WHERE’S YOUR CONFIDENCE?
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Opening Prayer
Lord Jesus, you stood before princes and paupers, offering the same love, never grasping for fame, never seeking a name. Help me to reflect your love and humility, no matter where you lead me.
Read PHILIPPIANS 3:1–11
For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.
No Confidence in the Flesh
3 Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. 2 Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in[a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Footnotes
- Philippians 3:9 Or through the faithfulness of
New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
What do you have to rejoice about (v. 1)? Write a list and spend time being joyful before the Lord.‘Confidence’ is a key word here (vv. 3, 4). Paul’s confidence had been in his heritage as a Jew, a learned, law-observant Pharisee, and a persecutor of the Jesus-followers (vv. 5, 6) Some think of Paul as deeply burdened by guilt about his actions before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–19), but his reflection here is that as far as right standing with God under the Jewish law was concerned, he was faultless (v. 6).
Paul warns the Philippians about people who sought to persuade gentile believers to keep the Jewish law and (for men) to accept circumcision (v. 2; we meet these people in Galatians too). It could be tempting, for Judaism was an established way of life, so gentile believers could avoid being treated so much as social outsiders if others saw them as Jewish.
Against this pressure, Paul focuses the believers’ attention afresh on Jesus. Verses 7–11 are one long sentence in Greek, drawing a contrast, but not between ‘Christianity’ and ‘Judaism,’ for Paul is still deeply Jewish. It is about finding that what God freely gives through Jesus is more valuable than all things—for Jesus makes us God’s own people.
Jot down the things that flow from trusting Christ (vv. 7–11) and give thanks to God for them.
Apply
Search for a YouTube recording of Graham Kendrick’s song ‘Knowing You, Jesus’ (2011), based on this passage, and listen worshipfully to it.
Closing prayer
Holy Spirit, thank you for enabling me to know Jesus, to know his love and be found in his righteousness. Surely, there is no better gift, no greater joy.
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