| | 1 | Finally, my brothers, 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 men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. | |
| | 3 | For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh-- | |
| | 4 | though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has 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 legalistic righteousness, faultless. | |
| | 7 | But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. | |
| | 8 | What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, 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 Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. | |
| | 10 | I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, | |
| | 11 | and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. | |
| | 12 | Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. | |
| | 13 | Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, | |
| | 14 | I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. | |
| | 15 | All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. | |
| | 16 | Only let us live up to what we have already attained. | |
| | 17 | Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. | |
| | 18 | For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. | |
| | 19 | Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. | |
| | 20 | But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, | |
| | 21 | who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. | |
