the streets, quarrelling among themselves, and attacking the passer-by.". In Deuteronomy the Law brings together the price of a dog and the hire of a whore, and declares that neither must be offered to God ( Deuteronomy 23:18). Paul is talking about their demands that the Gentiles be circumcised to be saved. How the text got gradually changed from the most correct form (not correction) in the early Uncials has been explained. So, then, Paul is saying, "I found the Law and all its ways of no more use than the refuse thrown on the garbage heap to help me to get into a right relationship with God. They want to tell you that you ought to be prosperous, you ought to be successful, you ought to be living in luxury, you are God's child, you ought to be indulging your flesh. When he shall come a second time he will change our vile body and fashion it like unto his glorious body. But unfortunately, since then, a lot of those things that they counted loss at that point, they picked back up, so that they are encumbered again. Annotations in loc.) Take all, and reign and rule." Submitted by admin on Sun, 2007-03-11 11:14. So Paul says that in the Christian life we must forget every past achievement and remember only the goal which lies ahead. May he prove his power this morning. Its materialism is not yet so refined as to be an assistance to the spirit; it gravitates downwards, and it has a bias from the right line; but it awaits the last change, and then it shall be perfectly sinless, as alabaster white and pure, upon which stain of sin did never come; like the newly driven snow, immaculately chaste. Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith." These Philippians will not be less saints in heaven, where there can be no such charges as "bishops or deacons." To "abound yet more and more," to have that love tempered by divinely given wisdom and divinely exercised judgment, is the very reverse of going back. I have already pointed that out to you, but I refer to it again. While I thus invite you, I trust he will speak through me to you and win you to himself. Few preachers would dare to make the appeal with which Paul begins this section. There are two chief stages of His humiliation flowing out of His perfect love. He says, "All my life I have been trying to get into a right relationship with God. And there Paul was converted. But it is not so that God has written His word. And that is in the glorious liberty that we have in Christ Jesus, that relationship that we can now have with God apart from the law. October 04, 2022 Jason Dexter Outline I. He closes the chapter with warnings and exhortations. They are circumcised, not with the outward mark in the flesh, but with that inner circumcision of which the great law-givers and teachers and prophets spoke. He has a plan for your life now, and we should be as Jesus, who said, "I must be about my Father's business." Fifa Women's World Cup LIVE: New Zealand vs Philippines score - BBC What God was interested in is that my heart was circumcised, that I had the heart after the Spirit, and not after the flesh. With us the dog is a well-loved animal, but it was not so in the East in the time of Jesus. I have not yet accomplished that purpose. To write the same things is safe,Philippians 3:1; Philippians 3:1. He had given up all religion, he loathed God, and had arrived at such a desperate state of mind that he had conceived an affection for the devil, and endeavored to worship the evil one. Such a notion is unknown to scripture, and revolting to the spiritual mind. Whose end is destruction. It must be a very sad thing to be a soldier under any circumstances; to have to cut and hack and kill and subdue, even in a righteous cause, is cruel work; but to be a soldier of King Jesus is an honor and a joy. 21Who will change By this argument he stirs up the Philippians still farther to lift up their minds to heaven, and be wholly attached to Christ because this body which we carry about with us is not an everlasting abode, but a frail tabernacle, which will in a short time be reduced to nothing. In common language it was popularly derived from kusi (compare G2965) ballomena ( G906) , which means that which is thrown to the dogs; and in medical language it means excrement, (dung, as the King James Version translates it). (12-21) Commentary on Philippians 3:1-11 When Paul stated that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, it was a claim that he was not simply an Israelite but that he belonged to the highest aristocracy of Israel. It is perfectly possible for him to observe all the outward observances of religion and yet have hatred and bitterness and pride in his heart. They had little enough even to eat. It seems the church of the Philippians, though a faithful and flourishing church, was disturbed by the judaizing teachers, who endeavoured to keep up the law of Moses, and mix the observances of it with the doctrine of Christ and his institutions. It often happens that men can stand the great sorrows and the great trials of life but are undone by what are almost minor inconveniences. Thus we see here the power of a risen and a heavenly Christ, not now treated doctrinally as in 1 Corinthians 15:1-58 or 2 Corinthians 5:1-21 and elsewhere, but as that which bears on the Christian for the constant experience of every day. And the resurrection will be wrought by this power. Because he lives, we shall live also; his victory is our victory. But while he was on his way, just before arriving in Damascus about noontime, there came a light from heaven brighter than the noonday sun. When first he tasted it, he found it so sweet that he cared for none other. What a display of power! It would be the equivalent in England of saying that he came over with the Normans or in America that he traced his descent to the Pilgrim fathers. Here was a picture the Philippians could understand. When Saul is seeking to take his life, David's demand is: "After whom do you pursue? 1. Accordingly, from the very starting-point, we are prepared for a difference of tone and character. No difficulties, however stern, that can be suggested from science or physical law, shall for a single instant stand in the way of the accomplishment of this transformation by Christ the King. The one thing that suits is to pursue the glory before him, till he is in the same glory along with Christ. In Php_3:15 he again uses teleios ( G5046) and says that this must be the attitude of those who are teleios ( G5046) . 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. The thought of this glorious consummation was a subject of the highest joy and confidence amongst the primitive Christian. (207) Quil leur auoit donne en garde; What he had given to them to keep.. Indeed he esteemed others better than himself. ( Psalms 69:9). Whoever they were, Paul reminds them of one great truth: "Our citizenship," he says, "is in heaven." "The resurrection of the body is not an isolated event but part of the last act in the drama of redemption (Romans 8:19-25)" (OBrien 466). So the apostle lets them know that he owned their hearty love; "not," he says, "because I desire a gift." Philippians 3:20-21 - Commentary | Sharing Bread And many people have never experienced the power of the resurrected life, because they have shied away from the fellowship of the suffering and of the crucified with Christ life. In point of fact the Ishmaelites could trace their descent to Abraham, for Ishmael was Abraham's son by Hagar; the Edomites could trace their descent to Isaac, for Esau, the founder of the Edomite nation, was Isaac's son; but it was the Israelites alone who could trace their descent to Jacob, whom God had called by the name of Israel. (i) "Beware of the dogs," he says. Who shall say unto him, "What doest thou?". And they are not really going ahead in life at all, because they are so involved in the past. This is where at least some of the Jews made the mistake. but for you it is safe. . Roman dress was worn; Roman magistrates governed; the Latin tongue was spoken; Roman justice was administered; Roman morals were observed.
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