Chapter 3

For the rest, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write you the same things indeed is not irksome to me, but it is necessary for you.

Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the mutilation.

For we are the circumcision, we who serve God in spirit, who glory in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh---

though I too might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, yet more may I:

circumcised the eighth day, of the race of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as regards the Law, a Pharisee;

as regards zeal, a persecutor of the Church of God; as regards the justice of the Law, leading a blameless life. Renunciation for the Sake of Christ

But the things that were gain to me, these, for the sake of Christ, I have counted loss.

Nay more, I count everything loss because of the excelling knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as dung that I may gain Christ

and be found in him, not having a justice of my own, which is from the Law, but that which is from faith in Christ, the justice from God based upon faith;

so that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings: become like to him in death,

in the hope that somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this, or already have been made perfect, but I press on hoping that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me.

Brethren, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it already. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind, I strain forward to what is before,

I press on towards the goal, to the prize of God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

Let us then, as many as are perfect, be of this mind; and if in any point you are minded otherwise, this also God will reveal to you.

Still in what we have attained let us be of the same mind, and let us also continue in this same rule. Followers and Opponents of the Cross

Brethren, be imitators of me, and mark those who work after the pattern you have in us.

For many walk, of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their end is ruin, their god is their belly, their glory is in their shame, they mind the things of earth.

But our citizenship is in heaven from which also we eagerly await a Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ,

who will refashion the body of our lowliness, conforming it to the body of his glory by exerting the power by which he is able also to subject all things to himself.