CONFIDENCE IN WHAT? - Three times in vs. 3-4, Paul uses the phrase, "confidence in the flesh" (TEV= "trust in external ceremonies"). What precisely does Paul want to say? Is "flesh" to mean, humanity in its weakness? Or as the TEV suggests, does the phrase speak more to anything that is physical, external, visible, and temporal vis-à-vis that which is spiritual, or internal, invisible, and eternal? Such is at the core of Paul’s contrast which follows.

SHADOWBOXING - Of whom is Paul referring to when he says, "If anyone else has reason to be confident . . ." (3:4)? The Judaizers? Gentiles who had succumbed to the teaching of the Judaizers? To whomever Paul alludes, he models his own credentials such that it exudes utmost confidence in the flesh. Paul is from Jacob’s favorite son, Benjamin, a Jew by racial descent, and Hebrew all the way down to the mother tongue-which few Jews spoke any longer

JEWS AND THE JUDAIZERS - Many rabbis I’ve spoken with also hold up faith as an important part of their religious culture. They avow that righteousness is not so neatly packaged as Paul seems to present it; it is not always an either/or proposition in an argument. It might be useful to describe the Judaizers as a group that moves more toward syncretism-that wants to cut and paste two religions together. That would result in a dilution of both and would produce a watered-down, tepid version of faith. Such distillation would never survive beyond a small enclave of disciples. How can we be true to our own tradition without bashing another? You can create a different world for your listeners by spending less energy on polemic and "why we’re better than you," by simply focusing on what the gospel requires of us-a full reliance of our life on Christ as the Savior and fulfillment of what we could never accomplish on our own.

What might "confidence in the flesh" look like in our post-modern society? Expertise? Good reputation? Education? Our reliance on high-speed internet and the new world that technology has opened? Science as the ultimate preeminent discipline?

How one becomes righteous before God? Negatively put, what doesn’t substitute for a relationship with God?

 

In a sense Paul understood the Christian life as a modeling for others what following Christ might look like. I can’t really see Paul walking the runway as a model with those hairy bow legs of his, but modeling Christian faith and teaching was something he did within every Christian community he entered.

Paul describes the goal of the Christian as "knowing Christ," or sharing his mind (3:8-10). The pattern of the gospel must be stamped upon all who call Christ "Lord." Christ himself is the blueprint for Christian behavior, but the apostle, modeling himself on Christ, becomes in turn the pattern for the Philippians, because they know him (3:17). Now that Paul is no longer among them, there are other models to follow-those who live according to the patter Paul gave them-and so the process continues. Individual Christians and Christian communities that embody the gospel serve to demonstrate the love of God to the world. The gospel is proclaimed in deed as much as in word Would we dare to claim to be examples to other saw of what it means to live like Christ? [1]

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[1] New Interpreter’s Bible XI (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2000), page 537.