Commentary on Philippians 3:4b-14

Sometimes it is worth pondering what the lectionary reading excludes.

Today’s text from Philippians 3 picks up partway through verse 4—in other words, right in the middle of Paul’s train of thought. The first few verses of the chapter feature some rude and argumentative language (“Dogs! Mutilators!”). Omitting these verses certainly makes the passage easier to read in church. But it also divorces Paul’s theological argument from the real-life dispute to which it belongs. It makes it easy to forget that Paul was writing a letter—a letter that was not addressed to us.

Circumcision of the heart

At the beginning of chapter 3, the tone of Paul’s letter shifts so abruptly that some interpreters suspect that Philippians 3:2–21 was originally a separate letter.¹ Verse 1 is a warm summons to rejoice. Verse 2 is a sharply worded warning: “Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!”

Labels like “dogs” and “evil workers” are all-purpose denunciations.² They tell us only that Paul was angry. “Mutilation” is more specific, and helps us understand why. The Greek word here is katatomē, which ordinarily refers to a notch or a groove or a sheered face of rock—in other words, the scar that is left when something has been cut. But here it is a play on words. Paul’s katatomē (“cutting”) is a sarcastic twist on the word peritomē—that is, circumcision.

The implication is clear: Beware the workers of evil and their false circumcision. Other Christian teachers have apparently been inviting gentile followers of Christ to be circumcised in accordance with God’s command to Abraham. As Paul’s heated language makes plain, he does not want such teachers to get a hearing in Philippi.

In retrospect, it is tempting to view the dispute between Paul and his circumcising rivals as a debate about how Jewish the gospel of Christ should be. I count everything as loss, Paul says—circumcision, Israelite identity, kinship with the tribe of Benjamin, legal observance, et cetera (3:7). Out with Judaism, in with Christ—this is how Paul’s language has often been understood.

When Paul was writing, however, no one could have envisioned a Christian gospel that was not also an invitation to join the people of Israel—least of all Paul. The question Paul and his rivals were debating is not whether gentile believers should become part of the family of Abraham, but how.

Here it is telling that Paul reserves the term “circumcision” (peritomē) for those on his side of the dispute: “For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh” (3:3). True circumcision, he implies, is a matter of the heart and the spirit, not of the flesh (see also Romans 2:29).

The basic idea was not a new one, nor was it unique to followers of Christ. Deuteronomy, too, had envisioned a circumcision of the heart marking a people who wholeheartedly love and serve their God (30:6). Jeremiah picked up Deuteronomy’s image and supplemented it with his own: a new covenant, written on Israel’s heart (4:4; 31:31–34).

Clearly, then, when Paul alludes to a spiritual circumcision, he is not criticizing Jews or repudiating Judaism. He is, rather, reiterating and extending an old prophetic dream. Paul believes that Jeremiah’s vision of a new covenant and a circumcision of the heart has now been fulfilled in Christ. To circumcise gentiles now would mean failing to recognize the new thing God has done. In Christ, God has already purified gentile hearts by faith and grafted believers into the people of Israel. Why initiate adoption proceedings for those who are already Abraham’s children (Galatians 3:7, 29)?

Losses and gains

It is in the context of this dispute that Paul begins to tally his gains and losses. The imagery of verses 7–11 is financial, with language drawn from the world of accounting.³ Paul’s qualifications and achievements as a faithful Jew would ordinarily be counted among his assets. But Paul has had a taste of the Spirit (3:3)—a down payment on the glory to come (2 Corinthians 5:5)—and he is no longer in the market for what now seem like “fleshly” commodities. The only acquisition he cares about is Christ.

So Paul compares the two sides of his ledger. On the one hand, there is the knowledge of Christ, which also means sharing in Christ’s righteousness, suffering, and resurrection life. On the other hand, there is circumcision, legal observance, his status as a Pharisee, and so on—in short, everything on which he had previously based his identity.

For Paul, the math is simple: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (3:8). The problem with the message of Paul’s rival teachers, then, is not that it is somehow too Jewish. The problem is that circumcision isn’t Christ.

One suspects Paul would apply the same calculation to the various trappings of Christian cultural identity. For example, to conflate racial identity with devotion to Christ is quite literally to put one’s confidence in the flesh. Such things are worthless—“rubbish,” as Paul puts it—compared to the knowledge of Christ.

Notes

1. For a summary of the debate, see Angela Standhartinger, “Philippians and Philemon,” in T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul, ed. Ryan S. Schellenberg and Heidi Wendt (T&T Clark, 2022), 356–57.
2. “Dogs” was not a term used by Jews to deride unclean gentiles, as many commentators have claimed. See Mark D. Nanos, “Paul’s Reversal of Jews Calling Gentiles ‘Dogs’ (Philippians 3:2): 1600 Years of an Ideological Tale Wagging an Exegetical Dog?,” Biblical Interpretation 17 (2009): 448–82.
3. Jennifer Quigley, Divine Accounting: Theo-Economics in Early Christianity (Yale University Press, 2021), 71–73.